They got rid of the ones they didn't invite in; now they can't get rid of the ones they did invite in! Now thick black smoke fills a public square in France. Now hooded figures move through the haze. Debris litters the ground. Structures burn. People film as the chaos spreads. That is the footage circulating today from the October 17 riots.
Officials and much of the media still call this a student protest over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, and rundown schools. The pictures and the arrest numbers tell a different story.
The movement began in mid-September in the Paris suburbs, places like Créteil with large immigrant populations. High school students blockaded schools and complained about missing teachers and poor buildings. Within days it spread nationwide. What followed was not orderly marching. Schools were ransacked or set on fire. At least two dozen facilities were damaged or destroyed in the early weeks.
Trash bins, cars, and buildings burned. Protesters hurled fireworks, paving stones, and other projectiles at police. In one case a 15-year-old aimed a makeshift flamethrower at a staff member. In another a student’s hand was mutilated after he handled a police grenade. Hydrochloric acid was thrown at officers in some incidents.
By early October more than 6,000 people had been arrested, the large majority of them minors. Hundreds of police officers and hundreds of students and staff were injured. Interior officials and the government described the shift from school action to urban violence. They blamed ultra-left agitators who joined the crowds.
On October 17 the protests expanded further as unions, former Yellow Vest participants, and others joined over cost-of-living issues. Authorities recorded roughly 140 actions involving more than 32,000 people outside Paris by midday, with over 250 arrests already logged. In Marseille protesters stormed the town hall, rammed doors, entered the building, and spray-painted anarchy symbols before police cleared them. In Lyon a tourism office was set ablaze. In Lille the mayor’s office was broken into and vandalized. In Paris, around Place de la République, masked and black-clad groups threw objects, attacked a bank, and looted a sports shop while police fired tear gas. Windows were smashed at the offices of conservative broadcasters. Cars burned. Officials again pointed to far-left elements intent on disorder.
If you haven’t seen it yet, this is a video of a French Parisian liberal woman pleading with "Protesters" that she's one of them; that she voted to help them; that she voted to give them shelter and money. As they looted and destroyed her shop, they laughed at her. She was left standing there, stunned, not believing that these thieving, rabble-rousing, criminal, barbaric hordes are the ones she's spent her whole life defending and advocating for them to invade her country and destroy it. Because of her fame in defending North African refugees, all the French media yesterday carried her story and her picture in front of her looted shop. Poor thing, her whole life wasted and she can't believe the mistake of her suicidal empathy that brought France to this ruinous state of destruction. You can see the sudden realisation on her face: having invited misery and death into her civil society, she herself is now on their menu, too. You can punish and lock up the people who did this, but the real solution is shutting the border and mass deportations! If you import people from Third World countries, you quickly become a Third World country.
This is the pattern that has played out for weeks. The education grievances may be real in places, but the sustained violence, the looting, the attacks on public buildings, and the rapid turn to urban disorder do not match the image of ordinary high-schoolers seeking better classrooms. Large parts of the unrest have been concentrated in the same banlieues that have seen repeated waves of rioting tied to failed integration and parallel societies. French authorities and right-leaning observers have noted the role of ultra-left organizers. Some American commentary has gone further and linked the scenes to the results of mass immigration policies that imported populations with limited assimilation and higher rates of street disorder. The French government itself has rejected the idea that this is simply about schools; it has spoken of urban violence that must be stopped.
France faces presidential elections in 2027. Marine Le Pen and the National Rally are leading in the polls. The scenes of burning buildings, hooded rioters, and overwhelmed police will not help the parties that have spent years defending open borders, multiculturalism without conditions, and soft responses to disorder. When the media continues to frame weeks of fires, lootings, and mass arrests as a student protest over classrooms, viewers are left to trust their own eyes.
And the same is happening in other parts of Europe. The political choice facing voters in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, is between continuing the same approach to mass migration or restoring order.
What's happening now in France demonstrates what every clear-thinking person has known for years: If you import the third world, you become the third world. Thank you, France, for showing the rest of Europe and the rest of the world the horrific impact of socialism and open borders.
What is unfolding in France is far more troubling, and far more existential, than a mere protest over school funding or a row over classroom sizes. This is not a demand for better ‘education’ as a route into French society, but a rejection of that society and its values. It is an intifada against French civilisation itself. The sooner France wakes up to this reality, the sooner it can begin to put a stop to it.
Is Paris burning? It is! And it must be stopped! "C’est la lutte finale!"
