Kampf gegen die Bulldogge
Ausschreitungen gegen Le Pen
Pierre shakes his head, looking towards the barriers the police has set up to block the boulevards of the southern french city of Toulouse. "There he is," the young student says, "and they won't let us get to him."
"He", that is Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the extremist Front National, well known racist and anti-semite and candidate of the extreme right for the upcoming french presidential elections in april and may. In 2002, during the last elections, he made it into the final round, only to be beaten by Jacques Chirac, who had been supported by all anti-fascists as the lesser evil.
On this rainy sunday afternoon a crowd of several hundred people has gathered to demonstrate against a reunion of Le Pen's party in a congress hall at Toulouse. Usually a on sunday afternoon you don't see too many french in the streets, even more so when rain is pouring down. However, this attitude changes completely when a police helicopter circles above the city. Following the helicopter will usually lead you to a brouhaha, and the last time this happened in Toulouse was during the unrest in the french suburb in late 2005. So the usual suspects knew where they had to go.
"Let's see what will happen," says Pierre before he pulls his pullover's collar up to his face. The police has taken cover behind barricades, only with a small entry every few meters to allow them to charge against the crowd. The demonstrators have positioned themselves about ten meters away from the barricades with a few of them getting closer from time to time.
There is the middle-aged man, who set up himself with the back to the police men. With his quiet and peaceful behaviour he stands out of the screaming and agitating crowd. His coat is covered with bagdes, which give proof of his anti-fascist attitude, as do the poems he holds in his hands. But nevertheless there are cases in which he supports violence. "When there was one thing that made things move in May '68, it was the violence," he says, having experienced this time in Toulouse nearly 40 years ago.
Others show their anger more overtly. There is a girl smoking cigarettes and constantly provoking the police. By this time Le Pen is in the congress hall, which is barely visible from where the demonstrators are, and he doesn't even notice what is going on outside. It may have been the fact that someone like Le Pen does not merit this kind of protection that may have lead to the following escalation of the events.
As the crowd gets more and more uneasy the police readies the cans of tear gas. Soon the policemen are hit by eggs and bottles and when they feel the demonstrators had gone too far, they offer them a taste of gas. This in turn has no effect of deterrence and provokes further attacks, which are answered by first charges of the police that were not successful.
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The police decides to launch tear gas grenades into the crowd and to profit of the confusion in order to drive apart the aggressive demonstrators by charging into the crowd. Bystanders instantly take cover at the side of the street, not knowing whether to fear the stones and bottles from one or the bats and tears gas grenades from the other side.
This is repeated several times, and each time somebody is being picked out by the police and arrested, before the police returns to their positions, just waiting for the next provocateur. This girl got her taste of the polices bats.
With each sortie of the police the crowd is pushed further back, but still people return, throwing more bottles and emptying the garbage cans in the area. The police then decide to push the crowd back onto another part of the boulevard, hoping that the group would be divided during the process. In the area of a roundabout the police come together from several roads from two sides and make further arrests.
Several men of the brigade anticriminalité fight with a man. They push his face, which is covered by blood, down on the pavement. Even his socks are blood-stained, his shoe having been lost in the fight. "Come on, take pictures," he yells, hoping that one of the photos would make it into the french papers on monday, showing that people are willing to suffer in their fight against racism. I find myself quickly surrounded by other policemen, pointing with tear gas launchers on us and threatening to delete our pictures if we'd continue.
Probably the man will only go down in the police's statistics as one of the "slightly injured" persons of this afternoon.
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I fight my way through the hazes of tear gas, following the police in their charges against the demonstrators, which by now have been pushed far down the boulevard. Still they are a huge group, still they are resisting the police. I try to evade the incoming stones and finally take cover behind a burning container. Each bottle thrown is answered by the police in another load of tear gas. In the middle of this I see Pierre, now with empty bottles in his hand, ready to be thrown at the police men. With his collar still over his face, I can only see his eyes, which is enough to spot his determination.
Both sides take some time to settle down with more than one hundred meters in between them. The police form their lines, while the demonstrators build up further barricades and set them on fire. The tension rises in what on normal days is an idyllic boulevard lined by old sycamore trees typical for the region. Between the trees the tear gas rests for a long time, making it difficult to see and to breathe.
Even though there are fires since half an hour at several points in the city, there's no fireman in sight. The police prefer to concentrate on shooting tear gas and letting the containers burn out, giving an impression of civil war.
The notorious Compagnie républicaine de Sécurité (CRS), the Gendarmerie and the Brigade anticriminalité have taken their time to plan their proceedings. There are companies running down side roads in an attempt to surround the demonstrators, probably guided by the helicopter that still hovers above the scene, his blades flashing from time to time between the trees' crowns.
The protest had started with about 100 peaceful demonstrators, among them representatives of human rights organisations. With these came the same amount of left-winged militants which were to show their disgust of the city hosting a far-right reunion. But as the afternoon progressed, they were rejoined by young men and women who are rarely seen on demonstrations or public gatherings - unless there is a chance of escalation.
Every now and then somebody gets closer to the police forces, just throw an empty bottle. The nearby shops get decorated by leftist graffitis, which will disappear over the night as the municipality eliminates all signs of violent conflict in the streets. Somewhere there has to be a huge repository of garbage containers.
As the police forces have regrouped and decided on a new course of action, they charge against the barricades, being welcomed by dozens of rocks that are thrown at them. But the tactic of the police pays off: With each fork of the road the group passes during their retreat, they break up. There are more and more small groups, there is less and less resistance.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who sees himself as the leader of the "nationalist right", assumes Joan of Arc as the symbol of his movement. It is not without irony that is is below the city's statue of Joan of Arc, which is covered with anti-fascist graffitis, where a policeman breaks down in front of my eyes, having been hit and wounded by a stone. Since the end of the 19th century the french extreme right considers Joan of Arc as the saviour of the french fatherland from englisch occupation during the Hundred Years' War, and she subsequently became symbol of catholic nationalism and as such a device to exclude the secular left, non-christian french and protestants. In 1884 the right asked for the establishment of a public holiday to commemorate Joan of Arc, but it was not accepted by the french parliament.
Today it is Jean-Marie Le Pen, who sees France threatened by a new kind of "occupation": immigration. His Front National celebrates Joan of Arc each 1st of May.
After two hours of violence there is still unrest, and the group is now in the centre of the city where a fair for families is held. The police changes its tactic again and makes more arrests in an attempt to raise the effect of deterrence. This time the young women and men are held in this position for nearly ten minutes, exposed in a medieval fashion on the market place in the centre of Toulouse as an exemple for all the other demonstrators to stop now. Only after the crowd seems to have understood the message the captives are lead to the buses one by one.
The last pocket of resistance finds itself in a road adjacent to the town hall, the Rue de Lafayette. A huge fire in the middle of the street can be traced down from far away thanks to its plume of smoke. However, by this time the group was relatively small and its resistance was limited to shouting at the police, which then decided to withdraw under the rejoicing of the demonstrators.
So did the violence do any good? By the time Le Pen had finished his reunion the demonstrators had been successfully dispersed throughout the city by the police forces. Nobody was at the congress hall to show Le Pen that he was not welcome. The ceremony he held in the hall seemed more glorious than the coronation of Charlemagne, as the bulldog celebrated himself while singing the Marseillaise.
And the elections? Le Pen is not to be dismissed. In 2002 he made it into the final round of the presidential elections nearly doubling all opinion polls, in which he barely reached more than 8% or 9% before election day. This time he is at about 13%, so on Arpil 22nd France may be set for an unpleasent surprise.