France Prepares 70,000 Police for More Protests After Month of Unrest, Looting and Arrests

French authorities said they plan to deploy 70,000 police officers for further demonstrations in Paris, aiming to prevent a repeat of the destruction and looting seen the previous weekend, after a month of protests across France. The unrest began with students angry about conditions at their schools and the quality of education. It has since widened to include activists and labor unions protesting issues from education funding to inflation. Some demonstrations turned violent, with looting, burned buildings, attacks on police stations and thousands of arrests. On Saturday, thousands marched in Orléans, southwest of Paris, to protest what they called fascism, while other demonstrators gathered in the capital. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, said this week that France is caught between violence and powerlessness. She said voters could choose a path of authority and security in six months, ahead of next year's presidential election.

Slate, on the left, treats the unrest as a political warning. It compares France with the 1960s United States and argues that violent protest tends to help right-wing politicians, as with Richard Nixon in 1968. It says the riots threaten to help Le Pen win the presidency, and it features her words and her positions on immigration, hijabs and the European Union. Fox News, on the right, leads with Brivael Le Pogam, CEO of Argil AI, who said on "The Faulkner Focus" that the unrest shows the dead end of socialism and blamed decades of left-wing policy. Fox adds the police deployment, the Orléans march and the arrest figures. Both sides describe the same unrest, looting and student origins. They differ on the cause and meaning: Slate focuses on electoral consequences, Fox on ideology. Alternative and independent outlets had not reported this story at the time of writing, while left-leaning and right-leaning outlets had.