The Paris massacre of 1961 occurred on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians. After 37 years of denial and censorship of the press, in 1998 the French government finally acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of 100 to 300 victims. Death was due to heavy-handed beating by the police, as well as mass drownings, as police officers threw demonstrators into the river Seine.
There were multiple episodes of violence between French police and the French Algerian community during the Algerian War. The police department was racist on an institutional level and terrorized Algerians with violence; pro-liberation Algerians targeted and killed police with bombing campaigns.
It was in this context that the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon (a former Nazi collaborator later convicted of crimes against humanity) ordered police to kill Algerians, insisting that they would be protected from any consequences.
Under these orders, the French National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians on October 17th, beating dozens to death and throwing people into the Seine river, where many drowned.
Forty years after the massacre, on 17 October 2001, Bertrand Delanoë, the Socialist Mayor of Paris, put up a plaque in remembrance of the massacre on the Pont Saint-Michel. How many demonstrators were killed is still unclear. In the absence of official estimates, the plaque commemorating the massacre reads, "In memory of the many Algerians killed during the bloody repression of the peaceful demonstration of 17 October 1961"
October 17, 1961: A massacre of Algerians in the heart of Paris 
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Is therapy an option? Medication? I was in a really rough place this time last year and now I'm in a much better place
I'm in therapy and have learned some tactics to escape the spirals.
I tried sertraline a couple of years ago and had very serious side effects (including auditory hallucinations and severe sexual dysfunction) and have been very much scared off of psychiatric medication by that experience, but I do think about setting up another appointment sometimes.
Maybe give it another go. It really helped me just turn down the volume on my anxiety enough that I could work on it. I'm tapering off it slowly now
Yeah. I'd need some pretty serious assurances that I would not have another psychotic episode, because the medicine which was supposed to turn down the Dark Thoughts™ actually gave them a megaphone and left me in a pretty dangerous situation. I also had to wait almost two weeks to talk to my psychiatrist again even though I told them immediately what was going on, and when we finally spoke he just suggested I was making it all up and gave me a different script. It was a real turn-off to say the least, and incredibly traumatic to say a bit more.
But yeah I just don't think the depths I am able to reach are normal or healthy and I need some kind of help pulling out of them.
Oh boy I can certainly understand your reluctance