Memo on French Riots to Martin Peretz, Stanley Kurtz, and other assorted wingnuts

To make the joke work, I think it would have to be “anyone except the more or less deranged and Stanley Kurtz (but I repeat myself).”

Thank God for this post I’ve been waiting for someone to say this and to find the statistics to say this- I’m getting increasingly tired of these idiots spouting this nonsence.

I think Peretz and Kurtz are both relying on the noted Europeanist, Mark Steyn, as their source material.

Be that as it may…the really unsettling thing here is that religion is no longer the opiate of the masses.

You do wonder if a lot of these people have ever been outside of America. In fact, you wonder if they have ever been outside. Or if, rather, they have spent the last few years holed up in a bunker, somewhere in the Mid West, with nothing to read but the labels on their Meals Ready to Eat and the collected writings of Mark Steyn.

I do not wish to take sides on this issue but I would like to see the stats on who it was that was doing the rioting etc. I did not think it was done by Arab teens who were doing riots in the name of Islam but still believe that most of the rioting in this instance was done by children, born in Europoe, with parents from north Africa–ie, muslim backgrounds and arab heritage. Am I wrong in this and, if sok can some one provde the figures to show me I am wrong. Again, not aMuslim outbreak but rather a teen outbreak from Arab/muslim poverty stricken poor.

There are some really unsettling parallels between this ludicrous fear-mongering and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, aren’t there?

Well, aside from the little technicality that Jews don’t really use the blood of Muslim babies in their rituals, while Muslims DO riot. Often enough, on thin enough pretext, to have a very intimidating effect in some countries.

And Brett chalks up another a-hole point.

Way to go!

Sorry Henry, but I’m going to run with it. What it reminds me of is the view that Hitler and other senior Nazis had of their potential enemies (UK, USA and USSR). The places was run by Jews, right, so every time that they said anything unwelcome, it was the Jews making them say it, and it should be discounted.

or is it meant in some weird way to cement an alliance with other racist groups in France – looking for some pro-Israel Le Pen type?

No, of course not. It doesn’t have much to do with France; quite simply they are pursuing every opportunity to illustrate that the Arabs and Muslims are dangerous, untrustworthy, destructive, and basically wicked in every respect.

That the magazine is not read doesn’t matter, as long as it can function as a thinktank of a sort: linked to, quoted, provides catchphrases, examples, talking points and so on.

I’m not certain how much of the fear should be taken at face value. There also seems to be a lot of wishful thinking involved. The destruction of France at the hands of the Muslim barbarians is too much of a wet dream for a certain kind of American rightwinger, hence the slavering over images of monstrous clerics looking down, Quasimodo-like, from the cathedral at the burning city. Even though they must know somewhere that it’s never going to happen, they can’t stop fantasising about it, because it would prove, once and for all, what they have always known: not only is America indisputably better than Europe, but also that Muslims are evil, and secular Europeans are guilty by association.

So while I think fear may be an important element, I also think we shouldn’t underestimate the appeal of hatred, wishful schadenfreude and a desperate desire for vindication.

Seems tnr is slightly on the right of Le Pen – he’s not so big on the “demographic menace” thing anymore these days. Too openly “biological racism”. You’d have to search the extreme right wing groupuscules fauna for a match to this mainstream (yes?) right wing “publication”.

What’s fascinates me here is that boundless capacity to phantasize the world. Tnr readers know that :

– France opposed the Iraq war because of its irrelevance, or lost empire, envy. Sure those reasons seem ridiculous to you, dear american, reader : it just shows how strange, foreign, arcane and exotic french minds are.

– As a consequence, Paris is now in rubbles, patrolled by muslimonazis militias, as you saw on CNN.

They live in a movie.

I’m going to agree with Chris Williams on the parallels between anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic prejudices, but I’d argue that the analogy is less to Nazi anti-Semitism than to classical anti-Semitism of the Pfefferkorn-to-Protocols variety.

Race is a relatively minor component of modern anti-Islamism, so most of the Nazi pathologies don’t come into play. On the other hand, the rhetorical and stereotyping patterns of anti-Islamism have some striking parallels to the earlier, religious and culturally-based anti-Semitism. Muslims are portrayed as both dangerous radicals and the secret rulers of the world; they are stereotyped as an alien and unassimilable minority that must be made to give up its backward customs for its own good; their religious texts are cherry-picked to make them appear to be enemies of humanity; they are vengeful of slights real and imagined; they engage in shadowy conspiracies against civilization as we know it.

There’s almost a one-to-one correspondence between Bat Ye’or and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Anti-Islamism isn’t anti-Semitism, but sometimes it can be a very anti-Semitic type of prejudice.

I did not think it was done by Arab teens who were doing riots in the name of Islam but still believe that most of the rioting in this instance was done by children, born in Europoe, with parents from north Africa—ie, muslim backgrounds and arab heritage

I have heard that Arabs were a minority among the more violent of last fall’s rioters, “more violent” meaning the ones who were stoning the police and burning cars, not just yelling and shouting. By some estimates about 60% to 70% of the violent rioters were African rather than Arab, and some of them weren’t Muslim at all.

On the bigger issue of Muslims in Europe, Spain is an interesting example. It has many Muslim immigrants, particularly from Morocco, but for the most part they are not considered much of a problem. The (non-Muslim) immigrants from Latin America, in contrast, are proving to be a major headache. al-Qaeda has very few if any followers in Spain, but the Latin Kings have thousands.

Sorry, I overlooked this one last time, roger at 20 :

an alliance with other racist groups in France – looking for some pro-Israel Le Pen type

Mr Le Pen has a problem with Jews, not Israel. He was even saying how he liked Sharon’s style, iirc.

Sarkozy’s drum is rather quiet these days.

His cops were enrolled early in his campaign – the media and Sarkozy voters love these “cops team crashing doors at dawn in some suburbs” sequences, but it seems to generate tensions rather than ease them (whoddathunk?). So people have begun to say that his police-as-spectacle is bad for the cops, and to pay attention to his – bad – results.

So he’s quiet these days : i think its because he realises that his arsonist-fireman pattern begins to show.

Of course this is only my interpretation, and I just can’t stand the guy.

OregonGuy is right in one thing: refusing to call the problem “the problem” doesn’t make it go away. Except the problem isn’t Islam, it’s wingnuttery.