Smashed shop windows, destroyed property, acts of looting and raging fires have rightly caused outrage and condemnation. There is no single explanation of the motives of the perpetrators. There are certainly opportunistic “criminal elements” who take advantage of such situations.
But there is also a lot of public anger that has boiled over after it had simmered for years as living conditions have deteriorated and demands for changes have been left unanswered. The French government has taken full advantage of these violent acts, using them to justify the overly securitised response to the protests and to avoid public scrutiny for the failure to address its own failures. The images of chaos allow those in power to pose as the defenders of a public order they have actively helped undermine.
These acts of violence, however, cannot delegitimise the reasons behind the mass mobilisation of students across France. They also must not distract from the brutal police violence that has unfolded. Fourteen-year-old Eden suffered a fractured jaw and had teeth knocked out by a tear gas grenade fired from a police launcher.
Sixteen-year-old Mael lost the sight in one eye after a suspected hit from a police rubber bullet. Fifteen-year-old Evan had a hand blown off by a police stun grenade. By October 14, 7,950 people had been placed in police custody since the protests began in September, 85 percent of them minors.
A further 2,700 were taken into custody following the October 17 protests. Yesterday, police made another 1,000 arrests. The staggering scale of detention and the mobilisation of tens of thousands of police officers make this one of the most heavily repressed protest movements of this century.
But there is also the quieter violence of social deprivation that the students are protesting and that has largely been ignored in the public narrative. Across France, the sense of growing impoverishment deepens year after year. Poverty rates are the highest they have been since the 1990s, with 9.8 million people living under the official poverty line.
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