FRENCH LETTER: The violence of 17 October has a long backstory (but who cares about history?)

France is indeed all of this and many other things that tourists adore, but it is also a lot of things that tourists would rather not know about. In fact, if La Belle France were a social media influencer, she would probably describe her relationship with her people as: Complicated.

Since the massive demonstrations on Saturday I’ve been fielding concerned messages from friends and acquaintances abroad, many of them francophiles shocked by sensational news headlines (Paris is burning!) along with images of shop windows being smashed and cars set ablaze, everything filmed through a post-apocalyptic haze of smoke and tear gas. I’ve spent the past two days composing replies, begging them not to believe what the far right want the world to believe: that France is out of control, due to immigrants and ultra-left anarchists, and that the only solution is more power to the forces of law and order.

By this morning I decided I might as well write about it on Substack, for anyone to read, and save myself a lot of time replying to personal messages. But I have to add a further warning: although this is a serious piece about a serious subject, I will also tell you about the annual Chestnut Festival celebrated in my small village during this auspicious weekend. Because France is never just one thing at any specific moment. France is large, it contains multitudes – to misquote Walt Whitman, who also wrote, in this same poem: Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself.

Let me start by stating that I was as shocked as anyone else by pictures of the historic town hall of Limoges destroyed by fire and the chaotic looting of shops. But – and this is a big BUT – I know that hundreds of thousands of French people protested peacefully, even joyfully, in cities across the country on Saturday, sometimes singing and dancing, with high school students carrying self-made protest placards that were often witty and humorous, despite their frustration about a government refusing to listen to them after weeks of protests. And many of the demonstrators were shocked by unnecessary police violence, being tear-gassed and charged and attacked with batons when the protest marches had barely begun.

I know this because I know people who participated in the marches, especially young people, my children’s age and much younger, and I heard witness accounts of police brutality. One of the most outrageous examples was when the Orchestre du Nouveau Monde, a classical orchestra with more than 400 members, was tear-gassed on the Place de la République – despite the fact that they had obtained permission to perform there and been assured they wouldn’t be chased away. Some tried to continue playing their instruments with tears streaming down their faces, but the police onslaught forced them to abandon their efforts and flee.

Meanwhile, in my village in la France profonde, the most exciting event of the weekend was a chestnut-spitting competition. (Yes, you guessed it, to see who could spit a chestnut further than anyone else.) I didn’t partake in the spitting, but I did enjoy a guided walk through the village streets presented by a professor of art history, also part of the annual Chestnut Festival. I learned some fascinating facts about the buildings in this bastide or fortified town, established in 1261 by a brother of King Louis IX – almost eight centuries ago, which remains astonishing to someone born in Cape Town where the oldest existing building dates from the late 17th century. Even more astonishing, though, is the endless succession of wars and uprisings that this village, like so many others in France, somehow survived. Almost miraculously, it seems.

France might still be romantically regarded as the country of love, with legendary lovers like Abelard and Héloïse, but it is also a country with a long, long history of war and violence. My thoughts inevitably turned to more recent episodes of violence, because I was receiving phone texts about the demonstrations from my student daughter and her friends – and I wondered how many of the young protestors knew about a previous peaceful protest on 17 October, exactly 65 years ago, that turned into a terrible tragedy.

It is known as the 17 October 1961 Massacre and it occurred in Paris during the French-Algerian War, when about 30,000 demonstrators of Algerian origin were attacked by police under direct order of the Parisian police chief, Maurice Papon. Some were beaten to death and thrown into the river Seine, some were still alive when they hit the water and drowned. After almost 40 years of denial, the French government finally acknowledged 40 of the deaths in 1998, although historians estimate that between 200 and 300 Algerians died that day. Coincidentally, the former police chief Papon was also convicted of crimes against humanity in 1998, not for the 1961 massacre but for his much earlier role as a collaborator with the Nazis during the Second World War.

And on 17 October 2001, exactly a quarter of a century ago, the city of Paris put up a plaque to commemorate the massacre on Pont St-Michel, a stone’s throw from the Notre Dame cathedral. A belated, modest, yet beautiful little memorial for the victims, with profiles of numerous faces cut out of steel, so that you could admire the river and the surrounding buildings through the empty spaces in the artwork. Most tourists never notice the memorial, their eyes irresistibly drawn to the grandeur of the cathedral’s square towers. And most of them are probably not interested, anyway, in this dark episode in the City of Light’s history.

I myself didn’t notice it for many years, until I visited Paris during the Covid pandemic in 2021, after the cathedral had been severely damaged by a fire two years earlier. It was such a melancholic visit, and Paris looked so sad without all her tourists, that I was in exactly the right mood to spot the memorial. To really look at it and reflect on what it meant.

For the past 25 years the City has been organising a small ceremony of remembrance here on 17 October, with roses thrown into the river where the victims were disposed of. This happened even this past Saturday when massive demonstrations rocked the city. But on Sunday night, when President Emmanuel Macron referred to the violence of 17 October, he was not talking of the police violence of 1961.

Nor, for that matter, of the police violence of 2026. He expressed sympathy for the police, not a word of sympathy for the high-school students who had been injured or maimed by police during the past weeks, not a single proposal of action to show that he was listening to their complaints, just a vague promise of talks. And lots of threats about law and order that would be maintained at all costs.

On Monday the threats were turned into action when various cities announced curfews from nine or 11 at night until the next morning. In some cities like Lille the curfew only applies to minors (including the very high-school students who started the protest movement more than a month ago), while in Paris it is a blanket curfew for everyone (even the tourists who still can’t stay away) in certain areas. These drastic war-time measures might help the police to control looting and arson after dark, but they have also made high-school and university students, teachers and trade unions and the Yellow Vest movement even more adamant to continue their protests and strikes – until the government stops shifting blame and start doing something about the very real problems facing French society.

And they are still finding new ways to protest. On Monday the Louvre Museum was blocked by art students, with leaflets printed in English to explain the situation to frustrated tourists who were only there to consume a few famous French artworks, not giving a damn about the social problems in the country. Some were actually sympathetic after they’d read the explanation, others shouted abuse at the protesters for spoiling their French vacation. These are the people I refer to in my trigger warning at the top of this post. They are probably buying the “blame the ultra left for everything” story that is being spun by the government and applauded by the far right.

There is clearly a link between the collaborist Vichy regime in the forties and the massacre of 17 October 1961, and an even more distressing link to the far-right sentiments that many French people nowadays express without any shame. For a few decades after World War 2 the national shame about this period of collaboration was so deep that very few French citizens would openly admit sympathy for the far right – although some of the Vichy regime’s prime figures were still in powerful positions, as proved by Papon in Paris.

But time passes and people forget. By the early years of this century, when President Nicolas Sarkozy started cosying up to the far right in an effort to win more votes for his centre-right party, there were not many survivors of World War 2 left. Less and less people to remind their compatriots of the horror of a despotic, racist, ruthless regime. Another 20 years later, by 17 October 2026, a shocking percentage of French voters declare themselves ready to vote for the far right. Their flimsy excuse is “we haven’t tried that yet” – I heard this phrase again this morning on the radio – and the irony is that they don’t even realise how cynical that sounds to anyone who remembers a bit of history.

The only conclusion I can come to is that people don’t care about history. And if you refuse to acknowledge the horrors in your country’s history, you are doomed to repeat them.

All these disturbing thoughts crossed my mind while I tried to concentrate on the Chestnut Festival in my village. When I heard that the president would “address the nation’” on Sunday night, I didn’t have high hopes. I felt like most South Africans when they hear that President Cyril Ramaphosa is once again going to deliver a speech to the nation, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (sorry, Shakespeare).

Alas, Macron’s speech was even more disappointing than I’d feared. He simply blamed the ultra left for the chaos, and although he was contradicted a few hours later by the public prosecutor of Paris who denied there were any proofs behind his accusation, he seems to be playing straight into the hands of the far right. A country that is out of control needs an authoritarian regime, right? And Marine le Pen’s RN or National Rally party is waiting in the wings to provide exactly this.

Among the many striking cartoons produced since the weekend’s riots, I saw one particular picture that paints the proverbial thousand words. A colourful illustration by Leopold Maurer found on Substack’s Cartoon Movement (CM Daily Cartoon), it depicts the tri-colour French cock, symbol of the republic, with its tail feathers on fire, running straight to a grinning Marine Le Pen who is waiting with a fire extinguisher – but in her other hand, hidden behind her back, she has an axe to kill the republican cock.

All the signs are pointing to the far right winning the next French elections in less than six months. Macron has steered this ship for almost 10 years, so terrified of what he sees as the far-left monster of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFI or France Unbowed party, that he is blindly heading for the treacherous iceberg of the far right. What the protest movement of the past month has shown us is that many French would prefer the monster to the iceberg – at least you can negotiate with a monster, whereas you have no idea how big or dangerous an iceberg is before you hit it – but we will have to see what the rest of the French population think.

The Yellow Vests have already announced that “Act 2” of 17 October’s massive protest will be performed this Saturday, 24 October. And the students are simply continuing to block schools and campuses until, well, who knows? Something’s bound to break, and I sincerely hope it’s not the bones and bodies of the Gen Z protesters who dream of a better future.

The author Lauren Elkin describes the French taste for tumult in her book, Flâneuse – Women Walk the City, how they are forever healing from one bloodshed only to inflict another, in the hope it would truly, this time, birth a more just world. It has still not arrived, she adds, though France is not done waiting for it.

Meanwhile, in my little village, the annual Chocolate Festival will take place next weekend, far from the uprisings and riots in the cities. As if to prove that wars and revolutions may come and go, political parties and governments may change, but the people will continue celebrating the food they love.

Taste of the week

Because it was such an upsetting week, in so many ways, I considered skipping the small joys of the week that I always add as a tail (or tale) at the end of my posts. But then I thought of the Chestnut Festival, where I tasted various delicious regional products that have nothing to do with chestnuts – luckily for me, since I’m not mad about chestnuts. The most pleasant surprise was a strange fruit that I’d always thought I disliked, ever since I first tasted it three decades ago in France. It goes by the funny name of kaki and it comes in the shape of bright orange balls hanging from bare branches after the tree has shed its leaves, resembling shiny baubles on a Christmas tree in December, when you often see them in the south of France.

I didn’t like the mushy texture and the astringent taste when a neighbour offered me a bite, scooped out of the fruit with a spoon, and I never gave it a second try. Even when I found out that kaki is known as persimmon in English, a mysterious word I’d come across in fiction and poetry from Asia, where the fruit originated. In fact, I learned that it is the national fruit of Japan, although nowadays China produces the vast majority of persimmons. Still, I couldn’t be tempted to taste it again, even when I toured through China and Japan. Until this weekend, when a local fruit producer convinced me to try a slice at our village festival.

It wasn’t mushy at all, it was firm and sweet, tasting like a mixture between a mango and a peach. Now I know that there are almost 3,000 varieties of persimmon, and the one I’d tasted 30 years ago was very different from what I tasted this weekend. And let this be a lesson to me. Food might be like books; if you don’t like a book by a writer, you might love another book by the same writer, and sometimes you even love the same book when you try reading it again years later. Food and books, like people, deserve second chances.

Book of the week

I actually read Mark Oliver Everett’s Things the Grandchildren Should Know more than a decade ago – it was published almost 20 years ago – but I searched for it on my shelves this morning so I can read it again. Not, in this case, because I didn’t like it the first time. On the contrary, I loved this autobiography of a musician that Rolling Stone described as the Kurt Vonnegut of the rock world, but I need to read it again while I’m listening to Everett’s brand new album, Cookie Happened. Because Everett is also known as E from the Eels, an indie rock band I’ve followed since their first album, Beautiful Freak, enchanted me in 1996. Exactly 30 years ago, come to think of it.

Sound of the week

Thirty years is a long time to keep listening to a band, to the 16 albums they’ve produced at a rate of about one every two years, without ever being disappointed by their music. I can honestly say I still have to hear an Eels song I don’t like.

So since this weekend I’ve been listening to Cookie Happened on repeat while France was falling apart (according to international news reports) and it seems like the perfect soundtrack for an ageing rock lover in these troubled times. The title comes from a famous quote by the Muppets’ Cookie Monster with his voracious appetite: Me no cry because cookie is finished. Me smile because cookie happened. A fabulous philosophy to cling to, methinks.

And my favourite song on the album, Congratulations to Me, has a yearning melancholic chorus that might just become my motto for the rest of my life: There’s just no time left to waste/before I leave this place. DM

Republished from Marita van der Vyver’s Substack. Read more of her Substack pieces here.