Paris orders curfews and troops, but force cannot buy legitimacy
By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin ·
By deploying soldiers and imposing curfews to suppress nationwide unrest, the French government mistakes an economic breaking point for a mere policing failure that tactical force cannot cure.
A security state built on sand
When a government starts measuring its authority in curfews and battalions, it has already stopped governing. Across Paris, Lyon, and Marseille, the French state has traded political listening for tactical lockdown. It has imposed nightly curfews in city centers and admitted to staggering intelligence failures after a weekend of fiery unrest. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has promised a "massive" deployment of police and soldiers for upcoming protests.
Yet this heavy armor cannot disguise the rot beneath it. The unrest is not a mere police challenge. It is the predictable explosion of a country where people cannot afford to live. Power is wielded from the top down without consent.
The strongest opposing case for the French government's heavy response is that public order is the absolute prerequisite for democracy. When historic town halls burn in Limoges and rioters use messaging apps to coordinate looting, the state has a plain duty to protect its citizens and property. From this viewpoint, restraint looks like weakness. Deploying the military alongside police becomes a necessary defense of the republic against violent fringe groups and opportunistic criminals.
But this argument misses the reality of who pays when big capitals decide. The state is protecting property while ignoring the misery that fueled the fire. Public schools are so dilapidated that students strike for weeks, while diesel prices hover near €2.37 per liter. Deploying soldiers to guard street corners treats the symptom while guaranteeing the disease will return.
The ghost of the boulevard
This moment bears the exact weight of May 68. Then, as now, student-led protests against deteriorating institutional conditions escalated into a broader social uprising that challenged the state's authority. The mechanism is identical: when a centralized administration ignores the crumbling infrastructure of daily life—whether overcrowded universities in the past or collapsing public services and impossible fuel costs today—the streets eventually become the only parliament left to the young.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez may confess his share of responsibility for static deployment blunders. President Emmanuel Macron may refuse to accept his resignation to preserve "continuous command." Yet this insulation of the executive only deepens the rift between the palace and the pavement.
As Rappler and NPR report, the government is rushing to criminalize dissent. Meanwhile, as RTÉ details, benchmark government bond yields reach their highest level in 24 years. This is the 2005 French riots and the Yellow Vests movement rolled into one: the same reliance on the language of casseurs to criminalize social anger, the same refusal to negotiate with a periphery that feels abandoned, and the same desperate hope that curfews can outlast an exhausted citizenry.
A republic of decrees
The tragedy of the Fifth Republic is that its leaders treat every systemic crisis as a riot to be cleared rather than a contract to be renewed. Macron governs through constitutional bypasses like Article 49.3 because he lacks the democratic floor to pass budgets or reforms in a deeply fractured National Assembly. A state that rules by decree cannot be surprised when its citizens eventually refuse to obey.
Sending soldiers into the streets of Paris will not lower the cost of a liter of diesel or fix a broken school. It will not bring back the trust of a generation that looks at its future and sees only walls. The French government will likely clear the boulevards this weekend through sheer tactical force. Yet it will have bought its quiet at the price of its legitimacy.