The repression of France’s gilets jaunes movement showed the violent side of French policing. In a year of protests, at least twenty-four people lost an eye, five had a hand torn off, and one elderly woman was killed by a tear gas grenade. She was a victim of so-called “nonlethal” weapons — the assorted flash-balls, rubber bullets, and grenades whose use as tools of crowd control maimed dozens of demonstrators across France.

While French police are taking on an increasingly authoritarian guise — with Emmanuel Macron’s government effectively banning filming of cops — such violence against protesters is hardly just a French phenomenon. Last fall, Physicians for Human Rights reported that 115 people had suffered head injuries during the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd — again thanks to the use of nonlethal weapons.

Paul Rocher is author of Gazer, mutiler, soumettre — a book on the dangers of these weapons and the politics of “gassing, maiming, and subjugating” those who protest. He spoke to Pascual Cortés and Gonzalo García-Campo about the often-lethal danger these weapons present, their role in encouraging police to resort to violence, and why they are so compatible with the neoliberal curtailing of democratic rights.