Shattered glass covers the footpath when Raphael Christophe walks to an historic square in the heart of Paris to survey the damage from the violent uprising of the night before. How does he feel about what he sees? “Revolted,” he says. The streets here are normally busy with shoppers who can stop for a coffee or aperitif at a classic French bistro. Now they are full of torched cars, burnt kiosks, smashed windows and looted shops.
Christophe, 46, is a business consultant from the regional city of Limoges. He looks around the Place de la Republique, where rioters ran amok on Saturday night, and can see the signs of more unrest. He watches a group of young men dressed in black pants, black hoodies and black balaclavas.
“They want to steal, mainly, and break everything,” he tells me. “They are very young. So it is very hard, at the beginning of their lives, to re-educate them. Perhaps they don’t want to work.
“Many things must be done, and also nothing can be done because this is like a virus in society – it’s everywhere.”
Within an hour, the young men in their black streetwear are clashing with police.
Christophe’s analogy hints at the despair in France over how to stop a violent upheaval turning into a social collapse. The unrest feels viral. The breakdown in order is so widespread, with so much mindless violence, that it is impossible to turn away with a Gallic shrug. The French have seen the danger from angry rioters who feel they have no future. What happens if more young people catch the virus?
The same question hangs over other parts of Europe at a time when many countries are struggling with low growth, high unemployment, rising welfare costs and heavy government debt. People want more from their leaders, but their leaders cannot deliver. Protest movements have swollen in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and elsewhere.
The French President, Emmanuel Macron, is yet to show he can assert control when protesters plan more rallies this weekend. More important, however, is the election early next year to choose his replacement. Some of the protests are championed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing presidential candidate who leads La France Insoumise (France Unbowed). For now, the political benefit is flowing to Marine Le Pen, the right-wing leader of National Rally.
The breakdown in law and order can easily spread anxiety about social decline and turn voters to the right.
When students began rallying across France last month, they were seen as peaceful protesters who wanted more school funding. Some unions joined the movement to complain about the cost of living. Then political activists chose to escalate the violence. The burning of the town hall in Limoges, the work of an alleged left-wing radical, may become a lasting symbol of this political extremism.
Then came the rioters and the thieves. One store manager told this masthead he locked up the shop on Saturday night and began travelling home. The alarm went off within 20 minutes. The store, Manga Story on Boulevard Voltaire, sells valuable Japanese figurines and Pokémon cards, making it a target for looters who wanted small products they can sell fast.
The store manager, Kevin, 35, was on the metro and regional train when he called up the shop’s CCTV on his phone. He watched a horde of thieves smash their way into his store, but he could not stop them. When he called the police, he was told they were too busy countering rioters and looters elsewhere.
Is he angry at the police? “One hundred per cent,” he tells me. “There were clearly not enough.” Who should take the blame? “I think Macron should resign.” He has lost rare Pokemon cards and other products of great value, and he estimates the losses at €1 million.
The destruction around Place de la Republique tells a story of pointless violence as well as calculated theft. Some looters targeted stores selling electronics, brand-name sporting goods, jewellery and watches – items easily exchanged for cash.
One electronics store owner, Jahirul Azam, was assaulted by 20 thieves who smashed their way into the shop and took cash, 70 phones and 20 MacBooks. “For five hours, the police did not intervene,” he told Le Monde.
But the mob also destroyed for the sake of destruction.
One café, La Barrique, was set alight by the crowd. The co-owner, Aline Li, said some of the looters were boys of 12 or 13. They took alcohol, a computer, a phone, and left everything in flames. “They filmed themselves doing it and they were laughing,” she told The Times.
This masthead witnessed the clashes between protesters and police in Place de la Republique on Sunday, starting in the afternoon and continuing into the night. The young people in black balaclavas, most of them men in their teens and 20s, resisted police attempts to disperse the crowd. Some threw rocks or debris at police, who fired tear gas in response.
Sporadic looting continued on the streets near the square on Sunday night. Two men of African heritage emerged from a wrecked clothing store on the Rue du Faubourg du Temple, not far from burned remains of La Barrique, with bags of stolen goods.
More than 3000 stores were damaged or robbed in the chaos nationwide, according to government estimates. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Wednesday that at least 2700 people were arrested and that 95 per cent of them were men. About 70 per cent were adults, but some of those detained were as young as 13.
The streets around Place de la Republique were busy on Sunday night with young men whose families could be traced to Africa or the Middle East. There were also some men whose families might have been in France for centuries. The crowd sought to confront the police, then scatter into the streets.
Protesters stood in the square with the Palestinian and Algerian flags around them. One of their slogans, spray-painted around the streets, was ACAB: “All Cops Are Bastards”. They were against the police, against the government, against Israel and against Le Pen and her right-wing party.
France does not release the ethnic background of those charged. Social media is awash with videos showing rioters and looters from African or Middle Eastern backgrounds, but the videos have to be treated with caution: one simply rebadged a protest that took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2024. BBC Verify also identified fake videos of an elderly couple being stripped to their underwear and a protester in a pink panther suit. Macron is warning of foreign interference in the social media coverage of the riots.
Some of the most aggressive agitators appeared to be the “black blocs” of anarchists and other extremists who often thrive on street protest. The looters, on the other hand, ranged from opportunistic young people to organised criminals.
Government spokesperson Maud Bregeon used a loaded term on Tuesday to describe the looters: “les racailles”. This can translate as “thugs” but has been used in the past to describe people whose families came from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
“We have seen the footage, we know who we are dealing with,” said Bregeon, who has been aligned with Macron and supports a centrist, Édouard Philippe, in the presidential race. This incensed the left. Members of the Ecologist and Generations parties accused her of talking like Le Pen.
This is the backdrop to the global headlines about riots and race, with US President Donald Trump blaming migration and Macron rebuking “stupid” talk by unnamed foreigners. (Photographs and video of the student protests, of course, are no guide to the demographics of the rioters or the looters; the groups are distinct, even if their borders are blurred).
Whatever the headlines say, French people are worried about what they can see in front of their eyes. The riots showed that their society is threatened by groups of angry young men, many from migrant backgrounds, who will resort to violence if they do not get what they want.
“It’s always the same ones – they hate France, they hate everything,” says one Parisian near the Place de la Republique. “They accuse French people of being racist. And they just want to burn everything, to break everything because they are not happy.”
It is impossible to find neat dividing lines in this disorder, because some of the looted stores were owned by migrants and some of the rioters were from white backgrounds. But it is also difficult to pin everything on a complaint about the cost of living or school standards. On the street, the violence looked like primal rage.
The French state is in poor shape to offer a brighter future for young people who display so much raw anger. The nation’s parliament has been paralysed since Macron called elections two years ago that left no party in clear control of the National Assembly. The government has been unable to pass any meaningful economic or budget reform.
Nothing highlights the impasse like the division over pension reform. While Macron enacted laws to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, this was shelved last year after a backlash in parliament. Le Pen has previously backed cutting it to 60.
“France is adrift, politically, fiscally and socially,” wrote Sylvie Kauffmann, a columnist at Le Monde, in The Financial Times on Wednesday. She noted France had not had a balanced budget since 1974.
While protesters demand more government spending, the cupboard is bare. The nation’s public debt reached €3.6 trillion at the end of June, equivalent to 119 per cent of gross domestic product. Investors who buy French government bonds are increasingly nervous about the nation’s ability to manage its debt burden, leading to higher interest rates.
Without a decisive government and a growth agenda, the prospects for the next generation are bleak. The French economy was stagnant in the latest quarter, while unemployment rose to 8.3 per cent. Youth unemployment rose slightly to 21.6 per cent in the middle of the year. (In Australia, for the same 15-24 age cohort, it was 11.1 per cent last month).
Le Pen gains from the civil unrest and government drift. “Our country is caught in a vice, or even taken hostage, between violence and powerlessness,” she said in a video address on Sunday. She is the leading candidate to win the presidency in the two-stage vote next April and May, defeating Mélenchon on the far left by 68:32 in the second round.
While Macron trounced Le Pen when he came to power nine years ago, winning 66:34 in the second round, he has lost popular support during his second term and his centrist movement has disintegrated. Only an extraordinary surge from the relatively centrist contenders for the presidency, such as Philippe or Raphaël Glucksmann, could change what looks like an inevitable victory for National Rally.
France is not alone in suffering an upheaval from protesters who have lost faith in the future. But the sheer violence of the riots, as well as the prospect of a presidential election within six months, sets it apart as an urgent test of whether a government can restore order, deliver prosperity, manage migration and ensure social cohesion.
In a sense, the student movement gave new voice to a discontent that has been building for years. They built the stage, and the rioters stole the show. The looters, meanwhile, simply stole whatever they could. Together, they revealed a fractured society that will take years to repair.
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