In France, a protest against the ‘Great Divide’

These are not isolated “abuses” by radicalized police officers, but a deliberate policy. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez explained it clearly: “There is no instruction for restraint."

In all my memory as a teacher and as an observer of the world of education in France, I have never seen a level of police repression like this brought to bear on a youth protest movement, never such a determination to terrorize young middle- and high-school students, to do violence to them, to insult and humiliate them. The images and the accounts of students detained and beaten are chilling. Teachers and parents bear witness to it as well. Five thousand arrests: a sinister record! Never before have we seen so many students taken away in handcuffs, confined at police stations, brought before juvenile court judges.

The most paradoxical aspect is that in France, over recent months, there has been a long debate about the violence inflicted on children and young people in incestuous families, in religious institutions, in secondary schools and in the primary schools where pedophiles have run riot. There is even a draft law described as “comprehensive,” to protect women, children and adolescents, currently under discussion. But what do we see, at the very same time, in another arena? Police officers, sometimes in plain clothes or with quasi-military equipment, insulting, beating and arresting young people. Do the government and its police forces know what they are doing? Yes, they do know. They are waging a real war against children and adolescents, to teach them that those who have force on their side have the only kind of power that matters.

The political choice of violence

These are not isolated “abuses” by radicalized police officers, but a deliberate policy. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez explained it clearly on Friday, October 2 on TF1: “There is no instruction for restraint and no instruction not to use all the intermediate weaponry available to the internal security forces.” In other words, every “sub-lethal” means may be deployed: not only batons and tear gas, but also rubber bullets (LBD), already doing extensive and harrowing damage – a 14-year-old with an eye gouged out, broken teeth, facial fractures, an amputated hand. This standing order to resort to maximum violence stands in sharp contrast to the moderation displayed toward the farmers, even when their actions targeted public buildings and the offices of the ecologist party, or blocked roads and highways. We have not seen farmers beaten to the ground, dragged along or seized by the neck, as happens to middle- and high-school students. The analogy with the practices of ICE in the United States, or even with the terror methods of........

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