Clashes broke out at the end of a Paris protest on Saturday after a largely peaceful march that drew 110,000 people, according to police, as fresh demonstrations took place across France.
Issued on: 24/10/2026 - RFI
Paris police said “more than 500 rioters” were attacking officers on the Cours de Vincennes, in the south-east of the capital. The confrontations began at around 5:30pm, shortly after the procession reached Porte de Vincennes.
Protesters threw projectiles at officers, who responded with water cannon and tear gas. Police said they were manoeuvring to arrest those responsible and help disperse the crowd.
The violence followed a calm and festive start to the Paris march, where demonstrators called for better pay and a better future while criticising government restrictions on protests.
Around 70,000 police and other security personnel were deployed nationwide, backed by armoured vehicles, helicopters and water cannon, to prevent a repeat of last weekend’s widespread unrest.
By midday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez had reported 135 arrests across France but said there had been “no major incident” at that stage.
“We will not tolerate any violence or any disturbance of public order,” he said.
The demonstrations come amid growing pressure on household budgets, with inflation – particularly fuel prices – rising sharply since the start of the Middle East war in February.
But government restrictions on demonstrations have become a further source of anger, with unions and other groups accusing the authorities of undermining the right to protest.
Earlier in the day, many participants in the Paris march had been keen to put their demands at the centre of attention.
Claire, a 26-year-old nurse who declined to give her surname, said she had come to express her hopes for change.
“Not everyone is out to smash things up. Some of us are simply here to say we disagree and that we just want a better future.”
After being caught off guard by last weekend’s unrest, police adopted a more mobile approach on Saturday, intervening quickly to disperse some gatherings.
“The police are really mobile... They come and disperse marches before they even form,” a 21-year-old student in Lyon told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
An AFP journalist saw officers fire tear gas at around 150 protesters who had tried to block a road near the city centre.
Nunez said police had confiscated items including metal balls, lead pellets, fireworks, slingshots, improvised weapons, a katana sword and airsoft weapons.
“These seizures clearly demonstrate the determination of certain far-left and radical left-wing groups to turn a number of demonstrations violent,” he said.
President Emmanuel Macron has blamed “ultra-left” groups seeking to “bring down the republic” for the worst of the previous weekend’s violence, when public buildings were vandalised and hundreds of shops looted.
The government’s decision to ban demonstrations not led by unions has drawn strong criticism. Unions reluctantly accepted restrictions keeping marches away from central Paris, Marseille and other cities, while joining other groups in warning of an “authoritarian drift”.
In Paris, police changed the main march’s route at the last minute, moving it from the city centre to the the south-east of the capital.
Murielle Guilbert of the Solidaires trade union said the ban on non-union protests was “outrageous”.
“We’re here because there is obvious public anger” over low salaries, she said.
For many taking part, the march was an opportunity to voice frustrations that have built up over years.
Aurore, 35, said that “people need to understand that the anger is real. We’ve been walked all over for 10 years.”
Ynyane, a 19-year-old wearing a Dragonball Z costume, said: “Taxes are a bit too high, and I have to support people who are struggling.”
Shops shut as political tensions build
Across Paris, many retailers boarded up their windows or closed their doors, fearing further looting on the margins of the demonstrations.
The Louvre and Musée d’Orsay also closed for the day.
Around 2,700 people were arrested following last weekend’s violence. Retail industry representatives said damage and losses suffered by shopkeepers ran into hundreds of millions of dollars.
The protests are unfolding six months before a presidential election, sharpening the political stakes for Macron’s government. The president cannot stand for another term, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen leads in opinion polls.
Le Pen’s National Rally held a congress in Orléans on Saturday to launch her presidential campaign, drawing a large counter-demonstration.
Thousands marched through the city chanting anti-fascist slogans and directing their anger at both Le Pen and Macron.
“Macron resign. Le Pen in prison,” protesters shouted.
Police put attendance at 11,000, while organisers said 26,000 people took part.
In Paris, far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon joined the march and predicted that the mobilisation would continue.
Macron “is going to understand that this is going to repeat itself every week”, he said.
The Yellow Vests movement, which organised disruptive protests against Macron eight years ago, has called for further demonstrations on 31 October in defence of “the freedom to protest”.
France is also part of a wider wave of demonstrations across Europe. Protests in Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal have focused on different demands, with some shared concerns over inflation and education. Italy has mobilised 500 troops to Milan following street violence there.
(with newswires)
Interview with Olivier Besancenot
Saturday 24 October 2026, by Olivier Besancenot, Stéfanie Prezioso
On 17 October 2026, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across France. Starting with young people and secondary school pupils, the mobilisation brought together other sections of society around the issue of the cost of living, outside the traditional trade union and political structures.
The Macronist government responded with repression on an unprecedented scale: a number of people taken into police custody not seen since the start of the secondary school pupils’ movement, a partial curfew, the dissolution of organisations now being discussed, and deaths whose circumstances remain to be clarified.
France is not an isolated case. In Belgium; in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni’s government has decided to send the army to Milan to suppress the protests; in Albania; in Spain; and in Portugal, where the call for a general strike is on everyone’s lips, young people are rising up against governments that serve the wealthiest and are becoming increasingly authoritarian. On the streets of Paris, in particular, impromptu bands struck up La Marseillaise, as well as El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, The Internationale and Va, pensiero, the chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco, amidst the tear gas. These were all songs of emancipation, steeped in the promises of past struggles, much like the slogan that resonated particularly strongly on 17 October, 65 years after the massacre of Algerians carried out in Paris by the police under Prefect Maurice Papon, who was convicted in 1998 of complicity in crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of Jews from the Gironde region during the Occupation: ‘We are the children of those you did not drown’. [1]
With a cross-sector day of action called for 5 November, Olivier Besancenot looks back with Marx21.ch on this period, its historical roots – from the French Revolution to the Paris Commune – and the reasons to believe in it.
Stéfanie Prezioso: What is new and surprising about the social mobilisation of young people in France and the alliance forged with other sectors of society around the issue of cost of living on 17 October, which points to the crisis of social reproduction?
Olivier Besancenot: What is new and surprising about the mobilisation on 17 October and the alliance that has formed is that it is taking place outside traditional structures. We had already seen social outbursts – whether sector-specific or thematic – that clearly eluded the organisations of the labour movement, be they trade unions, social organisations or political parties – the Yellow Vests, for example. But for a convergence to begin taking place, outside these organisations, between completely different sectors of society, with the support and participation – whether implicit or explicit – of certain structures: as far as I can recall, this is unprecedented.
This explains both the surprise that has caught the political establishment off guard, whilst also highlighting the movement’s limitations in terms of democratic organisation. I think this really points to the global crisis we are living through, which is also a crisis of labour movement organisations, to a transformation of society, and to a new type of proletariat which, in fact, is emerging through this sort of experience.
SP: You often refer to the French Revolution and the Paris Commune – and the social and democratic aspirations driven by the working classes – when reflecting on the events we are witnessing today. Why are these historical references so pertinent?
OB: It is true that my primary point of reference has always been the Paris Commune of 1871, far more so than the French Revolution, which I am learning to discover – or rediscover – through the struggles, particularly that of the Yellow Vests. That movement was a turning point: this history has re-emerged in the mobilisation in a subliminal way – or perhaps not so subliminal after all. The large demonstrations in December, which marched up the Rue de Rivoli to the Place de la Concorde in order to reach the Élysée Palace at any cost and confront Macron there, naturally evoked the great peasant revolts – led in particular by women – who would go and fetch the king from his castle to bring him back, for example, to Paris. Not to mention the French flag, which was not merely an expression of the far-right currents present at the start of the movement, or La Marseillaise, sung at the top of people’s voices, which I have learnt to listen to in a different light.
This Marseillaise can be heard, for example, in schools and in the secondary schools taking part in the protests, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods and the suburbs. So there is an underground history. And when one learns to rediscover it — as I am doing at the moment, notably by reading Jules Michelet’s History of the French Revolution — one realises that something truly extraordinary did indeed happen: the people, from the grassroots up, put an end to centuries of domination, organisation and the monarchical mode of production, and decided to do away with it all—on several occasions between the storming of the Bastille; the act of going to fetch the king in October 1789 to bring him back to Paris—a mass abduction the likes of which we no longer see; later, by beheading him; and later still, by organising days of insurrection and communalist action.
This inevitably leaves its mark, which, for my part, I had underestimated. We belong to a very distinct current, deeply shaped by the political era that began with the October Revolution of 1917 and ended in 1989, and one realises that there is something profound there after all.
SP: What does the scale of repression in France today – carried out by a supposedly centrist government, which is in no way inferior to that of Giorgia Meloni’s far-right administration – tell us about the convergence of the more or less extreme right-wing movements in Europe and around the world?
OB: The scale of the repression is, in fact, absolutely unprecedented. In terms of the number of people taken into police custody since the start of the secondary school pupils’ movement, it far exceeds even that experienced by the Yellow Vests movement, which itself had far surpassed the protests against the First Employment Contract (CPE) or those of the 1990s. In fact, working-class neighbourhoods have served as a testing ground for the systematisation of a repressive apparatus that is now being rolled out to every type of social upheaval. This tells us, first and foremost, something about liberalism and its policies, which require an authoritarian turn.
Secondly, it tells us something about the ongoing ‘fascisation’ – that is what I call it, despite everything, even if the term is open to debate, for it at least has the merit of highlighting what is actually happening: a whole series of measures have already been put in place by the Macronist government, even before the far right has come to power. In July, for example, the presumption of self-defence was granted by law to the police, which is a long-standing demand of the far right.
And there are many more examples like this. In this process, we can also see the extent to which the Macron administration is losing control of its own repressive apparatus. There is therefore a loss of control over the situation and, in this race against time, there is what Daniel Bensaïd called the ‘discordance of times’: between social time, which is becoming more radicalised, and political time, which is nowhere near that stage.
SP: The media have placed great emphasis on the unprecedented violence of 17 October, which undoubtedly reflects heightened anger. But what surprised us most was seeing hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converging across France, united in their shared rejection of social injustice and the denial of democracy. What conclusions do you draw from that day?
OB: To assess the 17th, it is extremely important to understand the scale of what is happening. I took part in this demonstration, and I have never experienced anything like it in my life, in terms of its sheer size, determination and the mix of people. It was a tidal wave, a human tide. Of course, when you get home in the evening and see the mainstream media and political coverage of these events – which, incidentally, did indeed take place – you get the impression that you weren’t part of the same thing. And this, for the time being, is being overlooked in the French political debate, as it is a sense of bewilderment that prevails, alongside the political exploitation of what happened: shops vandalised, and in some cases looted.
But all this cannot simply vanish overnight, for there is something too powerful, too profound in what has just been expressed, and which we have yet to understand: a movement that was organised solely through social media and subsequently supported by a number of organisations.
This points to a new phase, one that throws everything back into question, full of new possibilities, and which – despite the ongoing political unease of the moment, which persists and is catching up with this phase – must give us cause for hope.
SP: The hundreds of thousands of people who have mobilised no doubt feel today that the demonstrations are insufficient to bring a hardline government to its knees, a government that has no qualms about imposing a partial curfew. The call for a general strike is on everyone’s lips, just as it is in Spain. What do you think?
OB: The mobilisation will, indeed, lead to an outcome that, by its very nature, we cannot predict.
Nothing is over, because this movement isn’t going to stop: it’s too deep-rooted, too entrenched. It also has an international dimension. When you look beyond our borders, you can see that, amongst young people, similar events – or events we’re tempted to compare – are taking place in Belgium, Italy and Albania. There’s also the movement unfolding in Spain. There is also something happening from a generational perspective, which means that this movement will not be halted by the imposition of a curfew or by other authoritarian measures which, I am sure, will not be long in coming – perhaps even the dissolution of a number of organisations; we do not yet know.
The challenge now, in fact, is for the labour movement to take up the baton – that is to say, for the working class to take up the baton. If there is no strength in numbers – in terms of reminding society of the place occupied by workers – then, unfortunately, it will not be enough, and we will not succeed in ensuring that this legitimate revolt leads to a fully-fledged class consciousness, based on partial victories, or at least on a visibility that gives us reason to believe in it. This is what is at stake behind the call for a general strike. A day of cross-sectoral action has been called for 5 November: the challenge now is to ensure that the workers of this country do not remain mere spectators of what is happening, that they are not paralysed by the situation, especially as there are still grey areas.
There is talk of deaths in connection with the demonstrations, without a full explanation; accounts, theories and hypotheses are being put forward, but we have reached this level of gravity. We are therefore only at the beginning, and we are of course eager to see what the future may hold, even though we are, on the other hand, extremely — how shall I put it? — weighed down by the political anxiety of the moment, because we can see that all the ingredients of this period, this grim period in which we are living, are re-emerging.
20 October 2026
Translated by International Viewpoint from marx21.ch.
Footnotes
[1] Hundreds of Algerians were thrown into the Seine by police on 17 October 1961.
Olivier Besancenot
Olivier Besancenot is one of the best-known leaders of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), formed in 2009 following a call by the Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR), French section of the Fourth International). As candidate for the LCR in the presidential elections in 2002 and 2007, he received 1.2 million votes (4.5%) and 1.5 million votes (4.2%) respectively. He is a former postal worker in the Paris region.
Stéfanie Prezioso
Stéfanie Prezioso is a Swiss-Italian historian, professor of contemporary history at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Lausanne, and a specialist in twentieth-century fascism and antifascism. She is a member of the movement solidaritéS (Switzerland) and sat in the Swiss National Council from December 2019 to December 2023 on the Ensemble à Gauche list.
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