Tag: riots

Macron Admits Government Did Not Anticipate Violence of Islamo-Leftist Youth Riots

President Emmanuel Macron admitted on Monday that his government was caught flat-footed by the outburst of violent riots earlier this month accross France, which threaten to continue for the foreseeable future.

The so-called “Act II” demonstrations on October 17th in France, in which widespread looting and rioting took place as far-leftist groups converged with youths from ethnic minority enclaves, resulted in rampant destruction and injury, with around 2,400 arrests, nearly a thousand police officers, firefighters, and gendarmes injured, and an estimated 3,000 businesses impacted. The riots also saw an alleged far-left arson terror attack which resulted in the destruction of the 143-year-old City Hall in Limoges. According to the liberal think tank Fondation iFRAP, the riots on October 17th and 18th alone likely cost around €1.1 billion ($1.2bn) to the government and private businesses.

Mayors across the country were deeply critical of the federal government’s performance during the riots, which occurred following weeks of youth revolt unrest over supposed complaints about the education system. The mayor of Limoges, Guillaume Guérin, sensationally claimed that the National Police force dispatched to his city had run out of ammunition during the attack on the city hall, providing alleged far-left terrorists free rein of the building for nearly an hour.

More than a week after the fateful events, and after another weekend of riots which saw dozens of police injured and over 1,300 rioters arrested, President Emmanuel Macron finally admitted that his government had failed to properly prepare for the unrest.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Marseille on Monday, where far-leftists also vandalised the local City Hall, Mr Macron said per the 20minutes newspaper: “We hadn’t anticipated what was going to happen at all… It’s absolutely true that in Marseille, as elsewhere, there weren’t enough police forces (on October 17).”

However, true to form, Macron still sought to deflect blame elsewhere, this time claiming that social media was a principal culprit for the riots, saying such platforms are “damaging our democracies.”

“They were used, especially on the 17th, to bring young people and older people to the scenes of delinquency, attacks, and looting,” the president argued, claiming that online there is a “great deal of confusion, a kind of permanent agitation that is taking place, a fascination with violence.”

Previously, Macron had blamed the “ultra-left” for sowing chaos and even U.S. President Donald Trump for supposedly sparking the energy crisis in Europe with the conflict in Iran, while ignoring the role that his mass migration policies have played in creating a disaffected underclass willing to engage in wanton violence and destruction.

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“They’re not protesting and they’re not French”: The False Narratives Of The Far Right

A masked young lad is filming from his seat on a runaway tourist train as it careens through the Paris streets. “Waaaooh” he shouts as it whizzes along, waving at other kids dressed all in black, to the sounds of cheering. His eyes tell the story – he’s high as a kite on adrenaline and the unexpected joy of total freedom, unshackled, for a fleeting moment, from the grinding manacles of economic necessity.

He is one of tens of thousands. They’ve filled the streets for weeks, clambered onto statues, fought the cops, made demands for their futures. As police violence has escalated against them, they’ve fought back in kind under the slogan “if we burn, you burn.” An increasingly literal interpretation as public buildings collapse in flames. The youth in full, uninhibited revolt the likes of which we haven’t seen for many years.

And their furious rebellion has been caught by the wind, spreading across Europe, reflecting the economic and social malaise that afflicts the entire Western hemisphere, a crisis of capital and demographics that States have decided the young must bear and fix, white offering nothing in return. The motivation for that delirious nihilistic moment of a stolen buggy rampaging down cobbled tourist streets, a wild young man hollering to the crowds, is as understandable as it is universal.

But the kid is brown, and that’s all the excuse the commenters need.

Similar can be found under every news item posted by every news organisation. They’re not protesters, they’re jihadis taking their chance. They aren’t French students, they’re Muslim foreigners. Never mind that in every video we can see how young the people kicking off are, never mind how many white faces are all over the place, never mind what the demands are or the many anarchist and socialist slogans that have been daubed on every wall.

For those of us with a bit of grey along their temples, the words sound all too familiar. We hear some variation on the theme whenever any social rebellion begins, from Hosni Mubarak and pals during the Egyptian revolution in 2011 to Donald Trump shrieking about anteefa after the January 6th riots. It’s the elites’ favourite excuse – outside agitators. It can’t be what it looks like, we must unite against an amorphous, pernicious alien influence and, merely by happy accident, preserve the status quo.

Blah blah blah. It’s as tiresome as it is predictable. We know it’s bullshit. So why are the far-right’s socials full of exactly that rhetoric?

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French PM Puts Telecoms On Alert For Nationwide Social Media Blackout As Far-Left Riots Spiral

Student grievances may have sparked the unrest, but one communist protester explained the turmoil in the streets is part of a broader revolution against “Macron and capitalism.”

Prepare For Nationwide Social Media Blackout

By late Saturday evening, French authorities had detained almost 1,000 people during demonstrations and riots that drew at least 400,000 participants, while far-left uprisings spread across other parts of Europe.

About 110,000 people demonstrated in Paris, according to the Interior Ministry. The government deployed about 70,000 officers across major metro areas.

Michael Shellenberger reports:

France’s Prime Minister asked telecom companies to prepare to block social media platforms. “I wish to have the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in case of a repeat of urban violence.”

Separately, far-left unrest emerged in Albania, Spain, and Brussels, as well as in Italy’s cities of Naples, Rome, and Milan.

Footage from across Europe today, as communists stage a broader revolutionary movement:

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Paris Police Chief Sparks Outcry By Advising Shopkeepers To Hire Private Security Ahead Of Saturday’s Far-Left Protests

Shop owners in Paris are bracing for a new weekend of far-left protests against the rising cost of living, after last week’s demonstrations devolved into violence, looting, and arson across France.

In the capital, 451 shops were vandalized on Oct. 17 and 18, including 228 that were looted, according to the City of Paris. The government counts about 3,000 businesses hit nationwide.

On Oct. 22, nearly every store along the Champs-Élysées was barricading its storefront with metal shutters, security grilles, or wooden boards, as bewildered tourists looked on, The Epoch Times observed. Chanel, Lacoste, and Louis Vuitton all had been targeted by looters last week.

Near the Place de la République, workers have been screwing plywood panels over windows and doors, while posters on the boards invite residents to join a neighborhood WhatsApp group against break-ins.

Shops were not the only targets on Oct. 17. In Paris, individuals also forced their way into residential buildings, The Epoch Times witnessed.

Hire Private Security Agents

In a letter sent on Oct. 21 to Paris’s local elected officials, reported by France Info, Police Prefect Patrice Faure urged shop owners near the protest routes to hire private security agents, “possibly with dog-handler teams,” lower their shutters, and consider not opening on Saturday.

The reinforced police deployment cannot on its own guarantee the protection of every establishment, the letter states.

The advice sparked outcry from critics who said protecting citizens is the state’s job, not shopkeepers’.

“The government is asking shopkeepers to pay for private security guards out of their own pockets. This is an admission that it can no longer fulfill its most fundamental duty: protecting the French people,” Sarah Knafo, a member of the European Parliament and one of the leading figures of the conservative Reconquest party, said on X.

“In return,” she said, “can shopkeepers stop paying taxes to the government?”

David Lisnard, the president of New Energy, wrote on X that this is “an unacceptable admission of powerlessness and a complete reversal of fundamental principles.”

“Shopkeepers pay for the repairs, pay taxes so that the state ensures their security, and are now expected to pay a third time for private security,” he said.

Faure later conceded a “clumsiness” in his wording, while stating that protecting shop owners remained the authorities’ responsibility and priority.

Unarmed and Outnumbered

Requests for quotes have doubled since the riots, according to the French Union of Security Professions, the industry federation.

“Calls to our switchboard and email requests have multiplied,” Raphaël Mashhadi, manager of the Paris firm Gardiennage Paris RMS, told The Epoch Times.

Clothing boutiques, grocery stores, and hotels are booking guards in advance “on top of physical protections such as wooden panels,” he said.

A 12-hour night shift costs 420 euros (about $470) before tax, Mashhadi said, against the 10,000 to 20,000 euros he said a smashed storefront window can cost.

“The difference speaks for itself,” he said.

Cyril Baudouin, who runs RPro Sécurité, told The Epoch Times that his activity had risen by 5 percent to 15 percent and that he would turn down requests he could not staff. He called the appeal “a bit unfortunate” for shop owners who already suffered losses and must now pay for their own protection.

“It might have been preferable for the state to pay for the service, or to requisition private security companies, since prefects have the power to do so,” Baudouin said.

Under French law, security guards are normally confined to the premises they are hired to protect, and they can only carry a weapon when lives are considered to be at “exceptional risk,” and even then only with the prefect’s sign-off for each individual assignment.

“We cannot be armed the way police officers and gendarmes are,” Mashhadi said.

Baudouin said a prefectoral order could at least have allowed agents to carry pepper gel on the street during the protest.

“A security agent alone can do nothing. What we saw was not even a crowd; it was a horde of rioters, violent people, and there were many of them,” Baudouin said.

The only option is to evacuate staff, lock up, and call the police, he said, stressing that guards may block a doorway but can’t strike anyone, as a single complaint can cost them their license.

“We are there to prevent, deter, alert, and assist.”

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Federal Judge Orders CIA to Release Records Related to Jan 6 Protests Including Information on Whether CIA Had Personnel Deployed Like the 274 Undercover FBI Agents That Day

A federal judge has ordered the CIA to begin releasing records related to January 6 by November 16, including documents on shots fired inside the Capitol, requests for bomb technicians and detection dogs, and whether CIA personnel were deployed. The ruling follows a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.

OANN reported:

“The CIA must begin releasing records related to January 6th by November 16th.

In a recent ruling, the U.S. District Court for the D.C.— for the District of Columbia ordered the CIA to begin releasing records related to shots fired inside the Capitol.

The agency must also release requests for bomb technicians and bomb-detecting dogs and whether CIA personnel were deployed. The order stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Filed by conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch.

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Now You Say! German Chancellor Admits Immigration and Failed Assimilation Caused French Riots

More than a decade after Berlin opened the gates of Europe to mass migration, a German Chancellor has publicly admitted that importing millions of foreigners and the failure to integrate them is causing carnage in Europe.

On the sidelines of the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin this week, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he is concerned that riots in France and Italy could spill over into other European Union nations.

When pressed in an interview with Bloomberg as to the reasons for the unrest seen in cities like Paris and Milan, which have seen thousands of arrests, widespread looting, and arson attacks, Chancellor Merz admitted that it is “most likely” the result of “non-integrated people” due to “migration”.

He said this was leading citizens to vote in larger numbers for “extremely right and extremely left” political parties, creating “tensions and obviously riots in some countries, including France.”

The admission that mass migration and the failed attempts at assimilation are not only radicalising the host populations, but also responsible for violent civil unrest is quite striking from Merz, who leads the same Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party which sparked the European Migrant Crisis of 2015 under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, resulting in one of the largest demographic shifts in modern history.

While Merz campaigned on clamping down on immigration, he largely abandoned this position after forming a coalition with the left-wing, pro-open-borders Social Democrats (SPD) rather than partnering with the anti-mass-migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which he has claimed is outside the bounds of political acceptability.

During his 17-month tenure in office, Merz has frequently defended the need for continued mass migration into Germany and Europe as a whole, claiming that more waves of foreigners are required due to supposed shortages in the labour market and to mitigate the demographic impacts of an ageing population.

“Germany is a country of immigration. It has always been so; it is so now; and it will remain so,” he declared just last May.

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Georgia Democratic Governor Nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms Called Anti-Riot Laws ‘Silly’ and ‘Asinine’

Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms called anti-riot laws “silly” and “asinine” in 2022.

Bottoms — who oversaw a massive murder and crime spike during her time as Atlanta mayor, at the height of nationwide social justice protests —  criticized anti-riot laws during an interview with The Atlantic shortly after she ended her time in office. Bottoms announced in the summer of 2021 that she had decided not to run for reelection.

When asked, “What do you make of these proposals to stiffen penalties for public protest that become unruly or violent?” Bottoms called the laws “really silly.”

“And it really takes away from the real conversation and the need to have some real dialogue, some meaningful dialogue, on why people are in our streets protesting. Let’s have a conversation about the open carry law in Georgia and how protesters can walk with AK-47s down the street, and there’s no penalty for that. That scares me more than 100 college students protesting peacefully in the street,” Bottoms replied.

“I think when we peel back and we look at why were people in the streets in the summer of 2020, it was because we were witnessing something that we had never witnessed as a country as whole in my lifetime, and it was a need for a conversation and for real reform,” she continued.

“I hope that when you see policies and laws like that introduced wherever you are, it is this reminder of why elections matter. It’s not enough that we show up and we vote for the president,” she said. “We gotta show up each and every time when that state senator, when that local representative is on the ballot. Because if not, we have people speaking for us and setting laws for us that are completely asinine and not at all in touch with where we are and where we need to be as a country.”

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France Slaps 8PM Curfews On Cities As Interior Minister Admits Police ‘Lost Control’; Macron Flees To The Gulf

France moved Monday to put riot-hit cities under curfew after Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted that authorities had lost control of the streets in several major cities over the weekend. President Emmanuel Macron refused Nuñez’s offer to resign and then left for a Gulf tour to secure fuel supplies.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told prefects to impose “very limited” and “localized” curfews. According to France 24’s live coverage, Lecornu ruled out a full curfew for Paris. He said a state of emergency could be declared “if necessary,” but that curfews seemed better suited, adding: “I am absolutely determined to restore order.” Marseille’s prefect banned protests and gatherings from noon to 8 p.m.

By Monday evening, Lecornu’s office had named the first towns, all in the northern Nord department. Lille, Douai, Wattignies and Denain will be under curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Monday and Tuesday nights, with each mayor’s agreement, according to Franceinfo. Lille is where Nuñez said rioters broke into city hall, and Wattignies is one of its suburbs. Lille’s Socialist mayor, Arnaud Deslandes, had refused earlier in the day to sign a curfew order, arguing that a late-evening curfew wouldn’t match the hours the trouble broke out. Denain was already under curfew: its mayor ordered a weeklong curfew from 9 p.m. starting Sunday, after what the town said were fires, mortar fireworks and paving stones thrown at police by hooded rioters on Saturday.

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Macron Addresses Nation: Refuses Blame, Ignores Immigration Impact on Riots, ‘How Can French People Do This?’

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.”

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Radical Obama Judge Mehta ‘Reluctantly’ Dismisses Oath Keepers Case With Prejudice – Injects Unconstitutional Guilt Dicta

On August 4, 2026, in a ruling that closes the book on one of the most high-profile January 6 prosecutions/persecutions, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta (an Obama appointee) on August 4, “reluctantly” granted the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss with prejudice the indictments against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and seven other Oath Keepers: Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Robert Minuta, Edward Vallejo, Joseph Hackett, and David Moerschel.

Those eight Oath Keepers were among the fourteen Oath Keepers and Proud Boys whose sentences were commuted rather than pardoned by President Trump on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025. Their sentences had been reduced to time served, but they remained “convicted felons.”

As we previously reported, on April 14, 2026—three days before the defendants’ appellate briefs were due to be filed in the D.C. Court of Appeals—the Trump DOJ filed an unopposed motion to vacate their convictions and remand their cases to the District Court for dismissal with prejudice. On May 21, 2026, the Court of Appeals granted that DOJ motion (as well as a nearly identical motion in the Proud Boys case).With the convictions now vacated, all that remained was for the D.C. District Courts—the trial courts—to grant the DOJ’s unopposed (meaning the defendants agreed) motions to dismiss the charges with prejudice.

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