Paris riot police to charge Halloween student protest as ghosts

The Paris police prefecture has ordered its riot squads to spend Saturday in Halloween costume. Officers will patrol the student protests dressed as ghosts, skeletons and, for the six most senior commanders, a pumpkin. The prefecture said this would level the playing field now that students have promised to march in masks.

I have sat through this film before. Paris in 1968 had cobblestones. Paris in 2018 had yellow vests. Paris in 2026 has an armoured water cannon crewed by a man in a bedsheet. Progress, of a sort, if you squint.

A spokesman set out the thinking on Wednesday. If everyone is disguised, nobody can be identified, and if nobody can be identified, nobody can be blamed. He called it the first French public-order doctrine written entirely in the passive voice.

"The baton will be swung. Someone will be struck. Ideally that person will be a protester, but we accept that on a night like this a certain fog descends."

The students have responded by announcing they will come dressed as police. Both sides now expect to spend the evening politely frisking each other outside the Sorbonne until the last metro leaves.

It will end as these things end. A few cars will burn, everyone will go home, and both sides will insist that this time was different.