A Maoist Summer Festival

As a group of drowsy tourists left the palatial white casino in the Channel resort of Deauville early one morning last week, they were startled to see a $25,000 Lamborghini sports car in flames on the street outside. Near by were some Maseratis, a Ferrari, a Jaguar and an Iso Rivolta freshly daubed with bright red hammers and sickles.

Not far from that scene, the current battle cry of France's increasingly aggressive young Maoists was scrawled on a wall: "Pas de vacances pour les riches"--no vacations for the rich. A day after the Deauville raid, the Maoists threw a Molotov cocktail and started a small fire at a hotel in La Baule on the Brittany coast. On Bastille Day, they slashed hundreds of tires in Lourdes near the shrine of Bernadette.

Last winter and spring, the French Maoists firmly established themselves on the outer fringes of the lunatic left with a series of riots, bomb attacks and a daring caviar and foie gras heist in broad daylight at Fauchon, the epicures' haul grocery of Paris. Next, one of their leaders, Alain Geismar, 26, advised that they make it a "hot summer for the bourgeoisie." Shortly before he was hauled off to jail for inciting riots, Geismar made a tape recording in which he urged his comrades to camp in the gardens of private villas, picnic on golf greens and convert gambling casinos into nurseries for poor children.

The revolutionaries, who are estimated to number only about 2,000 in all of France, have been relatively inactive on the Cote d'Azur so far. There was no solid evidence of a connection between the Maoists and a rash of forest fires that broke out along the full length of the Riviera last week. Nonetheless, a number of resort owners met at Cannes to form a security force. In addition, Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin reinforced his riot police at the major resorts. His aim, he says, is to turn the Maoists' hot summer into "a cold summer, in a shady jail."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.