For the French government, there was a fleeting sense of relief on Sunday morning as workers in Paris and other cities hauled away charred trash bins and swept up debris after another day of disorder.
Largely peaceful protests on Saturday ended in the evening with clashes between the police and protesters, but as chaotic as the scenes were, they did not escalate into the wholesale arson and looting that engulfed the country a week earlier. A fortified police presence and widespread arrests kept a lid on vandalism, if not preventing it altogether.
Yet the respite could be short-lived. The huge turnout for the demonstrations — 410,000 people nationwide, according to the interior ministry; 800,000, according to the union organizers — suggested that, far from flagging, the protest movement was gaining momentum. Activists called for another day of protests on Oct. 31.
France remains acutely on edge. The killing of a young man in a shooting spree in a suburb of Paris on Friday has only added to the tensions. The authorities have not fully identified the assailant, who was arrested and is awaiting charges. President Emmanuel Macron of France denounced the shooting as a “racist terrorist attack” and described it as a “turning point” for the country.
French politics, too, may be nearing a fateful transition. On Sunday, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the main far-right party, was scheduled to officially begin her campaign to succeed Mr. Macron as president next spring. The unrest has buoyed her prospects, as she has promised to restore law and order and condemned Mr. Macron for what she says is an ineffectual response.
Other critics accused the government of using heavy-handed tactics to suppress the protests on Saturday. Local authorities refused to allow several rallies and, in Paris, changed the route of the main demonstration at the last minute, so that protesters were pushed from the center of the city to its southwestern periphery.
The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, blamed the violence on Saturday evening on “ultraleft” activists, repeating a charge the government has made since the unrest began in France’s high schools last month. But there were signs that the government’s argument was wearing thin, especially given the swelling size of the protests, which now include union members, public workers and protesters who were part of the “Yellow Vest” movement, which convulsed France from 2018 to 2020.
Far-left leaders deny they are fomenting the unrest, and they are now joined by skeptical leaders from the center left as well. The Socialist mayors of Paris and Marseille have aimed their criticism not at far-right agitators but at deeper problems that they say are a legacy of Mr. Macron’s nine years in power.
“Events are conspiring to boost Le Pen and distract from her problems and failures,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst who specializes in Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. He told clients last week that he now expected Ms. Le Pen to win the election, a shift from his view that a centrist candidate would edge her out in the second round of France’s two-round system.
“The centrist candidates are being dragged down by association with Macron,” Mr. Rahman said. While this could change again, he said, “As things stand, everything seems to favor radical change and Le Pen.”
The mood at a two-day congress of Ms. Le Pen’s party, the National Rally, in Orléans, south of Paris, was confident, even jubilant. Even the protests outside were peaceful. Manja Randriamihamina, 18, a high-school student from near Paris, said she had attended the gathering because it was “necessary to represent the youth.”
What attracted her to the National Rally, she said, was the party’s education platform, which emphasizes core subjects like French and mathematics. While Ms. Randriamihamina said she sympathized with some of the students who have been protesting against the education system, she bridled at what she said was their appropriation of other causes, like the plight of the Palestinians or the French far-left party, France Unbowed.
“We should focus on problems here in France,” said Ms. Randriamihamina, who traveled to Orléans on a bus chartered by the National Rally.
That same frustration, though with a different focus, ran through a demonstration of left-wing critics of the far-right party elsewhere in Orléans. Many expressed outrage over last week’s deadly shooting in the Paris suburb, Trappes, and a neighboring village, La Verrière. Though the details of what happened remain incomplete, critics claimed the violence had reflected the nativist language and anti-immigrant policies of the National Rally.
“The reality is that we are witnessing the normalization of far-right rhetoric here,” said Olivier Faure, the head of the Socialist Party. “If the far right were to win next year, it would usher in a state-sponsored xenophobic policy.”
Ali Rabeh, the left-wing mayor of Trappes, who also marched, said the shooting had whipped up “fear and anxiety.” The death toll could have been higher, he said, citing intelligence that the assailant had planned to target two mosques.
“One wonders whether, simply due to the color of one’s skin, one might be targeted on a street corner while out buying a baguette or visiting family,” Mr. Rabeh said.
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