On July 2 the French independent news site, Mediapart reported on the northern Parisian banlieue (ghetto suburb) of Aubervilliers: “There are fires, scooters slaloming between the barricades, groups of CRS [riot police] tramping behind their shields, a truck overturned on its side. In front of the Fort d’Aubervilliers [metro station], on the night of June 29 to 30, a group of onlookers watches twelve buses burn. At irregular intervals, an explosion is heard and the small crowd jumps. A teenager observes the brand-new Olympic swimming pool, built a few meters away and threatened by flames. He laughs: ‘It’s over! Cancelled, the Olympics!’”

This is just a small part of the riotous upsurge that has gripped France since the June 27 police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, who was pulled over for driving in a bus lane. Merzouk was shot at point blank range by one of two officers pointing guns through his car’s window. The incident was captured on film.

Street battles have occurred throughout France in several major cities, including the capital Paris and the port city of Marseille. Smaller centres, like Dijon and Nice have seen fighting and there has even been protests in the French colony of Guiana in South America – where a bystander was killed by a stray police bullet.

Riots have gripped the poor districts of France, spilling over into Belgium and Switzerland.

45,000 police supported by specialised military and police units have been mobilised by the Macron government. Nighttime curfews have been imposed in some areas.

There have been calls from the right for the government to declare a state of emergency and a statement from the police unions that the police might form a “resistance” to the government.

The US NPR News reported that in cities like Marseille, police have “used vans to block streets and discourage large congregations of angry demonstrators,” and tear gas to disperse larger groups while helicopters hovered overhead to monitor crowd movements.

“Shoot him“

Sky News UK reported on July 1 that a young man who was a passenger in the car has released a video giving his version of the June 27 events. He says the first words a police officer spoke at the car were: “Don’t move or I’ll put a bullet in your head!”

He says that the police whipped Merzouk with the butts of their guns. The young witness alleges the second officer said: “Shoot him.” Only then did Mouzouk use the accelerator to try to escape.

The police officer involved is being formally investigated for voluntary homicide and is being held in prison in preventive detention. Under the French legal system, being placed under formal investigation amounts to the same as being charged with a crime in Australia.

Far-right political operative, Jean Messiha, who successively worked for Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour (who is even further to the right than Le Pen), has opened a crowd-funding campaign for the imprisoned officer, saying that he had “done his job“. By July 2, it had raised over 800,000 Euros ($A1,314,084).

Police intelligence

French president, Emmanuel Macron has blamed the use of mobile phone social networks for the upsurge. In this he is speaking in line with a report given to him by Central Territorial Intelligence Service.

As reported in Mediapart, the “intelligence” is close to bizarre.

For example, they highlight the Muslim Perspectives association for posting a Twitter statement saying “Muslims and people of colour are a free target in this country” and mentioning “Islamophobic-inspired law”.

Also monitored by police are the Twitter accounts of famous footballer, Kylian Mbappé and the actor, Omar Sy. They posted tributes to Nahel Merzouk and spoke of the situation in France as being “unacceptable.”

The intelligence service fears a linking up between the “far-left protest movement, environmental protest, and high school organisations” with the alienated banlieue youth. They make no mention of the militant Mouvement des gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests movement) or the trade union movement against Macron’s pension law reform.

All those movements, to one extent or another, have felt the ultra-violence of the French police forces. If they were to intersect with the current upsurge, the French state would be in trouble.

Openly fascist police union statement

The alliance of the two French police unions issued an incendiary, openly fascistic statement on June 30 about the situation saying that police are in a “war against vermin.”

It went on: “Today the police are in combat because we are at war. Tomorrow we will enter resistance and the government should be aware of this.”

“Faced with these savage hordes, it’s no longer enough to call for calm, it must be imposed.”

The statement warned that if the police do not get special legal protection from the state, then “tomorrow they will be in resistance”.

History of oppression

There is a cyclical pattern of rioting by hyper-marginalised immigrant youth in France, in the 1990s, in 2005 and now. France has never really come to terms with the loss of its Algerian colony in the 1950s and has yet to relate humanely to North African migrant communities. The French state has never adopted any assimilation or integration policy for these groups, and certainly not multiculturalism.

This has resulted in not only appalling social conditions such as dilapidated housing, rampant unemployment and youth gangs – in effect, ghettoes left to rot – but also cultural and racist discrimination.

Many of the banlieue youth are born in France and have not known any other homeland. But they are not given citizenship status and hence they are excluded from basic rights enjoyed by all other French citizens.

Many are also Muslims and this religiosity is culturally regarded in France as an oppositional, anti-systemic political force that has radicalised the youth. It is treated by the state as a breeding ground for terrorism.

Young people bearing a recognisably Muslim name can find themselves excluded from employment.

This is flavoured with outright cultural denigration. During the 2005 events the then French president Sarkozy called the young rioters “scum”, proclaimed a state of emergency and launched a brutal police offensive against them.

Often these riots take the form of looting of shops or the destruction of public institutions. French left-wing blogger, Allain Graux speaks of this as “revenge against the colonial state”.

The ongoing oppression of these hyper-marginalised groups has produced a diffusion of racism, jingoism and ethnocentrism in French society, which feeds into the politics of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party.

In France there is a social pattern of extreme police violence against popular protest. Consolidated police brutality was used against the Yellow Vests. Police attacks on protests against Macron’s pension reform even led the EU commissioner of human rights to condemn the French police “for excessive use of violence”.

The situation is complex for the French left, however as Allain Graux asks: “What would happen if peasants, workers and students cooperated with the racialised youth of working-class neighborhoods, some of whose parents are fighting for pensions when they unionised, or in associations for social housing?” 

He urges the left organised in the radical La france insoumise (France Unbowed) party to “go and campaign in the neighborhoods, to provide explanations and solutions to questions concerning immigration, integration, rights, employment, education, housing, feminism and LGBTQ.”