Lucas Petit was just 11 years old in November 2018 when hundreds of thousands of men and women wearing yellow vests poured into streets across France and took over roundabouts.
His memory is hazy, but the story of his encounter with the police leaves an indelible impression. If he had ever been to a demonstration, he knew what would happen.
“It helped shape the whole image of violent protests,” he told CNN.
Petit, now 19, is part of a generation that expects tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and stun grenades to be used during protests.
“As we face social, institutional, symbolic and now physical repression, we feel compelled to respond with violence,” Petit said. “So I think violence is becoming the norm.”
Petit has kept his school in eastern Paris on lockdown for more than a month. He was part of a movement that began to demand better conditions in French schools, but expanded into a collective cry of anger, uniting disparate groups of grievances.
On October 17, mostly peaceful nationwide protests turned into chaotic scenes of looting and destruction. Limoges’ historic town hall went up in flames. Shops were looted and protesters were maimed for life.
Opportunistic looters also took part, along with young protesters from a variety of backgrounds. According to internal documents from the Ministry of Justice, 68% of the 186 people jailed between October 18 and 21 were under the age of 25, and 52% had no criminal record. Almost half were classified as looters.
The failure of the police response helps explain why the situation got out of control. But behind the tear gas and smoke lurks a change in the behavior of some French protesters.
Some have developed conflict know-how over the past decade. As riot police adapt their tactics and weapons, protesters have become adept at anticipating police tactics and exploiting gaps in security. Techniques once associated with organized extremism are now spreading to younger generations.
They often gather at the front of demonstrations dressed head to toe in black, with masks and hoods on, hence their nickname “Black Bloc.”
The group first appeared in Germany in the 1980s. The Black Bloc, associated with anarchist and anti-capitalist movements, is not an organization with formal leadership. It’s a series of protest tactics. These techniques became famous in France during the 2016 labor protests and were later further spread during the yellow vest movement.
Identities are hidden and participants often act in groups, sometimes attacking symbols of capitalism such as luxury stores.
This type of protester is also often called a “casser,” from the verb “casser,” which means “to destroy,” a broad term that can be applied to anyone who destroys property, regardless of ideological beliefs.
“Many young people who are not originally from the far left are now adopting black bloc tactics,” said Thierry Vincent, an expert on radical left movements. “This is a way of protest that doesn’t shock many young people anymore.”
One of the Black Bloc’s tactics involves small, highly mobile groups breaking away from major marches, forcing police to spread their forces thinly and making it difficult to respond in a coordinated manner. It was on display two weeks ago when a group of demonstrators tried to reach the Elysée Palace, forcing riot police to move them away. The strategy was successful. Police resources were stretched to the limit, contributing to officers being overwhelmed that day.
It’s not just their methods that are popular. There is also a growing desire to confront the police.
Hugo Melchior, a historian and left-wing activist who has been participating in demonstrations in the northwestern city of Rennes for 20 years, has seen it firsthand. Among the waves of masked demonstrators, he spotted a small group of students apparently affiliated with an armed group.
“Sometimes it was four young friends from high school or college who were not part of any network or organization, and they simply decided to come to the demonstration with the intention of fighting,” he told CNN.
Melchior has not seen so many people preparing for confrontation since the 2006 student riots.
Historically, France’s crowd control principles were aimed at keeping protesters at a distance. Violent conflicts have made it even more difficult to maintain.
Olivier Cappe, a former riot police officer with 25 years of experience and current head of the UN1TÉ police union, said officers now face threats from petrol bombs, firework mortars, pétanque balls and other projectiles.
“You automatically have to send police officers to intervene and potentially file charges and confront people,” Kappe said. “That’s where people get hurt.”
Understaffing exacerbates the problem. Cappe estimates that France is short of about 800 professional riot police officers.
“The French principle of crowd control is numbers,” he says. “The more people you have, the more imposing you look. The more imposing you look, the less intrusive you are.”
He suggested that outnumbered officers could quickly resort to weapons such as rubber bullet launchers. Both the yellow vest movement and more recently the student movement have deployed police without specialized crowd control training, with disastrous results.
Early in the protests, a police officer fired a tear gas canister at close range, hitting a 14-year-old boy in the face, breaking his teeth and seriously injuring his jaw. The Home Secretary suspended the use of hand grenades after a 16-year-old lost an eye to a rubber bullet and a 15-year-old lost a hand to a stun grenade.
Kappe acknowledged that stronger enforcement could worsen the problem. When police officers and students confront violent groups, young protesters may later come to identify with the people being targeted.
For Lucas Petit, a student who identifies as far left, the debate goes beyond whether violence is justified. It’s about what the violence is aimed at achieving. He is not shocked by the attacks on the symbols of capitalism. This is because they feel that such acts of violence may serve political purposes.
“These are not acts of violence for violence’s sake,” he told CNN. “They have a very specific political message.”
On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the escalation in violence was a collective failure.
“I don’t think any high school student ever started pushing their demands expecting to be met with such a dire outcome,” he said, adding that the police officers also did not register to face such a violent confrontation.
Asked about the 15-year-old student who lost his hand, Mr Macron said there was nothing that could justify what happened and reiterated his call for calm.
Restoring peace to the streets is a challenge at a time when many feel that government efforts to contain the violence, including curfews, bans on protests and heavy police deployment, violate the sacred right to protest and amount to a denial of democracy.
And this is no longer just a student movement, with trade unions and the Yellow Vest movement also taking part, expressing dissatisfaction with the cost of living and calling for Mr Macron to step down, and the anger doesn’t seem to be abating anytime soon.
On top of that, France is preparing for a deeply divisive presidential election in April, making the risks even higher.
Another protest was held on Saturday and a large demonstration is planned for November 5, raising fears of a repeat of the extreme violence seen on October 17, and a winter of discontent could be ahead.
