Macron, gardener of fear: he sows terror and reaps gouged-out eyes — French youth has nothing left but its eyes to weep with, and barely even that

N. Rochat — Genève, Suisse — 2026-10-21

The gardener

He dreams of being Jupiter; we see him rather as a gardener: he sows fear, he sows terror, he sows horror — and he reaps what he has planted. Emmanuel Macron has made dread an art of government. The Interior minister supplies the weapons. The Education minister supplies the sorting. And he, in the middle, does the watering. The result is a French formal garden: clipped to the line, the paths swept clean, and the eyes of the poor strewn across the ground.

The Enlightenment, switched off

France claims to be the land of the Enlightenment. It is in fact the land of extinguished lights: the LBD, that defence-ball launcher from Switzerland, exists almost nowhere else. Using it against crowds is a national speciality, like camembert or the guillotine. The toll? Lost eyes, shattered eye sockets, protesters blinded for life. To lose an eye for having protested — that is the compensation the Republic offers its children. You can no longer weep; you no longer have the means. It is economic.

Grenades, as in war

And when the high-school students took to the streets in October, the police did what they do best: they pulled the pin. Grenades — those devices ordinarily reserved for enemy positions — hurled into processions of teenagers. Their use was suspended, too late, like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Weapons of war against pupils who were asking for ceilings that do not collapse and teachers who exist. That day, the disproportion reached a rare degree of refinement.

Parcoursup, the washing machine

For those who keep both eyes, the machine remains. Parcoursup: the washing machine of French meritocracy. It washes whiter than white — the children of the well-to-do districts come out ironed and admitted, the children of working-class districts stay in the drum, spun dry, rejected by algorithm. All of it in the name of merit, needless to say. The good places for the rich, the delicate cycle for the poor, and the laundry is done.

School, or what is left of it

Just listen to those who are there. The high-school students themselves describe « dilapidated schools where there are still no teachers and where the ceilings are collapsing ». It is their observation, not ours. Faced with that observation, what does the executive propose? Grenades, riot-police reinforcements, and an algorithm — Parcoursup — that sorts pupils the moment they leave high school.

The logic is crystal clear, and it speaks for itself: schools are not repaired, teachers are not hired, but the police who frame the processions are armed all the more. The State has chosen its side — the side of order, not the side of education. One cannot at once proclaim that school is the nation's priority and, at the same time, let ceilings fall on pupils. That is the contradiction the facts establish, with no need to say more.

And the dead, in all of this

While eyes are being gouged out and the poor wrung dry, there are those who never make it out. The table, unvarnished:

Young Black, Maghrebi and African people die at the hands of the police. And justice, that grand lady so quick to punish pickpockets, never finds anything to object to when it comes to police officers and corpses. A suspended sentence, an acquittal, a dismissal, an out-of-court settlement, a reclassification that avoids the word « murder ». French justice does not see everything — it sees above all what suits it.

The statistical table, by origin

Out of 30 deaths: 21 are of Maghrebi, sub-Saharan African, Asian or Turkish origin. More than two-thirds. And among the 4 « French », how many faces from the well-to-do districts? The statistic is damning: the French police kill non-whites first. This is not an opinion; it is an addition — and addition does not lie.

The IGPN, the police of the police that never punishes

In France, there is a body supposed to oversee the police: the IGPN, the General Inspectorate of the National Police — the « police of the police ». Its 2025 annual report has just come out: we learn that fatal shootings are falling and corruption cases are rising. But we do not learn the one thing that matters: how many police officers have been convicted for the death of a man.

The answer is in the table above. Out of 24 deaths in 40 years, almost no conviction. A suspended sentence (Koumé), acquittals (Dieng), a dismissal (Traoré), investigations that never end (Nahel, Souheil, Diarra). The IGPN investigates, the IGPN reports, the IGPN closes cases. The police of the police protects the police. That is its function.

And this is where the latent racism reveals itself — not through an insult, but through the facts: the dead are Black, Maghrebi, African, Chinese, Turkish — and their presumed killers are, almost always, free. Had these 24 dead been police officers, French justice would have turned out differently. But they are young people from the banlieues, undocumented migrants, « foreigners ». So the IGPN closes cases, justice whitewashes, and the table grows longer. There is the racism: not in a word, but in a column that stays empty.

The conclusion

There is the whole system: gouged-out eyes in the name of the Enlightenment, grenades in the name of order, an algorithm in the name of merit, and deaths in the name of nothing at all. The gardener sowed fear, terror and horror — and the harvest is faithful to the sowing. Macron's France is a French formal garden: magnificent from afar, and strewn, up close, with bodies that no one counts.

📚 BIBLIOGRAPHY (rule no. 19)

1. Le Temps, « Why the French police is one of the only ones to use LBDs so much » — https://www.letemps.ch/monde/france/pourquoi-la-police-francaise-est-une-des-seules-a-tant-utiliser-dans-des-manifestations-les-polemiques-lbd-fabriques-en-suisse

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⚠️ Published reservations. (1) The facts are reported by the French press; the full list is in the sources. (2) Some origins are reported by the press, not officially confirmed. (3) The article attacks the remarks and their political author, not a people.