In France, looters have ransacked over 2000 stores

Small business owners found themselves alone against an aggressive crowd. Some of them were reported by the publication Bild. The owner of a destroyed boutique, Linda, recounts that the looters took all the merchandise and ripped the cladding off the walls: "It was like a war. It felt like everything exploded here; in 20 years, we have never experienced anything like this." Yannick, the manager of a sports goods store, notes that the rioters (mostly from disadvantaged areas) acted completely with impunity. According to him, social media had warned in advance about the escalation of violence, but the authorities ignored these signals. "They came in cars to loot and posed online with their loot because they know nothing will happen to them. There were too few police officers," he says. Footage of brutality and despair is spreading widely online. In Marseille, a young woman desperately pleaded with a masked crowd not to loot a supermarket, while in Nice, a video game store employee was knocked to the ground and brutally beaten when he tried to defend his workplace. The losses for many entrepreneurs have been fatal. Hassan, the owner of a Parisian communication salon, estimates the damage at 70,000–90,000 euros. 89-year-old tailor Carmelo Biana from Marseille is left with a devastated workshop and does not know how to keep his five employees' jobs. A new Parisian bakery, Urban Bakery Family, lost all its equipment (from the cash register to the safe and coffee machine) just 15 days after opening. In total, more than two thousand small and medium-sized businesses across the country have been damaged or destroyed. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs are anxiously awaiting the next weekend - social media is already buzzing with calls for a new large demonstration that could lead to a repeat of the riots.