How can we explain the June riots?

Contingency and structural causes are the basis of revolts. Obviously, we have that video, millions of us have seen it. It is clear that [in Nahel's arrest] there was no refusal to obey or defend legitimate rights. The video of the murder of the police spread very soon thanks to social media, which could be the peculiarity of the persecutions of 2023, in the face of the rebellions suffered since 1976-1977. In this period they were unable to base the reaction of the public authorities and society on a state lie, as was already mentioned in 2005 with the killings of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore.
It surprised who the video has increased. Comparable to the case of George Floyd, where he appears on the verge of death for eight minutes. Although the case of Floyd has a greater international dimension, the same causes have deduced the same effects. The Youth/Police relationship is deteriorating in popular neighborhoods. In a context in which discriminatory controls are the daily bread, and after the murder and abuse of the police, the spark that has caused the fire has been the death of Nahel. The message is clear: Enough!

We know that social hardships accumulate in these neighborhoods. The ethno-rational dimension of these problems is also present. Ghettization, systemic and institutional racism, are channelled by the police, but also by other institutions, especially schools. Many of them live their social experience as a top-down rationalisation: they are not like the citizens of the rest, and the institutions – that is, the State, the Republic – and the media are constantly limited to the ethno-racial (or religious) identity built. The combination of all these components identified and studied over the last 40 years has made the situation explosive. Nothing surprising.

A banner touched me because it sums up the situation very well: “How many Nahel have not been filmed?” It is not a question of extolling the role of the video, but of warning that in the murder of Nahel many minors have been identified, who are also monitored at all times, although they are not part of the drug economy and have been in school. The reality is very complicated and when such a murder occurs, this day suddenly becomes unbearable.

We can also cause the containment effect in the last riots. They were the first of the day after COVID-19. They lived harshly in the era of the pandemic because they suffered a threefold condemnation: they were in the front line of work, they were the most at risk, while being controlled, detained and punished.

What is the meaning of these insurrections?

A rebellion is a spontaneous, unorganized popular uprising, according to the Robert dictionary. There are the great emotions of the Old Regime or the rebellions of hunger. Although the context is different, the same logic works in these riots of death, that is, caused by police homicides. Disturbances are always the expression of anger, anger, disability, feeling of injustice. If there are fractures, fire is kindled... and the stones are thrown into the police, because besides being the cause of anger, it is the armed arm of the state. Also because of the social hypocrisy it does not listen. In his 1967 speech, Martin Luther King stated that insurrection is “the language of those who are not heard in society.”

There are sequences in the insurrections: first, that of emotion, that of blacksmith, that of misunderstanding, that of injustice. Compared to other social movements, this anger is a mute movie that needs to be deciphered. However, it is simple: the death of shots by police disobedience means that Nahel's life is not as valid as that of another 17 years. These others emerged better, are in middle or high class neighborhoods and are not descendants of migrants. It follows the deterioration of easily accessible public buildings. Rebellion is local. It is exceptional to go to a metropolitan center to destroy it. What is accessible has a symbolic power, which represents the public power, which considers it anti-own, racist, xenophobic and even Islamic. The map of degraded and/or stolen businesses and institutions is significant: they do not steal the local trade ttip.

How do you explain the burglaries that have been a novelty from the previous ones?

Yes, we have entered another phase, the theft phase. Remember that, unlike England (2011) or the United States (Los Angeles 1992), they are extremely rare in France. The only exception I know is Vaulx-en-Velin, in 1990, with the stolen and burned shopping centre. In 2023 there have been robberies in and outside the neighborhoods. Citizens are surprised by the robberies of large shops in Paris or Marseille. I have a double hypothesis to explain this atypical phenomenon. On the one hand, we have the professionalisation of young rebels – the so-called small ones among neighbours – especially motivated and organised. But on the other hand, at a given moment agents change, and for some sides or groups rebellions are unforeseen opportunities and take advantage of the time to steal shops. But also in this sense, is it surprising? These boys and girls are also part of the consumer society. We are constantly extolling the advantages, but they usually have many difficulties in accessing those goods. Revolts and burglaries are related to time, but there are also large fractures between authors, molds and forms of organization. It is necessary to carry out a sequencing of the rebellion to prevent everything from entering the same bag and changing the direction of care in a hypocritical way. On the first day empathy prevailed; on the second day, “kale borroka returns”; on the third day, the robberies; and on the fourth day, to address the parents following the advice of Dupond-Moretti, channeling a fine of 30,000 euros to parents who do not care for their children. Do we have to be the petzero of that Sosa move? I don't think so.

What do you think of the media monitoring?

I'm surprised by collective amnesia. Soon everything is forgotten. Images, comments, analyses, surveys, echoes of crime -- if it's all, and soon afterwards everything goes into oblivion. Until the next meeting. The same goes for terrorist attacks as for COVID-19. The history of rebellion? It doesn't exist. Sociologists and researchers must always repeat the same conclusions, problems, solutions. Didier Lapeyronnie, a colleague and friend who died too soon said: “Every six years I do the same interview.” However, alongside the homogenization of the mainstream media that denounce “great violence”, we also have media such as Mediategi. Journalism from Field allows us to refute the crazy right and extreme right discourse, based on police reading. In general, they render the agents of these popular neighborhoods and, above all, the militants invisible. Those on the front line are not stretched out of the microphone. Well, they already have things to burn. But you don't hear, you don't give them the floor, you become voiceless.

What can be equated with the 2005 leaps?

First, the death of a person close to post-colonial immigration, in a police interaction and in strange conditions. Context as well. In both cases it is a context full of tension, control, violent intervention and police pressure. It must be understood that in these bad neighbourhoods the Police is the last representative of the State and the only one, because public services were gradually disappearing. Extrapolating a little, I could say that the Police has become a symbolic goal, replacing other destinations that have lost meaning among the young – enemies of the class, the bourgeoisie, the bosses. They have reasons: they have no work experience or have minor contracts. In low-income neighborhoods the enemy is the police, which represents the state, and for the police these young people are people, harmful. There are no mediations between them, they are at war. The third similarity is expansion. Slower in the first, very active in the second, but both have gone from local to national.

What evolution can we expect?

Various political actors, trade unionists and researchers have produced proposals to reform the police, because that is the issue. But the government is far from reality, it has not taken a single step to calm the situation, unless flowers are distributed to the majority police unions. So my fear is to turn the fire on again in the next murder. For fundamentally political reasons, it seems impossible to reform the police. The difference is evident with regard to neighbouring populations. We have had 20 deaths from rejection of obedience since 2020, only one in Germany for ten years. In our case, the status quo is the winner, or the attitude of not looking at the problem better said: the spread of deadly weapons or the use of low-lethality weapons such as the CNC, the hit, the culture of impunity, the non-assumption of responsibilities – and this from the upper level of the system –. Even the aftermath. In view of the fact that some of the French police and society are levelling [in favour of Le Pen], the situation seems uncontrolled. I'm pessimistic about the future.

Alta, the Ombudsman has published reports on the police and its systemic racism. It has been a good job, because it really should not be the fatality to detect solutions. We cannot talk about police reform and that reflects the fragility of power. The fact that power is still standing thanks to his police is not entirely absurd, although paradoxically the latter is no longer dependent. The public debate is very polarised in France: those who defend the police say that immigration is the real cause of the rebellions; and those who are actually opposed, the laxatives, very excluded from the republican option, even if they have interesting proposals. It's very difficult to get into that polarization, because every critical discourse feeds the reactionary discourse, and vice versa, because the permanent disinformation of the media feeds radicality. We can learn much beyond France. The debate has taken place in the US: Should the police be disarmed? Do we need less money? Do we need to control it further? We can also reflect on armaments. Do all of them have to be armed equally or less the youngest, the least poorly trained, and the hardest targeted? Are we going to put an impeding monitoring structure? Will we talk about the 2017 law authorizing them to die? The problem is that the police institution does not want these reforms, it meets what it has, managing its support or its enemy.

In addition, the executive is increasingly taking liberal measures. We've been clear since 2016. Political power needs the police and is coordinated with trade unions like Alliance to move beyond the legitimate and democratic anger of citizens. In the recent riots, the unions asked him for a special status for the police, so that they would have a judicial remedy. Researcher, victim, witness and now judge? Are we in a democracy or an authoritarian regime? We often hear that Le pen will come to us in the neighbouring presidencies. But with co-management between the police unions and the Ministry of the Interior, we know that we are in a pre-fascist era, something they do not want to acknowledge. Instead of refusing, we could look at neighbouring peoples. In Germany, for example, they are in the strategy of calming the environment. There are several clues, but French polarization does not allow us.

The interview is complemented by the report "Racism in the French Police: the impossibility of recognizing the systemic character".