Why would anyone play the French defense?

There are no passive openings, only passive chess players.

This.

On the military theme does that make the pawn chain h7-g7-f7-e6-d5-c4 The Maginot Line?

Just saying the French had a bad military. And it is very obvious that they like to be passive but there is no such thing called a passive opening.

Hahaha typical pfren already 5 years ago

When was this? 

OMG, that quote was from 2016!

Who dares raise the dead!!!

There is an article from 2019 by IM Jeremy Silman titled 'the deadly French defense'. I personally don't like the French, but some people do.

I play the French because I like the kind of games I get with it and I get good results with it.  

I don’t always like the positions the French gives me, but I credit the French as one of several critical adjustments in my game that lifted me from C Class USCF to strong A Class.

Maybe as you gain Elo this defense becomes less and less useful but for me as a 900 the lines and sidelines are quite easy to memorize but most importantly it's easy to spot an inaccuracy. I tried learning the Sicilian but for the life of me I had no idea what to do when my opponent played a non book move on move 4. I'd be like, "I know this is an inaccuracy or even a bad move but I have no idea why!"
Also it helped me learn to enjoy playing as black. Now I've learned black has more control over what game is played. At the 900 level, White basically gets to choose an e4 or d4 game, but Black can pick from that subset. When I play e4 as white I'm hoping for an Italian or Scotch but it easily can be a Sicilian, Caro, or Bird or whatever.

I'm french bud

You don't have to play the French, because you're French. You could play the English, Spanish, Italian, Russian or Polish.

Though for quite a while, the king of England was also a French feudal lord, though he controlled much more territory than the king of France.

why was this stupid thread revived

Things aligned in the universe so you could ask this question !

This thread ends NOW! Seriously, some people want to avoid symmetry from the "get-go". I personally play the Caro-Kann. Years ago, I had my "Petrov Phase" but really did not know how to play it from Black's point of view. With the French, I got stuck with that crappy Bishop.

Several world champs were fond of the french defense , it cant be bad ...

I have been playing tournament chess for 50 years .... against 1 e4 I played Alekhines defense until I reached 1800 , switched to french until about rating 2000 and then started mixing my response between french and sicilian until 2200 . I used to play 1...e5 for the first few years as well until I switched to Alekhines ........

Botvinnik and Petrosian played the French more often than any other opening. Korchnoi, Uhlmann, Byrne and Maroczy were prominent players who played the French a lot.