I have to admit to being a little distracted the past few days doing the literal 'batten down and button up' routine. SO much so that I've only gotten one good, long post up for you guys, and the rest have been written in between lugging crap around the backyard and wingnuts.
As the board seemed a little thin on France with all the excitement here to keep track of, I figured I do a quick little check-in on our French brethren and see if things have chilled out a tad.
SOCCER BLUR!!
It appears not.
BREAKING: France in a state of chaos. Police charge protesters on Place de la Bastille in Paris after students slam them with projectiles. After the charge, students continue to hurl paving stones. Follow: @RMXnews https://t.co/HITGmat3zQ
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 8, 2026
They're still calling them 'students.'
Isn't that the cutest thing? Like these are little street urchin versions of Madeleine. How adorable.
French students, future doctors and lawyers. A bright future for France. https://t.co/brtBnSAPBW
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) October 7, 2026
Someone in the comments suggested that the caption should actually read: France's Future Doctoirs Show Off Their Guns.
It works.
@RadioGenoa I started playing hardcore music over these France videos, because it seems like a Mosh Pit! Almost FUN. Bring this Sh!t to the US and the tune will change and it wont end well!
— Richard Pasqua (@richardpasqua) October 8, 2026
An ABC News correspondent was there during the day, still calling them students and saying the police had been trying to move everyone on their own. He keeps spinning as he's talking because it's just chaotic.
Paris is the worst of it, but the protests have spread to a reported 40 cities since they started, as well as a few in Belgium.
The government has 'pledged to act' on the school and teachers' issues, but it's still up in the air what that means. And if they thought that was going to mollify the kiddies now that they've gotten a taste of the riot virus...
...In the third week of nationwide student protests, large crowds demonstrated in Paris and across the country, from Lille in the north to Rennes and Nantes in the west, and Toulon and Marseille in the south.
While most marches across France were peaceful, police clashed with protesters in Paris, using tear gas and a water cannon, whiles scuffles in Nantes and Rennes were also reported.
The government promised to address grievances over teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings but gave few specific details.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray said after meeting students and teachers in Reims that he was launching an emergency plan to ensure absent teachers are replaced, while heavy school timetables were also under review.
Student protest leaders said the measures did not go far enough and called for further marches next week.
...they couldn't be more mistaken.
Everyone is enjoying watching France fall.
There are 33 minutes of today's mayhem on the video below, and what it does show is that it's most assuredly not all North Africans rampaging.
It's also quite bizarre to see a gentleman in an overcoat serenely in the midst of a police/'student' scrum, white umbrella hooked over his elbow, calmly looking for a path to get through the battlefield.
Rosy-cheeked, milky-white-skinned college-aged or older high schoolers link arms and go in against the Parisian cops wearing what look to be khakis and argyle vests.
The ubiquitous cell phones everywhere at the end of random arms. It's truly a scene out of an avant-garde art film, and I'm sure it plays better stoned. The cops are getting tired of it - they call the officer swinging the baton in the second video a 'rogue cop' because he's just bopping people as he clears the street.
But the fellow in the interview wonders how the gendarmes can handle what they're putting up with.
@mvalet_officiel Vous avez vu ce policier-racaille en roue libre 👇 https://t.co/0R31ePN8LG
— Smith (@Smithsdml) October 8, 2026
Have you seen the mess at Place de la Bastille in Paris?
The cops did a hell of a job cleaning it up, and do you know where, for instance, the CRS 8 was?
They were guarding the Panthéon, where Emmanuel Macron was with the German federal president, while it was absolute war at Bastille. Frankly, I think that's a total slap in the face!
But hold on, it gets better: the police start at 6 a.m., and in a grand gesture of kindness, the administration gives them a little cup of applesauce and a piece of fruit to last them the whole day... like they're a bunch of filthy tramps!
We're asking them to hold the line against cobblestones and Molotov cocktails, but we can't even manage to give them a proper meal while they're serving France?
And don't even try telling me anymore that "everything went fine, except for a bit at the end," because I'm sick and tired of hearing that crap.
At Bastille, a chimney was hurled from a building onto the police; in Bordeaux, a police station was set on fire with cops still inside, and we're supposed to believe everything's fine when we've got raving lunatics who want to kill cops 🇫🇷?
I say hats off to the police and gendarmes 🇫🇷, because no one would want to go through what they're going through, NO ONE!
The 'CRS 8 'he's ranting about not being available while local police are abused, attacked, and get the crap beaten out of them at the Bastille is one of the general reserve units of the French National Police and is specifically trained for crowd unrest.
The CRS 8 is an elite, highly mobile rapid-intervention unit of the French National Police created in July 2021 to combat urban violence and high-intensity crime
How nice the president of France could be gadding about in Italy while his country's in flames. Although last time I saw him, he was in the Mediterranean shooting one of the guns off the bow of a French patrol boat, so at least he's back on dry land and not cruising.
I'm not sure that they have any plans to clamp down on this if it's been three weeks and all the Macron government can do is make mewling noises about fixing what makes the kiddies unhappy.
There may be nothing left for Marine LePen to save.
Beege ADDS: Instead of 'students,' can you say 'Intifada'?
That makes much more sense. And they're in flex-mode.
...There are a few problems with this narrative, beginning with the images and footage of the riots posted all over social media. What we see are not protests of classroom conditions, but the wanton destruction of schools, violent attacks on firefighters and police and even teachers, and all the indications of central organization and planning.
Among the “protesters,” we don’t see a broad cross-section of French society but overwhelmingly nonwhite males, immigrants and the children of immigrants. The barricades are being raised largely by Muslim youth of North African and Middle Eastern descent. Outside many schools, students weren’t chanting about funding cuts or classroom conditions, they were chanting “we are antifascists” and other such slogans. In Marseille, rioters flew the flag of Algeria and Hamas, not the tricolor. It was the same at a number of high schools that saw rioting.
It’s pretty obvious what’s going on, and who is behind the unrest. This is the Red-Green alliance of the socialist/Antifa left and Muslim immigrants, operationalized to bring the country to its knees through widespread rioting ahead of national elections next year. Indeed, the office of France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, on Friday made public that French intelligence is assessing the riots as orchestrated by proxies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”), or LFI. Mélenchon, who has denied LFI’s involvement, is running for president.
In short, what is happening in France is that communists and Muslim migrants are joining forces, testing their strength on the eve of national elections. It might be illegal to say so in France, but these are ethnic riots, a show of force by unassimilated Muslim migrants and their hard-left revolutionary allies, who believe that together they are strong enough to overpower the native majority.
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