Police violence and the state: The negotiation of the boundaries between legitimated and illegitimate police violence in the context of the gilets jaunes protests

Abstract: The French gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protest movement, sparked by a planned carbon fuel tax in 2018 is marked by numerous injuries and mutilations of protesters by police, and characterised by a shift towards a more confrontational protest policing strategy. Viewing protest policing and police violence as interlinked with political processes, this thesis explores the question of how the boundaries between sanctioned and unsanctioned police violence are (re-)negotiated in the intersections of law (enforcement) and politics in the specific context of the gilets jaunes movement. The analysis of public government discourse on the protests and their policing through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s critique of violence and Hannah Arendt’s theory on violence and power, and using a Critical Discourse Analysis, reveals a twofold discourse. References to democratic debate and a distinction between violent and non-violent protesters suggests an effort to secure and regain the government’s power whose loss is marked by the gilets jaunes’ contestation. Meanwhile, a denial of the existence of police violence and the emphasis of a threat to the state through the extra-legal violence of protesters forms the context in which the coexistence of law-making and law-preserving violence within the institution police are reaffirmed and legitimised. This process is then further institutionalised through two widely debated, controversial laws: the so-called loi anticasseurs, and the so-called loi sécurité globale.