Over the weekend, the supposed campaign by France’s youth for better classroom conditions took a detour through Marseille’s Louis Vuitton.
asserted
campaign → suppose → Vuitton
Looters armed with hammers and crowbars also cleaned out Hermes and Rolex.
asserted
Looters → arm → Hermes
According to one estimate, just under half the stores in the city centre were looted by a crowd police say reached 30,000.
uncertain
police → accord → 30,000
The bookstores, as far as anyone can tell, were spared.
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anyone → tell → ?
The looters, who ransacked some 1,500 stores across France, seemed to view their work as a kind of redistributive justice.
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who → ransack → justice
One Parisian store was graffitied: “This is for the high school students.”
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This → graffitie → students
It did not specify which high school.
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It → specify → school
One wonders if the Lycee Nelson Mandela in Nantes, a delightful newbuild completed in 2014 and set alight earlier this month, was among those the looters felt they were championing.
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they → wonder → those
Indeed, there appears to be little correlation between the schools being torched and those which are underfunded.
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which → appear → schools
And the looters are yet to put forward an argument for the educational benefits of a Louis Vuitton handbag.
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looters → put → handbag
What began in earnest one month ago as a campaign around classroom sizes and staff shortages has hardened into wanton criminality.
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began → begin → criminality
The scars left on French cities in recent weeks leave little doubt: torched cars and buildings, more than a thousand injured police officers, dozens of teachers assaulted, and several hundred million euros in damage.
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scars → leave → damage
Yet it is clear that many of those still marching, to borrow a line from Chaucer, know little of the things for which they pray.
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they → march → which
One woman, reportedly a left-wing protester, was filmed imploring her erstwhile comrades to stop looting a store.
uncertain
woman → film → store
“This isn’t the cause,” she screamed at a group of balaclava-clad, predominantly migrant-descended French youths.
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she → scream → youths
She was ignored, and eventually pushed aside, by young men who evidently felt otherwise.
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who → ignore → men
Eric Zemmour posted on X: “There are little whites among the looters, of course.
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Zemmour → post → course
As Audiard used to say, there are flying fish, but they are not the majority of the species.”
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they → use → species
He added: “The Great Replacement is not a theory; it is a fact.”
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it → add → ?
It is true that the majority of the footage that I have reviewed in recent weeks has shown a preponderance of ethnic minority rioters.
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I → review → rioters
Foreign flags, especially those of Palestine, Algeria and Morocco, have made regular appearances, while tricolours are rather thin on the ground.
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tricolours → make → ground
Given the riots’ aesthetic and demographic makeup, politicians on the right may feel increasingly emboldened to issue statements of this kind — which reflect the existential tenor with which the unrest has been received among right-wing populists the world over; as well as the enormous stakes voters of all hues will feel going into the presidential elections in April.
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voters → give → April
U.S. Vice-President JD Vance posted footage on X of the town hall of Limoges, a neo-renaissance building built in 1883, engulfed in flames.
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Vance → post → flames
He felt there was a universal lesson behind the building’s crumbling campanile.
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He → feel → campanile
“Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion,” he wrote.
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he → import → diversity
“They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.
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They → ignore → assimilation
They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen.”
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they → tell → this
He added: “And I hope Americans are paying attention.
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Americans → add → attention
This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”
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Democrats → seek → country
France’s centrist establishment is, almost by definition, compelled to rebuff such language, even as the interior minister conceded the police had “lost control” of the streets over the weekend.
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police → compel → weekend
Emmanuel Macron, perhaps wisely given the level of unrest, avoided knotty questions over the makeup of the riots when he denounced the “unbridled” violence attending what much of the European media is still describing as a “cost-of-living protest.”
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much → give → protest
In May, the European Commission posted a meme of a man in a tin hat gazing upon a litter strewn, dystopian rendering of Paris.
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Commission → post → Paris
It highlighted a fault line between Europe’s social democratic centre, which prefers to brush ethnic tensions under the rug, and the populist right, for whom they are electoral rocket fuel.
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they → highlight → whom
When the fires are put out and the soul-searching begins, one suspects this saga will be as much a battle over who decides what is real as what took place on the streets.
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what → put → streets
Michael Murphy is a journalist based in London.
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Murphy → base → London
He writes for the Daily Telegraph and presented the documentary, ‘Ireland is full! Anti-Immigration backlash in Ireland.’
asserted
Ireland → write → Ireland
The Aporia
