4 min readOct 29, 2026 06:23 AM IST First published on: Oct 29, 2026 at 06:23 AM ISTAn act of ominous violence took place on October 23 in Trappes and La Verrière, two immigrant townships 30 km from Paris. Six days after the scenes of violence and vandalism in France were attributed by the far right, without proof, to “Allah’s revolutionaries”, Kevin T, a White Frenchman, shot dead Pengo Bossio Wang, a Black martial arts amateur, critically injured a 12-year-old North African girl, and wounded three other people. It is hard to fathom how an innocuous month-old high-school protest could spiral into a heinous racist crime that President Emmanuel Macron called a “turning point” in the history of the Republic.The French high schoolers’ movement started in suburban Paris with a clutch of demands — buildings in a state of disrepair, lack of teachers, overcrowded classrooms, and importantly, the abrogation of a selection system called Parcoursup, by which students go through a sorting process rather too early in their youth. The government responded with silence. It had possibly forgotten what former president François Hollande had once said about high schoolers: They are like toothpaste. Once it comes out, it’s difficult to put it back in. The action began at the school gates — sloganeering, trash-bin bonfires, school blockades. But the situation deteriorated when the authorities chose to crush the protests through police repression. In the violent clashes that followed, school kids were joined by disgruntled suburban youth. Thousands of students, aged between 14 and 18 years, were arrested, and when the news spread that lethal police weapons had caused permanent disabilities in a few children, anger turned into rage.AdvertisementHigh schoolers took to the streets. Hundreds of thousands, whose history books had taught them about the revolutions of 1789 and May ’68, thronged the boulevards. But it must be underlined that their demonstrations, for the most part, were peaceful and carnivalesque, full of bonhomie and political humour. The situation came to a head on October 17, when French trade unions, “yellow jackets”, and school students joined forces for the “cost of living” protest; an estimated 800,000 descended onto the streets of France. The demonstrations in themselves were pacific, and if they culminated in scenes of violence, with monuments set ablaze, shops wrecked and pillaged, it was only due to masked external groups called “les casseurs” who had infiltrated the demonstration.The obvious question: Who is responsible for this? The far left blamed the police, calling them out for their lack of presence and action against the looters at a time when it was most needed, and for their mishandling of the situation. The far right, making a dubious use of the right to freedom of expression, made blatant, ethno-racial references to the “suburban riff-raff”, “Allah’s revolutionaries” and the “predators in the suburbs”. It was relentless in injecting hatred and poison into an already polarised France.It is such words of baseless finger-pointing and hatred, given a privileged platform by the mainstream media, that explain how a man like Kevin T could kill and injure innocent people of colour. The media carries a responsibility. It must know: Words harm, they kill, they trigger weapons. Further, state silence sows seeds of violence. It hides within its folds hubris, indifference and callousness. It is the womb of frustration and anger. Four weeks after the protests began, President Macron has ended up accepting a bulk of the student demands. And at what cost — billions of euros of heritage and property reduced to ashes, mass arrests, injuries to protestors and cops, a divided France.The writer is a filmmaker based in Paris