In an address to the nation on Sunday evening, French President Emmanuel Macron refused to take any accountability for the national riots that erupted on Saturday, as he sought to shift the blame onto the far-left and even external forces like the Iran conflict while failing to acknowledge the role mass migration played in creating a groundswell of support for the unrest.
President Macron, who has become little more than a lame duck in the Élysée with six months left in his term in office, addressed the country for the first time since the youth revolt began nearly a month ago.
Rather than taking a ‘the buck stops here’ approach, Mr Macron did not admit to any personal failings after his government failed to foresee or prevent some of the most destructive riots in recent memory, resulting in historic buildings being torched, thousands of shops being looted, and hundreds of police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters being injured on Saturday.
Instead, the outgoing leader pointed to “extremists from far-left groups” and “criminals” as being solely responsible for the “unrestrained violence” witnessed across France.
Meanwhile, Macron appeared to completely ignore the role that the importation of millions of foreigners into the country has had on the social framework, with many of the rioters being suspected of hailing from the multicultural suburban enclaves like Saint-Denis. Instead, the president questioned, “How can French people do this to France?”
“Why burn down the town hall in Limoges, the tourist office in Lyon, storm the town hall in Marseille, or attack the prefect’s residence in Bordeaux? How can they go so far? Nothing justifies it, nothing explains it, nothing excuses it. We all feel anger and shame tonight. Seeing the streets of our cities so ransacked is unbearable,” he questioned.
The neo-liberal president went on to claim that a distinction should be made between the “several hundred thousand of our fellow citizens [who] demonstrated with the intention of making legitimate demands” and “those who destroyed, vandalised, and looted.”
