The Suburbs Burned First

A police line and a street fire in Paris at dusk on Saturday, October 17, 2026. Photo: Jorge Jaramillo / JJxFile, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.

Saturday’s riots began a month earlier at a high school in the Paris suburbs, where the teachers had gone on strike over jobs the state had left unfilled. This edition goes back to that school and then sets out what the French state’s own reports say about the suburbs around it, who moved into the space the state left, which party sent its deputies to the school gates, and what the Islamists did during the month. The opening is free for every reader; the rest is for premium subscribers.

The Suburbs Burned First

France’s worst unrest in years began at a high school in Créteil that was missing a mathematics teacher. What the state left in the suburbs, who moved in, which party stood at the school gates this fall, and what the Islamists did.

On Saturday 550,000 people marched in 110 demonstrations across France, by the Interior Minister’s figure; the CGT union federation said 800,000 (CNews; France 24). By nightfall the nineteenth-century city hall of Limoges was burning and its bell tower had collapsed; Maurice Barate, the prefect who represents the state in the Haute-Vienne department, said the fire had been set knowingly (Ouest-France), by what he called “a wild horde” (AFP). In Bordeaux a masked group entered the prefect’s residence and, by the mayor’s figure, up to 100 stores were looted (Reuters); in Paris the looting began around the Place de la République (AFP). By Sunday afternoon Laurent Nuñez, the Interior Minister, had written that “more than 2,000 people have been taken into custody” and “more than 600 police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters have been injured” (Politico); the Paris police prefecture reported 855 arrests in Paris and its suburbs (The Independent). One demonstrator died after a heart attack (Politico).

The month began on Thursday, September 17, at the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry high school in Créteil, southeast of Paris, where part of the staff went on strike over unfilled jobs. Laurent Bessiere, a mathematics teacher and union representative, listed them for France Inter: a mathematics teacher, a French teacher, a teacher of French and history, an assistant principal and half a social worker’s position, with the nurse on sick leave, in a school whose enrollment had grown to 1,500 (France Inter; franceinfo). The next morning the students blocked the gate with trash cans and wire fencing; on Monday the 21st they blocked it again, and two deputies, as France calls the members of its National Assembly, came to the gate: Louis Boyard and Clémence Guetté of La France Insoumise, the far-left party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who finished third in the 2022 presidential election (France Inter; Conseil constitutionnel). By Friday the 25th the Créteil school district reported “a good ten” high schools under blockade, especially in Seine-Saint-Denis and the Val-de-Marne, the two departments that border Paris to the northeast and the southeast (AFP), and within the week students had blocked the Paul-Éluard and Bartholdi high schools in Saint-Denis (Le Figaro). On October 2 the police made 1,747 arrests in a day (franceinfo); by October 9 the Justice Ministry had 6,877 people taken into custody since the start, 86 percent of them minors, and 2,376 prosecuted (20 Minutes).

Paris and Washington have given two explanations. On October 1, after a crisis meeting, the Prime Minister’s office told the press that the intelligence services shared one assessment of the movement’s origin: an organized maneuver by La France Insoumise and its ultra-left proxies; the party’s coordinator, Manuel Bompard, answered that the government was sinking into conspiracy theories (Le Figaro). On Saturday night Sébastien Lecornu, the Prime Minister, wrote that ultra-left groups had organized the violence in several French cities and that criminals had joined them to loot and destroy (BFMTV). President Trump wrote on Truth Social on October 6: “What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration. This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!” (AFP). On Sunday morning he wrote: “France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” (AFP). Vice President Vance wrote on Saturday, over a video of the Limoges fire (AFP): “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion” but “ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility” (Politico). The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, answered the first post: if France does not write its own account of these events, others will write it in France’s place (BFMTV).

Each explanation is partly right, and each leaves something out. The schools where the blockades began stand in the kind of neighborhood Emmanuel Macron described on October 2, 2020, at Les Mureaux: places where the Republic had retreated and the organizations of radical Islam had methodically taken its place (Élysée). And the two crowds were not one crowd: in the school phase 86 percent of those held were minors; of Saturday’s, Nuñez said, the great majority were adults, “we are not dealing with the high-school movement” (CNews). No mosque or Islamist association has been shown running a blockade, and the government’s charge is against the ultra-left. The Islamist connection is a coalition: the Muslim Brotherhood’s student branch called its members out behind the blockades, the high-school union that took the movement national co-founded a collective with that branch and an ultra-left group the state has dissolved, and Tehran ran a campaign on the protests until France summoned its ambassador.

Macron was to address the country “solemnly” at 8 p.m. on Sunday, after meeting Lecornu and the ministers handling the crisis; the government, Politico reported, was hoping the school movement would fade in the two-week school vacation that began on Friday, and the mayor of Limoges, Guillaume Guérin, said the national police “simply had no more ammunition left” (Politico).

“Where we had retreated, we must return.”

The rest of this edition, the school in Créteil, the twenty years, the state’s own reports, the networks, the party and the Islamists, is for premium subscribers. Forum donors receive Insider Premium; if your invitation has not arrived, write [email protected].