The scenes from Paris this week would have made Gibbon weep. Not for the shattered glass or the burned-out cars, but for the sheer predictability of it all. A Champions League football match, a few thousand thugs, and suddenly the French Republic looks like a latter-day Rome beset by Visigoths. Hundreds arrested, dozens injured, and the usual chorus of politicians denouncing 'unacceptable violence' as if they had just discovered the concept. But let us not mistake a riot for a revolution. This was not the storming of the Bastille; it was the tantrum of a civilisation that has lost its nerve.
Consider the historical parallel. The late Roman Empire saw a curious phenomenon: bread and circuses replaced civic virtue. The mob was placated with entertainment, but when the entertainment turned sour, the mob turned savage. Modern Europe has done the same. We have substituted national pride with football tribalism, and then we act surprised when the tribalism spills into the streets. The Champions League, once a symbol of European unity, is now a canvas for our collective failure. We have built a continent of spectators, not citizens. And spectators, when bored or aggrieved, break things.
The security response was predictable: tear gas, water cannons, a few hundred arrests. But such measures are the aspirin of a dying patient. They treat the symptom, not the disease. The disease is a profound decadence, a loss of any shared moral vocabulary. France, like much of Europe, has spent decades deconstructing its own identity. It has apologised for its history, diluted its culture, and now it cannot even manage a football match without descending into chaos. The irony is exquisite: a nation that prides itself on universal values cannot keep order in its own capital.
What we are witnessing is not a security failure but a spiritual one. The rioters are not merely criminals; they are the logical outcome of a society that has abandoned the idea of authority. When every institution is mocked, every tradition is suspect, and every boundary is porous, the only language left is that of raw force. The police are overwhelmed not because they are incompetent, but because they are asked to hold back a tide that the culture itself has unleashed.
Some will say I am being too harsh. They will point to the efficient arrests, the quick restoration of order. But order without principle is mere suppression. The real question is: what is France willing to defend? Not just its stadiums, but its idea of itself. If the answer is nothing, then expect more of these episodes. Expect the rot to spread from the stadiums to the suburbs to the capital itself. Europe is not falling to barbarians from without; it is imploding from within.
The Champions League riot is a microcosm. It is a test that Europe is failing. The question now is whether we will learn from it or simply wait for the next match, the next riot, the next round of arrests. I suspect the latter. We are too comfortable for courage, too decadent for discipline. And so the circus continues, until one day there is no more bread to go around.
