France Burns: "Patriotic" Football Fans Patrol Lyon Streets as Rioters Run Amok | Watch

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As with the George Floyd riots in 2020, the death of one man has been met with riots and violent protests in multiple cities.

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France’s small towns are reeling from the spread of rioting. ‘Now it’s affecting the countryside’



July 7, 2023

(...) Although typically referred to in France as “les violences urbaines” — urban violence — the unrest this time was no longer contained to blue-collar towns and cities’ disadvantaged housing projects, places where anger at social and racial inequalities has festered.

Carried in part on the winds of social networks that have narrowed gaps between France’s urban centers and its vast rural spaces, unrest also reached outward to touch places that escaped a similar nationwide wave of rioting in 2005.

IN SMALL TOWNS, A NAGGING QUESTION

Mayors of small towns where vehicles were torched, fires lit and police attacked are scratching their heads, trying to figure out: Why them? Why now? Why are France’s big-city problems, which previously seemed far away, sinking roots into their peace and quiet, too?

“Why these incidents in a little town like ours?” asks the mayor of L’Aigle in Normandy, where fires were lit, cars torched and police chased around after small groups of suspects.

“In the press and even on the TV news, it was mainly Paris and its suburbs, Lyon and Marseille that were talked about. But when you look, there were also incidents in a certain number of small communities,” the mayor, Philippe Van-Hoorne, says. “Unfortunately, the increase of uncivil behavior, of violence, is developing even in modest towns like ours ... It’s very hard to solve.”

https://apnews.com/article/france-ri...5b0d3a234ff909