Macron floats social media cuts during riots
politico.eu
politico.eu
- Massive tax increases
- Less tourism
- Economy will get worse
- Price increases
- No more investments in the suburbs
- Less libraries and other free services
- More surveillance
- More police
- Restrictions on communications
Just because of kids who wanted an adrenaline rush.
Just because a cop decided to pull the trigger on a 17 year old instead of literally any other course of action, you mean?
Edit: sorry, emotional response.
Anyway, the French protest very often. People joke that it's their national passtime. If these protestors are almost entirely children I have a hard time believing this is about civil injustice and I am more inclined to believe this is just for fun and clout.
This has nothing to do with the kid being shot or with asking for less police brutality.
This is rather for thugs to show that they can do whatever they want and don't care about the police or anybody else.
Kids seem to be replaying 2005 to be on the track of their big brothers.
But suburbs no longer exist, and the legitimate grievance and political claims from back then are hardly current anymore.
So it's just for fame they do that now. And the one who spoke up in the news, or faced trials, are just airheads who did this for the clout and to follow friends. They're not criminals or activists.
And honestly, it feels weird.
The clout culture is no more important than the state or the left wing political demands of our generations. We're old.
However, in a way, they have anarchy in their blood. So it will be interesting to see what they will become in a decade or two.
I don't think the suburbs that are burning right now were seeing significant investments in the first place, same for the libraries and free services, surveillance and police.
There has always been a split between rich/middle class suburbs, and the more social and left over suburbs. Sometimes the two being separated by a small river, sometimes just a big road to cross.
Nanterre [0] for instance is really interesting as it's a pretty socially low place, but surrounded by La Defense (basically Paris' newer financial center), Neuilly (where a ton of old money resides) and Puteau/Courbevoie/Rueil MalMaison which have France's giant consulting and service firms (Cap Gemini etc.) and the newer white collar elite.
I believe he said this to satisfy his audience, and maybe to try to put pressure on social media so that they cooperate with authorities (to identify leaders and/or limit coordination between rioters).
It's bad because he's still pushing the overton window to the right, pretending this is OK for a the leader of a democracy to consider this. But I don't think they are seriously thinking about cutting social media.
So Macron being Macron.
There is nothing authoritarian or 'right wing' in suggesting that limiting communication means of rioters, looters, and, frankly violent thugs, should maybe be considered. Rioting is not a human right, neither is communicating to organise violence and looting.
In fact, I believe that there are plans to cut mobile networks in some situations like terrorist attacks. Frankly what has just happened is getting close to that territory.
IMHO the events and the reactions are worrying and show that French society is now as dangerously divided as what we've seen in the US for instance in relation to the 6th January events.
So sure, rioters are going overboard, but expecting pacific demonstrations at this point is kind of a lost cause.
In a democratic society people are free to peacefully demonstrate but that does not entitle them to policy change, that's what elections are for.
There's also a problem with the way people react in France, specifically. With the recent pension reform retirement age in France is still lower than the EU average and yet some people react like this is the end of the world and deserves a bona fide revolution. Why is that? IMHO there is a deeper resentment at play.
These tables have turned for a long time now. Whatever police's motivations are, we now have so many recorded evidence of them starting the violence that it's hard to argue they still work under the base assumption of protecting the order.
You might still have faith in the police in general and believe those were just "bad apples" and these number of incidents we somewhat isolated, but the fact they happened still remains and won't be forgotten.
> democratic society[...] that's what elections are for
The gov explicitely chose to pass laws bypassing the parliament's vote, the parliament being composed by directly elected deputees.
Again, there can be many arguments but it's a far more complicated situation than "manifestants bad"
and the code of the page that said it was blocked showed they were gathering details about users. They are not allowed to gather these details even for lawfully blocked websites (terrorism and child abuse). But they did it for Telegram.
The guy was dancing in an Elton John concert when the cities were burning.
The existence of nudge units I think also supports this, insofar as governments think they can tell people how to live, even if it's supposed to be the citizens which tell governments what to do.
Just like during protests. Rioters don't care about what the protest is for, they do it for the adrenaline.
That being said, looking at the videos during the riots, a lot of them really looked like video games.
In Paris, rioters even shot prostitutes as if they were in GTA.
People live every day with the fear and grief that this could be them, or their friend, or their son. They care enough to take real risks to make their issues heard. It's so deeply cowardly to sit comfortably on the internet and say they don't really mean it when their every action says they do.
And I guarantee that they didn't care at all about what the protests were about. They were just looking for random protests to join. Adrenaline is what they were after.
The riots were sparked by a completely different event, but "C'était pour s'amuser" https://www.bfmtv.com/police-justice/emeutes-sursis-et-brace...
Comments on the Telegram chats don't suggest more maturity.
To say that no one wants to just watch things burn, or smash and grab, or assault others is to ignore basic human nature and is equally cowardly because it is a denial of the truth to satisfy your beliefs.
To assume most protestors are good is equally as wrong as assuming most are bad actors.
The comment I was responding to however is making assertions about "the real reason" and that rioters "don't care." Which I simply don't accept that they have the authority to make broad statements like that.
The Macron quote I heard didn't blame video games. Macron said that social media encouraged rioters to riot, and that while doing so they felt the rush that they had felt while playing video games.
One nuance picked up by Polish media - the car had Polish license plates. It's a scam disguised as an investment. Well off people get legit car lease for a high end car, then are baited to "rent it" abroad for a monthly payment. Sometimes receive multiple months upfront payment. Then car "vanishes", while of course physically driving with original license plates on the French roads, and the payments stop. Basically car version of "buy an apartment with a mortgage and rent it, the tenant will pay your mortgage, after X years you have an apartment for free". The victims are people who are even more greedy than well off. The 17 years old was likely linked to drug dealing and to financial scam, driving recklessly and running away from police.
Similarly, the mere act of driving with a broken tail-light doesn't justify death, but it is a possible outcome. Now...if someone comes and shoots you and kills you, that doesn't make it right.
Similarly, if someone comes and shoots a sky-diver and kills them, that is also not right, even if there was a possibility of death.
Catch him and run a due process.
How does it point to that? And does that justify murder?
[1] https://nltimes.nl/2023/06/10/32-year-old-man-dies-arrest-st...
Yellow vests protested peacefully and that yielded nil.
Pension reform was protested peacefully and that yielded nil.
Anything that makes establishment scared is a valid protesting technique.
If police draw their weapon and you try to run them over, IMHO suddenly things do not look exactly like "police brutality", for instance, so let's wait and see.
This doesn’t excuse the fact that he was killed, which is an unforgivable overreaction by the police to someone driving recklessly in what’s likely a stolen car.
[0] https://www.carwow.co.uk/mercedes/amg-a45#gref
[1] https://www.eliterent.com/luxury-car-rental/rent-sport-conve..., https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0GeUVAXsAIVsMm?format=jpg
[2] https://www.ladepeche.fr/2023/06/28/nahel-tue-a-nanterre-par...
rich uncle ?
he works while living with his parents, and he's 17, so he just spends his check on stupid things any 17 year old would want to do ?
borrowing or renting a pricey car isn't a capital crime.
And you can ask questions before you shoot, if you're a skilled detective.
Evidence: the car had Polish license plates.
Conclusion: The 17 years old was likely linked to drug dealing and to financial scam, driving recklessly and running away from police.
It's like Sherlock Holmes deducing an entire life story from a missing shirt button. Unfortunately that isn't possible in real life and this chain of logic is absurd.
> His judicial file included 15 recorded incidents, including use of false license plates, driving without insurance, and for the sale and consumption of drugs.
Get out of here with this "he was no angel" stuff.
he was pulled over for driving on a bus lane (not something that is so reckless that it's punishable by death even in the most 'based' countries, in the middle east and things.)
and the running away thing is being questioned, as the passenger just testified. He says police beat the driver, which made him release the brake pedal, so the car creeped forward.
And anyway, police was on the side of the car, so at not point it time they were in danger. And their version of events didn't match the social media footage that has latter emerged.
Justice will take time. but it's hard to see anything but over-reaction and death penalty, as the teen matched the stereotype you described.
That's not true. Police officers have been killed while standing beside the driver side door during a traffic stop. All it takes is for their arm to get trapped by the open window and they can fall and get dragged or even pulled under the rear wheel.
These are leading questions, because the answer is obvious: if the choice is a dead cop or a dead civilian, a dead cop is the only moral choice that can be made. Optimizing for the safety of the police is how you turn police into fearful, scared "warriors" who view the citizenry as their enemy, like we have in the United States.
Risk is the police's business, taken intentionally and with foreknowledge on behalf of the citizenry. Or else they're bullies with badges.
US cops are just a rogue and racist organisation, who apply their own law (mostly based on racial profiling).
I think that comparing it to the police in the Philippines would be more appropriate.
The victim in this case got hated by the right wing was because he was a stereotypical drug dealer who drove off, and nothing else, and they wanted the police to be able to work.
If the choice is a dead cop or a dead fugitive, a dead cop is the only moral choice that can be made.
That was easy. And it's true and it's right, too.
The police are not judges and they are not executioners. If it takes a dead cop to bring in a non-violent fugitive, who in functional countries is to be presumed innocent until found otherwise by a court of law, that is a good price to pay for society. And I do note non-violent; somebody who's engaged in violence against other people--not property--has implicitly raised the stakes and I don't have a problem with the police then responding with force. (But they are not mind-readers, and so hypothetical future endangerment of civilians without cause is not within bounds.)
If police don't like defaulting to rules of engagement where civilians' lives matter more than their own, they can find another job where they can't employ force against other people.
> rules of engagement where civilians' lives matter more than their own
You're back to the word "civilians" again. And I don't accept that law enforcement's lives are worth less than lawbreakers' lives.
Is it possible? Sure, I guess. Did it happen? No.
Do you execute somebody for it could have happened? Well, I mean, I think officers of the peace shouldn't do so regardless of country.
> You're back to the word "civilians" again. And I don't accept that law enforcement's lives are worth less than lawbreakers' lives.
Because they are civilians! That's the definition! Words mean things!
You don't have to accept that cops are less important than civilians. I think your position is wrong and gross, but I concede that there's a discussion to be had about rules of engagement. We could have that, if you were packing for it.
But you want call me out for dirty pool about the word civilian?
How about lawbreaker?
In a liberal society, it is the job of a court to decide who's a lawbreaker. Cops don't make law and cops don't prescribe punishment. If we're talking about dirty pool, loading that implication onto an extrajudicial execution should make it really hard for you to look in the mirror. I hope you've got the same energy for taking one in the ten-ring when you go five miles an hour over the speed limit in an area with a few curb cuts. After all, you could have hit someone.
There's bad faith arguing and then there's this, you're just rushing to claim a moral high ground you don't have to move the post towards someone having to dismantle the claim that cops are less important than civilians.
In my country, Chile, there was a brief flash of time when this attitude was taken, that even if a suspect threatens a cop's life to get away, they should be given that right.
People got sick of dead cops quite quickly, and the position was just thrown into the dustbin of history, poof, there, wrong side of history, discredited, shunned, almost forgotten. You don't have rule of law when "civilians" make their own in the street and the State giving up the monopoly of violence.
This is true. This is absolutely true!
But that cuts both ways. Can you explain to me how, given that in a liberal society police do not and must not determine guilt or innocence, you can have the rule of law when the police are seizing that role for themselves? Because, when we go down this rabbit hole, the police committing extrajudicial killings is also the state yielding their monopoly on force; the extrajudicial action of an agent of the state, when not ordered by the executive, is seizure of that monopoly for personal ends.
You could convince me of a middle ground instituting an automatic venue-changed prosecution of every police killing and letting a jury sort it out--take your chances with that shoot!--but I tend not to think that would go over well with this crowd either.
But on his report, the officer testified that he shot because the car was heading toward him.
That didn't match the video.
There is an investigation because, with such a mismatch, you can wonder to what extent the officer was really in danger.
You can assume that if you really faced death, you would remember what happened and describe it exactly.
Fortunately there's a video to show this is an obvious lie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfcLfoNkFk
[1] - https://nltimes.nl/2023/06/10/32-year-old-man-dies-arrest-st...
Getting very Principal Skinner "No, It's The Children Who Are Wrong" vibes here.
The most disgusting part of all this is how easily and quickly people will dehumanize the victim, often looking for post facto justification (eg [2][3]). You see in the comments here, like alleging the victim may have been involved in drug dealing, car scams of otherwise driving recklessly. The obvious follow-up is "so it's ok to murder the victim then?"
Remember that Macron is the supposed centrist here, which just goes to prove that there are no centrists. Centrists are simply conservative reactionaries either too embarrassed to admit it or lying about it for political gain.
One other point about France in particular. The submitted article isn't French so specifically says "North African descent". French media does not do this. As a consequence, foreign media often repeats what French media says and makes an error in doing so. Instead of race, French media will simply say "immigrant", even if that "immigrant" is a French citizen for 3 generations but they are ethnically Algerian (or other North African).
I can't imagine cutting off social media working in Europe (eg VPNs), let alone surviving a legal challenge. Even suggesting it should give anyone pause however and expose the truth that Macron here is a reactionary.
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-us-killed-100-children-2015...
[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/jordan-neely-arrest-record-outrage-...
[3]: https://nypost.com/2021/11/15/sole-survivor-of-rittenhouse-s...
It's easy to imagine actually: You open the Tiktok app and the content doesn't load. VPNs might get around that though.
Riots following the police killing one teenager happen in the US also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_unrest
The fact that he called out Snapchat and TikTok is basically all you need to know that he doesn't believe it will work and is just targeting the social media of young people.
He does not suggest cutting communication during peaceful protests.
If this wasn't a Western country, media would be speaking of ethnic conflict, of the Government led by the leader elected by the white majority of the country enacting more authoritarian measures to quell social unrest.
If you want changes you need to break some shit and bash a few redcoats. Same thing happened in the 60s, Congress passed civil rights legislation because shit was burning and was going to continue burning if they didn't.
You don't have to cave to their demands, and it's expected that the powers that be will try to arrest them but the rioters are assumed to be desperate, the standing government is held to a higher standard.
Maybe if the police didn't kill anybody none of this would have happened.
> direct assault on police
The citizens are showing exactly the same restraint of the police?
> and elected representatives
There's a joke that goes something like, "When did the French Revolution end? Soon!"
The kid's dead. Settle the issue with the police in court, but keep the innocents out of this. People are far too focused on what's already lost, while ignoring what's about to be lost.
What I find ironic is that the French Revolution, with its execution of the previous government, gave birth to the conditions for modern property rights to exist [0].
I find it double ironic since my country is founded from a riot triggered by state violence [1].
[0]: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/james-c-scott-seeing...
What I've witnessed first hand+ and some friends suffered++ is that "peaceful protest" is not a useful metric anymore. Police action is completely indiscriminate and overboard.
+ a dozen people walking back home together down a street, 6 vans chock full of police forces raced to them out of nowhere, swatted them with an entirely uncalled for volume of tear gas and rubber bullets with zero warning, grabbed a few and flew away.
++ they have been protesting peacefully, then gathered for a picnic in a park, sat in the middle of families and all, got tailed by police forces that told them in unfriendly terms to move away "or else", which they could not because they were surrounded and none would let them pass, then immediately proceeded to indiscriminately teargas the whole place on grounds of refusal to comply, grabbing a bunch of fleeing people.