from what i can gather, what's going on in france is not political anymore, it's organized crime. the crime syndicates might spray paint a circle a here and there as a distraction but anarchists don't support the theft of bourgeois retail goods for profit. you don't eat cell phones. that's not any sort of socialism, it's the worst kind of pirate capitalism. it's as extreme right as you get. but it's not real. this looks more like the mafia than it does like some spontaneous uprising of the extreme right. i am not infinitely familiar with the types of organized crime currently operating in france, but marseilles is apparently both the mafia hot spot in france and the epicenter of the property damage.

there's a narrative on the left to blame this kind of thing on government agitators. the term for it, agent provacateur, est en francais. it actually traces to bismarck, and the french uprisings of the 19th century. i'm sure - certain - that the government had some spies working to cause unrest to justify the clampdown, but this doesn't match the fingerprint. people are talking about masked grown men smashing through windows with specialized tools and removing equipment and specialized goods onto waiting vehicles, not dumb kids throwing rocks at storefronts. this not a starving mass and they're not stealing bread. they're not focusing on revolutionary overthrow. they're stealing phones, electronics, running shoes and ram in order to resell it. to the extent that any young people are involved in this, these are entitled, middle class kids looking to make a quick buck, not a revolutionary left. the looting was planned and organized and intended as profit-seeking behaviour. these items are going to come up for sale on ebay, etc.

the left should be supporting proper policing to clamp down on the right wing extremism responsible for much of the chaos, but the difference of scale looks to me like basic property crime and should be treated like basic property crime.