In an interview ten years ago, renowned essayist and political journalist Eric Zemmour warned of the barbaric violence arriving in French society as a result of increasing migration. Unfortunately, he proved to be right as attacks against police officers and other public-sector employees have become commonplace by now. A few days ago a bus driver was badly beaten by gang members in broad daylight.

French conservative weekly Valeurs actuelles has published footage from ten years ago showing an RTL programme where renowned French essayist and political journalist Eric Zemmour is discussing how migration would spiral into violence in French towns and the outskirts of cities.

The conversation recorded a decade ago focused on the case of a murdered student who was stabbed to death by another student at a secondary school in the town of Le Kremlin-Bicetre in Val-de-Marne departement. Reflecting on the case, Zemmour said that global migration taking place across the world will surely lead to migrants importing barbaric violence to peaceful societies that have lived without wars for a long time, and to countries that are convinced that they have adequate measures in place to contain violence.

“Today, the victim is a young man, and it will be a police officer tomorrow, while it was a teacher yesterday,” Zemmour said back then. Unfortunately, the essayist was right when he prefigured what everyday life in France will be like ten years later. By today, violence has become a daily occurance in the Western European country with police and other public-sector workers increasingly becoming targets.

Christian Rodriguez, director general of the French national gendarmerie, told publicsenat.fr that the number of physical attacks on gendarmes has increased by 76 per cent between 2010 and 2020. In 2019, 2,300 gendarmes were injured in various attacks, up 72 per cent from 2012.

An article published by RTL in January stated that 38,519 cases of violent attacks on police officers were reported in 2019 with the number of incidents growing every year. The attacks against law enforcement officers rose by 18 per cent in just two years. The data suggests that an average of more than 105 police officers were subjected to some type of attack every day in 2019.

A popular pastime for young thugs is to ensnare firefighters and police by setting cars or garbage pails ablaze in suburban areas, and then surrounding the arriving officers and attacking them with fireworks and Molotov cocktails. Ten such cases occurred around Paris in October 2019 alone.

Even French mayors cannot feel safe. Based on data provided by the interior ministry, Le Journal du Dimanche wrote that since the beginning of the year, there have been 233 attacks against mayors of cities and towns, 35 ties more than last year.

Disputes arising out of a general refusal to to wear face masks are also becoming more common. Several bus and tram drivers have been attacked because they called on their passengers to wear masks on the ride. In early July, the international press published the tragic story of a French bus driver who asked a group of boarding migrants to put on face masks, but they dragged the 59-year-old man off the vehicle and beat him so brutally that he died a few days later.

Most recently, a bus driver was beaten by a gang of youngsters in the street, although it is unclear why he was attacked. The video shows that neither the attackers, nor the driver was wearing masks.

Numbers don t lie and, according to official statistics, the number of violent crimes is on the rise in France. It appears that Eric Zemmour s words of caution from a decade ago – when he warned about the imminent aggression associated with migration – still ring true.