Thread by @MaddockMirror

There is something that stinks about the lies and smears of the French Govt’s cover-up following the shameful behaviour of their police in Paris at the weekend, and suggests they PLANNED to use outlawed tactics against #LFC fans; A thread:
1/12

Listening to French Int Minister and Sports Minister double down on lies about #LFC fans, it’s as though they had STUDIED the Thatcher/South Yorks police play-book:
Fans arriving late✅
Thousands of ticketless fans✅
LFC specific threat to order✅
Attacked police✅
2/12

That’s no surprise, given Pres Macron has imitated Thatcher’s policies in many areas, including 'iron' policing. He tried to bring in tough new crowd control laws which included kettling and preventing police being filmed in 2020, allowing more brutal treatment of protestors
3/12

Those policies were kicked out by lawmakers as unlawful as they were considered too brutal, & not proportionate, but extreme violence has cont. against peaceful protesters from quasi-military police the CRS, and is most violent in Paris under notorious police chief Lallement
4/12

Interestingly, the Macron regime also pressed to be allowed to consider football fans as ‘protesters’ under certain circumstances, and have often been accused of creating violence with a vicious approach to policing matches, including this season’s French Cup final.
5/12

Like Thatcher - and increasingly across Europe with Govts extending police powers - Macron tries to control legitimate protest with the implied threat of state violence. Those which face most police brutality are demonstrators, inner city minorities...and football fans
6/12

The UK has actually followed Macron’s lead with some violent treatment of peaceful protesters, after extending policing laws (PCSC bill), but in France, it has led to huge domestic pressure on Macron to open enquiries into police brutality, and a ruling against his new laws.
7/12

So what better way to test methods he was barred from introducing than on football fans, and specifically, the despised English ‘hooligans’. The narrative began long before the game - dire warnings of 200k ticketless fans in Paris, analysis stating LFC fans would storm gates
8/12

Chillingly, evidence shows beyond doubt LFC fans treated differently to RM fans. LFC illegally kettled from 20,000 down to single lane, Madrid not. LFC gates inexplicably closed, not RM. Neutral testimony states only the calm of fans stopped these methods creating a disaster
9/12

It's no leap to listen to Minister Darmanin’s lies (his repeated claim of mass fraud of 40k fake tickets was only 2,500 fakes scanned according to official figures), and hear the disdain for football fans. He justified the police operation as a success “because no one died”
10/12

So the French govt & police had the perfect opportunity to test vicious methods they've tried hard to introduce domestically, on a football demographic they felt had no voice, and they created conditions to use them, with illegal - and life-threatening - policing tactics.
11/12

Then they lied & lied & lied with impunity afterwards, with disgusting establishment arrogance. It is time to stand up against these liars. In France and here in the UK. All of us, not just LFC fans. It is time to fight back against this horrific abuse of power.
12/12

Some interesting takes touching on all this here:

jacobin.com/2022/05/champi…

And here:

novaramedia.com/2022/06/02/foo…