Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP via Getty Images

Watching Paris gendarmes set on fire by Molotov cocktails at the end of a 31 October march to the Porte de Vincennes, in the east of the French capital, was shocking, but hardly surprising. As flames leaped around the panicking officers, agitators skilled in the art of insurrection shouted “let them burn”.

Masked and ruthless, the rioters have latched on to an anti-government protest that Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, diverted away from the city centre to this outer boundary. The Porte de Vincennes is also adjacent to the historic Red Belt of working-class industrial suburbs, dominated for decades by French Communist Party politicians who linked everything to the class struggle. Nuñez played up to this legacy after the disturbances, blaming “the ultra-left movement” for the worst of the trouble, including the “attempted murder” of his officers.…