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It has been scrawled on cardboard placards outside blockaded schools, shared in parody videos tens of thousands of times and repeated by Greta Thunberg. In the space of a few weeks, “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres” has become the unofficial slogan of France’s high school protests.
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Taken literally, the phrase means very little, and that is the point.
What does ‘Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres’ mean?
“Bismillah” is Arabic for “in the name of God”. Muslims traditionally say it before beginning a task, and in everyday French slang it can mean something closer to “let’s go”.
“C’est les ténèbres” translates as “it’s the darkness”. Among young people it is slang for a situation that is catastrophic or grim.
Put together, the phrase is nonsensical – “In the name of God, it’s the darkness”. Students say that is exactly why it caught on. They are mocking someone trying, and failing, to sound like them.
Where did the slogan come from?
The phrase comes from a screenshot of a Snapchat conversation that began circulating in early October, while students were using the app to organise school blockades.
In the message, a user named “Mamadou” asks to join a group: “Hi, in the name of God, it’s the darkness. When’s the blockade, wallah, bro?”
The message was accompanied by Algerian flag emojis.
Other screenshots showed similar accounts asking students where blockades would take place and who was selling fireworks and smoke grenades.
To many students, the clumsy mix of Arabic, street slang and national flags gave the game away. They concluded that the messages were written by police officers posing as teenagers to infiltrate private protest groups.
Did police really infiltrate student Snapchat groups?
This has not been proven. Neither the police nor the interior ministry in France has commented on the screenshots, and nobody has independently verified who was behind the accounts.
Some internet users claimed to have traced the accounts to locations near police stations, but those claims have not been verified. Some of the circulating screenshots may themselves be hoaxes or parodies.
Why are French students protesting?
The movement began in Créteil, south-east of Paris, on 18 September and quickly spread nationwide. A range of student grievances lie at the heart of the movement, including long school days, overcrowded classrooms, run down schools and teacher absences.
Many argue that these problems hit working-class suburbs and minority communities hardest. Around 400 schools were closed by blockades on 2 October alone.
The student protests fed into the nationwide demonstrations over the cost of living on Saturday 17 October, which ended in some of the worst rioting and looting France has seen in years.
Has the slogan spread outside France?
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg used it during a visit to striking students in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on 13 October, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
On 9 October, it appeared on placards at a union-led demonstration in Brussels against the Belgian government’s budget cuts. There, it was used as a gesture of solidarity with French students rather than a reference to the infiltration claims.
In Italy, ANSA reported that the phrase appeared at student demonstrations in Bologna on 15 October. It was heard again in Milan over the weekend of 17 and 18 October, when protests in Piazza del Duomo also turned to looting and students from a french school in Berlin were photographed holding a banner of the slogan.
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