Commemorating the storming of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789, France’s Bastille Day is a celebration of the Republic’s roots in the French Revolution of 1789. Ahead of France’s Bastille Day, Emmanuel Macron’s Minister of Interior, however, has ordered no less than 130,000 gendarmerie to police the country during the celebrations.
The Bastille, a medieval fortress, became the first target of attack on July 14th at the outbreak of France’s famous revolution in 1789. A prison, which French revolutionaries rightly despised as a symbol of the abuses the French monarchies perpetuated, the Bastille, at the time manifestations began to develop en masse throughout Paris, contained no more than 7 prisoners.
While Christopher Hibbert on page 82 from the 1980 edition of his book, The French Revolution , provides a list of no less than 954 names for those who stormed the Bastille, the vast majority of those named were local artisans. It is without a doubt a rebellion from below.
Despite the populous origin of the holiday, Emmanuel Macron’s extremely unpopular government is preparing one of the largest police state crackdowns in French history. Macron, whose government enjoys no major constituency within the population, recently imposed an increase in the age of retirement from 62 to 64 unilaterally.
This measure caused widespread popular outrage. Although the protests have dissipated to a degree, the seething rage protest continued to feel against Macron’s government played no small part in the recent outbreak of mass protests after a police officer brutally murdered a delivery driver on June 27th, 2023.
While the circumstances into Naél’s death are still under investigation, there is no reason to rule out an assassination. With the advent of comprehensive surveillance systems (like those from the famous Pasco county Sheriff’s department in Florida), the police are well disposed to stage assassinations. France’s comprehensive surveillance systems include linking the application of generative AI models to scan telephonic communications data for tracked words, geolocation, GPS, license scanning, cameras streaming live from traffic posts, the police in France have the ability to stage traffic violations for an excuse to stop anyone. Without access to data on France’s comprehensive surveillance systems, it would be premature to rule out Naél’s assassination at this time.
In response to his death, France witnessed days long protest throughout the country. Darmanin’s Ministry of Interior reported that more than 5,000 vehicles were set ablaze. 1,000 buildings were burnt. 250 police stations, including a group of anti-police rioters stormed with a rocket launcher, were raised. The Socialist Equality Party, for instance, published an article, reporting that France was burning.
In a scene eerily reminiscent of Julian Assange’s release of Collateral Murder, France deployed military attack helicopters to survey citizens. France’s BFMTV, which tweeted a video of these military attack helicopters, removed the tweet in an act of self-censorship.
Apparently, the Arabic language channel for Al-Jazeera (i.e., الجزيرة ) is the only news agency that has published official figures on the combined total of damages caused to France during Darmanin’s attempt to suppress protesters with an anti-Naél police crackdown. Al-Jazeera estimates that the combined total damage exceeded more than a billion dollars. As many in France, including Macron, have sought to downplay the cost the protests caused, this figure is likely to be an understatement.
Macron’s initial response included no more than 2,000 police. However, as protests spread, Darmanin proposed to increase the number of police on the streets of Paris by 20 time to 40,000, which led to a sharp rise in clashes. These clashes, as Darmanin announced on July 4th, 2023, led to the arrest of no less than 4,000 people.
Shortly after Darmanin’s announcement, Macron made it a point personally thanked Darmanin’s anti-Naél police force, saying, “[policiers], gendarmes, merci pour voter mobilisation exceptionnelle.” In his expression of gratitude, however, Macron made no mention of the fact that many of these officers referred to Naél Mazbrouk as “vermin” or the protesters who protested his death as “savage hoards.”
Word of the ‘savage hordes’ protesting in France spread well beyond the borders of France and as far away from Paris as Strasbourg on the border with Germany and they spread to Brussels, Belgium and also Lausanne, Switzerland, demonstrating just how strongly Naél’s plight resonates with workers and just how wide a following his cause generated throughout the French speaking parts of Europe.
Darmanin’s anti-Naél police force consisted of RAID, BRAV-M, CSI-93 or other paramilitary gendarmerie in the extreme. If the pictures of the paramilitary gendarmerie during the anti-Naél protests are reflective of the force to appear during Bastille Day, French workers may expect to confront officers in riot helmets, with black shields, armed with assault rifles.
Together with their militarization, many of the paramilitary gendarmerie mentioned above are found to have engaged in violations of the law. CSI 93, the force with which Naél’s murderer served, is a force well documented as criminal. In a video entitled “CSI 93 Violences Policiéres,” CSI-93 officers from a 2020 street raid are seen planting drugs on innocent bystanders before beating these individuals for resisting a false arrest. The officers use excessive force, beating the innocent young men to a pulp on the ground.
In the lead to Darmanin’s announcement, Macron made a series of announcements in response to the anti-Naél police crackdown. Last week, for instance, Macron banned a so-called March of Citizens, arguing against the event for the safety of the police, who expressed dismay at the fact that no more than 1.75% of Darmanin’s anti-Naél police force suffered injuries during the protests. Shortly before the ban on the March of Citizens, Macron announced the adoption of Article 3, a bill the legislature accepted to enhance police access to telephones, specifically targeting geolocation data, cameras, or microphones. Banning the right to assemble, while authorizing remote access to devices on telephones are thoroughly anti-democratic police state measures designed to curtail any or all resistance to Macron’s government.
In response to Darmanin’s anti-Bastille Day army of paramilitary gendarmerie and his decision to implement police state measures, French workers must mobilize independently in a unified call for a general strike. Nothing less than a general strike may result in a challenge to the ever widening dissatisfaction with Macron’s unpopular government.
While French workers begin to evaluate the many ways with which to raise a challenge to Macron’s unpopular government, consciousness is crucial “[Whatever] the conditions,” Trotsky writes in 1905, “the proletariat must see its path clearly and treat it in full consciousness. Above all else, it must be free from illusions. And the worst illusion of the proletariat throughout its history has always been reliance on others.”