A man and a woman cross the street as police officers move in on protesters

一名男子和一名女子穿过街道，警察正在接近抗议者。

Macron is losing control of France. Thousands of arrests. Torched schools, community centres, city halls, sports complexes, post offices. Looting ranging from Lidl supermarkets to Apple Stores. Gendarmes and special forces brought in to patrol the streets at night, in addition to the beleaguered police force. Rising anger among shopkeepers clamouring for a curfew “or we’ll take matters into our hands”.
And, after five days’ rioting across France, a rising sentiment that the current situation is largely the result of almost a quarter century of craven governments neglecting essential law and order.
The viral video of a 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk seemingly listening to the policemen who stopped him in the street only to be shot point-blank, shocked a majority of France – not just the residents of the country’s ethnically diverse banlieues such as the one he lived and died in.

马克龙正在失去对法国的控制。数千人被逮捕。学校、社区中心、市政厅、体育场馆、邮局被纵火焚毁。从Lidl超市到Apple商店的抢劫行为不断。除了备受困扰的警察力量外，武装部队和特别部队在夜间巡逻街头。商店主们越来越愤怒，要求实行宵禁，否则"我们会自己解决问题"。
在法国各地骚乱持续五天后，越来越多的人认为当前的局势很大程度上是近25年来腐败政府忽视基本法律和秩序的结果。
一段病毒式传播的视频显示，17岁的纳赫尔·梅尔祖克听着停住他的警察的指示，却被近距离开枪射杀，这个视频震惊了大多数法国人，不仅仅是他生活和死亡的那个种族多元的贫民区居民们。

The 6,000-strong march reacting to it the following day, calling for “justice”, was equally seen as perfectly legitimate — until it escalated disastrously, in all-too-familiar fashion. Rioting, incendiary accusations (of state racism, that “they” want to kill “us”) and then literally incendiary acts: arson, senseless vandalism and destruction, from bus stop shelters to rows of shops, kindergartens, social housing. And theft, everywhere, of private and public property; indiscriminate; from a six-pack of semi-skimmed milk to watches, jewellery, Nike shoes, baby buggies.
When the riots broke out, I was at the Tocqueville Conversations, a conference on the Ukraine-Russian conflict. There eastern Europeans ­– Poles, Ukrainians, émigré Russians, together with Brits and French and Americans and Spaniards – watched in increasing disbelief such wanton destruction perpetrated in a country at peace. “They’re destroying the social compact which is essential for democracy”, Sławomir Dębski, the noted Polish historian and geostrategist, mused. We had been discussing the cost to Europe of rebuilding post-war Ukraine: the French among us started worrying about the cost of rebuilding parts of Marseille, Lens, Bordeaux, Paris.

在随后的一天，有6000人参加了对此事件的示威游行，呼吁"正义"，这同样被视为完全合法的行为，直到它以过于熟悉的方式灾难性地升级。骚乱、煽动性指责（指责国家种族主义，说"他们"想要杀死"我们"）然后是真正的纵火行为：纵火、毫无意义的破坏和破坏，从公交车站亭到一排商店、幼儿园、社会住房。以及到处的盗窃，私人和公共财产无差别，从六瓶半脱脂牛奶到手表、珠宝、耐克鞋、婴儿车。
当骚乱爆发时，我正在参加有关乌克兰与俄罗斯冲突的托克维尔对话会议。东欧人——波兰人、乌克兰人、俄罗斯移民，在英国人、法国人、美国人和西班牙人的陪同下，越来越难以置信地看到一个和平国家遭受如此肆意的破坏。“他们正在破坏对于民主至关重要的社会契约”，著名的波兰历史学家和地缘战略家斯瓦米尔·德布斯基若有所思地说道。我们一直在讨论欧洲重建战后乌克兰的成本：我们其中的法国人开始担心重建马赛、伦斯、波尔多、巴黎等地的成本。

Nihilistic destruction has been tolerated in France for something like a quarter century. It started around the millennium, under the Chirac presidency. Increasingly, the tail-end of demonstrations and marches – an old French tradition, codified and regulated (you need to declare your traditional May Day march or political demo to the Préfecture, complete with itinerary, timing and so on) started being disrupted by looters soon known as “casseurs”, because they broke shop windows as well as the stuff they could not steal. Police engaged less and less with them, mostly to avoid accusations of systemic brutality — until, exhausted, they hit back strongly, triggering a new cycle of catch-up brutality and repression.
If this sounds like bad policing, it’s because it is: the flics, too, badly paid and badly trained, are deeply demoralised by such inconsistent stop-and-go practices. By 2005, the cycle had gotten completely out of hand. The death of two young men, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, who attempted to hide from police in a high-voltage electric transformer, and died electrocuted, triggered week-long riots. By then both narratives were entrenched, ready for use when US-inspired activists decided to recast France’s complex attitudes to ethnicity and citizenship into simplistic American ones.

在法国，长达大约四分之一世纪的虚无主义破坏行为一直被容忍。它始于千禧年，在希拉克总统的任期内逐渐加剧。示威和游行的尾声（一项古老的法国传统，已编码和规范化，你需要向警察局申报你的五一劳动节游行或政治示威活动，包括行程、时间等）开始被后来被称为“casseurs”的掠夺者打断，因为他们不仅打破商店的窗户，还打砸他们无法偷走的物品。警察与他们的接触越来越少，主要是为了避免被指责系统性的暴力行为——直到他们筋疲力尽时，他们强烈回击，引发了新一轮的暴力和镇压。
如果这听起来像是糟糕的警务工作，那是因为它确实如此：警察薪水低，训练不足，对这种不一致的停滞不前的做法深感灰心丧气。到2005年，这种循环已经完全失控。两名年轻人齐耶德·本纳（Zyed Benna）和布纳·特拉奥雷（Bouna Traoré）试图躲避警察，躲进了一台高压电力变压器内，被电死，引发了长达一个星期的骚乱。到那时，两种叙述都已根深蒂固，准备好在受美国启发的活动人士决定将法国对种族和公民身份的复杂态度重新塑造成简单的美国态度时使用。

President Emmanuel Macron is aware of the Black Lives Matter/George Floyd scenario. This is why he dithered: having waited three full days before sending out the gendarmerie, at the time of writing, he was still hesitant to impose a curfew or get the Army to patrol the streets.
Meanwhile the situation shows little sign of abating: le Président has had to cancel his state visit to Germany tomorrow. Control is rapidly slipping from his hands.

埃马纽埃尔·马克龙总统对于黑人的命也是命/乔治·弗洛伊德事件有所了解。这就是为什么他犹豫不决：在发出宪兵队之前，他等待了整整三天，截至撰写本文时，他仍然不确定是否要实行宵禁或让军队巡逻街头。
与此同时，情况显示出很少减轻的迹象：总统不得不取消明天对德国的国事访问。局势正在迅速失控。