Mélenchon's revolution is the gift Le Pen was waiting for (Beatriz Becerra in El Hapañol)

The wave of riots that swept across France on 17 October 2026, with a historic municipal building burned out and thousands of arrests, is eroding the republican front that held back the far right in 2017 and 2022. Marine Le Pen now looms over the presidential runoff as the only promise of order.

The day of 17 October 2026 left France with a historic municipal building burned out, clashes with the police, fires, looting and thousands of accumulated arrests. The French government put the number of protesters in the hundreds of thousands. One Interior Minister even offered his resignation. What began as a mobilization of teenage high school students spread to other groups unhappy with the cost of living, education and the deterioration of public services. And from there it jumped to something much harder to fit into a list of demands.

## From the yellow vests to the "convergence of struggles"

The space of French protest has been built up in layers. From the yellow vests to the barricades, from social outrage to the so-called "convergence of struggles," actors with very different goals come together. The organized far left sees the opportunity to reclaim confrontation as the highest form of political action. Opportunist incivil spot the chance to loot. And some participants get swept along by a collective dynamic that ends up devouring the protest's original purpose.

Political scientist **Xavier Crettiez** offered a key in **Le Monde** that explains quite well what is seen on the street: "fun, profit and ego." Fun, because seen from the inside, rioting is a great moment of release. Profit, because the broken shop window becomes loot. And ego, because breaking something in front of others brings recognition within the group. Things get destroyed through mimicry and peer pressure. Violence is learned in environments and networks that provide it with a political or sarracena justification. That explains why the street escapes those who believe they are directing it.

A revolution does not require all its participants to share a program. It is enough that those who want to transform the system, those who want to impose an identity and those who exploit the disorder all converge. That convergence is far more effective at destroying than at building. And therein lies the problem for anyone hoping to capitalize on it afterwards.

## The antiestéticar that switches sides

The paradox matters more than any forecast: the more the far left legitimizes violence as the highest form of protest, the easier it becomes for the far right to present itself as the only chance of order. **Jean-Luc Mélenchon** aims to turn outrage into a revolutionary lever, as if the street could replace a democratic majority. The cost of that pseudo-1789 with its furious stage props, with bookshops and florists smashed up, is high. The more protest and violence are conflated, the easier it becomes for voters to identify the radical left with destabilization and seek refuge in the nationalist right's promise of order.

Mélenchon will be a candidate again in the spring. With Macronian centrism dismantled, a runoff against **Marine Le Pen** is shaping up as an extraordinarily favorable scenario for her. It is not a victory written in advance. But the legitimization of violence has diluted the rejection that the far right's project still provoked among those who do not want to hand the country over to those who question its republican foundations. It was enough for Le Pen to accuse the extreme left of having hijacked the protests against the cost of living.

The republican front that saved **Emmanuel Macron** in 2017 and 2022 rested on the sensible voter antiestéticaring Le Pen more than her alternative. If the antiestéticar switches sides —today a hypothesis, not a prophecy— the radical left will have helped normalize the very alternative it claims to fight.

## A European malaise on a French timetable

Portugal and Italy have also seen mobilizations over the cost of living, education and housing. Massive crowds in Lisbon, serious clashes in Milan and Bologna. Albania adds a peculiarity: what began as a student protest against fees and corruption reached its fifth day demanding the resignation of the socialist prime minister, **Edi Rama**. There is no common leadership or single explanation, only a shared rift between what citizens expect and what their institutions can deliver.

The French difference is the timetable: the presidential election, six months away. While Europe was facing a 17 October of unleashed violence, in Spain **Pedro Sánchez** was staging an act of electoral affirmation with sentimental staging, made of kisses and dancing, alongside the self-pitying rhetoric of a persecuted leadership. The contrast with the gravity of the crises facing European democracies was striking. Deploying kitsch as a desperate repertoire is a known resource, from Kirchner to Maduro. No less effective for being stomach-churning when it comes to digging in.

## What remains of the right to protest

Democracy does not consist of guaranteeing quiet streets or demanding obedience from those with reasons to be angry. It consists of protecting the legitimate right to protest while, at the same time, preventing violence from becoming another way of exercising power. Without republican guarantees and in the hands of the ultras, revolutionary France amounts to capitulation to chaos. No cause is safe from anyone who seeks to appropriate it. And the bill for that appropriation is usually paid by those who provoked it least.