For most of the past week, the main French news channels have been leading with images that are familiar but still frightening to the French public. The images are of burning trash bins, overturned cars, gangs of masked youths taunting the police and throwing missiles at them — fireworks and Molotov cocktails — as well as attacking firefighters. The police, wearing heavy riot armor and carrying shields, have charged into the crowds of youngsters. They have used not only tear gas, but flash-balls, rubber bullets that constitute a “less-than-lethal” but nonetheless powerfully disabling weapon. Additionally, police have been indiscriminately smashing heads with batons.
At first sight, there is not much new here: after a decade or so of street violence, from the demonstrations of the Gilet Jaunes to the recent protests against pension reform, taking in the 2023 riots against the police killing of young North African in a Paris suburb along the way, the French public is now accustomed to scenes that in any other country would look like freeze-frame snapshots from a war zone.
🚨 BREAKING: MASSIVE RIOTS and PALESTINE FLAGS are waving in Paris, riot police are STRUGGLING, foreigners are everywhere and leftists are going berserk
THIS IS AMERICA IF THE LEFTISTS WIN.
The Islamists are waving the Palestinian flag everywhere…FRANCE IS FALLING
TEAR GAS is now being deployed.
Hamas movements are "ACTIVELY INVOLVED" in the riots
Rioters are being chased everywhere, but I want to see more MASS ARRESTS
This is a total free for all! IT LOOKS LIKE A 3RD WORLD NATION.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 6, 2026
