By Professor Frank Furedi

French society is slowly waking up to the fact that long standing moral norms that endowed people’s lives with a sense of security have lost their authority amongst a significant section of society.

As a sociologist I totally understand that riots can have legitimate causes.

Currently it is the poor state of French schools and an education system that appears to have lost its way that has sparked off the urban disturbances engulfing France.

I also understand that it is often difficult to make an airtight distinction between a protest and a riot.

A protest can easily get out of hand and trigger acts of violence.

I can also grasp that when a large number of children and teenagers are in the forefront of a protest movement its containment becomes tricky and in such instances the police may want to carefully consider the tactics it deploys. However, whatever its original causes, at some point a riot needs to be called by its right name, which is that it is a riot.

It should be evident that the disturbances in France today, do not simply involve protesting students but also organised and semi-organised activists who are motivated by the goal of violently disrupting everyday life.

Even more importantly these activists are driven by a hatred of the norms and values that underpin French society. Their action suggests that they are not only estranged from the nation that they inhabit but also driven towards supporting the moral or cultural replacement of what it means to be French.

The protestors and even the rioters who have occupied the streets of France in the past, such as the Yellow Vest movement, knew that there were certain limits to any manifestation of anti-social behaviour.

Even the student protesters of 1968 understood that it was wrong to burn fire-engines or stand by and watch while a fire-fighter was engulfed in flames.

Today’s rioters casually breach the moral restraints associated with civilised norms. Take the example of a headteacher of a sixth-form college who was doused in petro and beaten by rioters. Or the video that shows a group of masked rioters dressed all in black attacking a fire engine outside Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Marseille. A crowd can be seen hitting the emergency vehicle with blunt objects and smashing its windows. When a bright flame envelops the driver’s cab, a cheer from the crowd can be heard.

Dozens of teachers attempting to protect their schools from violent damage have been hurt. One piece of footage shows a young person, sporting a hood, running up to a teacher attempting to put out a tree fire and dousing him with petrol. Seventy-eight school staff were wounded during the course of last week’s riots. Such violent attacks on teachers are totally unprecedented in France.

Twenty-four schools have been burned or ransacked according to official sources. Consequently, lessons will be suspended in up to 500 secondary schools during the week of 5 October.

Probably one of the most shocking scenes caught on camera shows a hooded person using an aerosol can and a lighter to launch a burst of flame at a woman calling for an end to the violence. After using his makeshift flamethrower to damage the woman’s face he calmy walked away. Later it was reported that the victim of this attack suffered from first degree burns to her face.

The most disturbing feature of the riots is not so much the scale of violence engulfing France, but the mood of hatred directed by the rioters towards French society.

In the first instance the malaise afflicting France is cultural.

The phenomenon of the little intifada is unlikely to be confined within the borders of this nation. Many European countries face a similar threat to their national identity. It is time that Europeans understood that what is at stake is a war directed at their culture.

It is worth noting that sections of the French centrist and leftish media were much more concerned with the reaction of the police to the rioters than to threat represented by mob violence. An editorial in Le Monde noted that the ‘authorities should have listened to students first’.

Not all students are prepared to go along with this narcissistic rage against the culture and values of the French nation.

Some students groups, such as La Cocarde Étudiante, have launched actions aimed to unblock the universities which leftist protestors have attempted to shut down.

Such actions, which in the current climate are especially courageous, represent an important reaction to the mainstream positions of apathy and nihilism. These actions should be applauded.

Nonetheless, such actions clearly do not enjoy the widespread institutional support that the protestors enjoy within the left-progressive political milieu.

Tragically sections of the mainstream media have decided to frame the school riots as an issue of child protection rather than what it represented, a challenge to the integrity of the French nation.

The point that escaped many commentators is that main battlefield of the riots were the institutions that are responsible for the socialisation of young people.

The attacks on these institutions indicate that many of these schools have not succeeded in performing this task and are at a loss to know how to educate the young to become responsible French citizens.

Certainly, the teachers’ unions who decided to join pupils in a ‘day of action’ this week are not aware of their responsibility for familiarising young people with the values of France.

• Professor Frank Furedi is executive director of the new think tank, the Freedom and Sovereignty Initiative.