17 October: the inquiry commission opens, and the battle over the narrative with it

According to Le Monde, the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the violence of 17 October will begin its work the week of 2 November, with a hearing of Laurent Nuñez. The paper notes that the idea of such a commission won unanimous support among deputies, but that those of the Rassemblement national (the RN, the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella) have decided to boycott the proceedings, irritated at not having secured a co-rapporteur post. Le Monde describes a context of high tension. Beyond that, the dispatch says nothing about the precise toll of the violence or the full schedule of hearings: we will not invent it.

What follows is our reading, not an established fact. Over violence that, according to the very title of the commission, marked this day of mobilisation, one would expect seriousness. Instead we have first had a squabble over a post. The RN wanted a co-rapporteur seat; failing to get one, it slams the door. The avowed motive is a matter of who gets which armchair, not a question about what happened in the street. Readers may judge what that says about its concern for victims, whoever they are.

The first hearing, that of the head of public order, nonetheless sets the frame: the inquiry begins with the version of those who hold the baton and write the report. This is not a trial of intent; it is a question of structure. The police, like the courts or the budget, is not a neutral referee: it protects an order of property, even if the state remains a field of struggle where guarantees can be wrested. A parliamentary commission is one of those fields. It can establish facts, name responsibilities, open archives. It can also turn social anger into a technical file, into a doctrine of crowd control, into carefully amended recommendations.

This is where Rosa Luxemburg's question becomes useful: does a measure strengthen the confidence and power of those at the bottom, or demobilise them? A commission that produced a consensual report, applauded and then shelved, would be a reform in the narrow sense: a ceremony that manages disorder rather than illuminating it. Parliamentary theatre has a gift for this, boycott included, which supplies one more fine scene along the way.

Luxemburg did not despise the street; she saw in it a school. The demonstrators who saw, endured or filmed this 17 October do not need anyone to tell them what they lived through. The question is whether their accounts, those of the unions, the collectives, the injured, will enter the hearing room other than through the service door. That is the real test: not who sits, but who speaks, and who is believed.

We will see as early as next week whether the commission investigates violence or only its staging. One thing is certain: the account of a day of struggle is never kept under wraps for long without those who made it taking it back, out loud.