Monday 19 October 2026 · N° 2

Open the reader
France on the move

The freedom to protest breaks nothing (continued)

· N° 2

Jorge Jaramillo
Jorge Jaramillo · CC BY-SA 4.0

Opposite images

Depending on what you watch, this Saturday is not the same. In the images shared by La France insoumise and the left, peaceful marches. On CNews or in the communications of the Rassemblement national, burnt cars and smashed windows, as if the country had tipped over. I was in Paris, and neither tells the whole day.

One sentence too many

On Saturday evening, Emmanuel Macron denounced the “sowers of chaos”. Laurent Nuñez recalled that protesting is a fundamental right, and that sowing violence is not. Why put the two in the same sentence, when so many people marched without breaking anything?

Based on Le Parisien Paris and RFI

See page 3 as printed