Inside the Paris march that turned into a riot
Alexa Lavoie spent three hours with demonstrators in Paris before black bloc militants, fireworks and a water cannon took over the end of the route at Porte de Vincennes.
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Article by Rebel News staff.
Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: Paris is living through another round of street violence, and the country's far left is betting that fear of the rioters will keep anti-immigration parties out of power.
At the Place de la République, the marble seats around the monument have been smashed, nearby storefronts are boarded up and a newsstand has been torched. The letters ACAB, short for the English slogan "All Cops Are Bastards," are spray-painted across the blocks. Most of that damage dates to October 17, when so-called student protests turned into a riot. One shop owner said each smashed window costs about $4,000 to $5,000 to replace.
Ezra was on the ground in Paris after a second mass demonstration, this time with Alexa Lavoie, the Rebel News French-language reporter who marched in the middle of it with videographer Guillaume. Authorities had banned most protests across France, including one planned for the Bastille, which was cancelled the night before. Lavoie said the ban pushed the crowd toward Place d'Italie, a working-class area of small businesses that protesters were unlikely to target, as opposed to multinational chains such as Sephora and Nike.
For about three hours, she said, no police were visible, which she read as a deliberate choice to avoid provoking the confrontations seen on October 17. Most marchers were peaceful, though they chanted ACAB throughout. Many demonstrators she spoke with described the National Rally, the right-wing, anti-immigration party, as "the enemy." When she asked masked marchers why they hid their faces, the answer was to avoid being identified by police. None could explain why someone doing nothing criminal would need a mask.
The crowd changed as the march reached Porte de Vincennes. Police had blocked three of the four exits from the square to funnel people toward the metro, and black bloc militants in helmets and masks moved to the front. Police deployed a water cannon. Rioters fired fireworks at officers, and a mortar landed at Lavoie's feet. Rebel News hired a security firm staffed mainly by former military personnel, at a cost of thousands of euros, so that Lavoie and Guillaume each had a bodyguard. She said her guard kept her out of the crossfire between police and rioters.
Lavoie described the main march as a mix of far-left white French activists and people from immigrant backgrounds. The group that stayed to fight police at the end, she said, was overwhelmingly of North African, mainly Maghrebi, background, and largely second-generation. One second-generation marcher with Algerian roots told her he opposed the looting because "it makes us look bad."
The leader of La France Insoumise, the far-left party with a chance at the presidency, marched alongside demonstrators chanting ACAB. The party's mayor of Saint-Denis has said on television that violence can be legitimate and stood by those words after October 17. A man originally from Vietnam who approached the Rebel News crew at the Place de la République said he believed France was drifting toward authoritarianism and that the rioters were likely funded by outside interests.
Populist parties that would end mass immigration are leading in some polls, and the National Rally under Marine Le Pen is gaining ground outside Paris, in towns where immigration has become a problem. Lyon, which Lavoie said had never seen this kind of unrest, was one of the worst places to be on October 17. Even so, National Rally supporters told her they fear riots on May Day, ahead of the presidential vote, could scare voters away. France's two-round system also allows rival parties to coalesce against the National Rally in the second round, as they did in the legislative elections.
The pattern resembles the George Floyd riots of 2020, when Antifa and race activists drove months of unrest and the message to American voters was that peace would return once Donald Trump was gone. A steady drumbeat of riots in France could carry the same message: vote for the hard left and the street gangs stand down.
Closer to home, David Menzies and former Toronto Sun municipal affairs columnist Sue-Ann Levy hosted live results from Ontario's municipal elections, with candidates from Pickering to Toronto to Wainfleet and guests including Scarlett Gray and Harrison Faulkner.
In Paris, the government response has done little to reassure. Lavoie said Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez offered to resign after police lost control on October 17, and President Emmanuel Macron refused to accept it. Some looted shops in Lyon have announced they will never reopen. Lavoie said she sees no peaceful patriotic movement rising in France the way one has in London, and that French voters are either too frightened or have lost the sense that the country is theirs to take back.
GUEST: Alexa Lavoie, on the ground in Paris, France
COMMENTS
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Bruce Atchison commented 2026-10-26 23:20:06 -0400 FlagHow I wish the army would surround the riot zone and shoot all masked warriors. And if that sounds unfair, consider that those thugs went there to burn and destroy public and private property. Nobody has the intestinal fortitude to do such a thing so the riots will increase. I have no sympathy for those leaders who won’t protect their land from leftist thuggery.
