The temptation of broken glass

The prime ministers of Hungary and Poland have linked the riots in France to immigration. And Donald Trump, too. He considers that the violence of these days “comes from people who come from a different world and carry hatred in their hearts”.

How easy it is to condemn this violence and how miserable it is to take advantage of it to cultivate the votes of fear. And how irresponsible it is to cover one's eyes very tightly with both hands so as not to want to see how social unrest has grown and to reduce everything to a problem of law and order.

One of the origins of the French outburst of rage has been the high schools. The situation is familiar to us. We must remember our teachers' strikes. Or those of doctors? Or the farmers' revolt? Or the housing encampment? Or how inflation eats away at purchasing power? The diagnoses have long been made.

Likewise, it is dangerously misguided for the left to claim that the French were stopping fascism. Well, they are in a fine mess. Vandalism is usually the carpet through which states of emergency, which awaken so many passions among the far right, quickly enter, with arrests, imprisonments, and officially accidental deaths. The left should take note of this, if it is tempted to think that some good riots and a few acts of looting on the day of the general strike will be effective propaganda to increase the intention to vote eighteen days later. We already know that they want to take us to the polls with emotions, but the present and the future are already loaded enough to suggest that a couple of fires would not be a good idea.