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I think this event is noteworthy enough to warrant an entry here. It primarily hit the French web about 4 days ago but the English-speaking side of the internet is catching up quickly.

The Benalla Affair refers to a young man with ties to the French government who has been captured on tape beating up protesters during the May Day demonstrations in France this year.
Newspaper Le Monde was the first to report on the case and to publish the incriminating video., on July 18th.
This case is underlining the fact that private militias may be hired by official western "civilized" governments (such as France in this case), in addition to the police, to contain, control and most of the time use excessive force against demonstrators.

It became a major embarrassment for the Macron administration with still ongoing reactions as of today.

Thoughts?

Yeah, I think this need a entry too.
If we think at it, that a 4 in 1 scandal: gratuitous violence, usurpation of functions, out-of-law operative group (like in the dirty times of the Gaullist SAC) and cover-up.
And it's happening at the time where the constitution is reformed…

As a followup, it seems that social media (Facebook in particular but Twitter as well) are censoring links about the affair, deleting many Benalla/Maron related posts (In french). It's especially true for the parodic website NordPresse.
For now, it seems that the deleted posts are claimed to be either parodies or "fake news", as part of the antiFake News struggle by Facebook, I assume.

Yep, definitely keeping an eye on it. Especially since it's getting an intense political aspect (Interior Minister Gerard Collomb was summoned by the law commission of the National Assembly and the Senate for explaination of his role in this case). And the Internet / social media reactions are already very present in the french interwebs.

I'm currently collecting material for an entry, I may post it within the next days.

Also, After the backlash caused by the alleged NordPresse censorship, Facebook apologized for the situation and claimed it was all just a technical bug…

Breaking: Banella appeared on French national television tonight (on TF1, no less!) to explain his version of the story, stating that he didn't use excessive violence at all, as more videos were released.