ANALYSIS: Who are France's 'casseurs' and why can't police stop their violence?

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez offered his resignation - rejected by president Emmanuel Macron - after admitting that police had lost control of protests in many French towns on Saturday night.

While hundreds of thousands took part in peaceful protests, a small minority burned, looted, fought with police and generally ran amok. Thousands of shops were trashed and looted while public buildings were attacked, including in Limoges where the town hall was burned down.

What's in a name?

This is not the first time that violence has accompanied protests in France - in fact, it's so common that the troublemakers have a name, casseurs, literally meaning 'breakers' (from the verb casser - to break).

Three things happened in France on Saturday, October 17th; protesting, vandalism and looting and they were carried out, by and large, by three distinct groups of people.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in organised demos in towns and cities across the country, in order to protest about fuel prices and the rising cost of living. They were joined by lycée students, continuing their ongoing protest over a lack of funding for the education system.

They walked along the prepared routes, many holding placards with political slogans or jokes, and their ages ranged from pensioners to families and young children.

Official estimates put the total number of protesters at 550,000, of which 110,000 were in Paris.

But on the margins of the protests in some towns, trouble was flaring, driven by small groups of mostly young people - they smashed windows and bus stations, sprayed graffiti, set fire to street furniture and engaged in running battles with riot police.

In some towns, including Marseille, they forced their way into public buildings and vandalised them.

Marseille : plusieurs dizaines de manifestants ont pénétré brièvement samedi dans le hall de la mairie, sur le vieux port, après avoir enfoncé la porte en criant "c'est la Révolution, on prend la Bastille". Ils ont été dispersés par des forces de l'ordre ⤵️

[image or embed]

— Agence France-Presse (@afp.com) 17 October 2026 at 13:53

In Limoges, they set the town hall on fire.

These are the casseurs.

Limoges town hall burning after a group of individuals forced entry into the building during ongoing protest action against the "high cost of living", in Limoges, central France on October 17, 2026. Photo by Melaine PAYZAL / AFP

Finally came the looting - mostly carried out by teenagers and young men from the disadvantaged areas of the cities. They had no political point to make, simply taking advantage of the disorder to loot from shops.

So who are the casseurs?

Many large protests in France see trouble flaring at the margins, usually carried out by the same people - from May 1st demos to pension protests and strikes.

Generally, they don't join the protests, but either turn up at the end or stay on the margins.

They tend to be young, mostly in their 20s, and urban - they appear at protests in the bigger towns such as Paris, Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon and Nantes.

They're mostly affiliated with the extreme left - they often graffiti anti-capitalist slogans and pro-Palestine slogans, plus Antifa logos. Buildings that could be seen as emblems of capitalism - banks, real estate agents and McDonald's - are the most likely to be targeted.

They're often described as "groupescules ultragauche" - far left splinter groups, not formally affiliated to any political party.

But it seems that for many, the violence is the point, and they turn up equipped to cause damage and to fight with the police, often bringing along tools as well as masks and goggles to protect against tear gas and hide their faces. The damage they cause is designed to be photogenic - hire bikes or bins on fire, smashed up bus stops - but their violence is directed at property.

They also like to fight with the police and are practised at playing cat-and-mouse with the riot police - when it comes to dealing with police, they can be very violent. The most dramatic photos from any protest - a young man throwing stones at police or hurling their own grenades back at them, set against a backdrop of either flames or clouds or tear gas - are always of the casseurs.

How many are there of them?

It's not a formal organisation with a membership list, and the chaotic nature of street violence makes it hard to count them.

But at most demos, their numbers are usually just a few hundred in each town - many journalists who specialise in covering demos say that after a while you start to recognise the same faces turning up each time.

Nationwide, more than 2,330 people were taken into police custody over the weekend, 70 percent of whom were adults, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Monday.

So why can't police stop them? 

This is the question being asked in a series of emergency meetings in France this week, although the wider problem stems back years.

French police are often accused of being heavy-handed when dealing with peaceful protesters, yet seem unable to stop violence on the margins of protests. 

Macron has ordered the Interior Minister to "take all necessary steps to ensure transparency over the failures in planning and intelligence that led to the violence".

To end the "barricades and looting, he also requested that the interior minister promptly implement new operational methods for security forces to use on the ground in combating casseurs," the statement added.

It was widely reported that during the lycée student protests, undercover police had tried to infiltrate social media channels used by teenagers in order to gain information on the protests. The nonsense slogan Bismillah, c'est les ténèbres (name-of-god, it's the darkness) seen on some of the lycée protests is a mocking reference to the police attempts to imitate 'youth speak' in order to go undercover online. 

Are they immigrants?

No. Far-right politicians and commentators around Europe, plus MAGA figures in the US, are trying to link Saturday's disorder to immigration.

This is nonsense, the casseurs are French and mostly white. Many of the looters come from France's disadvantaged and racially mixed suburbs but are mainly French - the children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants.

They come from the same demographic groups as many of the rioters during the disorder in the summer of 2023 - of those arrested and brought before the courts during those riots, 90 percent were French citizens.