"No justice without police, stop the laxity!"
It's been almost a month now, but still it's worth taking a belated look at one of the biggest performances of the French police in recent years and the spin around it:
On the occasion of the two French cops killed at the end of April and the beginning of May, the police union and others mobilised under the slogan "Paid to serve, not to die" for a demonstration in Paris in front of the National Assembly on 19th of May, in which no less than 35,000 cops from all over the country took part. They demanded better equipment, higher penalties for "criminals" and more power in the hands of the executive ("The problem of the police is the judiciary"). Violence against the police has doubled in France in the last 20 years, the two killings within a few days highlight this. Now, all the errand boys of the bourgeoisie, from the conservative right-wing parties to the allegedly socialist and communist bourgeois parties, have gathered around the cops to support them in their plea for more powers and legal support in the aim of their untouchability. The more the contradictions come to a head, and even more so now during the economic crisis, the more difficult it becomes for the bourgeois parties to make credible their hypocrisy of democracy and their alleged obligation to the people to serve them. Instead, they show their true character and their true interests. Because, all bourgeois parties serve the oppressors, the bourgeoisie, the imperialists. Whether specifically to a particular group of these or, as in each case, to the whole exploiting class. And when the power of these is doubted, shaken or even challenged, then they show their true reactionary grimace, and no mask, however successful, can any longer deceive us, the proletariat, the oppressed masses, the people, about their true character
