boedicca
11-10-2005, 04:59 PM
Excellent analysis of the special circumstances that make France particularly ripe for the current (and most likely future) riots.
Excerpt:
Thelocal context is the constant denigration by the political class of everything that works elsewhere, especially if it is in the United States or Britain. It is the general immodesty, engrained both left and right, everything that works elsewhere, especially if it is in the United States or Britain. It is the general immodesty, engrained both left and right, concerning a supposed French model for civilization for the world that cannot find substantiation at home. And in the case of the current rioting, it is the boomerang effect of a particular kind of French romanticism that, over the years, legitimized intifadas, anti-globalist street fighters, and fire-bomb tossing with the subtext, we're with you, brothers.
So the violence here arises not only from specially French circumstances including massive housing projects in enclaves for the poor, and a dismal colonial history in North and Black Africa. It also comes, pre-rationalized, from the homegrown French who provided the conceits fashioning the rationale, however jumbled, of the rioters.
An Arab kid in Clichy-sous-Bois may not articulate it, but what rage it must create to hear he lives in the greatest, smartest, most fair country in the world, revered as Islam's best-friend-in-the west from Algeria to Oman, and then have to deal with a French reality of racist scorn and rejection.
Not to mention the French state which, clothed as the ideal republic, runs the school, the bus, the Métro, owns the housing project, operates the job center, and fails, in relation to immigrants, on all those levels.
And then the denial despite hints of self-awareness:
Now, Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist group that with the neo-Gaullists, makes up Jacques Chirac's presidential majority, describes France as a "sick state, a state swollen into impotence" with "a democracy that doesn't work well." This means, he said, that "reality never enters political discussions."
But asked why the riots were happening here, since France's neighbors seemed to be escaping its misery, Bayrou offered a general response that, like the answers of the other politicians he condemned, hid from the specifics of both responsibilities and solution:
"As long as French democracy doesn't change," Bayrou said, "these accidents are going to continue." He left it there.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/09/news/assess.php
All of which leads me to believe that riots on the current French scale are unlikely in other countries, unless AQ or some other Islamofascist group provides external leadership to plan them and imports agents provacateur to instigate them.
Excerpt:
Thelocal context is the constant denigration by the political class of everything that works elsewhere, especially if it is in the United States or Britain. It is the general immodesty, engrained both left and right, everything that works elsewhere, especially if it is in the United States or Britain. It is the general immodesty, engrained both left and right, concerning a supposed French model for civilization for the world that cannot find substantiation at home. And in the case of the current rioting, it is the boomerang effect of a particular kind of French romanticism that, over the years, legitimized intifadas, anti-globalist street fighters, and fire-bomb tossing with the subtext, we're with you, brothers.
So the violence here arises not only from specially French circumstances including massive housing projects in enclaves for the poor, and a dismal colonial history in North and Black Africa. It also comes, pre-rationalized, from the homegrown French who provided the conceits fashioning the rationale, however jumbled, of the rioters.
An Arab kid in Clichy-sous-Bois may not articulate it, but what rage it must create to hear he lives in the greatest, smartest, most fair country in the world, revered as Islam's best-friend-in-the west from Algeria to Oman, and then have to deal with a French reality of racist scorn and rejection.
Not to mention the French state which, clothed as the ideal republic, runs the school, the bus, the Métro, owns the housing project, operates the job center, and fails, in relation to immigrants, on all those levels.
And then the denial despite hints of self-awareness:
Now, Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist group that with the neo-Gaullists, makes up Jacques Chirac's presidential majority, describes France as a "sick state, a state swollen into impotence" with "a democracy that doesn't work well." This means, he said, that "reality never enters political discussions."
But asked why the riots were happening here, since France's neighbors seemed to be escaping its misery, Bayrou offered a general response that, like the answers of the other politicians he condemned, hid from the specifics of both responsibilities and solution:
"As long as French democracy doesn't change," Bayrou said, "these accidents are going to continue." He left it there.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/09/news/assess.php
All of which leads me to believe that riots on the current French scale are unlikely in other countries, unless AQ or some other Islamofascist group provides external leadership to plan them and imports agents provacateur to instigate them.