The Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints managed to play the first NFL game in France without having the venue sacked by the rioting socialists and Islamists. That doesn't mean tensions have dissipated; far from it. The organizers of the protests now plan to use Halloween as their next pretext for violence and destruction, which so far have resulted in no consequences at all for the rioters.
The New York Times is sticking with the Minneapolis Narrative of leftist protests being "mostly peaceful" while cities burn and shops get looted:
Largely peaceful protests on Saturday ended in the evening with clashes between the police and protesters, but as chaotic as the scenes were, they did not escalate into the wholesale arson and looting that engulfed the country a week earlier. A fortified police presence and widespread arrests kept a lid on vandalism, if not preventing it altogether.
This is the same kind of "trust us rather than your own lying eyes" coverage that we saw during the George Floyd riots as well as Joe Biden's cognitive decline. If these protests were "largely peaceful," the police wouldn't have to fortify their presence, conduct widespread arrests, and merely "keep a lid" on vandalism. Next up at the NYT: yet another lament on why people trust the media less than they do Nigerian princes on e-mail.
But I digress. The "largely peaceful" protests may return in force, which has the French government worried, as "largely peaceful" protests tend to do:
Yet the respite could be short-lived. The huge turnout for the demonstrations — 410,000 people nationwide, according to the interior ministry; 800,000, according to the union organizers — suggested that, far from flagging, the protest movement was gaining momentum. Activists called for another day of protests on Oct. 31.
France remains acutely on edge. The killing of a young man in a shooting spree in a suburb of Paris on Friday has only added to the tensions. The authorities have not fully identified the assailant, who was arrested and is currently under psychiatric observation to determine whether his mental health condition is compatible with continuing his interrogations, according to France’s antiterrorism prosecutor’s office.
Emmanuel Macron and his establishment worry about the protests. What has them really frightened is what French voters may do in response:
French politics, too, may be nearing a fateful transition. On Sunday, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the main far-right party, officially began her campaign to succeed Mr. Macron as president next spring. ...
The unrest has buoyed Ms. Le Pen’s prospects, as she has promised to restore law and order and condemned Mr. Macron for what she says is an ineffectual response. Some 5,000 people applied to become members of her party following the violence on Oct. 17, according to party officials.
That has Macron worried enough about his political consequences that he's finally ready to consider consequences for the rioters themselves. Macron floated a proposal to make rioters financially responsible for the damage they do to businesses, and suddenly the "yellow vests" have entered the chat:
Emmanuel Macron has been accused by trade unions of trying to curb the fundamental French right to protest as the government fast-tracks a bill to make protesters pay for damage caused by vandalism at street demonstrations even if they did not directly cause it themselves. ...
Trade unions and gilets jaunes (yellow vest) anti-government protesters are now joining sustained street demonstrations in a growing social crisis over schools, as well as the cost of living and public services. Authorities have increased security measures and placed restrictions on demonstrating after France saw one of its worst days of violence in years earlier this month when largely peaceful demonstrations were marred by looting, fires and vandalism of state buildings.
The senate will this week debate the government’s proposed “vandals pay” law. The legislation would mean that a person protesting could be held liable to pay up to €10,000 for damage and vandalism even if they did not directly cause it themselves, if they were continuing to demonstrate nearby or as part of the same group as perpetrators. The bill also provides for greater use of drones over protests.
In America, we'd call this the Pottery Barn Rule: You break it, you bought it. In America, though, this law would be just as useless as it would be in France. To hold someone financially responsible, you first have to identify them and establish their presence at the riot. That would require political leadership willing not to just disperse crowds but actually send in forces sufficient to arrest them in large numbers for the purposes of establishing financial and legal responsibility. With a few exceptions in the US – Donald Trump for sure, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and perhaps a few other governors – there wouldn't be enough arrests to exercise the law. In France under Macron and the leftist establishment, this is just window dressing.
LePen has a few thoughts about that as well, pointing out that she first demanded the law and that she intended to enforce it:
The RN has claimed the “vandals pay” bill was originally its idea and Le Pen said she would ensure damage to property was paid for by rioters. Le Pen told a cheering crowd of more than 8,000 people at the rally: “Vandals will pay and if it takes their whole life to pay, then they will spend their whole life paying.”
She said: “We are going to restore the rule of law. Who can claim that there is rule of law when hordes come to ransack and burn our buildings?”
The Left insists that this law would put an end to French democracy, which at the moment looks more like mob rule:
Éric Coquerel, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left La France Insoumise, said on Sunday that the “vandals pay” law “would mean the end of street demonstrations” in France because people would not want to take the risk of being held responsible and made to pay up to €10,000 for vandalism they had not committed. The Communist senator Fabien Gay told the parliamentary TV channel Public Sénat: “No demonstration could take place again in our country.”
Ahem. No demonstration that resulted in vandalism could take place without consequences. Maybe that would be the incentive necessary to split les Socialistes from Antifa and les Islamistes in the future. When French voters put LePen and her party in charge, that may be the best deal the socialists get. Did they expect the French middle class to just sit around while the Left ransacks their businesses?
Finally, Bill Maher addressed the socialist/Islamist uprising on his HBO show on Friday. "We have to get real," Maher said of socialism in the US, "about how much of it we have here." Maher insisted that Social Security was a form of socialism, but the replies in his comments angrily rebutted him. "Really?" wrote one. "After paying into Social Security for 50+ years I just got my first check, and you think that makes me the problem." Get ready for a few protests, Bill, but most of this is spot-on. (Also: The high price of housing in California has a lot less to do with socialism and a lot more to do with environmental and zoning policies, Bill. Those policies fall more into the "drawbridge" category than outright socialism. YMMV, of course.)
One reason young people want socialism so much is that they're jealous that older people have it and they don't. https://t.co/CHRCZQ5xQG
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) October 24, 2026