A bizarre phrase circulating among French school students has become a symbol of Gen Z’s distrust of the police, blending online humour, accusations of racism and ridicule of the authorities’ attempts to understand youth protest culture.
As footage of vandalism across Paris and other French cities dominated the news, another story was unfolding on the placards carried by demonstrators. Among the slogans appearing at school student protests was an unlikely phrase: “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres” — roughly, “In the name of God, it’s darkness.”
The expression has become an internet in-joke and a recurring feature of the demonstrations. Even French young people fluent in street slang were initially puzzled by its origins.
The phrase first circulated on Snapchat as a screenshot of a Telegram group chat used by students organising school blockades. A participant calling himself Mamadou — a popular West African male name — suddenly appeared in the conversation.
“Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres!” he wrote, before asking when the blockade would take place and declaring that the group would smash everything up. He ended with a request to be added to the group and two Algerian flags.
The other participants appeared not to recognise him. The message quickly spread online, prompting a suspicion that the author was a police officer attempting to infiltrate the student movement by imitating youth slang.
The combination of religious language, references to violence and Algerian flags struck many observers as an awkward caricature of young people from immigrant backgrounds. The phrase was widely mocked as an example of an outsider trying too hard to sound like one of the group.
The identity of “Mamadou” has not been established, however, and there is no confirmation that the person behind the message was a police officer.
Turning the joke against the police
Despite the uncertainty surrounding its origins, the phrase has taken on a life of its own, becoming a protest slogan that reflects how some young demonstrators view the police — and how they believe the authorities perceive them.
“The police have understood nothing about secondary school students,” student protester Marwa told French newspaper Le Monde, explaining why she had put the phrase on her placard. She described officers as both foolish and racist.
Linguist Laélia Véron, writing for Le Nouvel Obs, argues that the expression caricatures young people from disadvantaged suburbs with immigrant backgrounds. By adopting it themselves, protesters turn the perceived stereotype back on the authorities.
The slogan carries two messages, according to Véron: an accusation of racism and a mocking suggestion that intelligence services are too incompetent to understand the young people they are trying to monitor.
The phrase has also attracted attention from across France’s political spectrum. The far-right weekly Valeurs Actuelles described it as an anti-police slogan used particularly by anti-capitalists and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Its popularity has also fuelled parody. French comedian Pierre-Antoine Valade, appearing in a satirical report for the left-wing newspaper L’Humanité, went out on the street posing as an officer and approached young people using the now-famous phrase.
The sketch prompted a reaction from Matthieu Valet, a former police commissioner who is now a European Parliament member for the far-right National Rally party. Valet accused the newspaper of spreading fake news and insisted that the person in the video was not a police officer. He later deleted the post on X.
The episode illustrates how humour and online references have become part of the language of France’s student protests. A phrase whose origins remain uncertain has evolved into a shared joke — and a way for young demonstrators to challenge authority, mock police tactics and express their distrust of the institutions watching them.
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