Madame Le Cerf
Once upon a time one expected to hear bad news about “la racaille”(or, for the more woke,) “les jeunes” from big cities such as Paris, Marseille and Lyon. However, the summer of 2025 brought to our attention the spread of collective violence to areas previously thought safe. There had been a hint of this in the riots of 2023 following the death of Nahel Merzouk, shot dead by police after he had been stopped in his car in Nanterre. Towns which had been spared violence in the widespread riots in 2005 erupted in 2023. But this violence had a “cause”. Last summer the violence arose apparently spontaneously and spread all over France. Places which were usually peaceful, such as Limoges, Beziers and others of which most non-local French people would never have heard such as Arnage (Sarthe), Dausse (Lot et Garrone), Arsac (Gironde) and Mornant (Rhone) were treated to bouts of violence for no other apparent reason than that the perpetrators wanted to sow chaos.
On 8th July at Dausse, a small commune with a reputation for tranquillity, an evening market was attacked by about 200 “jeunes”, who came from neighbouring places. They insulted stallholders, pushed over their stalls and threw projectiles at them. Shoppers at the market were shoved, frightening those with children. A pregnant woman had to be taken to hospital as an emergency. The shocked municipal council cancelled the next scheduled market.
The next week, between the 14th and the 21st July, Limoges saw several clashes between police and groups of young people (often masked) in two of its suburbs. At Beaubreuil (where we sometimes shop!) a police patrol was surrounded and had fireworks thrown at them. In Val d’Aurance bus shelters were destroyed and ambushes set. This is a favourite tactic- set bins on fire and attack the police and firemen when they arrive. At night, roads were blockaded and motorists robbed or carjacked.
Other places saw leisure facilities such as swimming pools and water parks attacked. On 16th July at Arnage, near Le Mans, there was the inaugural opening of a water park. From the first hour dozens of young men forced their way in without paying, refused to queue for attractions and provoked altercations in the changing rooms. They insulted the staff and started fights in the pool. Films showed children being hit and panicked holiday makers trying to get out. After just a few hours, the management closed the park. It was not reopened until some days later, when far more security and a drastic system for excluding presumed undesirables. Similar violence and vandalism occurred at other swimming pools and water parks throughout France and even spread over the border into Switzerland.
What was remarkable in each of these instances was the very young age of the culprits, many only 13 or 14. Many had never been in trouble with the police before. The motives for their delinquency were vague. Some spoke of wanting to “get revenge” without specifying what for. Others said they wanted to make their voices heard. A large percentage of these violent young people came from single parent families where the mother had, for the most part, lost whatever control she had once had over her offspring. Many had stopped going to school. Others did not fall into these categories but seem to have joined in the chaos as if suddenly seduced by the spectacle of violence.
Those trying to analyse these events are considering a kind of reverse integration, where imitating the codes of the banlieuex, such as Seine-St. Denis or Trappes, has become a means of finding an identity for the youth of more civilised places. A bit like following gangsta culture because it’s fashionable.
One of the problems has been the widespread infiltration of drugs from the big cities into the towns and villages of rural France. Over the last decade, due to oversupply in the big cities and the desire for a growing clientele, the drug trade has progressively spread outwards so that departments once considered the back of beyond, such as Creuse, Indre and Haute Loire, now have organised networks. This phenomenon intensified greatly during, and above all, just after the Covid pandemic. At the beginning, the lockdowns, which were particularly severe in France, forced the drug mafias to adopt more discreet ways of delivering their product. Hanging about on street corners outside social housing blocks was too likely to attract the attention of the police when most of the country was behind closed doors. So, home deliveries became popular. After the pandemic, there was an explosion in drug distribution in areas previously little troubled by the trade. Country towns like Figeac in Lot and Aurillac in Cantal saw an influx of young dealers from the Paris banlieux, Lyon and Marseille.
Following in the footsteps of this spread of the availability of drugs to hitherto fairly “dry” areas has come a wave of crime, typically against relatively defenceless individuals – violent attacks on very old people, either in the street or in their homes, by two or three masked men for a handful of trinkets or a few euros. “Home jacking”, where a small group of delinquents take over a home, beating up or even torturing the owners to make them disclose their PIN numbers, and raping the females. The mainstream media tended not to report these crimes, but so called right wing channels, such as CNews, do report them. CNews has become the most watched news channel in France, which may explain the burning desire of the government to shut it down. Social media play a part in the phenomenon of “home jacking”. Apparently, displaying your lifestyle on Instagram can make you a target!
Another phenomenon which is receiving a lot of attention this year is the increase in violence, both sexual and non-sexual, on public transport. I must point out that this affects mostly the urban part of France- there is virtually no public transport in rural areas! I will be exploring this further in a future article.
“Rodeos” have for a long time plagued the outer suburbs of French cities. Here clowns on motorbikes and in cars tear up and down roads often in residential areas, menacing other motorists, pedestrians and any police who try to intervene. This form of criminality too is spreading to smaller towns. Large crowds look on and apparently the top thrill is to touch speeding vehicles as they swerve about in the road!
In May last year a volunteer fireman was deliberately run over in Evian. As he was getting ready to return to his station with three of his colleagues (after having spent some time photographing number plates of vehicles taking part in a “rodeo”), he was targeted by the driver of a Golf and run over from behind. The driver then turned around, came back opened his window and spat at his victim as he lay on the ground. The fireman (at death’s door) was taken to hospital at Annecy. According to witnesses, as his colleagues at the scene worked to save him (firemen here are trained as ambulance personnel as well) the swine who had knocked him down hung around to mock. He was arrested soon after and found to be drunk and high on nitrous oxide. A usual suspect with a rap sheet including driving without a license or insurance and while drunk, and drug dealing. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison and actually served 6 days before being released with an electronic bracelet.
Only the day before this event, after a massive rodeo in Bordeaux involving 300 vehicles and 3,000 participants and spectators the Justice Minister M. Darmanin declared that vehicles taking part in rodeos would be seized and either sold or crushed. The law allowing this had actually been passed in 2018, but it has hardly ever been applied.
The spread of what had previously been considered problems of the “banlieue” into “La France Péripherique” is causing more and more disenchantment in the general, population. People talk about how the “regalian” function of the state i.e. protecting its citizens and punishing criminals has virtually collapsed. In Isère dealers get away with posting leaflets boasting of their products in letterboxes. “High quality products (cocaine, cannabis, nitrous oxide) up to the level of your expectations” delivered to “deal points” in the vicinity or delivered to your door like take away meals. The number of deaths of young people connected with the drug trade continues steadily to increase and people mutter darkly about France becoming a narco-state like Mexico, Columbia and Venezuela.
Despite the closing down of the Observatoire National de la Délinquance et des Responses (ONDRP), which has made statistical evaluation of criminality more difficult, people are aware of the daily round of crimes. Reputable institutions like Fondapol regularly publish alarming reports. Along with the narcotraffic which infests whole districts, the rise in attacks on women, old people and Jews (the latter has exploded since October 7th, 2023) paint a worrying picture of present day France. There are those who talk of an Intifada and the Left accuse them of stigmatising the immigrant population. But the hashtag # Tout le Monde Sait is very popular here. More on this in my next article!
