The most destructive, spectacular and costly riots in France’s recent history, surpassing even the infamous unrest of 2005, are over. To the Anglophone media and its audiences they were an expression of the anger felt among the children of France’s former overseas possessions – a generational resentment fuelled by experiences of poverty, discrimination and painful colonial legacies.
Others have noted the opportunistic, even recreational quality of rioting, but the anger – the rage – against France among parts of its youth is real and goes deeper than one specific event.
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