And if there isn't violence, the police tend to escalate things and make it violent. I suspect this works to prevent/neuter any serious protests so long as the potential protestors still have something to lose, and in America there is very little in the way of a safety net, so living conditions would have to (continue to?) deteriorate quite a bit before protests started heading in a French direction.

I don't know if you know, but quite a few European countries are known to send police or "state" confederates into protests to give authorities an excuse to Escalate. You also see lots more water cannons being used over there.

In Paris the burning and destruction typically happens in the outer "boroughs" of the city -usually by disaffected groups -sometimes they happen to be disenfranchised- though typically they harm the older generation's property and that generation typically frowns upon the destruction.

Of course, in the US, we've had organizations who on paper are for justice and redress being found to foment agitation. It's a total corruption of their mandate. We had an "anti-hate" group paying hate groups to "do things"[1].

[1]https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/119311/witnesses/...