There are imprudent words that can haunt you forever and destroy your career. Take the French minister of the interior, Laurent Nunez. On October 6, as unrest among high school students was spreading across France, he confidently told the public radio station France Inter: “We have not lost control. Losing control is when you have hordes looting shops and committing atrocities.” Two weeks later, he has lost control — and face. “Chaos everywhere,” ran the headline of October 17 in a center-left daily, Le Parisien.
Clearly, the rioters, drawn from either the ultra-left or the Islamist sphere, were well-organized and had planned their operations a long time in advance.
Television showed the images, and social media bored them out, not turbulent youngsters anymore, but rather urban guerrilla squads, known as black blocs, attacking the police, setting fire to garbage bins and cars, and storming public buildings; in their wake, casseurs, or rioters, looting shops, from luxury boutiques to neighborhood convenience stores, and harassing ordinary citizens.
Clearly, the rioters, drawn from either the ultra-left or the Islamist sphere, were well-organized and had planned their operations a long time in advance. In contrast, the Macron administration seemed to have been taken by surprise, or at least not to have fully apprehended the magnitude of the threat. Monsieur Nunez submitted his resignation, but President Emmanuel Macron opposed it. The bitter cup had to be drained to the dregs.
At Paris, the CRS riot police barely managed, on October 17, to protect the Élysée Palace, the president’s residence; the Place Beauvau, home to the Interior Ministry; and the Palais Bourbon, where the National Assembly sits. A few hundred yards away, hooded teenagers targeted the “golden triangle” of fashion between the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the Place Vendôme: the fashion houses Céline and Dior, and the leather-goods makers Hermès and Goyard.
More violence was played out at the Eastern end of the capital, around the monument on the Place de la République. Once a working-class district, the neighborhood went yuppie in the 1980s and now serves, thanks to a highly efficient transportation network, as a gathering point for young people of North African descent from across the Greater Paris area. The monument itself, erected in 1883, a 30-foot tall bronze statue of a stern woman, the French Republic, extending an olive branch and surrounded, at a lower level, of the stone female allegories of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, has been defaced since October 7, 2023, with Palestinian and Algerian flags or hate graffiti.
Within a radius of several hundred yards, thugs were smashing the windows of sportswear and clothing stores, watchmakers and shoe shops, grocery stores and bakeries. Many claimed to be avenging another October 17, in 1961, shortly before Algerian independence, when the French police crushed North African violence in the capital: “You plundered us. Now we’re plundering you.” Time and again, gangs tried to break down the doors of apartment blocks and terrorize those living inside. One image of an elderly couple in their underwear being drawn in the street went viral.
At Paris, the CRS riot police barely managed, on October 17, to protect the Élysée Palace, the president’s residence; the Place Beauvau, home to the Interior Ministry; and the Palais Bourbon, where the National Assembly sits.
At Marseille, while rioters broke into shops, including, on certain downtown streets, those owned by Jews, a commando unit stormed City Hall and toppled the bust of Marianne, the female figure who symbolizes the Republic in all public places and on government stationery. At Lyon, unable to storm City Hall, rioters set fire to the elegant nearby municipal tourist office. At Limoges, one of the historic strongholds of the French labor movement in the 19th century and of the Resistance during World War II, rioters set City Hall ablaze. At Bordeaux, the official residence of the prefect was ransacked. Without a shadow of doubt, the rioters’ main purpose was to spread the notion that the government was about to fall — or that similar unrest could paralyze Marine Le Pen in May 2027, should she win the presidential election. By implication, they also sought to lend credence to the idea — popularized by leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his France Unbowed party — that the “New France,” dominated by immigrant communities, was now decisively prevailing over the Judeo-Christian “Old France.”
For the time being, they have not succeeded. The police and security forces have been stoically carrying on with their mission. More than a thousand police officers and gendarmes have been injured, and one of them was killed in an accident. Over one thousand rioters have been arrested, and many are already being tried in expedited hearings. The question is, however, how long such a situation is sustainable.
Monsieur Macron addressed these issues in his speech to the nation, Sunday evening. In 2020, he had convened a “war cabinet” to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Would he now declare a state of emergency or even call upon Article 16 of the 1958 constitution, which grants the president extended powers in a situation of crisis?
Not yet and not quite. However, the president’s speech should not be dismissed either as inconsequential. Monsieur Macron clearly pinned the blame for the chaos on “seditionaries” from “ultra-left grouplets” as well as on “many delinquents,” hinting that they would be dealt with to the full extent of the law: “Those who destroyed must pay. Those who looted must pay it back. Those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held to account.” Then, he rhetorically wondered “how French citizens can do that to France,” which may be understood as “how French can these people really be?”
Monsieur Macron, who is barred from running in the next presidential election but will be eligible again thereafter, seems intent on ending his second term as the undisputed and indisputable defender of the institutions.
Indeed, the president assured that “legitimate demands,” as expressed by some parts at least of the high-school protesters or by unions complaining about the cost of life, will be heard and discussed, though not without insinuating that France’s economic difficulties had been created by “a war in the Persian Gulf” to which the country “has no part.” Yet he also called “all political parties and unions” to publicly disavow the rioters, both a swipe at Monsieur Mélenchon and a warning to him, since France Unbowed has vociferously called over the past months to the right to insurrection.
Finally, even if a state of emergency has not been declared, the prefects will be granted special powers, both defined and undefined, to restore law and order.
Monsieur Macron, who is barred from running in the next presidential election but will be eligible again thereafter, seems intent on ending his second term as the undisputed and indisputable defender of the institutions. That would probably be his strongest card, both in the present circumstances and with an eye to the future. The rioters’ first reaction has been to double down on the following night. Once the French police and security forces are fully allowed to strike, though, they can be extremely effective.
Published originally on October 19, 2026.
