Student Protesters in France Have a Strange New Slogan. What Does It Mean?

As hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across France this past weekend in support of student protesters, many displayed a somewhat mystifying rallying cry on their cardboard signs: “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres.”

The phrase, a mash-up of the Islamic blessing “In the name of God” and the French phrase “It’s the darkness,” may make little sense on the surface.

But it has become a symbol of a generational rift since young people began protesting last month against lackluster school resources — demonstrations that evolved into widespread unrest this past weekend.

Where did the phrase emerge?

The sentence seems to have first been used on Snapchat by someone who was seeking entry to a private chat room where student protest organizers gathered.

The poster addressed Snapchat users with the greeting “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres,” a seemingly nonsensical phrase that appeared to mimic the colloquial blend of Arabic and French that young people in France sometimes use.

The writer then added, “We are going to break everything.”

The writer seems to have sent the message multiple times under different profiles, using names like Mamadou and Abdellah and accounts that displayed Algerian flag emojis.

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