There are dates that act as eye-openers. October 17 may well be remembered as the day when France witnessed the simultaneous collapse of state authority and the illusions of apprentice revolutionaries.
Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated. Many carried legitimate demands linked to purchasing power, precariousness, and the fear of social decline. But these citizens were erased from the screens by other actors: rioters, looters, and professionals of political violence.
In Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Limoges, Lille or Lyon, the same scenes repeated themselves. Public buildings attacked, businesses destroyed, streets turned into battlefields. A town hall set on fire here, a prefectural residence ransacked there, a gun shop looted elsewhere.
And the question arises: what is the next step?
An authority that has disappeared
What is striking about this sequence is the incredible contrast between the firmness that the Republic has sometimes shown toward social movements and the leniency shown toward contemporary riots.
French social history is marked by tragic events. Nobody today calls for a return to past tragedies. Nobody wishes to see the State shoot into the crowd. But between yesterday's bloody repression and today's spectacular helplessness, there is a path: that of democratic authority.
Yet, it is precisely this authority that has disappeared.
The fascination with rioting
For years, the far-left has cultivated an unhealthy fascination with rioting. Behind the grand words and revolutionary postures lies a simple project: delegitimizing all institutions.
The police are illegitimate. The justice system is illegitimate. Elected officials are illegitimate. Prefects are illegitimate. Mayors are illegitimate. And when everything is illegitimate, violence becomes, in their eyes, not only acceptable but desirable.
The most worrying aspect is the complacency these groups still enjoy. After every act of destruction, the same people minimize it. After every fire, the same people put it into perspective. After every looting, the same people explain that the main issue lies elsewhere.
As if shop windows shattered by themselves. As if injured police officers were responsible for their injuries. As if ruined shopkeepers deserved their fate.
This intellectual cowardice has become one of the great ailments of French public debate.
The next step: the fear of the French people
But solemn declarations do not replace public order.
France is tired of urban warfare scenes. Tired of elected officials discovering the problem once the cameras are on. Tired of ideologues finding an excuse for violence when it serves their camp.
The next step is what the French dread: a country where the State is no longer feared by rioters but mocked, a country where violence becomes routine, and where honest citizens pay the bill for the revolutionary adventures of a minority determined to set France ablaze.
A democracy does not die from authoritarianism alone. It can also die of weakness. That is the true lesson of October 17.
Bernard BERTUCCO VAN DAMME