As the situation in France continues to deteriorate, I am getting more email from readers there. I can’t vouch for their reliability, but I will pass them on with that caveat. This one is from Rich, an American living in a small town near Marseille. He is accompanying his wife who is in flight training school in Istres:
The unrest in Paris the last week+ has given me concern not just because we have good friends stationed there, but for what it might spark here in the south. This region is very charged, and of course, is the home of MANY more immigrants. Anyway, a la une de Le Monde ce matin is a report that the unrest has indeed begun to spread into Provence with rioting (car burnings, etc)in Dijon,Seine-Maritime, and Bouches-du-Rhone. Martigues is not a hot spot, but I am close enough to worry. The local paper La Provence only posts the front page, so it is useless to check. Also, looking at that, there is nothing really mentioned: http://www.laprovence-presse.fr/
La Provence may not be reporting the spreading violence, but CNN and many others are.
Violence was reported in some 20 communities around Paris and across the country, including areas near Rouen in northern France, Dijon in the east and Marseille in the south.
As for Paris itself, according to the Timesonline:The poor suburbs of Paris were set ablaze in the worst of eight consecutive nights of rioting, with 500 cars torched and a gym and primary school razed.
UPDATE: Shrinkwrapped has more.
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70 Comments
1. Jamie Irons:The New York Times finally publishes an article on the intifada (annoying registration required), but not on the front page (it’s in the international section).
The rioting, we learn, is due to “the frustration of young men who have no work and see little hope for the future.”
Though we learn elsewhere that the rioters shout “God is great!” as they torch everything in site, nowhere in its article does the NYT use the word “Muslim.”
I wonder why?
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 6:56 am 2. Mike Lief:The French authorities will not use overwhelming force as long as the rioters confine themselves to their own neighborhoods. In this they’re not unlike the LAPD’s handling of the riots in South Central.
I think the political calculus is sound, in light of the racial-grievance industry. “These people want to destroy their house? A pox on ‘em, so long as they keep the madness away from us.”
Easier to tut-tut over the destruction and mutter about root causes, rather than deal with the aftermath of cops (or flics) beating the crap out of blacks/Muslims.
Unless the riots enter Paris proper, or any other tourist-rich environs, I think they’ll continue at a simmer.
Nov 4, 2005 - 7:12 am 3. Jamie Irons:Mike,
You may well be right, but there is an important element in this situation that differs from the South Central riots of the early nineties here in the US.
The population from which the rioters come is far more alienated from, and isolated from, the rest of the country than has been the case in even the worst of our ghettoes. And the “policy” of the “leaders,” such as they are, of that community, is if anything to increase that isolation and alienation more and more. True, we had and have our Black nationalists, but they were and are a fringe element.
The French cannot allow the banlieus (sp?) to become a separate pseudo-state. See Amir Taheri, whom I cite in my little blog entry:
Nov 4, 2005 - 7:44 am 4. Jamie Irons:Mike,
You may well be right, but there is an important element in this situation that differs from the South Central riots of the early nineties here in the US.
The population from which the rioters come is far more alienated from, and isolated from, the rest of the country than has been the case in even the worst of our ghettoes. And the “policy” of the “leaders,” such as they are, of that community, is if anything to increase that isolation and alienation more and more. True, we had and have our Black nationalists, but they were and are a fringe element.
The French cannot allow the banlieus (sp?) to become a separate pseudo-state. See Amir Taheri, whom I cite in my little blog entry:
Nov 4, 2005 - 7:44 am 5. Mike Lief:Okay, having read Amir Taheri’s piece, I think the French may be at the tipping point. It sounds like the Muslims are pushing for de facto self-rule; the Republic cannot allow this challenge to go unanswered.
Taheri makes the point that the French thought their opposition to the Iraq war would buy them praise and protection from the Muslims.
It seems it has earned them contempt instead.
Interesting times.
Nov 4, 2005 - 7:47 am 6. timmah!:“…the Republic cannot allow this challenge to go unanswered.”
What is the answer? From the CNN link:
He said parents were determined to keep their teenagers at home to prevent unrest.
That’s it, no more rioting! You’re grounded!
“People have had enough. People are afraid. It’s time for this to stop,” AP quoted Gaudron as saying.
Off to the timeout chair!
“I will not accept organized gangs making the law in some neighborhoods. I will not accept having crime networks and drug trafficking profiting from disorder,” Villepin said…
Zut alors, he’s going to write a book!
“Zones without law cannot exist in the republic,” Chirac said.
Try again, Jacques.
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:02 am 7. In Vino Veritas:Brookheiser points this out: except for the two youths whose deaths started this whole thing, no one has been reported killed as a result of this riot. Compare with the Rodney King riots, where 50 people died, or various sporting championship “celebrations” that occur in this country every year.
Taheri makes the point that the French thought their opposition to the Iraq war would buy them praise and protection from the Muslims
These riots have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the disenfranchised poor in France. I realize, of course, that the only reason this has held your attention is that it feeds the Right’s narrative of Muslim perfidy, but no intelligent commentator is referring to this as some continuation of the Intifada.
A flash point (the death of two youths, electrocuted because they beleived the police was chasing them) has ignited long standing tensions among France’s poor immigrant community. This country is no stranger to events like this: LA, Howard Beach, Watts, Detroit. The fact that the French rioters are Muslim is irrelevant.
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:15 am 8. Jamie Irons:Dear Mr. In Vino…
You write:
The fact that the French rioters are Muslim is irrelevant.
Mr. Taheri records: With cries of “God is great,” bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee.
Now, when the people of South Central Los Angeles, to take one example close to home, rioted in the early nineties, most were probably (nominally, and perhaps lapsed) Christian. To my knowledge, none of then shouted phrases from The Book of Common Prayer as they set things ablaze. Even if they were fervent Christians, as some may have been, they did not (to my knowledge) call attention to this fact as they broke the law.
In the case of the LA riots, the religion of the rioters was truly “irrelevant,” both to them and to us.
You are free to continue pretending that this is the case in the current riots in France. In fact, I encourage you to do so, as it will permit you to remain, for as long as possible, as comfortable as possible.
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:42 am 9. Jamie Irons:Dear Mr. In Vino…
You write:
The fact that the French rioters are Muslim is irrelevant.
Mr. Taheri records: With cries of “God is great,” bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee.
Now, when the people of South Central Los Angeles, to take one example close to home, rioted in the early nineties, most were probably (nominally, and perhaps lapsed) Christian. To my knowledge, none of then shouted phrases from The Book of Common Prayer as they set things ablaze. Even if they were fervent Christians, as some may have been, they did not (to my knowledge) call attention to this fact as they broke the law.
In the case of the LA riots, the religion of the rioters was truly “irrelevant,” both to them and to us.
You are free to continue pretending that this is the case in the current riots in France. In fact, I encourage you to do so, as it will permit you to remain, for as long as possible, as comfortable as possible.
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:42 am 10. Jamie Irons:I apologize for tow double posts. I am having trouble with the execrable TypeCast.
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:47 am 11. Jamie Irons:I apologize for two double posts.
PIMF (Grrrr!!!)
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:49 am 12. thibaud:I seriously doubt that Islamism or religious demands are driving the behavior we’re seeing now in the cites, the nightmarish housing projects surrounding Paris’s northern edge. If Islam were the driver, then we’d see attacks on jews and synagogues and jewish cemeteries. Instead, we’re seeing attacks on property– in best US slum fashion, attacks on their own neighbors’ property, their own schools etc.
The root, and the branch, of the problem is that France like most continental European nations (and many Britons as well) continues to conceive of national identity mainly in racial terms. The mere notion of hyphenated Europeans is absurd: you’ll never hear the French or Germans referring to “african-frenchmen” or “turko-germans” because in the European mind, an african or a Turk simply cannot become a European.
Yes, yes, I know that the rhetoric of the mision civilisatrice of France mandates that the ex-colonials be treated under law as proper Frenchmen, but in reality, the blacks and beurs are not considered really French and will never gain power or significant wealth or status outside of the entertainment and sports industries. There’s not a single French politician, executive or leading intellectual or media figure of african origin.
The kids in the projects know this. Lacking their grandparents’ memories of hunger, war and misery in Africa, and lacking any real job opportunities, they don’t have either the work ethic or the incentives to do other than sit on their fesses or run drugs.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:11 am 13. jedrury:One may fairly conclude from the many varied news reports that Sarkozy?s statements about an ?organized? element to these French riots is true. As minister of interior, he obviously knows from whence he speaks given the lax French laws on governmental surveillance and wiretapping. The solution is more complex than rounding up the village elders at a community center for a gripe session, grounding the 18 year old car bombers in on Friday night or setting up a jobs program. One predictable governmental response will be as the Dutch have done in the aftermath of last year?s slaying of Theo Van Gogh: shut down Muslim immigration. It remains to be seen if the French will limit and deport radical imams as the British,. When a country is dealing with potentially fanatical true believers inducing violence, the imagination of law enforcement can be limited.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:15 am 14. In Vino Veritas:Never thought I’d say this, but I agree 100% with thibaud’s post. That is not to ignore the fact that the cancer of Islamism will take root (and is currently taking root) in the festering slums of France, perhaps analogous to Black Pantherism or Nation of Islam militantcy establishing itself in frustrated black communities during the Civil Rights era. However, Islamism is an effect, not casue, of these riots.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:19 am 15. Knucklehead:IVV,
Also from the Amir Tahiri article:
[Cultural and economic alienation], in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid.
Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the “millet” system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist “hijab” while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.
The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced “places of sin,” such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.
A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.
“All we demand is to be left alone,” said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local “emirs” engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.
How does one square “[t]he fact that the French rioters are Muslim is irrelevant” with an “emir” trying to persuade the French to negotiate an end to the hostilities with “a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood”? Just curious.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:19 am 16. Knucklehead:IVV,
Also from the Amir Tahiri article:
[Cultural and economic alienation], in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid.
Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the “millet” system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist “hijab” while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.
The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced “places of sin,” such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.
A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.
“All we demand is to be left alone,” said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local “emirs” engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.
How does one square “[t]he fact that the French rioters are Muslim is irrelevant” with an “emir” trying to persuade the French to negotiate an end to the hostilities with “a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood”?
The “messages” coming out of the “difficult neighborhoods” does not seem to be “you must make the whole of French life and culture available to us” but, rather, “we are not interested in French life or culture and we want our life and culture here and now without interference from the French.” This is not a demand for inclusion or equal rights. It is a demand for a seperate life and culture and the people who would negotiate this demand with the French authorities are apparently Islamic leaders.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:32 am 17. Knucklehead:I have lost track of the secret incantation to avoid double posts. Roger, can this be repaired?
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:34 am 18. thibaud:Vino – please avoid facile US analogies. The European attitude toward race and national identity is completely foreign to our culture, history and politics and will not permit comparisons to the US experience of race and ethnicity.
I pity the Europeans. Damned tough to navigate a global economy with a 19c racial mentality.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:35 am 19. thibaud:Knuck – the rioters have been throwing stones at imams as well as flics. These are not jihadists. They’re angry kids who are, more than anything else, rudderless, fatherless, leaderless and tired of being viewed as ni*gers by white France.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:37 am 20. thibaud:As reported by the BBC, a French statistical agency shows the following stats:
- 9.2% unemployment rate for people of French origin
- 14% unemployment for people of foreign origin (adjusted for education)
- 5% overall unemployment for university graduates
- 26.5% unemployment for “North African” university graduates
Source: Insee
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:40 am 21. chuck:I think I am inclined to thibaud’s view at this time. Even so, the situation in France is unstable and power is up for grabs. Who will grasp it? Disorder is opportunity and ambitious leaders will come to the fore and a supporting ideology will develop. Such are the lessons of history.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:58 am 22. Kevin P:Roger:
It’s not strictly a religous protest. It’s not strictly a economic protest. But it beginning to be organized around a seperatist, “leave us alone”, and “we want our own, seperate,muslim legal system.” Watch as the radical imams get more popular, watch as the front groups,formed like CAIR, get stronger and stronger. If France is naive enough to think that simply throwing some federal monies at the ghetto’s will stop this movement they have another thing coming. Once they make these area’s “no-go” areas for the police the jihadists will start to fill the void. ‘”Oh, there just letting off some economic frustration steam”. It is not that simple and if France doesn’t get serious they can expect the same treatment that the U.S. and the U.K received. If they think the Islamo fascists are going to cut them slack because they call President Bush an idiot and stayed out of the war they are truly foolish. It’s coming down the metro tracks and it will run them over if they don’t get serious.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:07 am 23. Robert Crawford:Brookheiser points this out: except for the two youths whose deaths started this whole thing, no one has been reported killed as a result of this riot.
That has been purely a matter of luck. Shots have been fired at police, medics, and firemen, and a woman in a wheelchair was doused with gasoline and set on fire, because she was the only person unable to escape from a bus attacked with Molotov cocktails.
The rioters’ incompetence at killing doesn’t make them any less interested in committing it.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:07 am 24. beautifulatrocities:Kristallnacht comes to mind
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:07 am 25. Knucklehead:Thibaud,
These are not jihadists. They’re angry kids who are, more than anything else, rudderless, fatherless, leaderless and tired of being viewed as ni*gers by white France.
It no longer matters who they are or why they are behaving the way they are behaving. What matters now is who steps into their “leaderless” condition. They will not remain leaderless and the French cannot alter their culture quickly enough to prevent the vacuum from being filled.
I hope, honestly, that I am wrong but I suspect that if I had a dollar for every salfist opportunist who has moved into these areas over the past few days, or is now enroute, I suspect I’d be able to make some significant upgrades to my materialistic condition.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:14 am 26. thibaud:kristallnacht? Pu-leeze. This time around, there’s no evidence of anyone singling out jews for attack. This is a clash between a racialist conception of national identity and a racial minority that is lost between two cultures, neither of which offers that minority anything attractive.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:18 am 27. beautifulatrocities:from No Pasaran:
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:21 am 28. Michael_B:In Vino’s veritas est nihil.
If a superficial analysis can be thought of as one obtained while floating on the water’s surface, without so much as peering into the depths, then In Vino’s misapprehensions are an example of those which take place while ethereally floating in thin air, above the surface, while gazing skyward. Dreaming is all well and good, but far too many resolutely facile leftists have insinuated their dreams, their fantasist, pie-in-the-sky imaginings onto the social/political sphere – therein ensuring nightmares are endured, not by themselves, but by millions of others. Hence the hecatombs of the 20th century. Never to be terribly concerned with the left’s hecatombs and detritus of the last century, they are now ever wont to assure the earth their latest dreams hold nothing but promise.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:21 am 29. beautifulatrocities:Of course, the Islamist jihad against Jews & synagogues in France has been going on for 2 years
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:25 am 30. thibaud:byootiful,
Go ahead, fit events to your preconceptions. Who needs to think when it’s so much more fun to regurgitate the same message a thousand times?
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:29 am 31. Knucklehead:Thibaud,
This is a clash between a racialist conception of national identity and a racial minority that is lost between two cultures, neither of which offers that minority anything attractive.
Which of the two cultures the racial minority is lost between can most quickly “offer” the racial minority something they will find “attractive”?
The French, to accomplish this, must alter their own culture in ways that require generations and cannot escape a constant, testable condition. They are stuck with reality and reality is always there for all to see. The “better future” is 40 years out and can’t even be mildly demonstrated for 5 or 10 or 20 years assuming a rapid start and the willingness of the “white French” to move in that direction.
The salafist “culture”, on the other hand, needs only to present a vision – it needs make nothing more than promises of some wonderful future if only the young “lost souls” will “return to the true way”. They have no nasty reality constantly present to be tested against.
The modern welfare state that is France has to deliver. The enemy only has to promise greener pastures. Very dangerous times.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:31 am 32. beautifulatrocities:That explains why Jews are rioting in France. Please. Can we get over these tired old Vietnam-era canards? As even American leftist Michael Walzer pointed out post-9/11, jihad does not & cannot fit into liberal ideology, hence the tendency to resort to liberal sociology 101 & the almost comical MSM reports of restless youths
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:32 am 33. thibaud:Knuck – it matters hugely who’s rioting and why they’re doing so. For starters, many of these kids have legitimate reasons for their anger and frustration. Again, this is not South Central. This is a nation whose economy is rigged to put young people out of work– especially if those young people are of african descent, and even when those african-frenchmen are university graduates!
That 26% of north african university graduates in France are unemployed speaks volumes about the situation. I’ve worked with plenty of very clever, hardworking young north african French programmers and wish I could arrange for every one of them to emigrate here. There are no doubt plenty of resenters among those burning down the hellholes around Paris right now, but I’d bet there are an equal number of talented kids in those projects who want nothing more than the chance to work hard and climb up the ladder. My heart goes put to them. I only wish I could help them.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:35 am 34. thibaud:Byootiful,
Please educate yourself about France before you bloviate further. The jews in France are not lost between two cultures because French jews are deeply assimilated, and heavily represented, in the same power structures that exclude French africans, not least in the Socialist Party-dominated institutions such as the media and intellectual circles. Bernard Henri-Levy, Bertrand Kouchner, Dominique Moisi, Danny “The Red”, and dozens of other writers and businessmen, investment bankers, diplomats and on and on.
Again, there’s not one prominent african executive or writer or diplomat or politician or entrepreneur I can think of. The French conception of national identity has, since Dreyfus, come to terms with French jews. It has yet to do so with africans. That’s the problem.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:41 am 35. thibaud:Knuck,
Here’s what the French can do, right now, to start turning around the situation. First, reduce the punitive payroll taxes and ridiculous work restrictions (35 hour work week, etc) on small employers so as to decrease youth unemployment. Slashing these restrictions would halve youth unemployment within months.
Second, permit the veil in the schools– along with yarmulkes, crucifixes etc. Tell the kids that how they behave is what matters, not what they wear.
Third, amend tax laws to encourage capital formation and investment in technology start-ups. In every advanced country, the technology sector is the favored path to riches for talented outsiders and minority groups. It’s shameful that Britain and the US have thousands of Indian executives and tech leaders while France has next to none.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:54 am 36. Fausta:no one has been reported killed as a result of this riot
Not yet.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:58 am 37. Knucklehead:Thibaud,
I’m all for optimism, but really now.
First, reduce the punitive payroll taxes and ridiculous work restrictions (35 hour work week, etc) on small employers so as to decrease youth unemployment. Slashing these restrictions would halve youth unemployment within months.
The French can do this right now, today? You’re talking about a nation where if the street mimes are unhappy they shut down the tourist industry with a strike. Do you really believe the French citizenry is going to give up their 35 hour work week to make a nicer world for the immigrants and provide their teenagers employment “within months”. If this can be accomplished in France it will take years, not months, to bring it about. And the result will be some menial jobs for the poorly educated and skill-less immigrant youths. This is a problem we in the US have been hammering at for a whole lot longer than months and have more or less reached an impasse. You can’t get the youths beyond menial jobs without education and you can’t get them to accept education as “authentic” to their “culture”.
I don’t claim these are intractable problems but they cannot be solved quickly. People just don’t work like that. These things take decades and sometimes generations to yield adequate results.
Second, permit the veil in the schools– along with yarmulkes, crucifixes etc. Tell the kids that how they behave is what matters, not what they wear.
The classic rock and hard place problem. Permitting the veil encourages the “seperateness” of the culture that subjugates women and represses the identity of self in favor of the culture. Over time that can be combatted. In the meantime the kids who would wear the yarmulkes are subject to torment or worse and their parents go into “Not With My Child” mode. And if you think NIMBY is a force to be reckoned with it pales in comparison with NWMC.
Third, amend tax laws to encourage capital formation and investment in technology start-ups.
Yes, tomorrow morning France will reverse course and toss beloved egalisme overboard for “savage American captalism.
All of these things are possible. Whether they are feasible or plausible in France is another matter. Even if they are, however, they are not likely to be put into play quickly.
At the moment I am deeply pessimistic about what’s happening in France. Surely overly so. You, on the other hand, are somewhat overblown in your optimism
Nov 4, 2005 - 11:19 am 38. TedM:I am in Knuckleheads camp. The riots are the tip of an iceberg. We have all worried about the
growth of an unassimilated moslem population in Europe. but, most of the worry has centered
on economics. How can a rapidly insolvent socialistic old europe cope with this. Now, we see the season of discontent. And it is ripe for Islamist leadership. What starts as a lower class eruption over the
frustrations of life can grow into a “movement”. And that movement has a name. —Islam. And not the
“religion of peace” Islam. Therein lies Knuckleheads pessimism. And mine too. This outbreak has the
look of one which can spread into every E.U country with a moslem underclass. The next few months
will show us if we are overly pessimistic or into the next stage of the spread of the caliphate.
Nov 4, 2005 - 11:29 am 39. Bostonian:I’m somewhat with Thibaud on this.
I think there are two things going on.
First, France’s extremely foolish economic & welfare policies have practically guaranteed that these people will not be integrated into society. They cannot get jobs, and they cannot start businesses.
But second, I doubt that the economic situation is the only thing going on. The Islamic belief system has a sharp dividing line between believers and kaffirs, and there’s an idealization of a society run “the right way,” i.e., along Islamic lines, undermining confidence in the real-life society. You can’t tell me these beliefs would not factor heavily into the equation.
***
As for France, both the government & the people seem to equate “treating people well” with giving them things and money. France will believe that to correct the “despair,” it must hand over even yet more money. This will fix nothing, and things will get worse. And so it goes.
Nov 4, 2005 - 11:29 am 40. Knucklehead:Thibaud,
Again, this is not South Central. This is a nation whose economy is rigged to put young people out of work
This same claim can be made about the youths of “South Central”. They can’t be integrated into the economy without an useful education and they can’t get a useful education in “South Central”. The “whys” of that are complex as all get out and not entirely the fault of the “rigged economy” – it is very difficult to “give” people what they have decided they do not want or to convince them that what they cannot see the advantage of is necessary to them.
There are both similarities and differnces in the US black ghetto and the French “immigrant suburb” situations. One of the key differences is that the US black ghetto situaton of 40 years ago had no cultural identificaton with Islam and was not subject to the darker proclivities therein. This is decidedly not the case with the French “immigrant suburbs”. Islamism is right there, next door, for the grabbing. The French have a more pressing problem on their hands than even the US did and does. Islam is the monkey wrench in the machinery. It is the graveyard everyone is whistling past. The word that dare not be spoken.
Nov 4, 2005 - 11:32 am 41. TedM:As is true with most of the thinkers and writers around the world, we have identified the problem, but on one has a solution.
read Robert Spencer on Frontpage.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20071
He too has much to say about how this all came about.
This situation is so complex that there is no previous scenario where we can look back and determine what the fix might be. The French and others in Europe will dither around and come up with some make shift short term answer. And that won’t work. I do not want to think too far ahead because that is too depressing. And maybe inevitable.
Nov 4, 2005 - 11:43 am 42. Huan:It doesn’t really matter whether the inciting cause of the riot is economic and the contributory factor religion, or that the inciting cause was religion and the contributory factor economic, once the riot perpetuate as it has now for over a week, it will be impractical to separate the two and both will need to be address to resolve the crisis. The French government will and must crack down. Then the test will come whether this is just a riot or an infitada in the making.
Nov 4, 2005 - 11:50 am 43. Syl:I may change my mind tomorrow. I’ve anticipated this, as most of us here have, however I didn’t expect anything so soon.
I think Knuck’s fears of something filling the vacuum are well-founded, but there’s another dynamic. No matter how separate they are and wish to be, France is the host country. They know it. The sheiks and other Islamic leaders will work very hard to stop the rioting.
Then they can go back to da’wa.
Any intifada type action will turn the host against them and most, surely not all, radicals in their midst have received the lesson from Britain. Attack the host country and you lose your safe haven.
Their demands for their separate millet are sincere. I don’t know what the hell France can/will do about that.
But it’s possible this will burn itself out.
On the other hand (there is always at least one other hand) the escalation and spread does feel ominous.
Nov 4, 2005 - 12:10 pm 44. madawaskan:I’ve been reading through these threads at Belmont, Blair’s and Roger’s and the discussion invariably compares LA riots or integration in America to what is now happening in France.
The success of the American “Melting Pot” is largely predicated on the reliance of QUOTAS during at least one of the largest waves of immigration after World War II.
I’m not familiar with the pattern of immigration or ethnic identity of the rioters in France. I think it is reported that they are third generation. Are they largely Morroccans and Algerians? Also how many from Central Africa-Zaire , Rwanda and the Congo are surprising in the religious diversity-the label and generalization of Muslim for this area would be a bit of a stretch. Zaire and Rwanda have over twenty identifyable religions-and has surprising levels of conversion to Catholicism, Christianity. So-the Muslim aspect of this-how much of a factor is that?
Getting back to the quotas-as for instance when in our bigger cities after WW I in Pittsburgh for example there were immigrants from Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Italy, and Hungary-just to name the primary groups-they HAD to speak ENGLISH to communicate with each other and to survive. This is especially true of the second generation who it would have been an impossibility to support with second language courses in Hungarian, Serbo- Croat {with Cyrillic Too!} Polish ,and Italian. Yet this is what the French are getting accused of not providing-now perhaps maybe they should have if they allowed such a monolithic homogenious group to immigrate at once-I don’t know the answer to that-but I would say the answer- “they’re Islamic” is simplistic.
Nov 4, 2005 - 12:11 pm 45. Bruce Wechsler:As usually is the case, there is no one single cause for the current troubles in France…but the two most mentioned here are certainly the two principal ones. Just because a particular group is wrong about much if complaints (and often immoral and hateful in it responds to them) does not mean that NONE of its grievances are valid.
Thibaud: Not certain, but I think BeautifulAtrocities was pointing out that the same groups that are now rioting are the very same ones that have been engaging in a slow but steadily rising trend of kristallnacht-esque actions against Jews, cemetaries and synagogues.
Nov 4, 2005 - 12:21 pm 46. Kevin P:Roger:
Multiculturalism reaches its logical conclusion. The myth that one doesn’t need to teach a national value system to preserve a country and that all cultures have equal value is exactly that, a myth. I am not calling for restrictions on cultural expression. For those immigrants who want to preserve the values that they hold dear and try to teach their children those ideas can be a good thing. But the notion that you can import large populations of immigrants and make no attempt to make them French, or make them Italian, or make them American is a formula for dissaster. I f the only value of being French(or any other country this utopian myth is practiced) is the paycheck you get from the government then all you will never be more then a temporary visitor who is just waiting for your homeland to improve so you can go back. The long term health of the country you are sojourning through will not be a high priority. Ask anyone who has rental properties. Renters who want to stay take care of their place. People who are passing through don’t.
I am not a nativist. America has been improved by the constant immigration that has brought energy and new ideas to our lands. But we want immigrants who come because they want to become Americans, not just for a job. The fact that they French have treated the Arabs as field workers and have not inculcated the idea of what it means to be French is one of the reasons they have a large section of the 10% West African muslim population who don’t feel part of the country.Yes, the melting pot is better(not perfect) then the multiculti lie.
Immigrants can, through the family, keep the traditions that are important to them alive. But one of the first things they should teach themselves and their children is that their are certain things about their culture that may clash with their new homeland and that although they may practice certains things themselves they can not expect the nation that is their new home to conform to everything they had back home.
Part of leaving the land you were born in and going to a new country is that your new homeland is going to have different values. Often these values are the very things that allow that country to bring you in, the very lack of these values is why your country of origin could not sustain you and your family.
Nov 4, 2005 - 12:49 pm 47. lindenen:Most nations are ethnically defined. I think it would be in Europe’s interest to give up the fantasy that they can override centuries of history and identity. They should look to Finland and Japan and finally come to terms with the fact that they’re better off without immigration. Jewish people did everything possible to integrate into European society, but they were slaughtered and expelled. Now, Europe is getting immigrants who will make war on them.
Also, the situation isn’t about JUST France. It’s happening in Denmark right now as well.
Nov 4, 2005 - 12:56 pm 48. Terrye:It seems to me that when some fanatics flew planes into the World Trade Center the first reaction had something to do with poor people getting even. It is standard.
Bush is going to Argentina and needless to say the die hard Latin communists will be burning American flags and blaming the US for their poverty…so what else is new? It is not as if France is the only contry with high unemployment.
In fact I live in a rural part of the country and we have our own alienated and forgotten youth. I do not recall the last time one of them set fire to the American Legion Hall and demanded home rule.
I do not doubt that the French welfare system and its socialist stranglehold on commerce and innovation has helped fuel the fire.
But when young men screaming God is Great start tearing things up it would be foolhardy to just assume it is all about the money.
I remember when the graves of allied dead were desecrated in France a few years ago the locals blamed it on the “Arabs”.
This has been coming for sometime.
Nov 4, 2005 - 1:58 pm 49. PeterUK:Attacks on Jews in France 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1265023,00.html
Nov 4, 2005 - 3:11 pm 50. PeterUK:Interestingly an Algerian terror group was calling for action before the riots
Nov 4, 2005 - 3:26 pm 51. PeterUK:Call to arms before the riots http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=25&story_id=24044&name=Algerian+group+calls+France+%E2%80%99enemy+number+one%E2%80%99
Nov 4, 2005 - 3:29 pm 52. Syl:Kevin
“I f the only value of being French(or any other country this utopian myth is practiced) is the paycheck you get from the government then all you will never be more then a temporary visitor who is just waiting for your homeland to improve so you can go back.”
Well, that’s the point. The world without borders. When Bush crossed the border into Iraq the shock to the ‘elites’ wasn’t the action against Iraq sovereignty..it was the affirmation of America’s.
Nov 4, 2005 - 3:36 pm 53. moondoggy:I wonder how long it will be before France makes a secret agreement with the French immams to end the intafada and what the terms will be?
Nov 4, 2005 - 3:40 pm 54. Jamie Irons:Here is a piece sympathetic to the young people of the banlieues from the International Herald Tribune, tending to support Thibaud’s viewpoint:
“We’re French, But Not ‘Real’ French”
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 3:52 pm 55. PeterUK:Jamie,
Did you check the link at 03:29 ?
Nov 4, 2005 - 4:10 pm 56. Jamie Irons:Peter,
No, I had overlooked that. Thanks.
Not a pretty picture.
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 4:44 pm 57. mythusmage:Thibaud,
Living somewhere does not mean you know anything about where you live. Especially when you choose to ignore that which makes you uncomfortable.
The rioters are punks, plain and simple. Immature brats encouraged by manipulative bastards with agendas of their own. And all occurring under a regime that panders to bigotry, chauvanism, and self-destructive animosity towards the different.
It’s pre-Nazi Germany all over again, and by the time it’s over we are likely to see the nations of Western Europe under east European occupation as UN agencies and NGOs work their asses off to put things back in order.
Unless I am very wrong it will get a lot worse. In 1944 a German General ignored orders to destroy Paris, I doubt the rioters will be so considerate.
Nov 4, 2005 - 5:24 pm 58. PeterUK:Jamie,
Did you notice the date? I posted this on your piece ay YARGB
Nov 4, 2005 - 5:37 pm 59. Jamie Irons:Peter,
No, sorry. But thanks for the heads up. I’ve been busy and distracted all day, and failed to notice the date. I just assumed it was within the last day or so.
Wow!
Jamie Irons
Nov 4, 2005 - 6:25 pm 60. WichitaBoy:The situation is somewhat reminiscent of Russia in 1917. A lot of discontented people and a nascent ideology ready to take advantage of the situation. The difference is that here the majority is not disaffected. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
Nov 4, 2005 - 6:34 pm 61. thibaud:“intifada”
“Russia in 1917″
“Kristallnacht”
“pre-Nazi Germany all over again”
Folks, can we please have a moratorium in laughably ignorant, over-the-top hysteria? Y’all are turning Roger’s Place into a right-of-center version of Daily Kos.
Let’s start with a reality check. To date, fewer people have been killed in these riots than are typically killed during the trauma of victory that regularly occurs after a Detroit sports team wins a championship. This doesn’t even come close to the loss of life, property destruction and criminality that the US experienced during its own urban uprisings in 1965, 1967 or 1968.
Next, to those making the ridiculous bolshevik and weimar and intifada analogies, please put the bottle away, give your face a good hard slap and then start doing a little googling to begin educating yourself about contemporary France. If that’s demanding too much, then consider the following obvious facts:
Unlike Russia in 1917, France is not fighting a disastrous war that’s taking the lives of thousands of its young men every week. The French government, unlike the tsar, has not ordered its troops to charge upon and slaughter an assembly of hundreds of pro-government men women and children demanding nothing more than bread from a tsar whom they revered. The French government is not confronted by a rival political authority like the Petrograd Soviet. The French economy is not facing collapse.
Unlike Weimar Germany, France is not enduring either a depression or hyperinflation or massive, punitive obligations imposed by nations that defeated it during a recent, disastrous war.
Unlike Israel, France is not at war, or struggling with an occupation, or facing organized, armed opposition from a nation whose population is several times larger than its own.
Please, please educate yourselves before you drag this thread, and Roger’s blog, further into cuckoo-land.
Nov 4, 2005 - 7:17 pm 62. thibaud:To understand the essence of the problem in France today, compare a few socio-political features of France and California, two left-leaning, multicultural democratic polities which compete for the title of fifth-largest economy in the world (Calif was ahead before the dotcom implosion; France is barely ahead at present).
Percentage of non-white students in the entering class of California’s most prestigious university: 45.
Estimated Percentage of non-white students in the entering class of France’s most prestigious universities, the Grandes Ecoles: less than 1.
Estimated percentage of non-whites and immigrants among Californians with a net worth of >$500 million: 25-30% (cf Khosla, Omidyar, Yang, Brin, Shriram et al).
Indians and Chinese as a percentage of CEOs of Californian high tech companies (as per Dun & Bradstreet): 29%.
Estimated percentage of non-whites among France’s most powerful businessmen: zero.
Estimated percentage of most powerful political posts in California during the last 20 years (Gov., Senators, Supreme Court, Speaker of House, mayors of LA, SF, SD, SJ) held by nonwhites: 10 (Hayakawa, Willie Brown, Tom Bradley et al).
Percentage of most powerful political posts in France during its history that have been held by nowhites: zero.
France and California are both thoroughly modern, advanced polities with a long tradition of progressive political and social behavior. Why does one of these entities welcome nonwhites into every facet of its power structure while the other freezes them out– utterly, totally, ruthlessly?
Are you beginning to understand where the problem lies?
Nov 4, 2005 - 7:46 pm 63. Karl:As to Islamism being a factor:
We have Amir Taheri’s piece, quoted at length above.
We have the episode of October 30th:
A tear gas grenade was launched into a mosque. Police denied responsibility, but acknowledged that it was the same type used by French riot police. Speaking to 170 police officers at Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture in Bobigny (the local authority overseeing Clichy-sous-Bois), Nicolas Sarkozy said, “I am, of course, available to the Imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque.”
We have Reuters reporting on the “big brothers” trying to mediate:
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose policy includes a tough police response and dialogue with ‘big brothers’, had to defend himself in a radio interview against suggestions he had allowed Muslims to organise their own security squads.
“We work with mediators in these neighbourhoods,” he said. “When rioters and police are clashing outside of a mosque, it’s not unusual that the imam goes out and calls for calm.”
Dalil Boubakeur, head of France’s official Muslim Council, said unofficial authorities such as imams and ‘big brothers’ were a fact of Muslim life in the poor suburbs.
And in the IHT story linked above:
Leaving the afternoon prayer at a makeshift outdoor mosque, Hocine, 23, a soft-spoken young man of Algerian descent in religious attire, said he was resigned to never having his culture and his religion truly accepted in France.
***
The man, who would only identify himself as Awax, said looking Arab in France was more than just having darker skin: It was also a ticket to a societal pigeon hole from which there was no escape.
“Looking Arab means you either spend all day at the mosque or you are criminal scum,” he said. “People generalize all the time, but you can’t. Nobody talks about white French people as Christian.”
In few places is the separation of religion and state as strict as it is in France, where all conspicuous religious garb like the Muslim head scarf is banned from schools.
The law has intermittently prompted some Muslim groups to complain, and last year many cases of Muslim girls refusing to take their scarves off made headlines.
While sociologists and immigration specialists say that the religiousness of immigrants is often exaggerated, they say it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Many of these guys are no more Muslim than other French people are practicing Christian,” said Christophe Bertossi at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.
“But if they are given no other identity the Muslim label risks becoming the thing they fall back on.”
Moreover, it appears that this already has been happening, with youth in the depressed areas defining themselves more as Muslims than by ethnicity. The evidence from the IHT piece is mixed, but given the amount of press now criticizing France for discriminating against Muslims, imposing the hijab restriction, etc., you can’t also claim that Islamism has nothing to do with the current state of affairs there.
When looking at the pre-existing lawless nature of the depressed areas, you have the intimidation of the shopkeepers to which Taheri referred, but you also have the assaults and rapes of young women whose dress or behavior is deemed improper by Islamist gangs. And you had a government that had made these neighborhoods “no-go” areas, leaving a vacuum for the imams and “big brothers” to become the de facto authorities.
While we should be careful not to stereotype Muslims in general, it seems reasonable to look at all of the above and conclude that the fundamentalist, separatist Islamists have been and are a factor in this situation.
Nov 4, 2005 - 7:52 pm 64. thibaud:I don’t recall claiming that “Islamism has nothing to do with the current state of affairs [in the banlieues of Paris].”
Everyone here is so obsessed with Islam that you can’t even see the obvious, 800-lb gorilla staring you in the eyes: France is a deeply racist country that holds back its african population from any significant participation in politics or wealth creation or intellectual life.
In generations past, when unskilled african immigrants could easily find factory jobs and when those immigrants’ memories of the hellholes they escaped in Africa were still fresh, the exclusion of africans from a track to wealth and power did not breed resentment. The african immigrants were in fact and in perception far better off than they could have imagined themselves elsewhere.
In today’s information-based economy, in France as in the US, there are few jobs available to the unskilled. Another major change is that youths raised in the hellish cites around Paris, Marseille etc do not remember the even worse hell that was (is) Algiers or other African nightmare cities. Yet another change is the sharp rise in French racism toward nonwhites, resulting in an openly racist, fascist presidential candidate’s edging a sitting Socialist PM in a presidential election in 2002.
The issues here are race mixed with an economic model that guarantees mass unemployment among the young, the nonwhite, and the unskilled–period. If you’re all three of the above, then you are utterly screwed in France. The kids in the cites know this well and are behaving the way angry, uneducated, unsupervised, unpoliced kids always do in such a situation. Islam and islamism are nothing more than epiphenomena here.
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:09 pm 65. thibaud:Roger,
Given the very heavy emphasis that Palamas Media contributors and editorialists place upon the menace of extremist Islam and Islamist terror, it seems that a perennial danger for PJM’s credibility will be the tendency, as seen with this and related threads, to slant analysis and, in future, reportage toward the Islamist Menace meme– even when that meme is not accurate and unsupported by facts or context.
A word to the wise: not every sparrow that falls, or apartment that burns, reveals the islamofascist hand. The world is a large and complex place. Best to try to understand it on its own terms before opining on its deeper meanings.
best,
t
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:15 pm 66. jerry:The anti-religious liberal always believes that “man lives by bread alone.” It is the secular materialist creed that all you need to solve this kind of social problem is money and goods. Then these poor downtrodden people will become happy citizens. I used to work for Air Force Colonel who kept saying that the revolution in Eastern Europe was the result of East Block citizens wanting Coca Cola and Levi’s. It infuriated me to no end. I happen to married to a Pole and knew this was BS. Revolutions happen because “man does not live by bread alone.”
These riots are all about Kulturkampf. Rich or poor Muslims will gravitate toward their own culture. There is no desire to assimilate; rather they seek to assimilate others. Why must we continue to remind the Thibauds of the world that 19 terrorists who attacked America on 9-11 were not poor and ignorant? They were at least middle class and well educated. I repeat “MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE.”
Over the years people from the Indian subcontinent migrated to the UK. They often arrived with a lack of skills. The Hindu element worked hard, went to school and became British. The Muslims pretty much stayed poor and unassimilated. Interestingly enough, the subway bombers were better educated and better off then run of the mill “Asian
Nov 4, 2005 - 8:50 pm 67. thibaud:Jerry – if this were about islam, then we’d be seeing attacks on jews and synagogues. Not one such attack reported yet. Try again.
As to your rather hilarious notion that secularism is destroying Europe– a notion you share to a T with the islamists, btw– try visiting today’s very secular, very wealthy Ireland, and then read any of the dozens of (very well-written) accounts of the hellhole that was the Church- and priest-dominated, pisspoor Ireland that prevailed well into the 1980s. And then tell us which Ireland is more stable, prosperous, confident, and sane. Hint: it wasn’t the Ireland in which pregnant girls used to cross the Irish Sea for their abortions.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:17 pm 68. jerry:Thibaud:
Please tell my why it is only the Muslim poor who are rioting and not Black African Christians from the former French colonies who also poor? Why is it that Hindu’s assimilated in England but not the Paksistanis? Why were the 19 hijackers at least middle class and educated? Why were the London bombers educated, not poor and to large degree apparently assimilated? What makes those who have all the Coca Cola and blue jeans they need become suicide bombers? You have no answer because you have no values.
Finally, in case you haven’t heard, Muslims attack Jews all the time. This about who controls the neighborhood Islam or the Government.
Nov 4, 2005 - 9:40 pm 69. thibaud:Jerry,
Why were the 19 hijackers at least middle class and educated?
Because those yuppies, unlike the impoverished rioters we’re seeing now, were totally uninterested in jobs or economics or assimilation. They were jihadists. The kids rioting in the projects today are not. Thanks for making my point.
Jerry, there’s utterly no evidence that islamists are driving these acts, which are totally uncoordinated, pointless, spontaneous, adolescent, dumb. It’s really all about access to jobs and being treated like equals rather than pariahs, aka n*ggers.
Nov 4, 2005 - 10:23 pm 70. PeterUK:“It’s really all about access to jobs and being treated like equals rather than pariahs, aka n*ggers.”
What jobs would these people accept that could reward them as much as drugs and crime? To quote a teacher who works with,”special needs” immigrant youths.”Several of mine(students)have been shot,but what can I offer them when their older brothers drive around in BMWs have girls on the street, earn(sic) as much in a month as I do in a year?”..”Work hard and you can be like me?”
First,they have to weened off their habits,criminal proclivities curbed,a basic lifestyle discipline instilled,then you can begin to educate them.Many will never rise above menial jobs,so they have to be kept interested,after all there is another option.It is worth bearing in mind that they are not used to taking orders,unless there is a real or implied sanction.
It has to been borme in mind that these young men have an adolescent macho respect culture to the nth degree,this is enhanced by their culture,the patriarchical societal structure of North Africa and the Middle East in general.
That culture precludes the civilising effect of women,yes the young men avail themselves of the host societies more open sexual mores,but their culture causes them to despise the girls they use.
When the youths do eventually marry,it is within the closed community to which they belong.
Nov 5, 2005 - 6:10 am