Trump and the right-wing MAGA media sphere are spreading the lie that the recent civil unrest in France was caused by immigrants.
It wasn’t.
The protests began with high school students. They were protesting the lack of resources provided by the French state to education. A legitimate issue: As in the US, French teachers are underpaid, and the physical condition of schools has deteriorated over the past 20 – 30 years. The students marched in many cities in France, big and small, largely peacefully and without incident.
When further marches were scheduled, other actors joined in – most predominantly labor unions. The far-left party La France Insoumise also joined in supporting the students. Still, the next round of marches was mostly peaceful.
But last weekend’s marches were hijacked by two groups prone to violence. The first group consisted of political extremists, such as the so-called Black Bloc, an undefined, leaderless group that espouses violence as a legitimate political tool. The second were the casseurs, young men (mostly) from poorer areas who glom on to large political protests in order to ransack and steal from stores. These groups were mostly responsible for the shocking images of fires and destruction from last weekend.
The Black Bloc members are not immigrants by-and-large. Because the casseurs come from poorer area – which have a higher proportion of immigrants (in part due to the effects of France’s colonial past in North Africa) – no doubt some were immigrants, but most were French-born citizens, some of Mahgrebin descent, and some not.
As with all events like this, press coverage focuses exclusively on the worst of the worst incidents, and does not report cases (as here in La Rochelle) where the marches were peaceful. I can assure all of you that all of France is not in flames; the trouble spots were localized and isolated.
France’s President Macron indirectly responded to Trump’s claim that immigrants were responsible for last weekend’s events by saying it was “stupid.” To use France’s misfortune to pour oil on MAGA’s already hot anti-immigrant hatred is typical Trump: incendiary and false.
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Headline in the NYT was “Macron says Trump Hates France and Distorts its Troubles.” Welcome to the club, Emmanuelle; he hates his own country too.