France’s newest prime minister was preparing to take office on Wednesday as small groups of protesters across the country blocked highways, roundabouts and bridges in a show of frustration about the nation’s political direction.
The day of protest, a rejection of proposed austerity measures that is fueled by anger against President Emmanuel Macron, has been expected for weeks. But it arrived at a moment of extreme political volatility, less than 48 hours after the government lost a confidence vote and collapsed, opening a sudden vacuum of power.
Mr. Macron moved swiftly to fill it, appointing Sébastien Lecornu, formerly the defense minister, as the new prime minister, late on Tuesday. Mr. Lecornu is expected to begin the job around midday.
By naming a center-right ally, and a proven loyalist, Mr. Macron appeared to double down on an approach that has burned through two short-lived governments over the past year. The move was interpreted by the president’s critics as more of the same and inflamed the antigovernment fury of many protesters in the movement, which calls itself Bloquons Tout, or Let’s Block Everything.
On Wednesday morning, scenes of police officers confronting small groups of protesters blocking bridges, tram lines and roads unfurled across the country. By 8:30 a.m., 75 protesters had already been taken into custody in Paris after many groups had attempted to block the ring road that encircles the French capital, according to the city’s police authorities.
The authorities deployed a heavy police presence of some 80,000 officers across the country to guard against attempts to block essential infrastructure, including airports, public transportation lines and stations, power plants, and water treatment centers.
“Law enforcement has the order to not tolerate any violence, any vandalism, any blockage, any occupation of our nation’s essential infrastructure,” Bruno Retailleau, the departing interior minister, told reporters Wednesday morning in Rungis, a Paris suburb, on a visit to a wholesale international food market there.
Mr. Retailleau also said that in southwestern France, about 50 protesters had attempted to block tram lines in Bordeaux, and that cable arson had interrupted train traffic between the cities of Toulouse and Auch.
The Let’s Block Everything movement started online in May when a right-wing group called for shutting down the country on Sept. 10, experts say. After François Bayrou, the departing prime minister, presented an austerity budget in mid-July, that call quickly spread through social media with the hashtags #BloquonsTout or #10Septembre. Mr. Bayrou resigned this week after the losing the confidence vote.
Many fear the protests could build like the Yellow Vest movement, which started online in 2018 and led to months of chaotic and sometimes violent protests across France, finally petering out after the government spent nearly $20 billion appeasing it.
A survey by the left-wing Jean-Jaurès Foundation found that a majority of people involved in the Let’s Block Everything movement were educated, highly politicized and angry far-left sympathizers. So distrustful have they become of the president, the prime minister and other institutions of power that they consider them illegitimate and want nothing less than a full-scale change of government.
Demands listed in one online leaflet reflected left-wing priorities: strengthening public services, fighting media concentration, taxing the rich.
However, like the Yellow Vests, this movement has no official leaders nor communication channels. Its positions are broad and its support is sprawling. A recent survey by the polling company Ipsos showed strong backing among both left-wing voters and those who support the far-right National Rally, and very little from the country’s centrist voters.
Tristan Mendès France, who studies online conspiracy movements, pointed out that many well-known figures from the Yellow Vest movement have also supported Let’s Block Everything.
“This movement is not centralized,” said Mr. Mendès France, who is a lecturer in digital literacy at Paris Cité University. “There are diffuse influences, including loads of extreme right influencers who have a large number of followers, but they are fragmented.”
“The atmosphere online is one of anger and frustration and dégagisme,” he said, using a French word referring to a wholesale rejection of France’s political class.
The political leader of the far-left party France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, endorsed the movement in August. Other left-wing political parties followed. Two of France’s labor unions have said they would take part in the protests, but most are waiting for a national strike set for Sept. 18.
Though one spark of the online movement was opposition to Mr. Bayrou’s proposed budget, the collapse of his government hasn’t doused it. If anything, some of Mr. Macron’s political opponents said the president’s choice of another prime minister from his inner circle would further inflame the movement.
Marine Tondelier, the leader of France’s Green Party, told the BFMTV news channel Tuesday night that Mr. Lecornu’s appointment was a “provocation” that revealed a “total lack of respect” for the French people, who would wonder what the point of voting was.
Early Wednesday morning, a group of about a hundred, mostly young protesters gathered at the Porte d’Orléans in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris, and then moved up to the Place d’Alésia, knocking over recycling cans and e-bikes as they went. They erected makeshift barricades, lit trash fires, and gathered on the street to block traffic, clapping and chanting a recurring protest slogan, popularized by the Yellow Vest movement: “Even if Macron doesn’t want it, here we are.”
But the protesters dispersed quickly after the arrival of rows of police vans with flashing blue lights and officers in riot gear, some of whom charged and fired tear gas. Within minutes, the police had cleared away the debris and traffic had resumed — until the protesters re-formed several blocks away and the scene repeated itself.
That game of cat and mouse is expected to play out in Paris and elsewhere around France on Wednesday as the protesters aim not for huge street demonstrations but for chaotic, fluid disruptions.
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.
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