Marine Le Pen said France’s democracy was at risk after violence erupted during anti-government protests.
The hard-Right National Rally (RN) leader released a pre-recorded address on Sunday, accusing both the Left and Emmanuel Macron of fuelling the unrest.
In a video posted on social media, Ms Le Pen said: “We are living through a profound crisis of trust and authority that poses a threat to democracy.
The French government was in crisis talks on Sunday after one of the most violent days of unrest in years left public buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted, and more than 2,000 people arrested in cities across the country.
Politicians on the left and right called for the resignation of the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, after the government appeared to have been caught by surprise by the scale of violence as state buildings were stormed and torched, bus stops smashed, roads barricaded and shops broken into and destroyed.
Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte attended a Celine Dion concert on Friday night as riots erupted across France.
“Let them eat cake.” https://t.co/TCl3rGUMY6
— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) October 18, 2026
France awoke to scenes of widespread damage on Sunday after a day of riots and demonstrations, with shopfronts shattered, burnt out cars, charred bikes, and piles of glass and debris on the pavements of Paris.
Police arrested about 1,800 people on Saturday as some 550,000 demonstrators took to the streets for protests that were largely peaceful.
They were demonstrating against rising fuel prices, the cost of living and deteriorating public services, including schools.
Just a little looting etc…
@fancypants_s
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) October 18, 2026
Food for thought …
More than 400 people were arrested in France on Saturday after protesters supporting high school student grievances clashed with police.
Police fired teargas in confrontations with protesters, as demonstrations across France were boosted by other groups angry over high prices and the fraying of a social welfare system.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country, and tensions erupted on the fringes of the nationwide demonstrations over absent teachers, decrepit school buildings and police violence.
🇫🇷 City hall in Limoges, France, getting torched…
This has gotten way out of hand now.
Still calling this a protest? My ass.
Writer: Daniyal
https://t.co/2CwA2FRljI
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 17, 2026
I spend a lot of time working in Paris, and I was there again recently. It remains one of the most beautiful and culturally important cities in the world. But beneath that beauty, France is facing an economic crisis that should concern every Western democracy. The protests spreading across France are being viewed through the familiar lenses of Left versus Right, immigration, and political unrest. Those issues certainly matter, but I believe the real story is much bigger. France is confronting the consequences of an economic model that has promised more than it can sustainably deliver.
🚨🇫🇷 The police couldn’t even STOP and had to pass through the rioters while they kept throwing stuff at them
How are they supposed to stop this when the streets look like that?
Writer: Lucas
https://t.co/KwZMk7J1to— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 17, 2026
Police have fired teargas and clashed with protesters supporting high school student grievances, as demonstrations across France were boosted by other groups angry over high prices and the fraying of a social welfare system.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country, and tensions erupted on the fringes of the nationwide demonstrations over absent teachers, decrepit school buildings and police violence.
Over the last two days I went on Fox News and Newsmax to warn Americans about what’s happening in France. Today, the images speak for themselves.
October 17, 2026. In Marseille, France’s second-largest city, a mob smashed through the doors of City Hall and stormed the lobby chanting "It’s the revolution, we’re taking the Bastille." Shortly before, rioters had trashed a municipal police station, breaking windows and throwing smoke bombs inside. Shops on the main avenue were vandalized and barricades were set on fire. In Paris, masked black bloc crews fired mortar fireworks at police at Place de la République while tear gas filled the square. There were 166 arrests nationwide by midday and more than 600 protests across the country, after weeks of blockaded high schools. The Yellow Vests are back.
Now here’s what every American needs to understand. What are these people demanding? More: higher wages, higher pensions, more public spending, more state. That’s in a country where the government already spends more than half of everything the economy produces.
This isn’t an accident. It’s where 45 years of socialism lead. Since 1981, left or right, every French government has grown the state. Macron is just the final, most polished version of the same system.
Socialism doesn’t create prosperity. It creates dependency. When people rely on the state for everything, every disappointment turns into anger at the state. And the state cannot allocate capital. It doesn’t risk its own money, and it never goes bankrupt when it’s wrong. It just borrows more and taxes more. Productivity stalls, wages stagnate and prices rise. Then people take to the streets demanding even more state. The loop feeds itself until it breaks.
America, watch closely. If the Democrats fully embrace socialism, this is the trailer for what comes next. History is accelerating. It took France decades to get here. It won’t take you nearly as long.
Vote for less government, never more.
— Brivael Le Pogam (@brivael) October 17, 2026
Report of the Yellow Vest movement allying with the “students”.
Lyon, France – tourist office set on fire. This is Europe, these are criminals. https://t.co/VsHcAOZ3Nz
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) October 17, 2026
h/t Mauser
It is wrong to attribute the French protests involving teenagers solely to the ‘New France’ – that is, non-European migrants who hold French identity cards but, in many cases, reject the French way of life. This unrest is not simply a clash between immigrants and France, or between Islam and European civilisation, as Donald Trump has tried to portray it. It is worse than that. Around the barricades and blockades, immigrants and white French teenagers are rising up together – against reality, work and excellence. Two forms of decadence and entitlement are singing in unison.
Nearly half of Muslim and Jewish respondents in a major French poll say they would consider leaving the country if Marine Le Pen wins the 2027 presidential election, according to an exclusive Ifop survey for the magazine Marianne.
The poll found that 46 percent of respondents identifying as Muslim would contemplate “leaving France to settle in another country” under a Le Pen presidency. Of those, 20 percent said they would “certainly” take that step. By comparison, 21 percent of the overall population expressed a similar willingness to leave.
Translation – >46% of Muslims will leave France if Marine Le Pen wins
>Le Pen is projected to win the entire country
>46% of Muslims will leave France if Marine Le Pen wins
>Le Pen is projected to win the entire country https://t.co/a9ojuDpP5R
— (Author) (@Alizeefascist) October 15, 2026
A 14-year-old pupil has been arrested after shooting a headteacher and a teacher at a school in southern France. On Monday, the suspect smuggled a hunting rifle inside a guitar case into the Joseph Lakanal school in Aubagne before opening fire. Mercifully, he was quickly subdued by a member of staff before he could shoot anyone else. The two injuries he inflicted were not life-threatening. The worst was avoided – but only narrowly. The investigation is now being handled by counter-terror police.
France in total chaos – cars drifting around fires, barricades in the street. If this generation is the future of France and Europe, we should be very worried. Zero values, zero patriotism. Only chaos, destruction and anarchy. https://t.co/dtZqH221wI
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) October 13, 2026
Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, the translated title of Dario Fo’s 1974 play, is one of the great works of Italian postwar literature. Exploring the struggles between moderates and hardliners in the country’s Communist Party, Fo drags his audience into the heady, violent atmosphere of the Years of Lead. In Italy, of course, that world is dead and buried, yet Fo’s story could just as well apply to the modern French Left. It, too, is riven by factionalism — even if, unlike Italy in the Seventies, France’s radicals now seem to be winning.
France—long the self-proclaimed guardian of high culture, of cathedrals and Cartesian clarity, of Enlightenment rationality and the moral vocabulary of Christian inheritance—now confronts scenes of disorder that would have been unthinkable to its earlier custodians. In the streets of its cities, young cohorts drawn largely from Muslim immigrant communities assert themselves with a confidence born of demographic momentum and ideological certainty.
This is Brussels. EU headquarters. Broad daylight. A mob smashes a car, jumps on the roof, destroys everything. Media calls them "students". If these are students, what do criminals look like? Europe imported chaos and now pretends to be shocked. Europeans must wake up now. https://t.co/Uydw61aFpF
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) October 11, 2026
OTTAWA – France’s new ambassador to Canada says her country admires the Carney government’s response to “extremely radical” American demands and is calling for swift action to boost Canada’s strategic ties with Europe.
“My mission is very clear. It’s to work toward making France one of Canada’s closest allies in Europe, in each field, in every sector,” French Ambassador Hélène Farnaud-Defromont told The Canadian Press on Friday.
France is an economic and social basket case currently beset by migrant lead civil unrest.
Good choice Carney.
As dustbins burn and students chant “everyone hates the police” in the French city of Lille, one teenager explains why he and his friends have taken to the streets.
“There aren’t even enough chairs. We have to go and find some at the start of every lesson,” the 16-year-old, who did not want to give his name, says of his school.
“We’ve got 50 minutes to eat at lunchtime but there are 2,000 of us that need to get through the canteen.”
Approaching civil war: France and Belgium are burning… schools torched, businesses looted, churches attacked.
Nearly 300 police injured, a young policewoman chased down and beaten in Paris, thousands of rioters arrested.
And we’re supposed to keep a straight face while the news media and government calls them “students” who just want better schools.
In Brussels barely one resident in five is of Belgian origin. In Aubervilliers, where ‘youths’ set fires and fought police this month, 84% of under-25s had at least one immigrant parent as of 2013. Across Seine-Saint-Denis, immigrants and their children now make up about 70% of the population – mostly Africans.
What we’re watching is a long-term, multi-generational invasion by enclaved, unassimilated cultures that will never be French or Belgian, whatever passport they carry. At some point we have to talk honestly about where the terms ‘unrest’ and ‘riots’ end – and where ‘invasion’ and ‘civil war’ begin.
— DonaldBest.CA * DO NOT COMPLY (@DonaldBestCA) October 10, 2026
‘In the name of Allah, we can kill them all!’, screams a masked student rioter named ‘Yanis’. He was filmed standing on top of a car, gesturing to the 10 or so police officers struggling to contain a restless crowd of teenagers. His chilling cry is met with cheers and exultation from the students outside the Honoré de Balzac high school near Paris. ‘Yanis, the voice of reason’ reads the subtitle on the now viral video of the speech.
🇫🇷 French muslim rioter Yanis, at the lycée Honoré-de-Balzac in Mitry-Mory (Seine-et-Marne), is heard screaming to the mob.
« Ils sont que dix, au nom d’Allah, on les tue ! » (“They’re only ten, in the name of Allah we kill them”).
Calling violence against the police.
On screen it says “Yanis is the voice of reason”
I thought this was about schooling?
— Michael Khieu (@kingkhieu) October 5, 2026
France has entered its third week of unrest, ostensibly over a lack of funding for schools. In a quest for better classroom conditions, students blockading their school in the north-central region Beaugency last week chanted along to M*R*H,* a song by the rapper Boro700. The title bears the initials of Mohamed Merah, the French-born terrorist of Algerian descent who in 2012 murdered three soldiers, then a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. One of them was an eight-year-old girl he chased down and shot at point-blank range.
Looking back at this, yeah, fucking France totally had it coming. https://t.co/yAWiyYgNew
— Chadimir Poutine 👨 🐻 🐷 (@ChadimirPoutine) October 4, 2026
