France Burns on Macron’s Failures, and Trump Has a Point on Migration
France’s riots grew from school protests into a 500,000-strong day of unrest, with 3,000 shops looted and Paris under curfew. Macron failed at every level.
In this article
How a school protest became France’s worst riots in years
France is rioting because every one of its problems arrived in the street on the same day, and the state led by Emmanuel Macron had prepared for none of them. A protest by high-school students over absent teachers and crumbling classrooms grew into a nationwide day of anger on Saturday 17 October, with about half a million people out, police overwhelmed and more than 3,000 businesses damaged or looted. By Monday night Paris was under a partial curfew around Place de la République and Les Halles, and Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux and Nice had restrictions of their own.
Watch how the protest was taken over, step by step. First came students who wanted better schools. Then came the political movements that saw a crowd they could ride. Behind them came thieves, who saw police busy with the crowd and went for the shop windows. After the thieves came gangs that went after police stations and officers and freed people held inside. Last came the people who want only chaos, and they set fire to history. In Limoges, masked men stormed the 19th-century city hall and set it alight; the fire destroyed much of the building and brought down its roof, and the prefect called it a catastrophe.
A protest without a leader does not stay in the hands of the people who started it. Each group climbs on and pulls it somewhere new, and a government that does not read the crowd ends up facing all of them at once.
Key takeaways
The school protests that began in mid-September had no leader and no fixed demands, so the state could not end them with concessions, and on 17 October they merged with Yellow Vests, the far right and other movements into a crowd of about 500,000.
Police planned for students and met half a million people. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted they lost control in several cities; more than 2,500 people were taken into custody and almost 1,000 members of the security forces were injured.
The failure runs from the police to the government to Macron himself: five prime ministers since 2022, an education budget eaten by pensions, fuel prices at record highs and billions sent to Ukraine.
Donald Trump meddles in a crisis that is not his, but he is right that mass immigration is part of France’s problem: the country is carrying roughly 8.6 million immigrants.
Why are people protesting in France?
The protests began as a schools revolt. On 17 September, staff at the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, south-east of Paris, walked out, and students joined them the next day. The grievances were concrete: teachers who do not turn up, teachers who cannot teach, classrooms that freeze in winter and bake in summer. The first marches came from poor neighbourhoods, where students felt the state had simply stopped trying.
Then social media did the rest. Students elsewhere watched clips on TikTok of others their age blocking schools and facing down police, and they copied them, this time in wealthy districts too. The movement never had a leader and never agreed on demands. In some towns the education ministry sent more teachers and the local protest ended, but new ones broke out faster than the government could respond. Students began clashing with police and filming themselves doing it. On one earlier day of action, authorities counted 256,000 marchers, 56,000 of them in Paris, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu accused the radical left of trying to stir chaos before next year’s presidential election. Silent Dossier described this leaderless, TikTok-driven movement earlier this month in France’s TikTok Revolt Hands the Far Right Its Moment.
By October the anger had widened to the cost of living, fuel prices and the government’s spending cuts. That is why the protests that started over classrooms ended with curfews.
Saturday 17 October: police ready for students, facing half a million
The students chose the weekends for their big days, and the government knew a major one was coming on 17 October, especially in Paris. Police studied the earlier marches and turned out in strength, about 60,000 officers nationwide. They were ready for a student protest.
That is not what arrived. The Yellow Vests, the movement that has fought the police over fuel prices and the cost of living since its violent clashes of 2018, came out the same day. So did the far right, which saw the student march as a chance to put its own people on the street, and so did a string of smaller movements and parties. Officially about 550,000 people marched. Police built for one protest found themselves facing half a million.
French protest violence has a pull of its own. The Wall Street Journal has described how violence in France draws people who come not only to watch it but to join it, and how the moment protesters get hold of the police is the moment control is lost. That happened on 17 October. Where the crowds outnumbered officers, and especially where the Yellow Vests and far-right activists were in front, the violence was extraordinary.
More than 3,000 businesses were damaged or looted. Rolex boxes lay in the street after watch shops were stripped, and in Marseille a Rolex store was looted along with an Hermès boutique. Sephora cosmetics stores were singled out and their staff dragged and beaten. Cars burned on Place de la République and along Boulevard de Magenta. Schools and historic buildings were set on fire, and in Bordeaux the prefect’s official residence was ransacked. Almost 1,000 police officers and gendarmes were injured, and by Monday evening more than 2,500 people had been taken into custody, according to Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted that police had lost control in several cities. He offered his resignation, and Macron refused it.
Analysis
Mismanagement at every level of the French state
France’s crisis did not start on 17 October. It is the bill for years of mismanagement, and it fell due all at once.
Start with the schools. A New York Times opinion piece made the point that France is not short of money for education: it spends about 100 billion euros a year on it. The money simply does not reach the classroom. Pensions take a huge share; a French government report found that 32 percent of the education ministry’s budget, or 28.5 billion euros, goes into the pension account for state employees. One of Europe’s biggest spenders on education still sends students into classrooms without teachers.
Then the fuel. The Yellow Vests came out because fuel prices have soared since the war with Iran began in February, and because Europe let Ukraine strike Russian oil refineries, tightening supply further. On 20 September, average French diesel prices hit a record of 2.41 euros a litre. The far right then marched to say all of it was the government’s fault, and to ride the anger.
The police failed too. They should have read the situation: when a leaderless student movement calls a national day of protest in a country this angry, other movements will join it. They planned for teenagers and met half a million people.
The government failed by letting every grievance build up until they all landed on it together. And Macron failed most of all. He cannot keep a government together; Lecornu is his fifth prime minister since 2022. He has also chosen to spend abroad while France struggles at home. France has given Ukraine about 8.5 billion dollars. That is less than Germany or Britain, but it is still 8.5 billion that could have gone some way to fixing problems inside France.
The curfews are the government’s admission that the situation is out of control. They carry a cost of their own: the curfews in Paris and Bordeaux fall on the districts tourists visit, and the hotels, restaurants and shops that live on those visitors lose their nights.
The politics: everyone rides the riots
The riots were ridden politically as skilfully as they were ridden in the street. Candidates for next spring’s presidential election lined up to blame Macron for where he has taken the country. The far right went further. Having had its own people in the crowds, it then told voters: look at what happens in France’s streets while we are not in power.
Marine Le Pen, who leads the polls for April 2027, posted a video on 18 October calling the government “exhausted, disoriented and seemingly incapable” of doing anything about the grievances. Her message was that this is Macron’s government, this is what he has brought, and he has lost control of the country. Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s president, told voters to use their ballots.
Macron answered in a Sunday television address. “We all feel anger and shame,” he said, and promised that those who looted would pay for the damage. He blamed criminals and insurrectionist elements of the radical far left. But Macron is leaving anyway. He cannot run again in April 2027, so this is in effect his last year. The real fight is over who inherits a burning France.
Analysis
What did Trump say about France?
The most striking comment came from Washington. Donald Trump, with a midterm campaign at home, chose to weigh in on France. Asked about the riots at the White House on 19 October, he said France’s crisis “has to do with immigration, not schools, not anything, it’s immigration”, and that he had told Macron to “close up your borders” when they first met in his first term. He went further: “You’re letting everybody from the world come in,” he said, and “Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon”.
When a Daily Wire reporter put it to him that Macron was blaming the Iran war, and Trump himself, for the rioting, he dismissed it: “I don’t think he is, no, I think that’s fake news.” That evening, at a rally in Park City, Kansas, he described France as “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists and communists” and told the crowd that if they wanted to see what was at stake in the midterm elections, they should look at France. The message to American voters was plain: elect Democrats and America will look like France.
The Atlantic read three things into those comments. Trump treats every protest as illegitimate, whatever it is about. He loves to involve himself in other countries’ affairs. And he loves to comment on everything, like a businessman holding court at his own party, glass in hand, giving his view on whatever the guests raise. The second point sits oddly with his own record. This is the president who shut down USAID, the aid agency his supporters accused of meddling in other countries’ politics with American money, in the name of staying out of other nations’ business. His policies say America should mind its own affairs. His microphone says the opposite.
Analysis
Trump’s immigration point stands
Trump’s habit of commenting on everything does not make him wrong this time. On immigration he has a point.
France is carrying roughly 8.6 million immigrants. That is a country inside a country. Qatar has about 300,000 citizens; France’s immigrant population is more than 25 times that. The official statistics office, INSEE, puts the number of immigrants living in France in 2025 at 8.0 million, 11.6 percent of the population in its provisional figures, and a census-based count of that kind does not capture everyone living in France without papers. However you count it, a state that cannot staff its classrooms or hold its streets is carrying a weight it has not managed.
That does not mean immigrants caused the riots of 17 October; students, Yellow Vests, far-right activists, thieves and gangs did. It means that France’s long failure to manage immigration is one more of the burdens that landed on the state at once, and Trump is right to name it, however much he enjoys doing so.
Analysis
Macron hit two walls, and Ukraine keeps pulling France in
It may be true that Macron could not manage this crisis. But his record did not start as a failure. When he came to office he had the economy moving and kept inflation within European norms. Then he hit two walls he could not get past: the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine. He handled both badly.
On Ukraine he did not keep his distance or limit France to modest support. France put itself in the front rank, and it is still there. Ukrainian pilots are about to start training on French Rafale fighter jets in November, and under a roadmap signed in July, Kyiv plans to order an initial 16 Rafales as the first tranche of a planned fleet of 100. France is being drawn deeper into Ukraine, and it will not be able to stop on its own.
Only one thing would pull France back from that commitment: the far right coming to power. A National Rally government would cut support for Kyiv. That is the real stake of these riots. Macron is leaving, his government has lost control of the streets, and the movement best placed to collect the anger is the one that would end France’s role in Ukraine.
What happens next in France
Lecornu has promised a “massive” police presence for the next national protest on Saturday 24 October, and curfews in several cities run for days. More arrests and more curfews may calm the streets for a weekend. They will not fix what put half a million people outside: schools without teachers, fuel at record prices, a budget that does not reach the people paying for it and a president who has run out of prime ministers.
France’s riots are the result of mismanagement at every level of the state, from the police to the government to the Élysée. Trump has no business lecturing France, but on immigration he is right. And the longer Paris leaves its problems to pile up, the more certain it becomes that the people who end up running France will be those who promise to tear the whole thing down.
Follow Silent Dossier
New articles and corrections are posted on our official accounts.
Related
