In France, the Mobs and the Muslims Instrumentalizing the Left

I just spoke to a close relative who lives in France. Neither she, nor any member of her extended family, nor any of their friends, now dare to go outside, while the noise and the violence continue, the mobs are running rampant, shops are looted, cars are set on fire, and the police try unsuccessfully to quell the packs of maddened, now mostly Muslim-led, crowds. For the first time, after having happily lived in France for 15 years and raising her sons there, she discussed the possibility of moving with her husband and children to America.

Which brings me to Andrea Widburg’s piece on the menace of these mobs to the French state and people, that you can read here: “The most terrifying image out of France (and it’s not what you think it is),” by Andrea Widburg, American Thinker, October 18, 2026:

Currently, my X feed is awash in images of the raging protests across France—the collapsing Limoges town hall, the looted stores, the ascendant Palestinian flags—even as mainstream outlets just fold the news from France into their other stories of the day, just one report among many. This dichotomy makes it hard to tell whether what’s happening is, as the media subliminally suggest, the French being French, as they’ve been periodically over the centuries, or whether we’re seeing the first domino fall, truly presaging the end of once-Christian Europe.

However, I saw one photo that was so stunning that I’m inclined to believe the latter view of events, no matter how much the media suggest that France is simply having its version of our 2020 George Floyd summer—something disruptive, costly, and (for some) deadly, but really just a blip in the life of an otherwise viable country.

Here’s the photo that stopped me in my tracks:

Google translates this as:

For me, this is the most horrifying image of this October 17:

An elderly couple stripped of everything, right in the middle of the street, left half-naked.

As if the pillaged Rolexes, Vuitton, Hermès, Dior, Sephora weren’t enough for resale.

The image that should be a wake-up call for the entire West.

The image of a so-called president who has lost control. Who has utterly failed his people….

While the riots across France were causing destruction and looting was in full swing, Emanuel Macron chose, in let-them-eat-cake, or perhaps one should say fiddling-while-Rome- burns fashion, to attend a Céline Dion concert, for which he has been properly savaged in the press. He has no idea what to do. He dare not mention the role of Muslims in these mass disruptions, because that would make him a racist and an Islamophobe.

Islam and leftism are both conquest-based faiths. Both begin by using Western norms to lever themselves into a base for violence, and then they destroy the societies that incubated them. However, Muslims, wiser than the leftist foot soldiers in the mob, don’t view leftists as their allies. They view them as their useful idiots.

Think of how Ayatollah Khomeini accepted the help of leftists in toppling the shah, and then, as soon as he took power, began to murder all of those people who had assumed that they would be able to overcome the Islamic fanatics. How wrong they were.

There are no French flags being waved at the protests in France. But there are lots of Palestinian flags being waved. Macron, meanwhile, has said: “There is no place for violence in our Republic. Those who have been destroying things, attacking prefecture offices and shops, looting even our mayoral offices, will be prosecuted and punished. To the forces of order, the guarantors of the right to protest, I convey the Nation’s support. We will together face the sowers of chaos, who try only to tear down our institutions and prevent those who wish peacefully to express their grievances from doing so.”

This is not enough. Not nearly enough. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Often have I heard that told. But who? And when?