You don’t have to “imagine” their colonial brutality. There are entire photo archives in which they document themselves doing unspeakable things, especially in Algeria.
You are witnessing a complete breakdown of the fiber of French society. This is unprecedented by any comparable standards.
The level of brutality is unlike anything I have seen or witnessed in my life time, or read about in books, about peace time Europe.
How did we get to this?
When you see the brutality that France is inflicting or pitting on its own people, you can only imagine how horrific it was in colonial Africa.