DOUGLAS MURRAY: If countries like France don’t confront and remove those who hate them, there will be nothing leftof them but a beautiful name

Douglas Murray argues that the unrest in France is not a conventional student protest but a broader crisis driven by adult rioters and political activists. He says the destruction in French cities matters because it reflects failures to maintain public order and, in his view, weak responses to immigration and integration problems.

Murray points to the burning of Limoges’s historic town hall and the ransacking of a Paris department store, and identifies far-left, anti-capitalist, environmental and pro-Palestinian activists among those involved. He cites French government spending at 57 per cent of GDP, public debt at 115 per cent of GDP, and a 2021 warning from retired military officers that immigration and integration failures could risk civil war. These are the article’s claims and framing.