The French are no strangers to protests that go sideways. After all, the nation is on its fifth republic since 1792.
Nevertheless, the rally on Saturday planned by the General Confederation of Labor and various other leftist outfits — a rally that quickly devolved into an orgy of destruction — proved to be too much for the French authorities to handle.
'There’s a lot of tinder for the flame.'
Luke Foster, assistant professor of government at Hillsdale College, provided Blaze News with insights into what has changed and what France is up against.
Throughout the West but perhaps most acutely in France, the old left that was historically focused on issues affecting the working class has increasingly been displaced by the “new left, which is much more about sexual and racial politics," said Foster.
This shift appears to have taken place midway through the 20th century.
In “Explaining Postmodernism,” Stephen Hicks, formerly of Rockford University, observed that in response to the “crisis of socialism,” “much of the Left changed its official ethical standard from need to equality” and began “concentrating their efforts on the special issues of women and of racial and ethnic minorities.”
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LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images
This is certainly the case in France, where instead of relying on and weaponizing the resentment of French workers, the new left is increasingly leaning on easily mobilizable immigrants and the children of immigrants to help “channel revolutionary pressure,” said Foster.
This comports with what French conservative activist Thaïs d'Escufon has observed in her homeland.
D'Escufon previously told Blaze News:
What started as student protests, mainly led by the far left, has turned into ethnic riots that are spiraling out of control. Immigrants have become the street-level enforcers of the far left, spreading chaos, looting, vandalizing, stealing, and setting things on fire. It is an unholy alliance.
French leftists of all sorts were out in force over the weekend. For example, the suspect arrested in connection with the torching of the historic town hall in Limoges has been identified as a member of the ultra-left.
Foster noted, however, that the riots were undeniably “immigrant-dependent,” using at least the language and the symbols of Islamist politics and flying in some cases the Palestinian flag as well as the colors of North African countries, including Algeria and Morocco.
This foreign presence was no coincidence. Leftist organizers clearly intended to weaponize migrant resentment from the outset.
Saturday was the 65th anniversary of the 1961 Paris massacre, where French police lethally cracked down on Algerian demonstrators. A website promoting French protests on Saturday explicitly referenced the incident, claiming that the “racism” that supposedly animated the violence against “peaceful Algerians” in 1961 is “still used to divide” today.
The choice to hold the protests Saturday plays “to Algerian grievance politics, which are very powerful in France,” said Foster.
“Something like particular local grievances about the way the schools are being run can very quickly turn into an ethnically and religiously motivated attack on the state and the country as a whole,” added Foster.
The professor noted that “ground zero” for the so-called student protests that culminated in the riots on Saturday was unsurprisingly Saint-Denis, a poor and violent area that has a large “North and West African immigrant presence.”
Saint-Denis — where an estimated one in three residents was an immigrant as of 2024 — also happens to be the political proving ground for the France Unbowed movement, or LFI, and the immigration-centered “new France” envisioned by LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Mélenchon and other leftists "are pouring oxygen on the fire and giving it a kind of rhetorical ideological framework,” said Foster.
Foster noted that Mélenchon and the LFI are explicitly committed to an electoral strategy of uniting students and other young people to Islamist politics in order to “unravel the current regime and political system and build something new.”
Mélenchon, a presidential candidate for the 2027 election, is a poster boy for the new left. He has long downplayed Islam as a national security threat, advocated for the “creolization” of France, rejected the integration of migrants, and called for the decriminalization of illegal immigration as well as for a capitalism-destroying revolution.
Mélenchon urged his followers earlier this month to join the so-called protests and subsequently joined labor groups in condemning police for doing their jobs when things went south.
While critical of the looting, Mélenchon stated after the riots Saturday left thousands of businesses gutted and hundreds of police injured, “I support the youth and student movement and their demands.”
Mélenchon did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.
Between Mélenchon’s apparent strategy and the character of the rioters, it appears that both President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron were right.
While Trump, who claimed that “what's happening in France is nothing less than out-of-control mass migration," has advocated for France to close its borders and take control "before it is too late," Macron blamed the riots on "seditionists from far-left fringe groups,” and his administration imposed nightly curfews.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu credited the curfews with achieving a semblance of calm in recent days.
"Tonight, new curfews will be decided where the situation requires it," said Lecornu early on Tuesday.
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