The recent riots throughout France following the death of Nahel M have not been paralleled in terms of scale and destruction since the French Revolution of 1789, argues Pierre Brochand, former director of the French Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE).
Brochand – who seldom appears in the media – highlighted the more than 200 towns and cities that witnessed rioting and looting en masse in June, resulting in hundreds of injured police officers, thousands of arrests, and more than one billion euros in property damage, in a recent interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro. He asserted:
“In terms of amplitude, official statistics suggest… that nothing comparable has happened in French cities since the Revolution of 1789 or, at the very least, the weeks following the Revolution.”
The riots “boiled down to the permanent indictment of the French people,” who are regularly accused of causing “all the misfortunes of the earth: world wars, colonization, Jewish genocide, global warming, indifference to drowning, etc,” Brochand added.
Moreover, what made the riots unique was their ubiquity. Despite such unrest being previously restricted to cities, the riots reached “very small provincial towns, which until then had been quiet,” he explained, calling it a “worrying reflection of the spread of immigration throughout the country, sometimes at the instigation of the public authorities.”
Brochand’s concern about immigration is one shared by the majority of the French public, 59 percent of which believe that the riots were “the consequence of the failure of [France’s] immigration policy.” Another 89 percent admitted they are “worried” about the future of the country.
The rapid spread of immigration throughout France was initially highlighted by former President Donald J. Trump, who stated in 2016 that “France is no longer France.”