From Gavroche to Hamza: France’s Crisis of Authority

There was a time when the fate of Paris was inextricably linked to that of Gavroche, the street urchin imagined by Victor Hugo in his masterpiece Les Misérables–mischievous, irreverent, yet driven by an instinctive generosity that made him a paradoxical embodiment of the French people. The popular hero of our time is a certain Hamza, a slightly plump teenager who walks about bare-chested and sprays passers-by with a water pistol, demands a ‘toll’ from them to cross the Canal Saint-Martin–a branch of the Seine in the north-east of the capital–insults women with obscene vulgarity, provokes the police, films each of his provocations and turns his own delinquency into a daily soap opera on TikTok.

A product of the ‘Great Replacement,’ Hamza has taken the place of Gavroche in a society that has made his rise possible. For it would be wrong to view this affair as a mere summer extravagance, made possible by the heatwaves and destined to disappear with the first cold snap, when it will be time for Hamza to add a t-shirt to his messy wardrobe. For several weeks now, this fourteen-year-old boy has been acting as a litmus test: he is bringing to light divisions that already existed, but which many preferred to ignore. He is making himself utterly unbearable, and with him, a certain ‘model’ of a multicultural society which, it must be admitted, only works in certain deranged minds.

Hamza is a star. Hamza is racking up the views. The more he spits, insults and provokes, the higher his follower count climbs. There are, of course, those for whom Hamza is merely a child, first and foremost a victim of excessive media exposure and the torrent of inevitably racist abuse that has accompanied his fame. But there are also those for whom he remains nothing but an unbearable lad, who needs, as the case may be, a good slap or a good kick up the backside. Some are in awe of him, but there are certainly far more who see him as the most striking symptom of a state that no longer knows how to enforce even the most basic rules, of a school system that no longer educates, of a justice system that no longer punishes, and of a society that seems to have given up on passing on the very meaning of authority.

Yes, Hamza is a child. This simple fact precludes any form of personal hatred towards him and demands a certain degree of restraint. But it is precisely because he is a child that the case is so worrying. If a fourteen-year-old boy can take over a public space, humiliate strangers engaging in repeated acts of provocation, with remarks of unprecedented violence, and then do it all over again day after day with total impunity, his age does not constitute a mitigating factor; on the contrary, it is a measure of the disorder in which a section of French youth is growing up.

A truly caring society never fails to discipline its children. It teaches them, sometimes harshly, that freedom does not consist in doing whatever one wishes, but in gradually coming to terms with the limits that make communal life possible. Confusing authority with brutality is an age-old mistake; confusing freedom with the absence of any constraints is a much more recent mistake, and perhaps an even more dangerous one. 

There is nothing cute about the obscenities of this boy in the throes of puberty who goes round spying on the neighbourhood women in their homes whilst they are scantily clad. A few short-sighted editorialists invoke La Guerre des Boutons (‘The War of the Buttons’), a classic of French children’s literature penned by Louis Pergaud, which recounts the terrible clashes between gangs of rural children in the 1950s. They conclude: “Hamza is their heir; such outbursts have always existed.” Except that, in Pergaud’s work, Lebrac’s misbehaviour is severely punished by exasperated parents who are determined to set their urchins straight.

This confusion largely explains the reaction of a section of the Left, which seems to believe that any criticism levelled at Hamza automatically fuels racist rhetoric. It is a well-known tactic for discrediting one’s opponent. But we must remember this basic principle: condemning behaviour does not imply condemning one’s background. Individual responsibility remains the foundation of any free society, regardless of one’s first name or skin colour.

Hamza is a convenient symbol; that is a fact. He is both the cause of France’s illness and its product. He thrives in an environment where all forms of authority have gradually weakened: that of parents, schools, the police and the justice system, but also that—more diffuse and perhaps more decisive—of public opinion.

The real novelty of our era is not juvenile delinquency. Paris has always had its share of insolent teenagers. What is new is that the humiliation of others has become a profitable spectacle. The camera that hooligans once feared has become their greatest ally. It is no longer a disturbing witness but the very reason for the act.

We live in a civilisation where visibility is tantamount to absolution. Every altercation generates millions of views. Every police custody incident fuels a public persona. Every controversy boosts one’s profile. The algorithm rewards excess with an efficiency that institutions are unable to counterbalance. Whereas previous generations feared dishonour, many today are discovering that scandal is the shortest route to recognition.

Here lies the true anthropological shift. For centuries, European societies were based less on fear of the police than on the weight of shame. Certain behaviours were avoided because they dishonoured the perpetrator in the eyes of their family, neighbourhood or loved ones. Yet this moral economy has gradually been turned on its head: what once attracted contempt now garners an audience. Fame has replaced respect and virality has taken the place of honour.

In this respect, the Canal Saint-Martin offers an almost perfect snapshot of contemporary France. It was often presented as a testing ground for the harmonious coexistence of the creative classes, working-class people, recent immigrants and bohemian bourgeoisie. To be honest, this coexistence was often based on mutual indifference rather than a genuine shared destiny. Everyone occupied their own territory and tolerated each other’s habits. People avoided conflict as long as it remained bearable. All it took was for a teenager to turn the quays into a permanent theatre of domination to reveal the fragility of this apparent balance.

The phenomenon takes on an even more disturbing dimension when one observes the digital world that revolves around this notoriety. People close to the teenager film themselves glorifying the Bataclan attacks. Hamza himself paraded down the Champs-Élysées on July 14th, calling women ‘dirty c***’. In the social media ecosystem, there are almost no symbolic boundaries left that are off-limits if crossing them promises a few thousand extra views.

The question that ultimately remains is disarmingly simple. Can a civilisation survive when it hesitates to say ‘no’ to its own children? Not out of a desire for repression, but because it knows that any true freedom requires learning where the boundaries lie. Societies rarely begin to decline when insolent teenagers appear: they are also a sign of good health. They begin to decline when they are no longer sure whether they still have the moral legitimacy to remind them that rules exist.

The Gavroche of the barricades made Parisians proud of their rebellious youth, for all time. Let us hope that Hamza’s fame will, in the eyes of history, be as fleeting as a Snapchat snapshot.