The screen caps shown in this post are taken from a French video featuring twenty minutes of excellent drone footage recorded a few days ago in the center of Paris. As far as I know, the riots — ostensibly protesting an increase in the retirement age — are still ongoing.
After twice watching the video carefully all the way through, it became clear that the two groups confronting each other — the rioters and the police — were following a set of rules or guidelines constraining their behavior. The rioters set fire to piles of odds and ends, throw projectiles at the police, and shoot fireworks. For their part, the police fire tear gas, cordon off the rioters, chase down and arrest a small number of them, and lay into some of the more aggressive ones with their batons.
Neither side steps outside these tacit constraints.
Why is that?
There is plainly a substantial Antifa component among the rioters; why do they feel themselves so constrained? They could torch the buildings surrounding the square just as easily as they do those piles of bicycles and street furniture. The nearby businesses and residences occupied by capitalist plutocrats would seem to be tempting targets, yet they remain unmolested.
Why is that?
For their part, the police could do much more severe damage to the rioters. If they were really serious about stopping the mayhem, a commander could order the use of live rounds to shoot five or ten of the more active demonstrators, pour encourager les autres. But they don’t.
Why is that?
I can’t answer these questions. However, it appears that the opposing sides in this conflict are deliberately keeping their actions within certain limits.
I don’t know whether this self-restraint is being coordinated from above. And if it is, I don’t know what the motive for these limitations might be.
At some point we may see some of those elegant buildings go up in smoke. And we may see black-masked corpses lying in pools of blood. When that happens, the game will enter a new phase.
Until then, we will be presented with more scenes from this carefully organized theatrical performance.
Hat tip: Vlad Tepes
Would the police not be effected by an increase in retirement age? They may be conflicted.
The french retirement system is a dark matter. There are 42 different pension schemes and police retire much earlier than others, for understandable reasons: lifelong 24/7 shifts all over the world. So my educated guess for France is: police retire at 55, unless otherwise confirmed. And french workplace culture differs a lot from other countries: I worked at a social research institution in the seventies and the tone was a shock for me. Very autoritarian reminding occasionally of military drill instructors. Well, military was even more polite in the day in other countries of Europe.
I don’t know – is it not just the usual “rules of engagement”?
It’s sort of ok to put stuff on fire and throw plastic bottles or something…
…but if the “rioters” started to really go after the buildings or shoot firearms, the rules of engagement would quickly change and the police would go full force against them…
So – I’d say it may be a sort of “French riot culture” in action. It’s not a real riot in that no one in the streets is really interested in destroying the city.
Though I don’t deny the work of agents provocateurs, I am sure Paris is full of them. The French must already know that and that is why nobody is particularly keen on going “full riot mode”. Because such get singled out and taken to custody.
Perhaps it’s the government thugs knowing that not going full Brownshirt on the rioters also protects them from injury or death.
They’re happy to give the appearance of following the orders of the Élysée Poofter and not risk injury to themselves as long as the rioters don’t get too rambunctious.
Undoubtedly there are agent provocateurs amongst the rioters, but I would venture that the vast majority of those protesting really don’t know how to kill or have the stomach for it. It is enough to disrupt the normal activities of the city and make life miserable as the longer this goes on the weaker it makes little Napoleon.
But why don’t they go ahead and torch the capitalist buildings, like the BLM rioters did here in 2020? That’s the part I don’t understand.
These rioters do not hate French cultural, history ,or even basic western civilizations. They know they are getting totally screw by unelected elitist controlling weak woke men holding high office “running” their countries and western civilization into the ground. It is the same story here in America, Canada, western Europe ect. The true haters of western law ,cultural, free speech ,burn down court house , pull down statues, love violence mayhem ,do not have day jobs. The people protesting here on a whole most love their country, cultural, work for a living ,have connections to traditional French society . Their country, has not failed them ,the “elected” or in many cases installed government officials have failed them by the government embracing climate change religion, massive third world illegal invasion of “refugees”. The woke government is running out of taxpaying citizens to support the insane policies they support. The citizens at these protest have alot to lose if they are arrested ,including and not limited to their jobs.
If I had to guess, a fundamental difference is that the jurisdictions where Antifa was doing those antics were jurisdictions where the government was sympathetic to Antifa. A few times Antifa has miscalculated and caused trouble in the wrong city and been stomped hard for it.
The rioters in France are not supported by the government and don’t have their sympathy. Little Napoleon will tolerate rioting as long as it isn’t “mostly peaceful” and the rioters don’t set anything valuable on fire. And, I think the rioters know that they maintain support and sympathy of the majority of the French only so long as it doesn’t turn into destroying buildings or private citizens vehicles, but no one cares about lighting piles of trash or dumpsters, tires, etc on fire. Maintaining public support is probably the biggest reason why they don’t actually riot for real.
@ Baron Bodissey
“why don’t they go ahead and torch the capitalist buildings”
— What about “think global, act local”? (Globalist modus operandi.)
The local think-tanks of the PTB must have figured that torching buildings would not be wise at his point in France. Exactly why, I do not know.
That may be connected to the functions of ‘instigation and containment’ of the riots — in other words you have to be able to turn it on-and-off at will, centrally. An informed Frenchmen could elaborate on that, perhaps.
The ‘containment’ part might explain why the French were able to sit in a relaxed way in nearby restaurants while the neigbourhood was on fire: they must have felt that it was all contained and constricted without the danger of escalation.
The only ‘real’ riot was the recent week-end at Sainte-Soline. Not Paris, but a sleepy little village in rural western France.
Two protesters in hospital in comas; 1000 Police injured.
https://www.bfmtv.com/politique/retraites-darmanin-annonce-1093-policier-gendarmes-et-pompiers-blesses-de-puis-le-16-mars_AN-202304010354.html
Nope. You are mistaken.
Diane Ouvry (Parti Reconquete)
published this (which I have cut significantly) day before yesterday (Monday):
La France est devenue un véritable coupe-gorge.
Voyez par vous-même, en piochant dans la presse ces derniers jours :
Jeudi 23 mars à Cergy, un jeune homme a reçu des coups de couteau au thorax en pleine rue.
Vendredi 24 à Lille, un certain Sabri attaque gratuitement des passants… à la hache !
Même jour, dans les Vosges, un voyou « connu des services de gendarmerie » tente de poignarder un gendarme.
Samedi 25 à Paris, une jeune femme tabassée au visage et ensanglantée meurt dans son hall d’immeuble.
Même jour à Auby, une racaille à moto menace des piétons pendant son rodéo. Alors qu’il tombe de son véhicule, ses comparses venus l’aider… agressent les passants.
Dimanche 26, à Ivry-sur-Seine, un homme de 25 ans grièvement blessé par balle en fin de soirée sur une péniche.
Même jour, à Chartres, une femme est égorgée sur le chantier de Chartrexpo.
Et la semaine dernière :
Lundi à Strasbourg, une course-poursuite meurtrière fait 3 morts et 6 blessés.
Mardi soir, à Villejuif, 5 hommes à moto-cross en plein rodéo sauvage refusent d’obtempérer aux policiers. Dans leur fuite, l’une des racailles renverse sévèrement un agent.
Même soir, même ambiance à Nemours. Un policier est percuté par une moto-cross et traîné sur plusieurs mètres. Les forces de l’ordre sont encerclées par une trentaine d’individus qui leur jettent des projectiles.
Même soir, à Rennes, c’est une fusillade au pistolet-mitrailleur. Les riverains n’en peuvent plus !
Dans la nuit de mardi à mercredi, à Nîmes, c’est une fusillade… à la Kalachnikov !
Mercredi, à Montauban, dans un centre hospitalier, 3 personnes ont été poignardées.
Même jour, à Marseille, c’est un ado de 16 ans qui a été poignardé à l’artère fémorale…
Jeudi soir à Aubenas : le commissariat de police a été visé par des tirs de mortiers d’artifice.
Vendredi matin à Nanterre, un homme de 28 ans est tué par balle en pleine rue.
Dans la nuit de vendredi à samedi, près d’Orléans, un homme a été tué par balles.
Samedi, à Paris, un ouvrier a été frappé à coups de marteau à la tête par des squatteurs.
Quatre personnes ont été blessées ce samedi soir suite à des coups de feu dans un commerce d’alimentation situé près de la cité Félix-Pyat, rue Édouard-Crémieux, dans le 3e arrondissement de Marseille […]”
That’s at least seven deaths–civilian deaths. Plus all the machine-gun shootings and all the stabbings. And I cut the report significantly to post it here.
This is not secret info. It’s France’s BLM Summer. It’s bad.
European cities all have “squares” precisely for the peasants to blow off steam. I remember joking in the ’90’s with friends, watching whatever “rioting in the square” was happening then. We were laughing and saying things like, ” why do european cities build squares? they’re nothing but trouble.” and , “I would never live in a city with a square. Too much rioting.” etc. A fun riff at the time.
Now, I have to laugh when I hear people say, “look at Europe, they’re at least doing something. Unlike America.”
Nope. I believe its all intentional and organized. It seems to be a brilliant idea by the elites.
When central Paris was remodelled by Hausman in the 19th century, those wide boulevards weren’t just driven through for the convenience of the citoyens, but so that troops could move quickly; the government knew its people.
That was at Bonaparte’s command b/c he had been an artillery officer (that’s how he took power, in fact) so that field pieces could be used on broad, straight boulevards against civilians.
Thanks, I didn’t know that.
“If they were really serious about stopping the mayhem, a commander could order the use of live rounds to shoot five or ten of the more active demonstrators, pour encourager les autres.”
Literally makes no sense. The word you want is “décourager” (i.e., DIScourage).
https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais-anglais/d%C3%A9courager/22294
And if you really want to know what’s going on in France, get yourself onto the PARTI RECONQUÊTE ! distro list (Eric Zemmour). It’s free:
https://www.parti-reconquete.fr/
Scroll to the bottom; look for
“Recevez les actualités de RECONQUÊTE!”
Below that is a window …
“Inscrivez-vous”
where you put in your email address. Et voilà!
They come in French but you can translate them if you don’t read French. It’s reliable, first-hand info.
“Encourager” is obviously used ironically, just as it was in the original quote, which I believe was from Voltaire.
The French are adept at irony.
Thank you for your reply, but I must differ. It was not obvious in the least.
Astroturf commie revolutionary theater of the NWO.
The “rioters” are centrally coordinated (like during intifadas in the West) and both sides are played by the PTB. (Also in Germany, by the way — I knew it when it turned out that the recent nation-wide traffic strikes there were organized by the unions that are enemy tools now.)
The real strategical goal of this preemptive (fake) violence is, of course, the central oppression of the (real) populace and the strengthening of (deep) state power.
I guess it is all part of the Script (of Rockefellers’ Operation Lockstep 2011, for example). And that’s why Schwab was so prescient when he stated back in 2021 that “vee must preepare for an angrier vörld”: they are harming and provoking the population and then turn the anger of the masses against it. It is like regenerative braking.
“With the left, the point is never the point. The revolution is always the point.” (Vladtepesblog)
Well said. Good post.
I guess at this point everyone here agrees that is an astroturf commie revolutionary theater of the NWO.