Systemic excess, not just an individual's fault

Almost 80 years ago, after the tide had turned against Germany in World War II, the dictator in Berlin wanted the Nazi-occupied capital of France to be destroyed before it fell to the Allies. Hitler reputedly asked his generals, “Is Paris burning?”

- MAHIR ALI

It wasn’t in 1944, but Paris has frequently been seared by flames, metaphorically or otherwise, in the ensuing decades. It is an intriguing coincidence that the epicentre of the latest bout of mass rioting was also the cradle of the student revolt that, in 1968, rocked the foundations of the Fifth Republic just a decade after it had been founded by Charles de Gaulle.

Back then, de Gaulle actually fled to West Germany, driven by the fear that the uprising, in which the working class eventually joined the students, might actually succeed. Emmanuel Macron, 55 years later, cancelled a visit to Germany after last week’s protests spread across France, even reaching the remaining French colonies in the Caribbean and beyond.

Macron was quick to describe last week’s murder of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk by Parisian traffic police as “inexplicable and inexcusable”. Macron was only half right, though. The killing was undoubtedly inexcusable, and the police officer who pulled the trigger faces the charge of “voluntary homicide”. But it certainly wasn’t inexplicable. Since 2017, police officers have been authorised to use lethal violence at traffic stops. The death toll last year was 13. The victims were mainly of North African origin.