"Ingen tror på nåt längre" – covidgenerationen om upploppen i Paris förorter
Efter att fransk polis sköt ihjäl en 17-årig pojke har landet haft sina värsta upplopp sedan Clichy-sous-Bois stod i brand 2005. För många i Paris förorter klingar republikens motto – frihet, jämlikhet, broderskap – falskt. Men konsekvenserna av upploppen har bara gjort tillvaron sämre för de som bor där: Infrastrukturen är förstörd, stödet för Marine Le Pen stiger och debatten om polisvåld förs bara på vänsterkanten. Der Spiegel rapporterar från Parisförorterna. The police shooting of a teen in France has sent the biggest jolt through the country since the riots in the banlieues in 2005. For many, the promise of liberté, egalité and fraternité still rings hollow today. By Leo Klimm, Nadia Pantel and Britta Sandberg 7 July, 2023 From a distance, the three words inscribed above the glass entrance door of the Clichy-sous-Bois City Hall can be read: liberté, égalité, fraternité. It's only when you get closer that the damage becomes visible: holes where three stones struck the pane of glass, just below égalité, equality. As if the ideals of the Republic itself were the target. Samira Tayebi wipes tears from her face as she stands in front of the shattered glass. "You've never seen me cry, not even last week when my daughter got married, but today …" - Tayebi loses her voice. Fellow employees and citizens alike are gathered in front of her, and she has to inform them that instead of novels, comics and magazines, the city's library now only contains piles of ash hardened into clumps by the water from the fire hoses. Tayebi grew up in the high-rises of Clichy, worked for years as a teacher in this banlieue in northern Paris, and has been mayor here since 2022. "In my family, there was no money for books," Tayebi says as she gathers her composure. "If I wanted to read, I had to go to the library. These places are crucial for us." Then she speaks of cohesion and struggle, of overcoming the crisis together. But it is the feeling of powerlessness that resonates most after the speech. The Cyrano de Bergerac Library in Clichy-sous-Bois was more than a public meeting place, it was a promise. Just like the new light-rail line and the freshly inaugurated music school. All projects that were developed after the 2005 banlieue revolts began in Clichy with cars burning, battles between local youth and the police – and an uncontrollable rage that erupted for three weeks and spread to banlieues across the country. It was said afterwards that 2005 could never be allowed to repeat. And billions of euros flowed into impoverished suburbs like Clichy. These days, though, it seems like all that money has amounted to nothing. As if France were back exactly where it was nearly 20 years ago. Divided between those who hardly ever set foot in the banlieues because of their fears of violence – and those who live there, for whom the promise of égalité feels like a mockery. People of whom the rest of the country only takes note when they once again begin setting fire to their own neighborhoods. But violence in the banlieues has never escalated as quickly and fiercely as it has this time. And never before has it extended so far into the city centers. A week into the eruption of violence, there have been hundreds of attacks on police buildings and city halls, more than 1,000 ravaged stores and incinerated buses and streetcars – along with thousands of cars. In the last few days, the situation has calmed down noticeably, at least when it comes to the number of fires. But that abatement hasn't been reflected in the political debate. The analyses were finished even before supermarkets had a chance to sweep up all the broken glass. The immigrants are to blame (even if the people described as being such are often third-generation French citizens). The police are to blame (even though they have increasingly become the employer of choice for the children of immigrants). But if you want to still hear questions, you have to head to those places where the violence took place. Questions like: What the hell is going on here right now? Hayat Aït is sitting on her motorcycle in one of the parking lots in front of the residential towers of the Cité Pablo Picasso and watching videos on her mobile phone. She wears her black curls cut short, and Patrick from the series "Spongebob Squarepants" is holding his belly laughing on her sweater. Aït is immediately interested in talking. She shows the wallpaper on her phone and says she always carries him with her. It's a picture of Nahel, the 17-year-old who was shot and killed during a police check here in Nanterre, just west of Paris, on June 27. Aït says she knew Nahel well and that their families are friends, adding that she's been trying to deal with her feelings for a week. The grief and anger over Nahel's death and how completely overwhelming things have become since their housing development turned into a battle zone. As she speaks, there's a sudden smell of smoke about 100 meters behind her. "That's just the kids playing with firecrackers," Aït says with a laugh. But then there are flames. "Holy shit, are they crazy?" Aït runs off. As she runs, she shouts epithets at two 10-year-olds standing around before disappearing into the underground garage and re-emerging with a fire extinguisher. Two women haul a cleaning bucket full of water. A parched lawn has caught on fire. "They will burn us alive," one of the women says. Aït activates the fire extinguisher. People watch from the windows of the high-rises from right up to the 38th floor. When Hayat Aït returns to her motorcycle, she wipes her soot-black hands on her pants and says: "I can't take it anymore." Her Algerian parents moved to the Cité Pablo Picasso before the top floors of the high-rises had even been finished. Aït is 23 years old and works as a supermarket store manager in Paris. She knows that it's possible to escape poverty. But she also knows well just how much will and perseverance it takes. "For many, it just sucks to live here." But she says no one wants to talk about that right now. "The more we set on fire, the more they say that the Arabs and blacks can't be integrated. We're acting like caricatures of ourselves right now." Aït uses "we" even though she herself is busy putting out fires rather than starting them. Because she knows that there are few degrees of separation between the banlieue residents who suffer from violence and those who are responsible for it. Even as the orgy of destruction embarked on by the banlieue youth served to push the cause of their fury out of the news, it led to a parallel shift in French President Emmanuel Macron’s political positioning. The killing of the teenager by a policeman was "inexplicable and inexcusable," the president said shortly after the deadly shooting. And for a brief moment, the country was shocked by an amateur video that refuted the police version of events. Nahel wasn't shot in self-defense. And everyone could see as much. But the shared mourning over Nahel lasted barely half a day. It quickly turned into battle being waged between the left and the right, with one side denouncing the "execution" of Nahel M. by a racist police force, while the other side castigates the suburban riots as the consequences of "mass immigration" and wants to strip the rioters of their citizenship and cut off their families' child welfare support payments. Macron, a centrist, has also jumped into the debate, which has focused on the criminality of young men in the banlieues and the perceived weakness of the state. "We need to find a way of sanctioning the families financially when the first crime is committed," Macron said at a meeting with police. And during a meeting with 250 mayors whose cities have suffered from the riots, he spoke of "broken, blow-up family structures" and of the "fundamental authority" that must be deployed to take on the youths. The president and those around him are uninterested in claims of possible racism within the police force. When asked what he thinks about the riots, 17-year-old Amine doesn't hesitate. "I participated," he says. He's sitting in the shadow of one of the apartment blocks in the Pablo Picasso development and points to where the grass had just burned. "That's where we prepared the Molotov cocktails." Amine speaks as if he were at war. "If I die in this fight, so be it." He says his parents are from Morocco and that France was "a dream country" for him as a child. Now, he thinks it was all a lie. Liberté, freedom? "Who does that apply to? Not to us Arabs – we get harassed by the police as soon as we step outside the door." "Look around you!" Fraternité, brotherhood? "It only exists here, with us – we stick together in the Cité." Few countries wear their own ideals as proudly on their chests as France. The Republic isn't simply a state – it also wants to capture the hearts of its citizens, much like a religion approaches its followers. "Liberty, equality and fraternity" is a mantra for democracy. Only, this ideal isn’t always reflected by reality. In France, the origin of citizens may not be recorded, and the Republic defines itself as being color blind. By doing so, though, it fails over and over again when it comes to acknowledging existing racism. The Republic may be perfect, but the country isn't. This basic tension doesn't make living in France bad, per se. What's wrong, after all, with swearing allegiance as a society to three clear values, even if they can’t ever be completely realized? At the very least, it makes clear that citizens can expect a lot from their state and that they can always remind it of its promise. Harsh criticism of the president and the government is one of the basic skills that defines a responsible citizen in France. But sometimes criticism turns into radical rejection. When, for example, a group in society refuses to continue to put up with the disconnect between aspiration and reality any longer. Five years ago, it was the yellow vests who attacked city halls, a ministry and even the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Now, in summer 2023, it is the youths in the banlieues who are setting fires. When searching among the social housing projects and their immigrant residents for clues as to what triggered the sudden upheaval of frustration and violence, the first issue to come up is always the police. Everyone you ask speaks of racist slogans and humiliating police checks. Many also say that the situation used to be less tense, that police officers used to be perceived more as people. Now, though, they look more like "robocops" in their body armor. For years, there has been a debate in France about whether the police are too heavily armed and too poorly trained. The police officers themselves complain most about the state of constant alarm in the country between terrorist attacks, mass protests and riots. On Thursday, it emerged that the 38-year-old police officer who fired the fatal shot at Nahel had worked every one of the nine days leading up to the shooting. If you ask someone like proud rioter Amine about the police, he responds: "They hate us, and we hate them." But complaints about the police are frequently followed by another grievance: COVID. The pandemic, which seems to have been largely forgotten among those who were easily able to shift to working from home, has left behind deep scars in the banlieues. From the first lockdown onward, it was clear that both the virus itself and the measures deployed to counteract its spread would hit the poorest the hardest. Nadia Ahmiddouch has been living for 30 years in Cité Pablo Picasso on the outskirts of Paris and works as a social worker in the surrounding municipalities. "COVID was a deep wound. So many people here died," she says. "That period made youth here more nihilistic and depressive. In the wealthier neighborhoods, parents just send their children to the psychiatrist. Here, children have internally bid farewell to their futures." For such young people, who even as teenagers are faced with the reality that they are at the very bottom of the country’s class structures, avowals of égalité and fraternité don’t carry much weight. It is now precisely these young delinquents from the COVID generation who are facing fast-track trials across the country – legal proceedings that can be observed in places like the 17th chamber of the Bobigny Criminal Court near Paris. Trials here take place on the ground floor. The clock behind the bench has stopped at five minutes to 12, but nobody seems to mind. The defendants are escorted in by armed police officers, some of them in handcuffs. They don’t look out into the courtroom, staring instead down at the floor – both apprehensive and somehow absent, as though this trial had nothing to do with them. Three young men are part of the first group of the day. They stand accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a police commissioner on the night of July 1. All of them mumble. "Could you speak a bit louder. I can’t understand you," the judge says. They all nod, wipe their faces awkwardly with their hands and continue to mumble. A trio of 18-year-olds who allegedly threw Molotov cocktails and can no longer explain why they did it. One of them is wearing a black T-shirt reading "Playboy" in shiny silver lettering with a skull beneath it fashioned from silver studs. Around 40 adolescents and young adults will be brought before the judge on this afternoon. The three in the next group were born in 2003, 2004 and 2005 in the suburb of Saint-Denis, all of them still live with their parents and they are all unemployed. They have been charged with ransacking a store in Aubervilliers and stealing several bottles of alcohol. Two of them deny the charges, while one initially confesses before then getting bogged down in contradictory statements. The judge adjourns the proceedings due to a lack of evidence. The expedited court procedures may not always be as fast as the judiciary would like them to be, but the strategy adheres to the line laid out by Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti: punishing rioters and plunderers to the full extent of the law. One of those who frequently demands heavy-handedness from the state is Jordan Bardella, party head of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist party Rassemblement National. On Tuesday afternoon, he drives up in a dark-colored sedan to the police commissioner’s office in Nanterre and steps out of the car. The building is like a fortress, surrounded by steel barricades four meters tall. Bardella is there to pay a visit to the police operating in an area that has been beset by unrest. In the morning, he published an open letter to the police and the gendarmes. "Your uniform has become a target for all those who want to attack the Republic and its symbols," he wrote, and pledged the officers "unshakeable support" from his party. The 27-year-old Bardella grew up in a banlieue himself – in social housing in Département Seine-Saint-Denis. His mother came to France in the 1960s as the child of Italian immigrants, later surviving on minimum wage as a single mother living with her son. Bardella has frequently sought to leverage that background in his political career. For many years, he likes to say at campaign appearances, "the only forest I knew was the bleak rows of high-rises," adding that he found himself confronted with violence, gangs and drugs at an early age. At some point in his narrative of being a child immigrant comes the story of his success, the product of effort and discipline and his escape from the banlieue. Bardella sees himself as living proof that success is possible as long as you want it. He is a gift to the party. These days Bardella wears immaculate shark-collared white shirts and hair cut just as short as that of the police officers he has come here to meet. "For me, they are people who get up every morning to restore the republican order that has been heavily damaged by 30 years of immigration and laxity," he says in an interview after speaking with the officers. He is demanding an immediate stop to immigration, educational institutions run by the military and strict penalties for the parents of juvenile delinquents. "If we take over leadership of this country in the 2027 presidential elections, we will restore republican order in this territory square meter by square meter." No other politician has profited from the unrest to the degree Marine Le Pen has. According to an IFOP survey, 39 percent of the French are satisfied with how Le Pen has positioned herself in the crisis, while Emmanuel Macron received only 33 percent support and left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon just 20 percent. If you look at the direct consequences of the unrest, it becomes clear that they couldn’t be worse for the people in the banlieues: soaring support for the Le Pen’s right wing, destroyed infrastructure in their neighborhoods and a debate over police violence limited to the far-left margins of society. Mehdi Bigaderne calls it "suicide." "Why would you destroy your own neighborhood? Because you no longer want to live, and you believe in nothing anymore." It's 9 p.m. on Tuesday evening and Mehdi Bigaderne is alone in the City Hall of Clichy-sous-Bois. At noon that day, he stood behind Mayor Samira Tayebi as one of her deputies, and now he has just finished a tour of the quarter. It is quiet in Clichy, with people both young and old sitting in folding chairs on the sidewalks. "We’ll see how things develop," Bigaderne says, though he doesn’t sound particularly optimistic. Still, Mehdi Bigaderne has for several years refused to give up. When Clichy erupted in violence in 2005, he was a 24-year-old student, and he knew many of those who started erecting barricades. He lived in the same run-down social housing as those who French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy – who would later become president – referred to as "riffraff." "Those weren’t riots, it was a revolt," says Bigaderne. The year 2005 politicized many young people in the banlieues. And it also propelled people like Bigaderne into the city halls – people who know what it’s like to grow up in the high-rise ghettos. Why do young people throw rocks at City Hall? "Because they feel ignored and scorned" Bigaderne says. He talks about how the people of Clichy began burning their French passports in 2005 since they would rather not be French citizens than second-class citizens. That year, Bigaderne and others arranged a tour of France from banlieue to banlieue and had people fill out "cahiers de doléances" – registers of grievances. "Just like in the French Revolution," he says. He and the others made sure they would become part of the country’s history. One could interpret Bigaderne’s involvement as proof that France isn’t actually disintegrating into two competing factions, with the immigrants on one side and the increasingly nationalist majority on the other. It’s just hard for Bigaderne himself to adopt such a point of view at the moment. "The last few days have felt like failure," he says. He then reflects: "I would still tell every 17-year-old that they shouldn’t stop hoping for a better future," he says. Outside, darkness has fallen. Before he heads home, Bigaderne wishes the security guard a good night. The guard will remain at City Hall until the next morning. Democracy here can no longer be left on its own. © 2023 Der Spiegel. Distributed by The New York Times Licensing Group. Read the original article at Der Spiegel.
Efter att fransk polis sköt ihjäl en 17-årig pojke har landet haft sina värsta upplopp sedan Clichy-sous-Bois stod i brand 2005. För många i Paris förorter klingar republikens motto – frihet, jämlikhet, broderskap – falskt. Men konsekvenserna av upploppen har bara gjort tillvaron sämre för de som bor där: Infrastrukturen är förstörd, stödet för Marine Le Pen stiger och debatten om polisvåld förs bara på vänsterkanten. Der Spiegel rapporterar från Parisförorterna. The police shooting of a teen in France has sent the biggest jolt through the country since the riots in the banlieues in 2005. For many, the promise of liberté, egalité and fraternité still rings hollow today. By Leo Klimm, Nadia Pantel and Britta Sandberg 7 July, 2023 From a distance, the three words inscribed above the glass entrance door of the Clichy-sous-Bois City Hall can be read: liberté, égalité, fraternité. It's only when you get closer that the damage becomes visible: holes where three stones struck the pane of glass, just below égalité, equality. As if the ideals of the Republic itself were the target. Samira Tayebi wipes tears from her face as she stands in front of the shattered glass. "You've never seen me cry, not even last week when my daughter got married, but today …" - Tayebi loses her voice. Fellow employees and citizens alike are gathered in front of her, and she has to inform them that instead of novels, comics and magazines, the city's library now only contains piles of ash hardened into clumps by the water from the fire hoses. Tayebi grew up in the high-rises of Clichy, worked for years as a teacher in this banlieue in northern Paris, and has been mayor here since 2022. "In my family, there was no money for books," Tayebi says as she gathers her composure. "If I wanted to read, I had to go to the library. These places are crucial for us." Then she speaks of cohesion and struggle, of overcoming the crisis together. But it is the feeling of powerlessness that resonates most after the speech. The Cyrano de Bergerac Library in Clichy-sous-Bois was more than a public meeting place, it was a promise. Just like the new light-rail line and the freshly inaugurated music school. All projects that were developed after the 2005 banlieue revolts began in Clichy with cars burning, battles between local youth and the police – and an uncontrollable rage that erupted for three weeks and spread to banlieues across the country. It was said afterwards that 2005 could never be allowed to repeat. And billions of euros flowed into impoverished suburbs like Clichy. These days, though, it seems like all that money has amounted to nothing. As if France were back exactly where it was nearly 20 years ago. Divided between those who hardly ever set foot in the banlieues because of their fears of violence – and those who live there, for whom the promise of égalité feels like a mockery. People of whom the rest of the country only takes note when they once again begin setting fire to their own neighborhoods. But violence in the banlieues has never escalated as quickly and fiercely as it has this time. And never before has it extended so far into the city centers. A week into the eruption of violence, there have been hundreds of attacks on police buildings and city halls, more than 1,000 ravaged stores and incinerated buses and streetcars – along with thousands of cars. In the last few days, the situation has calmed down noticeably, at least when it comes to the number of fires. But that abatement hasn't been reflected in the political debate. The analyses were finished even before supermarkets had a chance to sweep up all the broken glass. The immigrants are to blame (even if the people described as being such are often third-generation French citizens). The police are to blame (even though they have increasingly become the employer of choice for the children of immigrants). But if you want to still hear questions, you have to head to those places where the violence took place. Questions like: What the hell is going on here right now? Hayat Aït is sitting on her motorcycle in one of the parking lots in front of the residential towers of the Cité Pablo Picasso and watching videos on her mobile phone. She wears her black curls cut short, and Patrick from the series "Spongebob Squarepants" is holding his belly laughing on her sweater. Aït is immediately interested in talking. She shows the wallpaper on her phone and says she always carries him with her. It's a picture of Nahel, the 17-year-old who was shot and killed during a police check here in Nanterre, just west of Paris, on June 27. Aït says she knew Nahel well and that their families are friends, adding that she's been trying to deal with her feelings for a week. The grief and anger over Nahel's death and how completely overwhelming things have become since their housing development turned into a battle zone. As she speaks, there's a sudden smell of smoke about 100 meters behind her. "That's just the kids playing with firecrackers," Aït says with a laugh. But then there are flames. "Holy shit, are they crazy?" Aït runs off. As she runs, she shouts epithets at two 10-year-olds standing around before disappearing into the underground garage and re-emerging with a fire extinguisher. Two women haul a cleaning bucket full of water. A parched lawn has caught on fire. "They will burn us alive," one of the women says. Aït activates the fire extinguisher. People watch from the windows of the high-rises from right up to the 38th floor. When Hayat Aït returns to her motorcycle, she wipes her soot-black hands on her pants and says: "I can't take it anymore." Her Algerian parents moved to the Cité Pablo Picasso before the top floors of the high-rises had even been finished. Aït is 23 years old and works as a supermarket store manager in Paris. She knows that it's possible to escape poverty. But she also knows well just how much will and perseverance it takes. "For many, it just sucks to live here." But she says no one wants to talk about that right now. "The more we set on fire, the more they say that the Arabs and blacks can't be integrated. We're acting like caricatures of ourselves right now." Aït uses "we" even though she herself is busy putting out fires rather than starting them. Because she knows that there are few degrees of separation between the banlieue residents who suffer from violence and those who are responsible for it. Even as the orgy of destruction embarked on by the banlieue youth served to push the cause of their fury out of the news, it led to a parallel shift in French President Emmanuel Macron’s political positioning. The killing of the teenager by a policeman was "inexplicable and inexcusable," the president said shortly after the deadly shooting. And for a brief moment, the country was shocked by an amateur video that refuted the police version of events. Nahel wasn't shot in self-defense. And everyone could see as much. But the shared mourning over Nahel lasted barely half a day. It quickly turned into battle being waged between the left and the right, with one side denouncing the "execution" of Nahel M. by a racist police force, while the other side castigates the suburban riots as the consequences of "mass immigration" and wants to strip the rioters of their citizenship and cut off their families' child welfare support payments. Macron, a centrist, has also jumped into the debate, which has focused on the criminality of young men in the banlieues and the perceived weakness of the state. "We need to find a way of sanctioning the families financially when the first crime is committed," Macron said at a meeting with police. And during a meeting with 250 mayors whose cities have suffered from the riots, he spoke of "broken, blow-up family structures" and of the "fundamental authority" that must be deployed to take on the youths. The president and those around him are uninterested in claims of possible racism within the police force. When asked what he thinks about the riots, 17-year-old Amine doesn't hesitate. "I participated," he says. He's sitting in the shadow of one of the apartment blocks in the Pablo Picasso development and points to where the grass had just burned. "That's where we prepared the Molotov cocktails." Amine speaks as if he were at war. "If I die in this fight, so be it." He says his parents are from Morocco and that France was "a dream country" for him as a child. Now, he thinks it was all a lie. Liberté, freedom? "Who does that apply to? Not to us Arabs – we get harassed by the police as soon as we step outside the door." "Look around you!" Fraternité, brotherhood? "It only exists here, with us – we stick together in the Cité." Few countries wear their own ideals as proudly on their chests as France. The Republic isn't simply a state – it also wants to capture the hearts of its citizens, much like a religion approaches its followers. "Liberty, equality and fraternity" is a mantra for democracy. Only, this ideal isn’t always reflected by reality. In France, the origin of citizens may not be recorded, and the Republic defines itself as being color blind. By doing so, though, it fails over and over again when it comes to acknowledging existing racism. The Republic may be perfect, but the country isn't. This basic tension doesn't make living in France bad, per se. What's wrong, after all, with swearing allegiance as a society to three clear values, even if they can’t ever be completely realized? At the very least, it makes clear that citizens can expect a lot from their state and that they can always remind it of its promise. Harsh criticism of the president and the government is one of the basic skills that defines a responsible citizen in France. But sometimes criticism turns into radical rejection. When, for example, a group in society refuses to continue to put up with the disconnect between aspiration and reality any longer. Five years ago, it was the yellow vests who attacked city halls, a ministry and even the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Now, in summer 2023, it is the youths in the banlieues who are setting fires. When searching among the social housing projects and their immigrant residents for clues as to what triggered the sudden upheaval of frustration and violence, the first issue to come up is always the police. Everyone you ask speaks of racist slogans and humiliating police checks. Many also say that the situation used to be less tense, that police officers used to be perceived more as people. Now, though, they look more like "robocops" in their body armor. For years, there has been a debate in France about whether the police are too heavily armed and too poorly trained. The police officers themselves complain most about the state of constant alarm in the country between terrorist attacks, mass protests and riots. On Thursday, it emerged that the 38-year-old police officer who fired the fatal shot at Nahel had worked every one of the nine days leading up to the shooting. If you ask someone like proud rioter Amine about the police, he responds: "They hate us, and we hate them." But complaints about the police are frequently followed by another grievance: COVID. The pandemic, which seems to have been largely forgotten among those who were easily able to shift to working from home, has left behind deep scars in the banlieues. From the first lockdown onward, it was clear that both the virus itself and the measures deployed to counteract its spread would hit the poorest the hardest. Nadia Ahmiddouch has been living for 30 years in Cité Pablo Picasso on the outskirts of Paris and works as a social worker in the surrounding municipalities. "COVID was a deep wound. So many people here died," she says. "That period made youth here more nihilistic and depressive. In the wealthier neighborhoods, parents just send their children to the psychiatrist. Here, children have internally bid farewell to their futures." For such young people, who even as teenagers are faced with the reality that they are at the very bottom of the country’s class structures, avowals of égalité and fraternité don’t carry much weight. It is now precisely these young delinquents from the COVID generation who are facing fast-track trials across the country – legal proceedings that can be observed in places like the 17th chamber of the Bobigny Criminal Court near Paris. Trials here take place on the ground floor. The clock behind the bench has stopped at five minutes to 12, but nobody seems to mind. The defendants are escorted in by armed police officers, some of them in handcuffs. They don’t look out into the courtroom, staring instead down at the floor – both apprehensive and somehow absent, as though this trial had nothing to do with them. Three young men are part of the first group of the day. They stand accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a police commissioner on the night of July 1. All of them mumble. "Could you speak a bit louder. I can’t understand you," the judge says. They all nod, wipe their faces awkwardly with their hands and continue to mumble. A trio of 18-year-olds who allegedly threw Molotov cocktails and can no longer explain why they did it. One of them is wearing a black T-shirt reading "Playboy" in shiny silver lettering with a skull beneath it fashioned from silver studs. Around 40 adolescents and young adults will be brought before the judge on this afternoon. The three in the next group were born in 2003, 2004 and 2005 in the suburb of Saint-Denis, all of them still live with their parents and they are all unemployed. They have been charged with ransacking a store in Aubervilliers and stealing several bottles of alcohol. Two of them deny the charges, while one initially confesses before then getting bogged down in contradictory statements. The judge adjourns the proceedings due to a lack of evidence. The expedited court procedures may not always be as fast as the judiciary would like them to be, but the strategy adheres to the line laid out by Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti: punishing rioters and plunderers to the full extent of the law. One of those who frequently demands heavy-handedness from the state is Jordan Bardella, party head of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist party Rassemblement National. On Tuesday afternoon, he drives up in a dark-colored sedan to the police commissioner’s office in Nanterre and steps out of the car. The building is like a fortress, surrounded by steel barricades four meters tall. Bardella is there to pay a visit to the police operating in an area that has been beset by unrest. In the morning, he published an open letter to the police and the gendarmes. "Your uniform has become a target for all those who want to attack the Republic and its symbols," he wrote, and pledged the officers "unshakeable support" from his party. The 27-year-old Bardella grew up in a banlieue himself – in social housing in Département Seine-Saint-Denis. His mother came to France in the 1960s as the child of Italian immigrants, later surviving on minimum wage as a single mother living with her son. Bardella has frequently sought to leverage that background in his political career. For many years, he likes to say at campaign appearances, "the only forest I knew was the bleak rows of high-rises," adding that he found himself confronted with violence, gangs and drugs at an early age. At some point in his narrative of being a child immigrant comes the story of his success, the product of effort and discipline and his escape from the banlieue. Bardella sees himself as living proof that success is possible as long as you want it. He is a gift to the party. These days Bardella wears immaculate shark-collared white shirts and hair cut just as short as that of the police officers he has come here to meet. "For me, they are people who get up every morning to restore the republican order that has been heavily damaged by 30 years of immigration and laxity," he says in an interview after speaking with the officers. He is demanding an immediate stop to immigration, educational institutions run by the military and strict penalties for the parents of juvenile delinquents. "If we take over leadership of this country in the 2027 presidential elections, we will restore republican order in this territory square meter by square meter." No other politician has profited from the unrest to the degree Marine Le Pen has. According to an IFOP survey, 39 percent of the French are satisfied with how Le Pen has positioned herself in the crisis, while Emmanuel Macron received only 33 percent support and left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon just 20 percent. If you look at the direct consequences of the unrest, it becomes clear that they couldn’t be worse for the people in the banlieues: soaring support for the Le Pen’s right wing, destroyed infrastructure in their neighborhoods and a debate over police violence limited to the far-left margins of society. Mehdi Bigaderne calls it "suicide." "Why would you destroy your own neighborhood? Because you no longer want to live, and you believe in nothing anymore." It's 9 p.m. on Tuesday evening and Mehdi Bigaderne is alone in the City Hall of Clichy-sous-Bois. At noon that day, he stood behind Mayor Samira Tayebi as one of her deputies, and now he has just finished a tour of the quarter. It is quiet in Clichy, with people both young and old sitting in folding chairs on the sidewalks. "We’ll see how things develop," Bigaderne says, though he doesn’t sound particularly optimistic. Still, Mehdi Bigaderne has for several years refused to give up. When Clichy erupted in violence in 2005, he was a 24-year-old student, and he knew many of those who started erecting barricades. He lived in the same run-down social housing as those who French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy – who would later become president – referred to as "riffraff." "Those weren’t riots, it was a revolt," says Bigaderne. The year 2005 politicized many young people in the banlieues. And it also propelled people like Bigaderne into the city halls – people who know what it’s like to grow up in the high-rise ghettos. Why do young people throw rocks at City Hall? "Because they feel ignored and scorned" Bigaderne says. He talks about how the people of Clichy began burning their French passports in 2005 since they would rather not be French citizens than second-class citizens. That year, Bigaderne and others arranged a tour of France from banlieue to banlieue and had people fill out "cahiers de doléances" – registers of grievances. "Just like in the French Revolution," he says. He and the others made sure they would become part of the country’s history. One could interpret Bigaderne’s involvement as proof that France isn’t actually disintegrating into two competing factions, with the immigrants on one side and the increasingly nationalist majority on the other. It’s just hard for Bigaderne himself to adopt such a point of view at the moment. "The last few days have felt like failure," he says. He then reflects: "I would still tell every 17-year-old that they shouldn’t stop hoping for a better future," he says. Outside, darkness has fallen. Before he heads home, Bigaderne wishes the security guard a good night. The guard will remain at City Hall until the next morning. Democracy here can no longer be left on its own. © 2023 Der Spiegel. Distributed by The New York Times Licensing Group. Read the original article at Der Spiegel.