France

France Burns

Plus: Property-tax rebellion, Paxton loses suburban women, Jewish life in the UAE, and more...

Liz Wolfe | 10.19.2026 9:30 AM

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(Abaca Press/Corsan O/Le Parisien/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom)

Is this really about cost of living? Over the weekend, the civil unrest that had been at a simmer boiled over in cities all over France. Over 1,000 police officers were injured, with seven seriously injured. More than 2,400 people were arrested.

"Rioters…attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where they broke into the local government headquarters and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic," reports The New York Times. "A fire destroyed a tourist office in Lyon, and 1,500 shops were damaged or looted nationwide, according to Alexandre Bompard, head of the French federation of commerce and distribution, who estimated that the cost of repairs could run into hundreds of millions of dollars."

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"They came prepared," claimed the French journalist Paul Amar on CNews. "They had the addresses of town halls. They had addresses of Jewish shop owners. In a street in Marseille, all businesses owned by Jews were set on fire. Businesses run by Muslims weren't." The Jewish Community Protection Service has disputed such claims.

Reason's Matt Welch has a good write-up of how the violence and destruction have altered Lyon, Paris, Marseille, and Limoges, where the city hall was burned and collapsed.

Ces images doivent faire le tour du monde. Nos voisins doivent savoir.

Lyon l'une........

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