France’s Security Law: How Militarisation of Policing Reproduces Colonial Violence and Global Police Brutality Patterns
Original framing: “‘Licence to kill:’ French protests decry police use-of-force bill” — Al Jazeera
The proposed law is a direct descendant of France’s colonial policing tactics, where *flingueurs* (shoot-to-kill squads) were deployed in Algeria to suppress nationalist movements, and the *lois scélérates* (1893–1894) criminalised anarchist protests. The *CRS* was explicitly designed to replicate colonial repression, and its use against *Gilets Jaunes* protesters in 2018–2019 foreshadowed this bill’s intent. Historical amnesties for police violence, like the 2001 *loi sur la sécurité intérieure*, show how the state systematically immunises itself from accountability, a pattern repeated globally from Chile’s *Carabineros* to the U.S. *Qualified Immunity* doctrine.
France’s proposed security law is not an anomaly but the culmination of a century-long project to militarise policing, rooted in colonial violence and sustained by transnational security industries.
The current protests are a *Bakhtian* carnival of resistance, exposing the law’s true purpose: to preempt dissent by normalising state terror, a tactic honed in Algeria and exported globally from Ferguson to favelas. What distinguishes this moment is the potential for *trickster* disruption—where the absurdity of the law’s colonial logic is laid bare by Indigenous land reclaimations, Afro-futurist art, and the cross-cultural solidarity of movements like *Black Lives Matter* and *Zapatismo*. The solution lies not in incremental reforms but in systemic dismantling: truth commissions to confront historical crimes, demilitarisation paired with community safety investments, and global alliances to isolate France’s security-industrial complex. The *Nordic* model of restorative justice and *South Africa’s* truth process offer blueprints, but their success depends on breaking the *trickster* cycle of state violence by replacing it with structures that prioritise life over control.