The editorial of the editor-in-chief of Lyon Capitale.
ransacking of a town hall, broken shop windows, burnt garbage cans, damage to street furniture, facades smeared with anti-Macron, anti-police and antifas tags. For several nights, Lyon has been on fire.
The nights more beautiful than our days? From dusk, the streets of Lyon are taken over by small mobile groups of ultra-left thugs, at the call of “alternative media” and groups claimed on the extreme port side of the chessboard.
A protesting fringe and revolutionary about 400 to 500 people (prefecture) mobilized against the pension reform which has chosen the path of violence to express its anger.
“Lyon to the savages“… The watchword for “spontaneous” demonstrations (undeclared and unauthorized) says a lot about the state of mind of the protesters.
Opposite, the police are prepared. Et it seems that the strategy of dispersal in small mobile groups is bearing fruit. The thugs run (the police too) and no longer gather massively. This limits the violence but does not make it disappear.
Lyon becomes a cutthroat. The streets are cafes of thugs who scamper and tear gas that smoke and scrape the throats. Monday evening, streets of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th were feverish. Soon a curfew…?
Rightly, the mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet condemned the “intolerable degradation““rejecting any form of violence in the expression of discontent“, following the storming of the town hall of the 4th.
The paradox is that the city councilor at the same time defends acts of civil disobedience. “It’s gratifying to see young people who are committed” he explained on the occasion of a lunch during which the journalists questioned him on the roadblocks by the environmental activists of Last Renovation, the punch actions of Extinction Rebellion during the Festival of Lights, against service stations, at the headquarters of Bayer, on the Arkema site, the sabotage of electric scooters, the tires of deflated SUVs. “It’s a bit of embarrassment to open your eyes.”
A mayor represents the whole population. Lyon doesn’t have to be held hostage by a violent minority.
There should be no half measures or compromises against violence: when the extreme right commits abuses, it is necessary to condemn, by name. When the extreme left commits abuses, it is necessary to condemn, by name.
The world is watching France and Lyon go up in flames. The foreign media are delighted. The images of violence are looping on foreign TVs.
“There was a time when the president promised to reform France so well – including its political culture, its social system and its economy – that the social fracture and the rise of the extreme right of Marine Le Pen were to be only distant memories” writes the Spiegel Online. Today, it is rather the rise of a violent part of the extreme left that is looming on the horizon. With a real danger of falling into chaos.
For further : Survey – Lyon, land of extremes
