Protests banned, demonstrators beaten by police and another thousand arrests: this is the face of an increasingly authoritarian French government in the dying throes of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.
Although half a million people across France marched on Saturday, protesters in cities like Lyon were beaten with truncheons and tear gassed for defying bans imposed days after Macron warned that only protests considered “legitimate” would be allowed. “The recommendation is that there should be no demonstrations in the coming days,” he warned.
High school student demo in Nantes, Oct. 6. Sébastien Salom-Gomis / AFP
Weeks after high school students blockaded schools over unsanitary conditions, dilapidated buildings and chronic teacher shortages, the government has yet to offer a single substantive solution. Its initial response was instead to dismiss the entire movement as a form of “urban crime.”
Even as the movement widens with parents, teachers, workers and labour unions mobilising against budget cuts and inflation, the government has responded with curfews in Paris and other cities, an increased police presence, and helicopters overhead.
Darmanin said law enforcement would step up the use of GPS tracking and facial recognition, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called for police to be reinforced by a military units.
“It is now time to choose sides,” he said earlier this week. “Either you’re on the side of the Republic, and therefore the police…or you are on the side of the rioters.”
The implication is clear: question the police and you stand with outlaws. A formulation reminiscent of George W. Bush’s “you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists” speech after 9/11.
This us-versus-them narrative tends also to demonise political opponents, and the government has duly accused Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise (LFI) of somehow orchestrating the entire student movement. Now, the rhetoric has taken a sinister turn: two senior conservative figures have raised the prospect of banning LFI, the largest party on the left.
No evidence of an LFI conspiracy has been presented, but that hasn’t stopped the Interior Minister from labelling looters and hooligans “far-left” – as though masked young men were chanting political slogans while stuffing their bags. In reality, many of those brought to justice were opportunists looking to cash in on the chaos.
Even the intelligence community appears unconvinced.
The investigative website Mediapart reported that intelligence officers were asked to write, “word for word, that LFI is behind the movement, even though this is objectively false,” according to one territorial intelligence officer. Indeed, no senior figure has provided proof, and students have bridled at the idea that their movement must have been organised by “adults” and political operators.
All the while, Emmanuel Macron has been conspicuously absent.
On the eve of the riots of Oct. 17, Macron attended a Céline Dion concert with Brigitte and the wife of Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man. That he found time to hear her sing the theme from Titanic was almost poetically apt.
Photo montage by Frédéric Vignale
It is hard to escape the impression of a president who simply doesn’t care.
When riots kicked off after the police killing of Nahel Merzouk in June 2023, Macron danced to Elton John. During the nationwide strikes against pension reform, he was among those giving a standing ovation at a Paris theatre. Activists alerted to his presence stormed the stage, forcing security personnel to whisk the insouciant theatrophile to safety.
These were no isolated faux pas. As France battled wildfires and tenants suffered in poorly ventilated flats last August, he posed on a jet ski for the cover of a major magazine.
Such are the privileges of France’s presidential system: Macron is free to dance (badly) to pop, while leaving his prime minister to handle the grubby business of governing – or to concoct conspiracy theories that absolve the government of responsibility.
Five weeks into an escalating national crisis, we have an Education Minister who has yet to offer a substantive response to students’ demands; a police force that has beaten children and fired stun grenades and tear gas at point-blank range; and an Interior Minister who has apologised not for police violence – despite more than 30 internal investigations – but for not going far enough.
And how has the apparently democratic government responded? With instructions to prosecutors to demand stiffer sentences. Recurring curfews. More police. And plans to deploy the army.
This is the very apparatus authoritarian regimes dream of – deployed six months before a presidential election in which the far right is well ahead in the polls.
