Minors and Machetes: France’s Deadly New Normal

As usual, the press remains "dishonest about the exact motives of the murderers and their socio-ethnic background", because they're racist jihadists!

From The European Conservative

By Hélène de Lauzun, PhD

31% of alleged perpetrators of armed robberies are aged 13 to 17 and 57% of homicides committed by minors involve use of a knife.

As the trial opens for the man accused of stabbing young Matisse to death on April 24th last year, the case is one in a series of crimes that have become symbols for a disturbing trend in France. A new report submitted to the government highlights the sharp rise in attacks with bladed weapons, many committed by increasingly younger perpetrators—some of them minors. The authorities seem completely powerless to stop this dramatic trend. 

The murders of teenagers killed with bladed weapons have made headlines in France several times in recent months: mundane stories of provocation, dirty looks, and phone thefts degenerating into savage murders with knives or sometimes even machetes. Faced with the scale of the phenomenon, Prime Minister François Bayrou has commissioned a special report entitled “Minors—Bladed Weapons.”

The report concludes that there is “increasingly armed juvenile violence.” According to figures from 2024, 31% of alleged perpetrators of armed robbery are minors aged 13 to 17. In addition, a knife is involved in 57% of homicides committed by minors.

Beyond the numbers, the report offers a series of recommendations aimed at preventing the violence from escalating further.

But the proposed solutions focus on addressing the problem after it has taken root—regulating access to weapons, imposing harsher penalties. The underlying approach points toward tighter state control, including monitoring of social media and expanded video surveillance. But whether it is a question of acting before or after the crime, the report does not question the motives or the reasons for the dramatic brutalisation of French society. Why are more and more young people resorting to violence in ways unheard of just a few years ago?

The loss of moral and educational values is obviously not mentioned. Furthermore, the report remains strangely silent on the profile of the attackers. When the murders of Thomas in Crépol and Elias in Paris were revealed, the press remained surprisingly discreet, not to say dishonest, about the exact motives of the murderers and their socio-ethnic background.

In the case of Thomas’ murder in Crépol, who was the victim of a raid by gangs of young people of immigrant origin who came to a village ball to “attack white people,” the cover-up of the anti-white racist motive for the crime was the subject of a media and judicial scandal that the victim’s relatives are not likely to forget.

Recently, the mother of 15-year-old Elias, who was killed with an axe in the middle of Paris after having his phone stolen, published an open letter in Le Figaro to express her anger. She accuses the media of “not having the honesty to write the words ‘machete’ and ‘axe,’ preferring to minimise the act by talking about a knife.”

Today, with the publication of this new report, many French people are echoing the words of Elias’s mother: “I am waiting for answers and I see nothing coming.”