Anyone following events in France is witnessing a society collapsing in real time. The most shocking thing is the sadism directed at ordinary people: masked men using flamethrowers against a random woman at a bus stop. Young masked men chasing a teacher with a large stick.
You see a thirst for destruction and sadism. The authorities have already lost control and France is falling and falling. There have long been warnings that something like this could happen in France, but when it actually happens, it is still different. These memories cannot be erased.
France’s latest riots did not come out of the blue. They began with angry secondary school pupils and years of frustration over the state of their schools.
For about a week, teenagers aged between 15 and 18 have been blocking secondary schools due to a shortage of teachers, overcrowded classes, exhausting timetables and buildings which they say are literally falling apart.
The pupils have described classes with around 35 pupils, leaking roofs, broken toilets and a lack of basic equipment. In some schools, they have reported rats and cockroaches.
What began around Paris quickly spread across the country, from Lille and Nantes to Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille and Strasbourg.
Then the situation escalated.
Rubbish bins and barricades were set alight, school entrances were vandalised and riot police were deployed. Fires were reported inside the school buildings themselves, including in Nantes and Rouen.
Marseille was the scene of some of the worst incidents, but the details are important.
At Victor Hugo, two teachers were doused with petrol whilst a pupil tried to throw it into a rubbish bin. The prosecution initially described it as an assault and an act of pouring petrol, but local authorities later stated that the spraying itself was unintentional.
At Saint-Exupéry, hundreds of young people surrounded firefighters who had been called out to a fire outside the school, forced them away from the fire engine and then set the vehicle alight.
Yesterday, it became clear just how big this has become.
The Ministry of the Interior reported that 1,949 people were arrested in a single day, 305 police officers and gendarmes were injured, and 1,027 of France’s approximately 3,700 secondary schools were affected.
The Guardian reports that nearly 3,000 secondary school pupils have been arrested since the movement began, whilst university students have now joined in, blocking access to around 30 university campuses.
And now there is a new dispute over who is actually behind all this.
According to a source close to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, the intelligence services stated at a government crisis meeting that the movement began as an operation organised by Mélenchon’s ‘France Unbowed’ and its allies on the far left.
LFI rejects this, saying it supports non-violent protest and accuses the government of turning genuine anger amongst students into a political struggle.
France has just presented a budget for 2027 that is built around extensive fiscal austerity measures.
Education funding is set to increase by around 1.2 billion euros, but the plan also involves the abolition of 1,588 permanent teaching posts, which the government says reflects falling pupil numbers.
So behind the burning rubbish bins, the riot police and the viral videos lies a much bigger debate about the state of French schools, how much money they need, and whether pupils have been ignored for too long.
France has a long tradition of taking its anger to the streets.
This time, many of those standing behind the barricades still have homework to hand in on Monday.
Sources: Reuters, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Le Monde / Author: Julie
https://x.com/Gdams70/status/2105891719103324222/video/1
