“Rioting erupted in cities across France on Saturday as demonstrations against rising living costs and declining public services spiraled out of control in some of the worst violence the country has witnessed for decades,” Reuters reported. “Police have detained more than 2,000 people, France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, adding that more than 600 police officers were injured,” a CNN article pointed out.
Throughout English language media there has been a push to center images of violence within the French protest movement, depicting a stark violence, implied to have been perpetrated by the majority of protestors. This could not be farther from the truth. Despite attempts to portray French protestors as chaotic and violent, they have actually been peaceful, and most images of violence are created either directly or indirectly by the police.
The protests didn’t begin on October 17. This movement has been building since September when high school students blocked their schools to protest worsening conditions; 105-degree classrooms in the summer, a chronic lack of teachers, ballooning class sizes and long school days. Despite peacefully demanding the right to not pass out of heat stroke during lectures, they were met with immediate police violence. On October fifth, a fifteen-year-old student had his hand blown off by a grenade shot by French police. He never had a chance to be peaceful; violence was done to him. And so, the protests seem violent.
On October 13, I was at a march in Toulouse joining the students, indignant teachers, angry union workers and furious parents. By that time, the protests were about more than classroom conditions; they were about police violence and state repression. And still we marched peacefully. Suddenly, our chants were interrupted by the pop and hiss of the tear gas grenades being launched at us. Despite no fires or looting taking place, we were running through the streets as the gas tore at our eyes and lungs, trying to put distance between ourselves and the advancing police with their swinging clubs. This was a violent protest, but it was not the protestors who were violent.
One image from that day stuck with me; an apartment flooding with tear gas when police shot a grenade directly into it. In 2018 an 80-year-old woman in Marsaille was killed when the same thing happened.
So let’s be clear about something. You are seeing images of chaos and violence, but they are caused by the police, not protestors. Since the beginning, there has been a consistent effort to portray the protestors as violent in order to discredit the movement and shift the conversation towards their actions instead. Never once has Macron or the French government been made to answer for the extreme violence they have perpetrated against the French people and French children over the past month.
On October 17, the world stood appalled at images of the 150-year-old Limoges town hall burning down in the midst of the latest wave of protests. Politicians around the world have bemoaned the loss of this historic building which survived two world wars (despite never being near combat or at risk), but no thought has been spared for the children who have lost their hands and eyes, no thought for the people whose arms and legs have been broken by CRS clubs, no thought for the for the children choking as French police flood crowded downtown centers with tear gas. Buildings can be repaired. The trauma, injuries and deaths caused by the French government cannot.
If the French government actually cared about maintaining order or preventing damages like they claim they do, they would take active protective measures instead of creating the very circumstances that make looting and arson possible. Instead, groups like Marine Le Penn’s National Rally party have been using these images to promote their racist agenda in the upcoming elections, all while protecting actual violent fascists. No, the fact of the matter is the French police have no interest in protecting the public or stopping violence. Instead, they have been systematically using the images of chaos and violence they themselves helped create as a rhetorical weapon to complement their clubs.
The protests show no sign of stopping. As of writing this, many major cities in France have been placed under curfew, and more protests and strikes are being planned. It is likely that more images will come across your feeds of cities engulfed in flames, broken windows and emptied stores. But as you watch, as you hear people decrying the violence, do not forget where it comes from. It is not coming from protestors calling for a better future, but from the French government which denies them one.