France Braces for Another Round of Far-Left Riots

PARIS—On the morning of Oct. 18, the smell of tear gas still lingered in the République metro station.

Up on the square, where the Oct. 17 march had set off, the windows of a Darty electronics store lay in pieces, and two security guards stood out front with a muzzled dog.

Burned-out cars lined the surrounding streets. The monument in the middle of the square was covered in graffiti and ringed with debris.

“It looks like a war zone,” Jean-Luc, a 77-year-old retiree, told The Epoch Times. “And guess who will pay for this? The French taxpayers, as always.”

Workers were still clearing debris from one night of violence when the next began.

Around 11 p.m., groups of youths roamed the streets, smashing shop windows, looting, harassing passersby, and setting trash cans alight. Elsewhere in the capital, barricades burned. On the Champs-Élysées, looters targeted a Louis Vuitton boutique.

By the end of the night, police had made 351 arrests.

Another large demonstration has been planned for Oct. 24, and concern is growing that last Saturday was not a one-off but the opening act of a longer confrontation between radical left-wing activists, rioters, and French authorities.

A State Under Attack

The demonstrations on Oct. 17, originally called over the rising cost of living, drew 550,000 people nationwide, including 110,000 in Paris, according to the Interior Ministry.

The government estimates that at least 3,000 businesses were damaged or looted. Authorities have reported 2,397 arrests, while 997 police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters were injured, seven of them seriously.

Stores were not the only targets. Public buildings were also attacked.

In Limoges, rioters set fire to the city hall, a historic building opened in 1883. As the blaze spread, the roof and bell tower collapsed. On Tuesday, a suspect described as an ultra-left activist was arrested in an operation involving RAID, France’s elite police tactical unit.

In Marseille, protesters, some of them carrying Palestinian flags, forced their way into city hall chanting, “This is the Revolution, we’re taking the Bastille.” Once inside, they toppled a bust of Marianne, the female figure that personifies the French Republic.

In this city alone, the Bouches-du-Rhône police prefecture counted more than 30,000 looters.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has acknowledged that the authorities lost control in some cities. He offered his resignation on Sunday, but President Emmanuel Macron turned it down and called instead for “new modes of action” against the rioters.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has since imposed localized curfews, including nighttime restrictions around Place de la République and Les Halles, two of the areas of Paris hit hardest.

Speaking at a press conference on Oct. 20, Mathilde Panot, who leads the France Unbowed group in the National Assembly, condemned what she called “freedom-restricting measures.”

The unrest has been building since late September, when students started blockading high schools in Seine-Saint-Denis, a department just north of Paris with a large immigrant population. The protests then spread nationwide.

On Oct. 1, the prime minister’s office said intelligence services had identified what they described as “an organized maneuver by France Unbowed and its ultra-left proxies” behind the unrest. France Unbowed, or LFI, the country’s main far-left party, denied that allegation, saying that the movement was “spontaneous.”

By Oct. 17, the presence of organized far-left groups was hard to miss. Hundreds of black bloc militants had gathered at Place de la République before noon, moving in groups as orders were shouted through megaphones.

Nuñez said police had been attacked “at the very clear instigation of the ultra-left,” with looters and what he called “opportunistic offenders” joining in as the day wore on.

Lecornu has accused ultra-left groups of trying to “organize deep disorder in the country until the presidential election,” now just six months away.

‘A Confrontation Between Two Frances’

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said roughly 70 percent of those arrested were adults, many of whom police already knew.

Across the Atlantic, President Donald Trump weighed in on the unrest, blaming mass migration in a social media post.

“The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Jean-Pierre Colombiès, a former French police commander and a security analyst, was not surprised to see these looters operating alongside radical activists.

“In a context this tense, we simply had to expect opportunistic delinquency to graft itself onto the ultra-left elements,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that the government is reluctant to point at the looters’ origins.

“It’s a taboo,” he said. “Many politicians don’t want to acknowledge that assimilation, and even integration, have not worked.”

Ivan Rioufol, a veteran French journalist and author of “The Coming Civil War,” sees a broader political and cultural divide behind the violence.

The demonstrations, he told The Epoch Times, “visually show this alliance between the ultra-left and this France of diversity born of immigration, which Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls the ‘new France.’” Mélenchon is a left-wing politician and the de facto leader of La France Insoumise.

“We are watching the multiculturalist model crumble in real time. At the same time, the anti-capitalist and anti-Western currents are forming an alliance. What is playing out is a confrontation between two Frances,” Rioufol said.

Debate Over State of Emergency

In a televised address on Sunday evening, Macron expressed “anger” and “shame” over the violence, blaming “insurrectionists from ultra-left splinter groups, joined by many criminals.”

“Those who destroyed must pay, those who looted must repay,” he said.

The president has not declared a state of emergency or announced additional police powers. Instead, he pledged financial assistance for affected businesses and proposed consultations with young people.

For Jean-Éric Schoettl, a former secretary-general of France’s Constitutional Council, the country’s highest authority on constitutional matters, the response fell far short of what the situation demanded. He described Macron’s address as “completely out of touch.”

He compared it to the 2005 suburban riots, which prompted the French government to declare a state of emergency.

“Last weekend’s events are perhaps ten times greater,” he said. “If a state of emergency was justified in 2005, it is all the more so today.”

He said an emergency declaration “also matters on a symbolic level.”

“The authorities need to get their act together, stand up more forcefully for the Republic, democracy, and its institutions,” he said.

However, Schoettl warned that such a move would not solve the deeper causes of the unrest.

“Hatred of France, whether it takes the form of neo-Robespierrism or decolonial ideology, manifests itself in increasingly destructive ways,” he said.

The government, however, said that narrower, more targeted security measures would be more effective.

Lecornu said declaring a state of emergency remained an option “if it’s useful,” but argued that localized curfews “seem more appropriate.”

Preparing for a Second Wave

The government’s approach may be put to the test as early as Saturday.

After the Oct. 17 demonstrations, a second nationwide day of action is called for Oct. 24, billed as “Act II.”

Labor unions have also announced a strike for Nov. 5.

To avoid a repeat of last weekend, authorities plan a much heavier security presence.

Lecornu has promised a “massive” deployment of police forces.

Nuñez, for his part, announced “exceptional means” to back up police operations, including soldiers from Operation Sentinelle, France’s domestic counterterrorism force.