I am not quite sure why, but I am both too embarrassed with my views on the subject of the riots in France to post them on CT and too pleased with them to resist linking to them elsewhere. Sorry.
I see no reason for the sheepishness. You sliced very skillfully through much of the blather cluttering up the anglophone blogosphere on this subject.
Not that said blather is in any way surprising. Take a story that manages to encompass two of the Right’s favorite bugaboos–cheese-eating surrender monkeys and the islamofascist threat–and the resulting “discussions” are bound to provide lots of wild ‘n’ woolly entertainment, and precious little else.
Anyone care to tell an ignorant American why they are rioting? I’m honestly interested in a positive analysis of this beyond the Right’s “muslims are all crazy” theory. If it’s not the case that poor policy-making has resulted in the maintenance of an economic underclass not integrated with the rest of French society, then I’d love to hear what people think is actually going on over there.
If it’s not the case that poor policy-making has resulted in the maintenance of an economic underclass not integrated with the rest of French society,
It is. (I admit to having the same thought as Daniel: the rioters have certainly “integrated” into French patterns of protest, except they missed cobblestone throwing class.)
I guess what I meant to say is, what do you think is actually going on there? Daniel says the notion that “French society has not been able to integrate them” is “utter rot” and that the rioters have “a political grievance.” I had gotten the impression that their political grievance stemmed from the fact that French society has not been able to integrate them. This may be a misapprehension, in which case I encourage someone with more knowledge of French politics than I – which could be any one of a whole lot of people – to enlighten me.
Otherwise I guess we can just make some more French jokes. Hey, I hear they like to eat cheese!
Okay, so what I should take away from this is that two weeks of rioting in three hundred towns is a minor dust-up, and nobody’s really worked up about this?
Or is the contention being made here that the French just like to riot culturally, sort of like how Americans are just socially prone to invading other countries and the British like to get blown up by things?
On NPR’s “Day to Day” program this afternoon (08 November), I heard a French journalist claim that car-burnings have been a common phenomenon around Paris for quite some time. He claimed (unless I heard him incorrectly while racing down the highway in my not-so-airtight VW) that before the current spate of violence began that there was an average of 80 car-burnings per night in certain neighborhoods that are explicitly avoided by most of the populace. It has become so common that it simply isn’t reported as an extraordinary event.
If it’s not the case that poor policy-making has resulted in the maintenance of an economic underclass not integrated with the rest of French society,
well I see where you’re going, but this is theorising beyond the evidence. What there is decent evidence for is “they’re rioting because they’re poor and nobody respects them”.
I don’t think we can argue from there to
1) “they’re an economic underclass” (if the term “underclass” is to mean anything more than they’re poor), or that
2) “poor policy-making has resulted” in this, as opposed to the simple fact that France has been in recession or near-recession for about seven years. There were certainly towns in the Welsh Valleys that had unemployment of 40% and more for long periods in the 1980s and 90s, under completely different policies.
3) that they’re “not integrated with the rest of French society”. I would want to see much more evidence before taking this on trust, and I’d probably be looking for a rigorous definition of what “integrated” meant in this context.
They’re rioting because a) they’re poor b) there was an incident that got them angry c) they’ve been allowed to keep rioting and d) it hasn’t rained. The general conditions that lead to riots are pretty well-studied, and I would assume that the size and frequency of them follows something like a power law distribution; despite the conspiracy theorists, a riot is usually a self-organising phenomenon. Given this, I’m not sure that we need a specific theory of particular riots.
Malik, Bilal and Mohamed are grands freres (“big brothers”) now, and use their prestige to set a good example. But they discussed the bad old days dispassionately, recalling how Neuhof homeboys had pioneered the tradition of torching cars en masse. It started in the mid-’90s when cars burned during riots to avenge the deaths of two youths who stole a car, led police on a chase and crashed. Car-burning grew into a New Year’s Eve event here, and spread across France, Malik said.
Daniel: What there is decent evidence for is “they’re rioting because they’re poor and nobody respects themâ€. I don’t think we can argue from there to … “they’re an economic underclass†(if the term “underclass†is to mean anything more than they’re poor)
While I agree with the general thrust of your comments, Daniel (especially the bits about special vs general theories of riotivity), I’m not sure what you’re driving at here. “They’re poor and nobody respects them” sounds like a pretty good definition of “underclass” to me.
And yet the Welsh seem not to burn sheep as an expression of their anger, instead choosing to torch the summer cottages of the English.”
Posted by nick s
Nick, ya gotta unerstan’, the Welsh be a thrifty folk. They understand that a sheep can provide entertainment forgetthatImeant **food**, yea, food, for months, while a burnt English summer cottage can provide several man-months of rebuilding wages.
Uh, what’s surprising about a super-rich suburb, the richest municipality in France (or maybe the second or third), the one where Sarkozy and his clan officiate as mayors and regional councillors, being twinned with Windsor and Maidenhead? The geography of the Parisian periphery is a bit more complicated than “huge high rise estates everywhere”. You aren’t confusing it with Neuilly-sur-Marne (poor-ish, about like Clichy-sous-Bois).
Otherwise I agree. Don’t tell those kids they don’t want to integrate. Nearly all the inhabitants of the estates want is to be treated like everyone else. This includes not being called “scum”, and not getting strip-searched, aged 15, at every street corner.
I’ve taught kids from the periphery. They may not be called “Jacques” or “Olivia”, but they’re as French as they come. What else would they be? They don’t _know_ anything but France, they are born and bred here.
Given this, as I’ve written elsewhere, I’m not convinced that “failure of the French model of integration” is at stake here. Sure it’s easy to criticise the French model, as it is for every national ideology. But what’s clear is that the policies are a far cry from the lofty republican values. Forget about extra help and positive discrimination — the treatment of the _banlieue_ inhabitants is anything but equal.
Car-burning has indeed been frequent in years. Especially during New Year’s night — the Struthof estate (in Strasbourg) is particularly well-known for it.
So you’re saying both that these young men have a grievance and are just being silly, being negroes on the one hand and French on the other.
What’s next, jokes about the bondfires in Detroit?
And how in all this are you not an asshole? And Belle Waring too?
What snobbery. What whiteboy rich ass scum
Given this, as I’ve written elsewhere, I’m not convinced that “failure of the French model of integration†is at stake here.
Perhaps it hasn’t failed in its own assimilationist and “colour-blind” terms. Nonetheless
“rampant unemployment, heavy-handed policing, discrimination, poor housing and a concentration of large numbers of immigrants from North and West Africa, along with their descendents.”
Has the background to the economic aspect as well as what actually sparked the whole thing.
I actually oppose the riots, and have written about this on my blog, because I think as a form of political protest it may be liable to blow up in their faces.
Riots only work in France if you overthrow the ruling class. That is not going to happen, so it just means plenty of hand-wringing after and not much policy action.
If the “French assimilationist model” consists of simply telling people “Assimilate!”, this will fail. But the “model” is much more complex. Some would paraphrase it as “You are not brown, black or white, Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jew, you are all nothing more than citizens of the Republic”. Now this is one way to go about integrating migrant populations, and you or I may find fault with it, but frankly, there are worse attitudes than that.
But there is a second half to the ideology: “… and we, society and the state, will treat you all alike as citizens.”
This model has not so much failed because of its content, but because the second half hasn’t even been implemented. The populations from the poor estates are not treated alike, in particular not if they descend from former inhabitants of France’s colonies. They are treated as potential criminal from the age they enter elementary school, they have substantially lowered job prospects simply by virtue of having a foreign-sounding name. In a climate of generally high unemployment — something I struggle with, too, to the point of thinking of leaving France — town planning decisions and a not-in-my-backyard mentality compound their disadvantage.
This is why I think that pontificating about the inadequacy of “the French model” looks wrong-headed to me. The reality just doesn’t look like the high-minded ideology promised. And _this_ is something even a kid with the most basic of educations can grasp.
What’s next, jokes about the bondfires in Detroit?
Honestly? Next we’re going to joke about your typographical error. For, my dear boy, “bondfires” — as you call them — are what I use to light my impossibly huge, forced-perspective-inducing cigar, the lit end of which I use to spark a fuse that leads to a round bomb with a picture of the world painted on it. Caption? “Our Current Predicament.”
Honestly, if we can’t joke about how the world is going to shit, then what can we joke about? I know — Procol Harum. But what else after that?
“And then there’s the story of my uncle’s best friend’s death. He was chased by a horde of young women who were naked except for rollerskating equipment. They relentlessly chased him all the way to the edge of a cliff, where he fell off and died. Everyone in the family thought it was an unspeakable tragedy, but not those Monty Python jerks. Apparently, they think being chased off a cliff in the prime of your life by semi-nude skaters is a big joke.”
So you’re saying both that these young men have a grievance and are just being silly, being negroes on the one hand and French on the other.
Not at all. For one thing, they’re for the most part Arabs. For another, I love the French and I think that smashing things up and setting fire to them is an excellent way to pursue your grievances against the French state. If these young chaps stick to it for long enough, maybe they will be as pampered and looked after as French farmers.
What’s next, jokes about the bondfires in Detroit?
Probably not; I’ve got at least a week’s worth of New Orleans material to get through first.
And how in all this are you not an asshole?
My impish sense of humour helps. Oh Seth, do try to take a break once in a while, it really does help. Btw, if you are going to call me “whiteboy” it might make sense to adopt a pseudonym like, I dunno, “Delbert Wilkins”, because (and I think I have mentioned this before) being called “whiteboy” by “Seth Edenbaum” makes me feel like a minor character in an episode of Seinfeld.
1) an Islamist-inspired or -led “intifada” (despite the fervent wishes of the know-nothing American anti-Islamist blogosphere)
2) nothing out of the ordinary for French
african and arab kids in the cites on the periphery of large French cities
3) a joke (despite efforts by some here to shrug them off as such)
Re. the ludicrous “intifada” meme, if these events were guided or motivated by Islamism, we would have seen hundreds of attacks on jews, synagogues, jewish cemeteries of the sort that happened several years ago. (One attack daily in each city affected would have put the tally over 100 several days ago.) Instead, in this affair we’ve seen over 7,500 cars torched and only two attacks on jewish targets. The imams are condemning the violence, and the kids are ignoring the imams’ calls to end it. So much for the fell hand of Islamism imagined by every right-wing US blogger from Reynolds on out.
Re. the notion that this is nothing out of the ordinary, not so. The scale of these riots, and the French government’s near-total helplessness and fecklessness in trying to end them, put this in a different category entirely from the popular French game of Grand Torch Auto. Given the incompetence of the police and the copycat aspect of the torchings, there’s currently no end in sight to this. It’s not (merely) a rash of joy-torchings.
Re. the attempts on this thread by some to slough it off as a joke, these events are deadly serious. These riots and the failures they bring to light will undoubtedly cause the most sweeping national debate and policy changes in France since 1968, which itself was a watershed year in the Republic’s history. I believe they will inevitably force the French to confront their essentially racialist conception of national identity, and explore the benefits of the assimilationist, truly multicultural American model in which dualness, or pride in being, eg, both “asian” and American, is welcomed as a healthy trait among our immigrants.
As to the drivers behind these events (aside from Sarkozy and the cops’ incompetence), IMHO these are fourfold:
1) a deeply entrenched racialist conception of national identity which does not allow a citizen to consider himself both “african” and “French”;
2) an economic system which favors older, unionized workers at the expense of younger workers, combined with a decline in the availability of the sorts of unskilled positions that were abundant when the african and arab kids’ grandparents and parents emigrated to France forty or so years ago, with a result that unemployment for nonwhite youths is endemic and abov 35%;
3) an obvious pattern of racial discrimination in hiring, the results of which are that there’s not a single african to be found in the uppper ranks of either major political party, or among senior state functionaries, the senior executive ranks of any French corporation, or the intellectual and media elite of the country. African university grads have a 26% unemployment rate; for their white peers, the unemployment rate is 5%. Perhaps a 2x or 3x differential could be explained by different majors or institutions attended, but I doubt that this explains a 5x differential in unemployment rates. IIUC racial discrimination is not illegal in France, or if so is almost never prosecuted.
4) a familiar (to Americans) set of dysfunctional attributes of the urban underclass culture, seen in the immensely popular French version of American gangsta, cop-killer rap.
#1 and #2 are root causes; the economic barriers will certainly be addressed (look for the absurd 35 hour workweek restriction to be lifted for small firms, perhaps also enterprise zones) but I don’t see any hope of the French embracing the thoroughly laissez-faire attitude toward immigrant culture and economic conditions that has worked brilliantly in providing economic opportunity and freedom for American religious minorities to succeed and geneally be left alone, while reducing incentives for resenters to come here.
As to eliminating racial discrimination, it will be interesting to see whether the French embrace affirmative action, which is profoundly at odds with the throughly meritocratic French approach to higher education. I don’t see it happening.
As to the French gangsta culture of groups like the popular NTM, or Nique ta mere [= f— yo mama], this is a double edged sword. A huge amount of junk but also a source of cultural energy and vibrancy that moribund old France could profit from, if applied to more productive uses.
Re the influence of French rap, here are lyrics from the huge hit, “FranSSe”, by rapper Mr. R (note the Americanized name), which compares France to the Third Reich (transl. by Olivier Guitta): the state can go f–itself. . . . I pee on Napoleon and General De Gaulle. . . . My niggers and my Arabs, our playground is the street with the most guns. . . . F–ing cops, sons of whores. . . . France is a lousy mother who abandoned her sons on the sidewalk. . . . My Muslim brothers are hated like my Jewish brothers were during the Reich” [at which point Mr. R’s video shows footage of Hitler and of Nazi concentration camps].
To those peddling the “French Intifada” meme: please note the appeal to solidarity with what the rapper calls his “Jewish brothers”. Somehow I doubt this would receive the Islamist Seal fo Approval. But then, hardly any of these kids ever sets foot in a mosque. If there’s any “pathology” that’s been “imported” by these kids from overseas– as right-of-center blogger Michael Totten tried to argue the other day, and Reynolds blared through his megaphone– it’s not Islamism but the pathologies of the US underclass. By Totten’s logic France should try to inoculate itself against importations of US hip-hop culture.
Also funny to note Mr. R’s horrifying (to the French) anti-statist rhetoric: Boyz from the Hood, or is he just one of the ChicagoBoyz?
Thibaud, this line of anti-state rhetoric is far from unheard of in French history, but leftist anarchism usually means brûlez les fachos et la bourgeoisie. The Chicago model is a bit more tolerant of the first of the first and admant in its support of the second.
Nor is this line of ethnic solidarity and restatement of the “French model” at the same time as expressing contempt for it as a state, really new. I’m thinking of Sniper a few years ago:
What could be more stereotypically, characteristically French than that?
Yeah, initially I had the same reaction. But come to think of it (and Belle’s post helped me here), a vital element is missing – where’s the customary massacre? What I see now is a bunch of french-wannabe pussies faking a revolution: who cares about those lousy renaults, they probably wouldn’t start anyway. Where are barricades, pitchforks, pistol brandishing half-naked women? This is not French, they are not really trying, lazy bastards.
“smashing things up and setting fire to them is an excellent way to pursue your grievances against the French state. If these young chaps stick to it for long enough, maybe they will be as pampered and looked after as French farmers.”
Not to worry. Union organizers are hard at work and soon the rioting will be limited to 32 hours per week, with strict rules regulating who can set what on fire.
I think the general impetus for the riots is, as it would be said in the U.S., “We’re mad as Hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.” When Americans feel this way, they then to act individually rather than collectively – going to one’s workplace and shooting people, or what have you. In France the response is collective.
I’d agree with a fair bit of this, but you need to consider that since ’68- or before, if you look at the Breton protests in the early ’60s- French groups which have successfully used violence have all been ‘inside’ the system: employed trade unionists (with jobs), farmers (with farms and in receipt of subsidies), students (soon to become comfortably bourgeois). Meeting their demands has always been a case of cancelling this or that law and chucking out a few extra milliards of subsidy. If there really is unemployment of over 40% in the Mahgrebin communities in France, fixing that is going to be a damn sight harder and more expensive than giving the farmers a few more francs. And tracking the success or failure of such policies will be near impossible if you’re legally prohibited from collating data on different ethnic groups.
Minor point re Jews in French rap: there are actually a lot of working-class Jews living in the banlieues, usually of Tunisian or Moroccan descent. So when French rappers cite the sufferings of the Jews, it’s not that surprising: it’s basically saying ‘no to divide and rule’ (or ‘if the kids were united’ or ‘don’t mess with my homies’ or whatever).
Re alienation: I watched the World Cup final in ’98 in the Place de la Republique, surrounded completely by Arab kids from the banlieues. They spoke French rather than Arabic, but they had more Algerian than French flags, and their constant chant was ‘Algerie! Zizou!’- the latter being the nickname of Zinedine Zizane. I’d make a joke but Chris Bertram and I have yet to agree on the warning protocols.
In fact car burning is also rampant in Italian urban centres, but the last I heard the Italians were still stumped as to the motive. Are they about to find out, I wonder?
Now that everybody’s reassured themselves that these riots are ’68 redux (but now with gangsta rap!) The interesting ‘intifada’ argument is not ‘Al Queda is behind the riots’, but rather ‘conservative islamic elements in the banlieus will be further strengthened as a result of the riots’. That, for example, the French state will end up cutting deals with islamic community leaders to restore order and promised new spending in the banlieus will end up being influenced by them.
As for the incompatibility of islam and the apparently westernized rap-loving rioters — many of Al Queda’s western european recruits have lived wild, secular lives before being radicalized. And the values of rap and conservative islam are not exactly incompatible, are they, when it comes to the treatment of women (the ones one the streets without the hijab are the bitches and ho’s).
I posted this link yesterday, and I don’t think anybody commented. Is this all B.S.?
Nadir Doudane grew up in the same projects. Now, he works as a youth counselor trying to encourage more normal relations between the boys and girls.
What is it about the projects that is at the root of this violence?
“I think it’s because of the tradition that make the boys think that the girls should be treated this way and not that way,†says Doudane. “It’s not France here.â€
What really scares Doudane is that Islamic fundamentalists are taking advantage of these frustrations. “It’s tough. What the fundamentalists are saying to the young kids, ‘We will help you find a job. We will help you be proud of who you are.’ That’s why it’s a big success here.â€
What really scares Doudane is that Islamic fundamentalists are taking advantage of these frustrations. “It’s tough. What the fundamentalists are saying to the young kids, ‘We will help you find a job. We will help you be proud of who you are.’ That’s why it’s a big success here.â€
What, faith-based initiatives are not a panacea anymore?
If there really is unemployment of over 40% in the Mahgrebin communities in France, fixing that is going to be a damn sight harder and more expensive than giving the farmers a few more francs.
Except that the riots are, more or less, in response to attempts to (rather heavy handedly) _change_ that status quo.
Cynically speaking, to stop the riots, just build a few token community centers, and tell the police ‘ok forget about what the former minister (now spending more time with his family) said, those places _are_ no go areas, if the locals want to peddle drugs or burn cars, that’s none of our business’.
Of course, if you were an evil mastermind who wanted to deepen and worsen the reality and perception of the ghettos, then you would, if you were a _really really smart_ mastermind, get the inhabitants to burn the cars of anyone with a job that pays well enough to run a car, ensuring they either move out or drop the job.
Le Figaro said more than 20,000 cars have been set ablaze in France so far this year. _Before_ the riots.
I get the impression that the anglosphere reaction to the riots is a bit overblown. But at least they haven’t said the rioters have resorted to cannibalism, raping babies, and starving to death in three days. To reach THAT level of idiocy, one must be a respected member of the leftwing, mainstream American/British chattering class media conglomerate (and it helps if a Republican is president). Thus, though Daniel Pipes, Pat Buchanan, Glenn Reynolds et al may be stretching things a bit, they have yet to stoop to the level of, say Dan Rather.
He explains the French tast for violent protest is a very intuitive way – the French state is just so unresponsive you HAVE to protest violently to get anything done. Did someone mention the farmers?
Um, you people are aware that this stuff goes on regularly in Britain, even in essentially all white, nominally Christian slums and estates, aren’t you?
Even the spark that sets it off is invariably the same, the police break the habit of a lifetime and show up to arrest someone.
It’s a turf war between local scallies and the (normally absent) state, that’s why the young lions of the underclass never cross the road and attack wealthier areas nearby.
I get the impression that the anglosphere reaction to the riots is a bit overblown. But at least they haven’t said the rioters have resorted to cannibalism, raping babies, and starving to death in three days
True, but in the early days of the crisis you could see the anti-Islamist right-of-center bloggers champing at the bit. As with the New York-based newsmedia and Katrina, the central meme of the Pajamas Media crowd– Islamism! Barbarians at the Gates of Vienna!! The multiculti clueless left doesn’t GET IT, man– rose quickly to the fore, before any of these jokers even bothered to earn that these riots are happening despite a judicial regime that possesses sweeping powers of search, detention, interrogation of suspected jihadists and despite a civic and popular culture that is profoundly hostile to, not friendly or mushy-wimpy-resigned towards, multiculturalism and assimilation of the african minority, and despite immigration laws that are far tougher than those of any EU nation I can think of, let alone the uS. But the Intifada meme, combined with schadenfreude directed at the hated frogs, trumped any effort to learn the basics of France’s situation.
In the case of Katrina and the Bush-hating media, the grand meme that was locked was Wicked BusHitler Hates Black People!!! The NY mainstream media transformed a story about the spectacular sinkhole of incompetence, corruption and degradation– political, economic, moral– that is Louisiana and New Orleans into a story about the wickedness and heartless incompetence of… the Bush administration.
The right-wing blogosphere was eager to transform a series of race riots by third-generation, irreligious, apolitical French kids in les cites into… an Islamist-inspired “intifada.”
In both cases, hysteria came before seeking after facts and bloviating was substituted for intelligent analysis. But hey, this is the brave new media age. Why bother with facts and logic when you can just grab that trusty old meme and fire away?
Isn’t it a fact, though, that a member of the Bush administration (FEMA director) has been fired in the aftermath for wickedness, heartlessness and incompetence?
“[A] vital element is missing – where’s the customary massacre? What I see now is a bunch of french-wannabe pussies faking a revolution: who cares about those lousy renaults, they probably wouldn’t start anyway … . Where are barricades, pitchforks, pistol brandishing half-naked women? This is not French, they are not really trying, lazy bastards.â€
Regarding the missing massacre, hasn’t the ruling class always taken care of this item? Or rather their lackey(s)? Cavaignac, in ‘48.(see below) Thiers, in 1870. DeGaulle in ‘68. The people have risen, the oppressors and their assorted running dogs, vassals, minions, etc., cower in their mansions, bureaus, barracks, and stations, “ ils ne voulont pas marchons“ (as Joffre (I think) famously said about B.E.F. commander Sir John French in 1914, in the run-up to the Marne). The insurrection is doing what it’s supposed to.
This morning a heavy clash began in the upper part of the Faubourg Saint Denis. Near the northern railway, the insurgents occupied several barricades and a house which was under construction. The first legion of the national guard attacked without, however, gaining any advantage. It used up its ammunition and lost about fifty dead and wounded. It barely held its own position until the artillery arrived (towards 10 o’clock) and blew the house and the barricades to smithereens. …“It is a veritable massacre,†writes the correspondent of a Belgian newspaper.
The interesting ‘intifada’ argument is not ‘Al Queda is behind the riots’, but rather ‘conservative islamic elements in the banlieus will be further strengthened as a result of the riots’.
The only problem with that most interesting argument, Slocum, is that there’s still no evidence whatsoever that any of this is actually, you know, happening. But if you’re that determined to squeeze this particular square peg into the round hole of the Clash of Civilizations, that’s your prerogative. As has been amply noted above, you’ll find no shortage of Americans who will be all to happy to join you.
Abb1 – it’s also a fact that a couple of synagogues have been torched in this story. But to play up FEMA’s incompetence, as the media did, over and above the far more important story of the unbelievable failure of local government in the face of a natural disaster that they knew would happen and had prepared for over decades, would be like telling the public that the riots in France comprise a wave of anti-semitic attacks by islamists. The issue is one of emphasis, spin, story line.
The right-wing anti-Islamist blogosphere is now compiling reports (verified or not) of piecemeal incidents that seem to fit the intifada thesis. never mind that Grand Torch Auto is the favored sport for many of these kids; that the rioting has not changed targets, only cities (indicating a high degree of copy-cattism; or that we’ve seen islamist violence in France before and the pattern, targets and methods were entirely different from what’s happening here.
Meme is truth, and truth meme. That’s all ye know in the new media world, and all ye need to know
Re alienation: I watched the World Cup final in ‘98 in the Place de la Republique, surrounded completely by Arab kids from the banlieues. They spoke French rather than Arabic, but they had more Algerian than French flags, and their constant chant was ‘Algerie! Zizou!’- the latter being the nickname of Zinedine Zizane.
From an American perspective, it’s perfectly healthy and natural for a group of immigrants’ kids (and their parents) to embrace a favored son sports hero in part as a way of expressing communal pride. I’m not a sports junkie but I’m sure one could find dozens of examples of immigrant or minority religious groups embracing sports heroes in this way, from irish-americans cheering for Tunney and Sullivan to italian-americans and DiMaggio and Berra to jewish-americans and Koufax to hispanic- and asian-americans embracing their own US baseball stars today.
The crucial differences with the French kids chanting ‘Algerie! Zizou!’ is that those kids are not permitted, in the eyes of the French, to consider themselves (let alone express pride in themselves as) simultaneously “algerian” and “french.”
IIRC these kids offered at the World Cup in 2000 (?) a brilliant, unscripted formula that their white betters would do well to ponder, summarized simply in the chant, “Beur! Blanc! Noir!“. All of these identies are French. A deeply racialist (if not openly racist) French white majority doesn’t get it: the American embrace of dualness is by far the best way to absorb a high-growth, energetic immigrant population which, given the aging white majority’s reluctance to bear and raise children, provides the only real hope that any of us in the West have of ever retiring.
‘conservative islamic elements in the banlieus will be further strengthened as a result of the riots’.
Huh? The rioters’ own parents are reportedly planning to march against them, the imams are against them, their neighbors whose cars have been gutted are against them.
The only clear winner from this will be the marketing genius who comes up with an interactive video game called “Grand Torch Auto.” (insert trendy gothic script fonts and thong-clad female avatars with molotov cocktails)
>or pride in being, eg, both “asian†and American, is welcomed as a healthy trait among our immigrants.
Err, you are talking about *my* country? Or is there some America I haven’t heard of, one which “they should learn our language and our customs” isn’t just daily fodder for comedy clubs, work cafeterias and AM radio but a constant subject of attempted legislation?
And give it up on New Orleans. That’s why we have a FEMA – stuff like this way beyond a given state’s resources no matter how competent, like it or not.
The Bush regime sucked ass in this situation, and it wasn’t some “librul media” that made it so, they just reported it.
Sorry to others for going off thread, but how an otherwise lucid fellow like thibaud can suddenly start spouting this crap is something that is gonna be a subject of neuroscientific research very shortly, I’m thinking.
Chris, the country you inhabit seems to be a construction of media and academic bloviators of the far right and left. In the actual America– ie places like Sunnyvale, CA, where indian-americans are going to build a metroplex devoted to bollywood films, or Columbus, OH, which now has 30,000 striving, increasingly successful muslim somali-americans, or St Louis MO, which has thousands of hardworking, ambitious bosnian-americans, or Dearborn or Houston or any of dozens of growing cities across the country, immigration is rightly seen as a good thing: America’s secret weapon, if you like, in the global economic race. In reality– despite the morons on talk radio and the internet– Americans like and welcome hardworking immigrants, who tend to boost the values of neighborhoods they move into, regardless whether these are blighted neighborhoods being restored (cf the bosnian immigrants in St Louis) or middle-class neighborhoods whose schools and property values are boosted by high-achieving asian-americans.
The biggest threat to the spectacular success of our laissez-faire policy toward immigrants– ie, obey the laws, work hard, and you can expect to worship as you choose (whether you’re mormon or sikh or scientologist or venusian or whatever) and be given abundant opportunity to become prosperous and pursue happiness– comes from the cultural left. It’s these clowns who are desperate to cap U Cal Berkeley’s asian-american enrollment, just as the ivy league admission committees sought to cap jewish-american enrollment in the early-mid 20c. You need to get out a bit more.
57 – Your first sentence supports the italicized one you’re questioning. The idea is that the French government finds that the conservative Muslims are the ones whom they’re most capable of working with in avoiding future rioting, which strengthens conservative Islamic elements.
That’s assuming that Sarko’s neo-corporatist approach (muslim parliament, etc) really has any effect. Color me skeptical. The state can’t co-opt these groups by creating little poodles. The only way forward is to empower and employ many more of these kids, by eliminating the labor and tax absurdities that ensure mass youth unemployment, and improving access to capital for new business formation.
I watched the World Cup final in ‘98 in the Place de la Republique, surrounded completely by Arab kids from the banlieues
heh. I probably spilt beer on you.
In unrelated news, kids, if you are having a riot in the area where you live, then burning cars is very much the sensible thing to do. It has all the same visual impact as burning buildings, it ties up nearly as much time and effort for the authorities and it is much cheaper and less inconvenient when the riot has finished. We had riots in Newcastle and Manchester (? locations) about ten years ago when they set about burning houses and community centres that have still not been rebuilt.
But to play up FEMA’s incompetence, as the media did, over and above the far more important story of the unbelievable failure of local government in the face of a natural disaster that they knew would happen and had prepared for over decades, would be like telling the public that the riots in France comprise a wave of anti-semitic attacks by islamists. The issue is one of emphasis, spin, story line.
In fact, FEMA was incredibly incompetent and we haven’t even now learned the full story behind this incompetence. Moreover, FEMA’s incompetence is much more important to this country because all of us potentially depend on FEMA for responding to a natural disaster. WRT New Orleans and Louisiana, all we can do is shake our heads. WRT FEMA, we fear for what may happen to us or our communities should a natural disaster strike us. There was absolutely nothing overblown about the reporting on FEMA’s incomptence.
Peter’s half-right. While the rate of unionization is quite low, the reach of unions is far greater than in the US, as seen in extremely restrictive labor laws and collective bargaining agreements that are pervasive in France. In fact, many union activists in the US are seeking lessons from the French as to how they can gain the clout that French unions have, in spite of low membership.
Here’s a Communications Workers of America (CWA) strategist on French unions:
in France, unions count only 10% of the workforce as dues-payers but unions negotiate in nearly all industrial sectors based on long standing support for collective bargaining. Unions actively compete against each other – both for membership and votes for government mandated workplace committee members open to all workers in the same workplace or firm. But the country’s various labor federations then find ways to engage in common contract campaigns with management or the government; as a result, nearly 90% of French workers have collective bargaining agreements. The right to strike is well-established and widely supported by members and non-members alike….
Blah, the Katrina story was overwhelmingly about the failure of local government. And yes, that is the lesson that other communities will take from Katrina, not the sideshow about FEMA. Besides NOLA, the other major disaster-in-waiting is of course an earthquake in the Bay Area. No one in the Bay Area (to take one glaring example) is so foolish as to believe that FEMA, not local responders (both public and private), represents the last best hope for minimizing loss of life when the earthquake occurs.
The point, again, is how difficult it is for media chatterers with deeply-held, preconceived notions– be they rightist or left-leaning bloggers, cable network anchors, old media pundits– to put aside a dearly beloved meme and try to understand a situation or event on its own terms, with clear eyes. The media botched reporting of Katrina, and nearly all of the American bloggers are botching their analysis, if you can call it that, of these race riots-cum-car-torching orgy.
In unrelated news, kids, if you are having a riot in the area where you live, then burning cars is very much the sensible thing to do….
Dan that’s just a brilliant polemic. Mark my words, it will bring out French youth en masse, (heh) every class and coloration, etc., and no matter what foot they dig with. (Perhaps not the poor devils locked in the attic chained to a sewing machine by evil stepmothers and the like. You don’t see that sort of thing as much nowadays. Even in France, if you can believe it. In any event, their numbers are too small to be decives. What is to be done, can be done, and quite nicely, without them.) Les jeunes camarades français can liberate them at leisure in the detailed, house to house work necessary in any event for the total reordering of “French†society which you no doubt plan to implement a outrance once the state is smashed, no pulverized, its rubble consigned to the trash heap of history.
I know it’s going to work out just as I’ve said, because there is nothing that impresses kids, or insipres them to action, more than advice from older people telling them to do sensible practical things, and telling them what things are sensible and practical. Back in the late 60’s-early 70’s when I was up to my neck in left-wing antiwar extremist politics I always followed whatever words of wisdom of this nature that I was lucky enough to come by, no matter what my own foolish notions were. That just how young people are. It’s their nature, always has been and always will be.
The ‘68 French uprising failed because it got a reputation for jokes and silliness. The young people naturally lost interest, and that was that.
Below is an attempt at insurrection humour. I trust you’ll keep it away from the children.
French bourgeois: Vous Diable!! Zat ees an ‘undred zowzand dollaire BMW!
{ 70 comments }
Uncle Kvetch 11.08.05 at 4:45 pm
I see no reason for the sheepishness. You sliced very skillfully through much of the blather cluttering up the anglophone blogosphere on this subject.
Not that said blather is in any way surprising. Take a story that manages to encompass two of the Right’s favorite bugaboos–cheese-eating surrender monkeys and the islamofascist threat–and the resulting “discussions” are bound to provide lots of wild ‘n’ woolly entertainment, and precious little else.
nick s 11.08.05 at 5:19 pm
And yet the Welsh seem not to burn sheep as an expression of their anger, instead choosing to torch the summer cottages of the English.
Grand Moff Texan 11.08.05 at 5:33 pm
I’m shocked, just SHOCKED that all this burning and bashing is going on …
… and not a single turnip farmer is involved?!?!?!?!?
Verily, it is the end of Gallic cultural hegemony in the West!
.
Iron Lungfish 11.08.05 at 5:40 pm
Anyone care to tell an ignorant American why they are rioting? I’m honestly interested in a positive analysis of this beyond the Right’s “muslims are all crazy” theory. If it’s not the case that poor policy-making has resulted in the maintenance of an economic underclass not integrated with the rest of French society, then I’d love to hear what people think is actually going on over there.
Grand Moff Texan 11.08.05 at 5:41 pm
Take a story that manages to encompass two of the Right’s favorite bugaboos—cheese-eating surrender monkeys and the islamofascist threat
Two great hates to hate great[ly] together!
Hey! You got your islamofascist neocaliphate misgyno-dhimmocracy in my socialist nightmare!
Hey! You got your childcare-o-crat anti-semitic nanny-state in my thanatopediatric splodeydope turd-world!
It’s Recess-Wingnut Utter-Fuss!
…ok, I’ll stop.
.
Grand Moff Texan 11.08.05 at 5:42 pm
I’d love to hear what people think is actually going on over there
They’re saying it’s a ‘manifestation.’
.
jayann 11.08.05 at 5:54 pm
If it’s not the case that poor policy-making has resulted in the maintenance of an economic underclass not integrated with the rest of French society,
It is. (I admit to having the same thought as Daniel: the rioters have certainly “integrated” into French patterns of protest, except they missed cobblestone throwing class.)
now to torch an English Second Home…
Walt Pohl 11.08.05 at 5:56 pm
I had the same reaction as you, Daniel. It’s France. They’ve been rioting continuously since 1789.
Iron Lungfish 11.08.05 at 5:57 pm
They’re saying it’s a ‘manifestation.’
Well, I guess that explains everything.
I guess what I meant to say is, what do you think is actually going on there? Daniel says the notion that “French society has not been able to integrate them” is “utter rot” and that the rioters have “a political grievance.” I had gotten the impression that their political grievance stemmed from the fact that French society has not been able to integrate them. This may be a misapprehension, in which case I encourage someone with more knowledge of French politics than I – which could be any one of a whole lot of people – to enlighten me.
Otherwise I guess we can just make some more French jokes. Hey, I hear they like to eat cheese!
Iron Lungfish 11.08.05 at 6:01 pm
They’ve been rioting continuously since 1789.
Okay, so what I should take away from this is that two weeks of rioting in three hundred towns is a minor dust-up, and nobody’s really worked up about this?
Iron Lungfish 11.08.05 at 6:05 pm
Or is the contention being made here that the French just like to riot culturally, sort of like how Americans are just socially prone to invading other countries and the British like to get blown up by things?
cbu 11.08.05 at 6:27 pm
On NPR’s “Day to Day” program this afternoon (08 November), I heard a French journalist claim that car-burnings have been a common phenomenon around Paris for quite some time. He claimed (unless I heard him incorrectly while racing down the highway in my not-so-airtight VW) that before the current spate of violence began that there was an average of 80 car-burnings per night in certain neighborhoods that are explicitly avoided by most of the populace. It has become so common that it simply isn’t reported as an extraordinary event.
Can anyone corroborate or refute this claim?
Daniel 11.08.05 at 6:41 pm
If it’s not the case that poor policy-making has resulted in the maintenance of an economic underclass not integrated with the rest of French society,
well I see where you’re going, but this is theorising beyond the evidence. What there is decent evidence for is “they’re rioting because they’re poor and nobody respects them”.
I don’t think we can argue from there to
1) “they’re an economic underclass” (if the term “underclass” is to mean anything more than they’re poor), or that
2) “poor policy-making has resulted” in this, as opposed to the simple fact that France has been in recession or near-recession for about seven years. There were certainly towns in the Welsh Valleys that had unemployment of 40% and more for long periods in the 1980s and 90s, under completely different policies.
3) that they’re “not integrated with the rest of French society”. I would want to see much more evidence before taking this on trust, and I’d probably be looking for a rigorous definition of what “integrated” meant in this context.
They’re rioting because a) they’re poor b) there was an incident that got them angry c) they’ve been allowed to keep rioting and d) it hasn’t rained. The general conditions that lead to riots are pretty well-studied, and I would assume that the size and frequency of them follows something like a power law distribution; despite the conspiracy theorists, a riot is usually a self-organising phenomenon. Given this, I’m not sure that we need a specific theory of particular riots.
nick s 11.08.05 at 6:42 pm
I heard a French journalist claim that car-burnings have been a common phenomenon around Paris for quite some time.
If the cités are anything like British council estates, I can well believe it.
From the LA Times in September (i.e. pre-riots):
Ross Smith 11.08.05 at 6:56 pm
Daniel: What there is decent evidence for is “they’re rioting because they’re poor and nobody respects themâ€. I don’t think we can argue from there to … “they’re an economic underclass†(if the term “underclass†is to mean anything more than they’re poor)
While I agree with the general thrust of your comments, Daniel (especially the bits about special vs general theories of riotivity), I’m not sure what you’re driving at here. “They’re poor and nobody respects them” sounds like a pretty good definition of “underclass” to me.
P O'Neill 11.08.05 at 7:14 pm
More French than the French themselves. Brilliant.
But isn’t it Clichy-sous-Bois?
Barry 11.08.05 at 7:22 pm
And yet the Welsh seem not to burn sheep as an expression of their anger, instead choosing to torch the summer cottages of the English.”
Posted by nick s
Nick, ya gotta unerstan’, the Welsh be a thrifty folk. They understand that a sheep can provide entertainment forgetthatImeant **food**, yea, food, for months, while a burnt English summer cottage can provide several man-months of rebuilding wages.
Chris W. 11.08.05 at 7:45 pm
Uh, what’s surprising about a super-rich suburb, the richest municipality in France (or maybe the second or third), the one where Sarkozy and his clan officiate as mayors and regional councillors, being twinned with Windsor and Maidenhead? The geography of the Parisian periphery is a bit more complicated than “huge high rise estates everywhere”. You aren’t confusing it with Neuilly-sur-Marne (poor-ish, about like Clichy-sous-Bois).
Otherwise I agree. Don’t tell those kids they don’t want to integrate. Nearly all the inhabitants of the estates want is to be treated like everyone else. This includes not being called “scum”, and not getting strip-searched, aged 15, at every street corner.
I’ve taught kids from the periphery. They may not be called “Jacques” or “Olivia”, but they’re as French as they come. What else would they be? They don’t _know_ anything but France, they are born and bred here.
Given this, as I’ve written elsewhere, I’m not convinced that “failure of the French model of integration” is at stake here. Sure it’s easy to criticise the French model, as it is for every national ideology. But what’s clear is that the policies are a far cry from the lofty republican values. Forget about extra help and positive discrimination — the treatment of the _banlieue_ inhabitants is anything but equal.
Car-burning has indeed been frequent in years. Especially during New Year’s night — the Struthof estate (in Strasbourg) is particularly well-known for it.
Tom T. 11.08.05 at 7:48 pm
Clearly there is a market opportunity for enclosed garages around Paris.
Seth Edenbaum 11.08.05 at 7:56 pm
So you’re saying both that these young men have a grievance and are just being silly, being negroes on the one hand and French on the other.
What’s next, jokes about the bondfires in Detroit?
And how in all this are you not an asshole? And Belle Waring too?
What snobbery. What whiteboy rich ass scum
jayann 11.08.05 at 8:29 pm
Given this, as I’ve written elsewhere, I’m not convinced that “failure of the French model of integration†is at stake here.
Perhaps it hasn’t failed in its own assimilationist and “colour-blind” terms. Nonetheless
“rampant unemployment, heavy-handed policing, discrimination, poor housing and a concentration of large numbers of immigrants from North and West Africa, along with their descendents.”
BBC
suggests France has failed to encompass these people’s needs.
Chris W. 11.08.05 at 8:39 pm
@jayann, I’m not saying anything different.
jayann 11.08.05 at 9:14 pm
Chris sorry. I think on reflection I misread you (a lot of people seem not to understand the French assimilationist model).
Belle Waring 11.08.05 at 10:20 pm
now, now, seth. I’m whitegirl rich ass scum.
Sunny 11.08.05 at 10:29 pm
The best article I’ve read on the subject so far is one by Amir Taheri:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nypost/20051104/cm_nypost/whyparisisburning
Has the background to the economic aspect as well as what actually sparked the whole thing.
I actually oppose the riots, and have written about this on my blog, because I think as a form of political protest it may be liable to blow up in their faces.
Riots only work in France if you overthrow the ruling class. That is not going to happen, so it just means plenty of hand-wringing after and not much policy action.
Chris W. 11.08.05 at 10:38 pm
I was being elliptical, sorry.
If the “French assimilationist model” consists of simply telling people “Assimilate!”, this will fail. But the “model” is much more complex. Some would paraphrase it as “You are not brown, black or white, Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jew, you are all nothing more than citizens of the Republic”. Now this is one way to go about integrating migrant populations, and you or I may find fault with it, but frankly, there are worse attitudes than that.
But there is a second half to the ideology: “… and we, society and the state, will treat you all alike as citizens.”
This model has not so much failed because of its content, but because the second half hasn’t even been implemented. The populations from the poor estates are not treated alike, in particular not if they descend from former inhabitants of France’s colonies. They are treated as potential criminal from the age they enter elementary school, they have substantially lowered job prospects simply by virtue of having a foreign-sounding name. In a climate of generally high unemployment — something I struggle with, too, to the point of thinking of leaving France — town planning decisions and a not-in-my-backyard mentality compound their disadvantage.
This is why I think that pontificating about the inadequacy of “the French model” looks wrong-headed to me. The reality just doesn’t look like the high-minded ideology promised. And _this_ is something even a kid with the most basic of educations can grasp.
Delicious pundit 11.08.05 at 10:53 pm
What’s next, jokes about the bondfires in Detroit?
Honestly? Next we’re going to joke about your typographical error. For, my dear boy, “bondfires” — as you call them — are what I use to light my impossibly huge, forced-perspective-inducing cigar, the lit end of which I use to spark a fuse that leads to a round bomb with a picture of the world painted on it. Caption? “Our Current Predicament.”
Honestly, if we can’t joke about how the world is going to shit, then what can we joke about? I know — Procol Harum. But what else after that?
For some reason I am reminded of this:
“And then there’s the story of my uncle’s best friend’s death. He was chased by a horde of young women who were naked except for rollerskating equipment. They relentlessly chased him all the way to the edge of a cliff, where he fell off and died. Everyone in the family thought it was an unspeakable tragedy, but not those Monty Python jerks. Apparently, they think being chased off a cliff in the prime of your life by semi-nude skaters is a big joke.”
GP 11.09.05 at 12:01 am
“The reality just doesn’t look like the high-minded ideology promised.”
That’s funny, they say the same thing about Communism these days.
Daniel 11.09.05 at 12:58 am
So you’re saying both that these young men have a grievance and are just being silly, being negroes on the one hand and French on the other.
Not at all. For one thing, they’re for the most part Arabs. For another, I love the French and I think that smashing things up and setting fire to them is an excellent way to pursue your grievances against the French state. If these young chaps stick to it for long enough, maybe they will be as pampered and looked after as French farmers.
What’s next, jokes about the bondfires in Detroit?
Probably not; I’ve got at least a week’s worth of New Orleans material to get through first.
And how in all this are you not an asshole?
My impish sense of humour helps. Oh Seth, do try to take a break once in a while, it really does help. Btw, if you are going to call me “whiteboy” it might make sense to adopt a pseudonym like, I dunno, “Delbert Wilkins”, because (and I think I have mentioned this before) being called “whiteboy” by “Seth Edenbaum” makes me feel like a minor character in an episode of Seinfeld.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 1:58 am
Iron Lungfish,
A few thoughts on what the riots are not:
1) an Islamist-inspired or -led “intifada” (despite the fervent wishes of the know-nothing American anti-Islamist blogosphere)
2) nothing out of the ordinary for French
african and arab kids in the cites on the periphery of large French cities
3) a joke (despite efforts by some here to shrug them off as such)
Re. the ludicrous “intifada” meme, if these events were guided or motivated by Islamism, we would have seen hundreds of attacks on jews, synagogues, jewish cemeteries of the sort that happened several years ago. (One attack daily in each city affected would have put the tally over 100 several days ago.) Instead, in this affair we’ve seen over 7,500 cars torched and only two attacks on jewish targets. The imams are condemning the violence, and the kids are ignoring the imams’ calls to end it. So much for the fell hand of Islamism imagined by every right-wing US blogger from Reynolds on out.
Re. the notion that this is nothing out of the ordinary, not so. The scale of these riots, and the French government’s near-total helplessness and fecklessness in trying to end them, put this in a different category entirely from the popular French game of Grand Torch Auto. Given the incompetence of the police and the copycat aspect of the torchings, there’s currently no end in sight to this. It’s not (merely) a rash of joy-torchings.
Re. the attempts on this thread by some to slough it off as a joke, these events are deadly serious. These riots and the failures they bring to light will undoubtedly cause the most sweeping national debate and policy changes in France since 1968, which itself was a watershed year in the Republic’s history. I believe they will inevitably force the French to confront their essentially racialist conception of national identity, and explore the benefits of the assimilationist, truly multicultural American model in which dualness, or pride in being, eg, both “asian” and American, is welcomed as a healthy trait among our immigrants.
As to the drivers behind these events (aside from Sarkozy and the cops’ incompetence), IMHO these are fourfold:
1) a deeply entrenched racialist conception of national identity which does not allow a citizen to consider himself both “african” and “French”;
2) an economic system which favors older, unionized workers at the expense of younger workers, combined with a decline in the availability of the sorts of unskilled positions that were abundant when the african and arab kids’ grandparents and parents emigrated to France forty or so years ago, with a result that unemployment for nonwhite youths is endemic and abov 35%;
3) an obvious pattern of racial discrimination in hiring, the results of which are that there’s not a single african to be found in the uppper ranks of either major political party, or among senior state functionaries, the senior executive ranks of any French corporation, or the intellectual and media elite of the country. African university grads have a 26% unemployment rate; for their white peers, the unemployment rate is 5%. Perhaps a 2x or 3x differential could be explained by different majors or institutions attended, but I doubt that this explains a 5x differential in unemployment rates. IIUC racial discrimination is not illegal in France, or if so is almost never prosecuted.
4) a familiar (to Americans) set of dysfunctional attributes of the urban underclass culture, seen in the immensely popular French version of American gangsta, cop-killer rap.
#1 and #2 are root causes; the economic barriers will certainly be addressed (look for the absurd 35 hour workweek restriction to be lifted for small firms, perhaps also enterprise zones) but I don’t see any hope of the French embracing the thoroughly laissez-faire attitude toward immigrant culture and economic conditions that has worked brilliantly in providing economic opportunity and freedom for American religious minorities to succeed and geneally be left alone, while reducing incentives for resenters to come here.
As to eliminating racial discrimination, it will be interesting to see whether the French embrace affirmative action, which is profoundly at odds with the throughly meritocratic French approach to higher education. I don’t see it happening.
As to the French gangsta culture of groups like the popular NTM, or Nique ta mere [= f— yo mama], this is a double edged sword. A huge amount of junk but also a source of cultural energy and vibrancy that moribund old France could profit from, if applied to more productive uses.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 2:12 am
Re the influence of French rap, here are lyrics from the huge hit, “FranSSe”, by rapper Mr. R (note the Americanized name), which compares France to the Third Reich (transl. by Olivier Guitta): the state can go f–itself. . . . I pee on Napoleon and General De Gaulle. . . . My niggers and my Arabs, our playground is the street with the most guns. . . . F–ing cops, sons of whores. . . . France is a lousy mother who abandoned her sons on the sidewalk. . . . My Muslim brothers are hated like my Jewish brothers were during the Reich” [at which point Mr. R’s video shows footage of Hitler and of Nazi concentration camps].
To those peddling the “French Intifada” meme: please note the appeal to solidarity with what the rapper calls his “Jewish brothers”. Somehow I doubt this would receive the Islamist Seal fo Approval. But then, hardly any of these kids ever sets foot in a mosque. If there’s any “pathology” that’s been “imported” by these kids from overseas– as right-of-center blogger Michael Totten tried to argue the other day, and Reynolds blared through his megaphone– it’s not Islamism but the pathologies of the US underclass. By Totten’s logic France should try to inoculate itself against importations of US hip-hop culture.
Also funny to note Mr. R’s horrifying (to the French) anti-statist rhetoric: Boyz from the Hood, or is he just one of the ChicagoBoyz?
Scott Martens 11.09.05 at 2:38 am
Thibaud, this line of anti-state rhetoric is far from unheard of in French history, but leftist anarchism usually means brûlez les fachos et la bourgeoisie. The Chicago model is a bit more tolerant of the first of the first and admant in its support of the second.
Nor is this line of ethnic solidarity and restatement of the “French model” at the same time as expressing contempt for it as a state, really new. I’m thinking of Sniper a few years ago:
No, Daniel’s got it right. The people in these neighbourhoods are pissed off in very distinctively French ways and are responding in very French ways.
abb1 11.09.05 at 3:00 am
What could be more stereotypically, characteristically French than that?
Yeah, initially I had the same reaction. But come to think of it (and Belle’s post helped me here), a vital element is missing – where’s the customary massacre? What I see now is a bunch of french-wannabe pussies faking a revolution: who cares about those lousy renaults, they probably wouldn’t start anyway. Where are barricades, pitchforks, pistol brandishing half-naked women? This is not French, they are not really trying, lazy bastards.
Isabel 11.09.05 at 3:01 am
“smashing things up and setting fire to them is an excellent way to pursue your grievances against the French state. If these young chaps stick to it for long enough, maybe they will be as pampered and looked after as French farmers.”
Best comment so far!
agm 11.09.05 at 3:25 am
Whitegirl. French farmers. Maybe it shouldn’t bem but dear higher being, this is just too funny.
So, how long until they start slipping across the border in search of a job, I wonder?
Doug 11.09.05 at 4:19 am
Not to worry. Union organizers are hard at work and soon the rioting will be limited to 32 hours per week, with strict rules regulating who can set what on fire.
a 11.09.05 at 4:54 am
I think the general impetus for the riots is, as it would be said in the U.S., “We’re mad as Hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.” When Americans feel this way, they then to act individually rather than collectively – going to one’s workplace and shooting people, or what have you. In France the response is collective.
Dan Hardie 11.09.05 at 5:49 am
I’d agree with a fair bit of this, but you need to consider that since ’68- or before, if you look at the Breton protests in the early ’60s- French groups which have successfully used violence have all been ‘inside’ the system: employed trade unionists (with jobs), farmers (with farms and in receipt of subsidies), students (soon to become comfortably bourgeois). Meeting their demands has always been a case of cancelling this or that law and chucking out a few extra milliards of subsidy. If there really is unemployment of over 40% in the Mahgrebin communities in France, fixing that is going to be a damn sight harder and more expensive than giving the farmers a few more francs. And tracking the success or failure of such policies will be near impossible if you’re legally prohibited from collating data on different ethnic groups.
Minor point re Jews in French rap: there are actually a lot of working-class Jews living in the banlieues, usually of Tunisian or Moroccan descent. So when French rappers cite the sufferings of the Jews, it’s not that surprising: it’s basically saying ‘no to divide and rule’ (or ‘if the kids were united’ or ‘don’t mess with my homies’ or whatever).
Re alienation: I watched the World Cup final in ’98 in the Place de la Republique, surrounded completely by Arab kids from the banlieues. They spoke French rather than Arabic, but they had more Algerian than French flags, and their constant chant was ‘Algerie! Zizou!’- the latter being the nickname of Zinedine Zizane. I’d make a joke but Chris Bertram and I have yet to agree on the warning protocols.
Dave F 11.09.05 at 6:58 am
In fact car burning is also rampant in Italian urban centres, but the last I heard the Italians were still stumped as to the motive. Are they about to find out, I wonder?
Slocum 11.09.05 at 7:07 am
Now that everybody’s reassured themselves that these riots are ’68 redux (but now with gangsta rap!) The interesting ‘intifada’ argument is not ‘Al Queda is behind the riots’, but rather ‘conservative islamic elements in the banlieus will be further strengthened as a result of the riots’. That, for example, the French state will end up cutting deals with islamic community leaders to restore order and promised new spending in the banlieus will end up being influenced by them.
As for the incompatibility of islam and the apparently westernized rap-loving rioters — many of Al Queda’s western european recruits have lived wild, secular lives before being radicalized. And the values of rap and conservative islam are not exactly incompatible, are they, when it comes to the treatment of women (the ones one the streets without the hijab are the bitches and ho’s).
I posted this link yesterday, and I don’t think anybody commented. Is this all B.S.?
Nadir Doudane grew up in the same projects. Now, he works as a youth counselor trying to encourage more normal relations between the boys and girls.
What is it about the projects that is at the root of this violence?
“I think it’s because of the tradition that make the boys think that the girls should be treated this way and not that way,†says Doudane. “It’s not France here.â€
What really scares Doudane is that Islamic fundamentalists are taking advantage of these frustrations. “It’s tough. What the fundamentalists are saying to the young kids, ‘We will help you find a job. We will help you be proud of who you are.’ That’s why it’s a big success here.â€
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/13/60minutes/main617270.shtml
abb1 11.09.05 at 7:18 am
What really scares Doudane is that Islamic fundamentalists are taking advantage of these frustrations. “It’s tough. What the fundamentalists are saying to the young kids, ‘We will help you find a job. We will help you be proud of who you are.’ That’s why it’s a big success here.â€
What, faith-based initiatives are not a panacea anymore?
soru 11.09.05 at 7:21 am
If there really is unemployment of over 40% in the Mahgrebin communities in France, fixing that is going to be a damn sight harder and more expensive than giving the farmers a few more francs.
Except that the riots are, more or less, in response to attempts to (rather heavy handedly) _change_ that status quo.
Cynically speaking, to stop the riots, just build a few token community centers, and tell the police ‘ok forget about what the former minister (now spending more time with his family) said, those places _are_ no go areas, if the locals want to peddle drugs or burn cars, that’s none of our business’.
Of course, if you were an evil mastermind who wanted to deepen and worsen the reality and perception of the ghettos, then you would, if you were a _really really smart_ mastermind, get the inhabitants to burn the cars of anyone with a job that pays well enough to run a car, ensuring they either move out or drop the job.
Le Figaro said more than 20,000 cars have been set ablaze in France so far this year. _Before_ the riots.
soru
jayann 11.09.05 at 7:48 am
This model has not so much failed because of its content, but because the second half hasn’t even been implemented.
Yes – thank you.
Steve 11.09.05 at 7:50 am
I get the impression that the anglosphere reaction to the riots is a bit overblown. But at least they haven’t said the rioters have resorted to cannibalism, raping babies, and starving to death in three days. To reach THAT level of idiocy, one must be a respected member of the leftwing, mainstream American/British chattering class media conglomerate (and it helps if a Republican is president). Thus, though Daniel Pipes, Pat Buchanan, Glenn Reynolds et al may be stretching things a bit, they have yet to stoop to the level of, say Dan Rather.
Steve
Iron Lungfish 11.09.05 at 7:55 am
Dan Rather, Steve? Jonah Goldberg was making “Thunderdome” jokes.
rjw 11.09.05 at 8:07 am
Ted Stanger (former European correspondent for Newsweek, and resident in France) has a nice little book that aims to explain the peculiarities of the French to an American audience (Sacrés Francais).
He explains the French tast for violent protest is a very intuitive way – the French state is just so unresponsive you HAVE to protest violently to get anything done. Did someone mention the farmers?
Not that I’m condoning it of course….
Scratch 11.09.05 at 8:18 am
Um, you people are aware that this stuff goes on regularly in Britain, even in essentially all white, nominally Christian slums and estates, aren’t you?
Even the spark that sets it off is invariably the same, the police break the habit of a lifetime and show up to arrest someone.
It’s a turf war between local scallies and the (normally absent) state, that’s why the young lions of the underclass never cross the road and attack wealthier areas nearby.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 9:07 am
I get the impression that the anglosphere reaction to the riots is a bit overblown. But at least they haven’t said the rioters have resorted to cannibalism, raping babies, and starving to death in three days
True, but in the early days of the crisis you could see the anti-Islamist right-of-center bloggers champing at the bit. As with the New York-based newsmedia and Katrina, the central meme of the Pajamas Media crowd– Islamism! Barbarians at the Gates of Vienna!! The multiculti clueless left doesn’t GET IT, man– rose quickly to the fore, before any of these jokers even bothered to earn that these riots are happening despite a judicial regime that possesses sweeping powers of search, detention, interrogation of suspected jihadists and despite a civic and popular culture that is profoundly hostile to, not friendly or mushy-wimpy-resigned towards, multiculturalism and assimilation of the african minority, and despite immigration laws that are far tougher than those of any EU nation I can think of, let alone the uS. But the Intifada meme, combined with schadenfreude directed at the hated frogs, trumped any effort to learn the basics of France’s situation.
In the case of Katrina and the Bush-hating media, the grand meme that was locked was Wicked BusHitler Hates Black People!!! The NY mainstream media transformed a story about the spectacular sinkhole of incompetence, corruption and degradation– political, economic, moral– that is Louisiana and New Orleans into a story about the wickedness and heartless incompetence of… the Bush administration.
The right-wing blogosphere was eager to transform a series of race riots by third-generation, irreligious, apolitical French kids in les cites into… an Islamist-inspired “intifada.”
In both cases, hysteria came before seeking after facts and bloviating was substituted for intelligent analysis. But hey, this is the brave new media age. Why bother with facts and logic when you can just grab that trusty old meme and fire away?
abb1 11.09.05 at 9:26 am
Isn’t it a fact, though, that a member of the Bush administration (FEMA director) has been fired in the aftermath for wickedness, heartlessness and incompetence?
Tom Doyle 11.09.05 at 9:28 am
abb1:
“[A] vital element is missing – where’s the customary massacre? What I see now is a bunch of french-wannabe pussies faking a revolution: who cares about those lousy renaults, they probably wouldn’t start anyway … . Where are barricades, pitchforks, pistol brandishing half-naked women? This is not French, they are not really trying, lazy bastards.â€
Regarding the missing massacre, hasn’t the ruling class always taken care of this item? Or rather their lackey(s)? Cavaignac, in ‘48.(see below) Thiers, in 1870. DeGaulle in ‘68. The people have risen, the oppressors and their assorted running dogs, vassals, minions, etc., cower in their mansions, bureaus, barracks, and stations, “ ils ne voulont pas marchons“ (as Joffre (I think) famously said about B.E.F. commander Sir John French in 1914, in the run-up to the Marne). The insurrection is doing what it’s supposed to.
June 24, 1848
At the same time the roar of the cannon resumes most violently in the vicinity of the Saint Michel Bridge which forms the juncture between the insurgents on the left bank and those of the Cité. General Cavaignac who this morning has been invested with dictatorial powers, is burning with the desire to employ them against the uprising. Yesterday the artillery was used only in exceptional cases and for the most part only in the form of grape-shot. Today, however, the artillery is brought everywhere into action not only against the barricades but also against houses. Not only grape-shot is used but cannon-balls, shells and Congreve rockets.
This morning a heavy clash began in the upper part of the Faubourg Saint Denis. Near the northern railway, the insurgents occupied several barricades and a house which was under construction. The first legion of the national guard attacked without, however, gaining any advantage. It used up its ammunition and lost about fifty dead and wounded. It barely held its own position until the artillery arrived (towards 10 o’clock) and blew the house and the barricades to smithereens. …“It is a veritable massacre,†writes the correspondent of a Belgian newspaper.
[…]
The workers also fortified themselves on all sides in the Faubourg Saint Jacques, in the neighbourhood of the Panthéon. Every house had to be besieged as in Saragossa. The efforts of dictator Cavaignac to storm these houses proved so fruitless that the brutal Algerian soldier declared that he would set them on fire if the occupants refused to surrender. In the Cité, girls were firing from windows at the troops and the civic militia. Here, tool howitzers had to be used in order to achieve any success at all.
F. Engels, “June 24, 1848″, Neue Rheinische Zeitung (June 28, 1848)
abb1 11.09.05 at 9:39 am
Yeah, exactly: it’s the ‘girls firing from windows at the troops’ stuff that’s sadly missing here. Resist the repression, damn it! To the barricades!
Uncle Kvetch 11.09.05 at 10:04 am
The interesting ‘intifada’ argument is not ‘Al Queda is behind the riots’, but rather ‘conservative islamic elements in the banlieus will be further strengthened as a result of the riots’.
The only problem with that most interesting argument, Slocum, is that there’s still no evidence whatsoever that any of this is actually, you know, happening. But if you’re that determined to squeeze this particular square peg into the round hole of the Clash of Civilizations, that’s your prerogative. As has been amply noted above, you’ll find no shortage of Americans who will be all to happy to join you.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 10:54 am
Abb1 – it’s also a fact that a couple of synagogues have been torched in this story. But to play up FEMA’s incompetence, as the media did, over and above the far more important story of the unbelievable failure of local government in the face of a natural disaster that they knew would happen and had prepared for over decades, would be like telling the public that the riots in France comprise a wave of anti-semitic attacks by islamists. The issue is one of emphasis, spin, story line.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 10:59 am
The right-wing anti-Islamist blogosphere is now compiling reports (verified or not) of piecemeal incidents that seem to fit the intifada thesis. never mind that Grand Torch Auto is the favored sport for many of these kids; that the rioting has not changed targets, only cities (indicating a high degree of copy-cattism; or that we’ve seen islamist violence in France before and the pattern, targets and methods were entirely different from what’s happening here.
Meme is truth, and truth meme. That’s all ye know in the new media world, and all ye need to know
thibaud 11.09.05 at 11:38 am
Re alienation: I watched the World Cup final in ‘98 in the Place de la Republique, surrounded completely by Arab kids from the banlieues. They spoke French rather than Arabic, but they had more Algerian than French flags, and their constant chant was ‘Algerie! Zizou!’- the latter being the nickname of Zinedine Zizane.
From an American perspective, it’s perfectly healthy and natural for a group of immigrants’ kids (and their parents) to embrace a favored son sports hero in part as a way of expressing communal pride. I’m not a sports junkie but I’m sure one could find dozens of examples of immigrant or minority religious groups embracing sports heroes in this way, from irish-americans cheering for Tunney and Sullivan to italian-americans and DiMaggio and Berra to jewish-americans and Koufax to hispanic- and asian-americans embracing their own US baseball stars today.
The crucial differences with the French kids chanting ‘Algerie! Zizou!’ is that those kids are not permitted, in the eyes of the French, to consider themselves (let alone express pride in themselves as) simultaneously “algerian” and “french.”
IIRC these kids offered at the World Cup in 2000 (?) a brilliant, unscripted formula that their white betters would do well to ponder, summarized simply in the chant, “Beur! Blanc! Noir!“. All of these identies are French. A deeply racialist (if not openly racist) French white majority doesn’t get it: the American embrace of dualness is by far the best way to absorb a high-growth, energetic immigrant population which, given the aging white majority’s reluctance to bear and raise children, provides the only real hope that any of us in the West have of ever retiring.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 11:39 am
MODERATOR — please correct tags above– close the last sentence’s italics after “Beur! Blanc! Noir!“
merci,
t
thibaud 11.09.05 at 11:45 am
‘conservative islamic elements in the banlieus will be further strengthened as a result of the riots’.
Huh? The rioters’ own parents are reportedly planning to march against them, the imams are against them, their neighbors whose cars have been gutted are against them.
The only clear winner from this will be the marketing genius who comes up with an interactive video game called “Grand Torch Auto.” (insert trendy gothic script fonts and thong-clad female avatars with molotov cocktails)
Grand Moff Texan 11.09.05 at 12:24 pm
WSJ today is priceless.
“France utterly lacks self-awareness, doesn’t think about racism, only racism in America. Liberals love France.” Etc.
The column is signed “Ralph Peters,” but I think it’s a bot.
.
a different chris 11.09.05 at 12:40 pm
>or pride in being, eg, both “asian†and American, is welcomed as a healthy trait among our immigrants.
Err, you are talking about *my* country? Or is there some America I haven’t heard of, one which “they should learn our language and our customs” isn’t just daily fodder for comedy clubs, work cafeterias and AM radio but a constant subject of attempted legislation?
And give it up on New Orleans. That’s why we have a FEMA – stuff like this way beyond a given state’s resources no matter how competent, like it or not.
The Bush regime sucked ass in this situation, and it wasn’t some “librul media” that made it so, they just reported it.
Sorry to others for going off thread, but how an otherwise lucid fellow like thibaud can suddenly start spouting this crap is something that is gonna be a subject of neuroscientific research very shortly, I’m thinking.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 1:16 pm
Chris, the country you inhabit seems to be a construction of media and academic bloviators of the far right and left. In the actual America– ie places like Sunnyvale, CA, where indian-americans are going to build a metroplex devoted to bollywood films, or Columbus, OH, which now has 30,000 striving, increasingly successful muslim somali-americans, or St Louis MO, which has thousands of hardworking, ambitious bosnian-americans, or Dearborn or Houston or any of dozens of growing cities across the country, immigration is rightly seen as a good thing: America’s secret weapon, if you like, in the global economic race. In reality– despite the morons on talk radio and the internet– Americans like and welcome hardworking immigrants, who tend to boost the values of neighborhoods they move into, regardless whether these are blighted neighborhoods being restored (cf the bosnian immigrants in St Louis) or middle-class neighborhoods whose schools and property values are boosted by high-achieving asian-americans.
The biggest threat to the spectacular success of our laissez-faire policy toward immigrants– ie, obey the laws, work hard, and you can expect to worship as you choose (whether you’re mormon or sikh or scientologist or venusian or whatever) and be given abundant opportunity to become prosperous and pursue happiness– comes from the cultural left. It’s these clowns who are desperate to cap U Cal Berkeley’s asian-american enrollment, just as the ivy league admission committees sought to cap jewish-american enrollment in the early-mid 20c. You need to get out a bit more.
washerdreyer 11.09.05 at 1:42 pm
57 – Your first sentence supports the italicized one you’re questioning. The idea is that the French government finds that the conservative Muslims are the ones whom they’re most capable of working with in avoiding future rioting, which strengthens conservative Islamic elements.
thibaud 11.09.05 at 6:18 pm
That’s assuming that Sarko’s neo-corporatist approach (muslim parliament, etc) really has any effect. Color me skeptical. The state can’t co-opt these groups by creating little poodles. The only way forward is to empower and employ many more of these kids, by eliminating the labor and tax absurdities that ensure mass youth unemployment, and improving access to capital for new business formation.
Stephen M (Ethesis) 11.09.05 at 10:56 pm
Le Figaro said more than 20,000 cars have been set ablaze in France so far this year. Before the riots.
I’m glad I dropped by again. I’ve gotten a perspective I’ve not found anywhere else.
Thanks.
Peter 11.09.05 at 11:34 pm
an economic system which favors older, unionized workers at the expense of younger workers
2 interesting statistics:
Level of unionization in France:
1970: 21.5%
2005: 8%
Unemployment
1970: 2.5%
2005: 9.8%
Peter 11.09.05 at 11:34 pm
an economic system which favors older, unionized workers at the expense of younger worker
2 interesting statistics:
Level of unionization in France:
1970: 21.5%
2005: 8%
Unemployment
1970: 2.5%
2005: 9.8%
dsquared 11.10.05 at 1:28 am
I watched the World Cup final in ‘98 in the Place de la Republique, surrounded completely by Arab kids from the banlieues
heh. I probably spilt beer on you.
In unrelated news, kids, if you are having a riot in the area where you live, then burning cars is very much the sensible thing to do. It has all the same visual impact as burning buildings, it ties up nearly as much time and effort for the authorities and it is much cheaper and less inconvenient when the riot has finished. We had riots in Newcastle and Manchester (? locations) about ten years ago when they set about burning houses and community centres that have still not been rebuilt.
blah 11.10.05 at 4:49 pm
But to play up FEMA’s incompetence, as the media did, over and above the far more important story of the unbelievable failure of local government in the face of a natural disaster that they knew would happen and had prepared for over decades, would be like telling the public that the riots in France comprise a wave of anti-semitic attacks by islamists. The issue is one of emphasis, spin, story line.
In fact, FEMA was incredibly incompetent and we haven’t even now learned the full story behind this incompetence. Moreover, FEMA’s incompetence is much more important to this country because all of us potentially depend on FEMA for responding to a natural disaster. WRT New Orleans and Louisiana, all we can do is shake our heads. WRT FEMA, we fear for what may happen to us or our communities should a natural disaster strike us. There was absolutely nothing overblown about the reporting on FEMA’s incomptence.
thibaud 11.10.05 at 11:09 pm
Peter’s half-right. While the rate of unionization is quite low, the reach of unions is far greater than in the US, as seen in extremely restrictive labor laws and collective bargaining agreements that are pervasive in France. In fact, many union activists in the US are seeking lessons from the French as to how they can gain the clout that French unions have, in spite of low membership.
Here’s a Communications Workers of America (CWA) strategist on French unions:
in France, unions count only 10% of the workforce as dues-payers but unions negotiate in nearly all industrial sectors based on long standing support for collective bargaining. Unions actively compete against each other – both for membership and votes for government mandated workplace committee members open to all workers in the same workplace or firm. But the country’s various labor federations then find ways to engage in common contract campaigns with management or the government; as a result, nearly 90% of French workers have collective bargaining agreements. The right to strike is well-established and widely supported by members and non-members alike….
thibaud 11.10.05 at 11:18 pm
Blah, the Katrina story was overwhelmingly about the failure of local government. And yes, that is the lesson that other communities will take from Katrina, not the sideshow about FEMA. Besides NOLA, the other major disaster-in-waiting is of course an earthquake in the Bay Area. No one in the Bay Area (to take one glaring example) is so foolish as to believe that FEMA, not local responders (both public and private), represents the last best hope for minimizing loss of life when the earthquake occurs.
The point, again, is how difficult it is for media chatterers with deeply-held, preconceived notions– be they rightist or left-leaning bloggers, cable network anchors, old media pundits– to put aside a dearly beloved meme and try to understand a situation or event on its own terms, with clear eyes. The media botched reporting of Katrina, and nearly all of the American bloggers are botching their analysis, if you can call it that, of these race riots-cum-car-torching orgy.
Tom Doyle 11.10.05 at 11:21 pm
Daniel wrote:
In unrelated news, kids, if you are having a riot in the area where you live, then burning cars is very much the sensible thing to do….
Dan that’s just a brilliant polemic. Mark my words, it will bring out French youth en masse, (heh) every class and coloration, etc., and no matter what foot they dig with. (Perhaps not the poor devils locked in the attic chained to a sewing machine by evil stepmothers and the like. You don’t see that sort of thing as much nowadays. Even in France, if you can believe it. In any event, their numbers are too small to be decives. What is to be done, can be done, and quite nicely, without them.) Les jeunes camarades français can liberate them at leisure in the detailed, house to house work necessary in any event for the total reordering of “French†society which you no doubt plan to implement a outrance once the state is smashed, no pulverized, its rubble consigned to the trash heap of history.
I know it’s going to work out just as I’ve said, because there is nothing that impresses kids, or insipres them to action, more than advice from older people telling them to do sensible practical things, and telling them what things are sensible and practical. Back in the late 60’s-early 70’s when I was up to my neck in left-wing antiwar extremist politics I always followed whatever words of wisdom of this nature that I was lucky enough to come by, no matter what my own foolish notions were. That just how young people are. It’s their nature, always has been and always will be.
The ‘68 French uprising failed because it got a reputation for jokes and silliness. The young people naturally lost interest, and that was that.
Below is an attempt at insurrection humour. I trust you’ll keep it away from the children.
French bourgeois: Vous Diable!! Zat ees an ‘undred zowzand dollaire BMW!
French insurgent: Nuut ennimaaw.
Listen to the original (MP3 file)
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