Crowd Violence is Not New To Paris.

It was an unseasonably warm Mardi Gras day as nightfall fell over Medieval Paris. It was Tuesday the 26, 1229.    Students had joined in the usual carnival festivities  strolling along the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter.

Their long flowing robes and penchant of spouting Latin made them immediately identifiable as the elite students of the University of Paris.  Paris was considered a student mecca where wealthy families sent their young men to be educated.

As the night was too young to head home, they chose an out of way tavern to further celebrate their ebullient mood.  Before long loud roudy voices were heard protesting the outlandish wine prices. An altercation  with the tavern owner quickly grew into a full fledge brawl.

Angry and drunk, fighting ensued.  The next day,  the enraged students returned and started destroying the tavern and surrounding property.  Back then, the university was under the authority and protection of Pope Gregoire IX,  who was an alumni.

Blanche de Castile, the regent Queen felt the students deserved punishment and called out her royal police. By this time a surge of angry students armed with makeshift weapons were met with  dawn spears and batons of the police.  Two students were killed, setting off even more protests that resulted in professors going on strike and closing classes. These protests rattled the whole community for two years!

Sounds familiar doesn’t it. This student protest 997  years ago eventually gave way to the church relinguishing control of the university.  Pope Gregoire IX in 1231 issued a papul bull of Parens Scientiarum freeing them to develop other curriculums besides theology and guaranteeing students rights.

Marching in protest is well inbred in French culture as a way of bringing about desired changes wanted by the citizenry.  Throughout the centuries, most were in protest of taxes,  especially the hated ones on wine and salt.

.During the 1700’s many protest revolved around food prices and shortages and the growing  inequality of wealth.  The huge bread riot of 1775, helped stoke the fires of the forthcoming bloody French Revolution from 1789 to 1799.

Gustave le Bon, who developed a theory around crowd violence witnessed during the Franco Prussian war  holds valid today, as I devoted a post on him on March 20, 2019.

Anonymity in crowds is a powerful vessel for unleashing anger and rage. It often is contagious.  Crowds can act like a magnet drawing in like minded others, and giving them a sense of invisibility.  Participating in crowd violence can give the disenfranchised a temporary notion of power and invincibility.

Since 1229,  the other major student protests resulting in violence  was in 1968.  This lasted several weeks resulting in a huge general workers strike and multiple governmental repercussions.

The October 17,2026  protest, started out of student anger, was quickly hijacked and enlarged by the general public in protest of  higher costs of living, especially gas prices stemming from the Iran war.

The majority of general protests here are peaceful with no violence.  From my perspective, they function as a way of showing solidarity for workers rights and reforms wanted by large groups of the populace.

The larger ones dealing with heavily contested issues can grow into inviting violence due to the inherent emotion they may arouse in the populace.  The Yellow Vest protests were an example.

These large masses of marchers are a perfect excuse for the “caisseurs” ( the breakers) to take advantage and create street violence.   They are well organised and generally will tailgate and fringe the edges of an otherwise peaceful protest.

They are made up of delinquents, petty criminals, and anarchists,  who are hellbent on destruction, burning garbage cans, cars, and breaking into stores to steal merchandise.

They know the routes well in advance; the purported number of police assigned, and the stores they want to break into.

For these criminals, it can be seen as a new “business model” to steal expensive articles for immediate resale on online web sites.   The recent October 17 protest harvested hundreds of stolen articles, photographed and listed for sale on Vinted within 24 hours.

The tragic burning of the Limoges city hall was the premeditated violence of two adult anarchists,   adding fuel to the current political divisions in France.

In an effort to reduce the number of caisseurs, the French Senate just adopted a new law making them responsible for repayment of damages incurred,  in addition to prison time.    Their families will also be deprived of any social benefits they had been receiving.

It is unfortunate that the American ultra right  media incorrectly portrayed the recent French protest being about anti immigration.  It was about the higher costs of food and fuel, with noticeable spikes since the Iran war.

Since then, fishermen and farmers have been hard hit with much higher fuel and fertilizer costs, increasing the overall price of foods.   These protests have spread to Italy, Spain and Portugal, likewise affected,  resulting in violence too.

I have felt safer here in France, than I ever did in the US.  Though isolated acts of terrorism plague both countries,  the increasing number of deaths from mass shootings and every day gun violence in the US, far exceeds deaths from violent French protests.

Tomorrow, October 31, there will be another protest march against “la vie chère”, or high cost of living.  Curfews are set for areas around Châtelet and Les Halles.

Paris police have forbidden two large groups, including the Gillets Jaunes, (Yellow Vests), already known to incite violence, to join in.   They have been assigned to march only on a small portion alongside the large traffic lanes that encircles Paris, judged easier to secure.

Parisien police did a great job for the Olympics and were masterly in crowd management, securing the routes that drew massive crowds of people for Pope Leo’s rockstar welcome last month.  Police control and pat downs of each person wanting street assess took place at barriers far from the Pope’s route that I judged stricter than at airports!

I don’t envy their job tomorrow.  May Halloween be peaceful to all!