If This Isn’t a Civil War, It Certainly Looks Like One

In the past two decades that I have been living in Paris, I have been a witness to some terrible events—the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the mass slaughter of young people at the Bataclan, the untrammeled violence of the Gilet Jaunes demonstrations, and the nihilistic uprising of 2023.

Thank God, no one was killed on Saturday—a miracle in itself, although one man did die of a heart attack. I went to bed Saturday night as sickened and frightened by the scenes of violence in Paris and all over France as I have ever been.

In Paris, this was happening only a mile or so from where I live. It was hard to turn your eyes away and watch or do something else as you were hypnotized by the scenes of violent assaults on the police and property, counter-charges from the police, all to the soundtrack of sirens and a landscape of familiar, usually busy city streets, wreathed in smoke from burning cars and dustbins, or heavy with the fumes of tear gas.