French Government and Establishment Exploit Protest Violence to Justify a Crackdown on the Left
Source: Marlon Ettinger. "France’s Rulers Want Violence as a Pretext for a Crackdown." October 27, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
The author argues that France's government, its allies in the media, and the far right want the protests to turn violent because it gives them an excuse to crack down on the left. He points to heavy-handed preparations for a march that turned out calm, shaky intelligence linking France Insoumise to rioters, and media coverage that hyped up violence, all in the run-up to a presidential election.
Conclusion
France's political and media establishment is not merely reacting to protest violence but is actively seeking and amplifying it as a pretext to justify a broad authoritarian crackdown on the high schoolers' social movement and on the organized left, especially France Insoumise.
Premises
- The government pre-emptively framed October 24 as inevitably violent, imposing curfews, mobilizing ten thousand additional police, rerouting the march away from central Paris, and preparing telecoms to cut off social media, even though the march was orderly and largely calm.
- The government's narrative linking France Insoumise to the violence rests on thin or manufactured evidence: leaked intelligence reports whose authors told Mediapart they were pressured by superiors to produce evidence of a link, while Mélenchon explicitly disavowed looting and a political scientist said the ultraleft's importance is overestimated.
- Officials and politicians conflate the organized left, France Insoumise, and black bloc or autonomist groups into a single 'galaxy' (Marcangeli), and Macron announced bans on protest requests by 'people without any legitimacy', signaling repression directed at political opponents rather than only at violent actors.
- Mainstream and right-wing media amplified expectations of violence and misrepresented events, as when CNEWS aired footage from Albania as if it showed Paris protesters preparing to riot and then dismissed the error by saying it was 'the same technique'.
- The government and the far right stand to gain electorally from the narrative of chaos ahead of next spring's presidential election, with Le Pen presenting herself as the party of order and centrist and right forces blaming the left, while protesters' substantive demands (school conditions, budget cuts, cost of living) are ignored.
Assumptions
- The government's pre-emptive security measures were disproportionate to the actual threat rather than reasonable precautions after the October 17 looting.
- Political and electoral incentives are a plausible explanation for official behavior, and inferring motive from incentive is reliable here.
- The pressured intelligence reports reflect a deliberate effort to build a political case rather than ordinary bureaucratic disagreement.
- Rhetorical conflation of the left with violent groups is strategic rather than a sincere (if mistaken) assessment.
- A calm October 24 shows that the government's anticipation of violence was unjustified, not that its security measures successfully deterred it.