France’s Recent Riot Roots
By Denise Best | Related entries in In The News, The WorldHow far do the roots of the recent French riots extend?
Here’s a perspective as to possible drivers of the recent violence being demonstrated in the Paris suburbs.
Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: “the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs.”
President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the “conservative society” that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it “is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world.”
How the times have changed. Muslims in Paris’s suburbs are out shooting at police and firefighters, burning cars and buildings, and throwing rocks at commuter trains. Even children are out on the streets – it was reported that a 10-year-old was arrested.
The trigger for the riots was the electrocution of two teenagers last Thursday, which the rioters say came following a police chase, a charge the police deny. But even if the charge by the rioters is true, that the police are culpable in the deaths of the two youths, the fact that such an incident would spark a riot is a sign of something deeper at work – no doubt France’s failure to integrate its immigrant Muslim community.
It turns out that France’s Muslim community lives in areas rampant with crime, poverty, and unemployment, much the fault of France’s prized welfare system.
There are those of us who spent part of the 1980s in Europe, supporting the idea, among others from the Reagan era, that immigration was a virtue for a country and that the racial or religious background of the immigrants did not matter. We maintain that view. But immigration into a country with a dirigiste economy is a recipe for trouble, which is why supporters of immigration into France have long warned of the need for liberalization.
Now, some folks are no doubt saying to themselves, so what? That’s France’s problem.
Well, think again – there are some possible ramifications that dictate the need to take this problem seriously on the international front.
A number of observers of the French scene have looked at population trends and suggested that France is on its way to becoming a Muslim country (one that would, let it be noted, be armed with hydrogen bombs). Some react to this by suggesting a halt to immigration and even expulsion.
The better approach is to impose law and order, more speedily to reform the burdensome welfare state, and start integrating the Muslim community.
A very sensitive situation and one that needs to be handled with care as actions taken because the consequences can certainly be far-reaching.
Integrating the Muslim community, increasing law enforcement efforts to address the rioting conditions, and striving for economic reform are all necessary areas that the French government and leadership need to quickly pursue.
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November 4th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
The French never should have joined America and invaded Iraq; none of this would have happened. Uhhh.. they didn’t?
November 4th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
Frances attracts the wrong Muslim immigrants because of its fantasy land social welfare. As Judge Posner puts it:
“What is important is the effect of economic institutions on the self-selection of immigrants and on their incentives when they arrive. If economic institutions such as open labor markets and a low safety net encourage the immigration of strivers, they and their children are unlikely to feel like resentful outsiders.” Posner – Becker Blog
When as matter of social policy a country like France says, come here and we’ll take care of you — your going to get a less than desirable group of people. If a country says, come here and you’ll have the freedom to succeed or to fail — it tends to attract better people.
November 4th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Get the schadenfreude out of our systems ASAP, because France matters; America and the West need a strong France as much as we ever have (it was why Ike was willing to help out in Vietnam). The social problems are not France’s alone. Obnoxious elites or not, they are our friends and they are in serious deep s**t.
November 4th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
Callimachus — For clarity sake, will I be accused of schadenfreude, a big fansy word for taking pleasure in other people’s pain, whenever I point to the obvious manifestations of a failed policy. This is like when conservatives accuse liberals of enjoying our fatalities in Iraq and rooting for the insurgency, because they disagree with our foreign policy. It is “irrsinnig” and please quit forcing me google foreign languages to figure out what you are saying.
And for the record: I don’t hate France – its the French that I have issues with, but the real estate looks really nice.
November 4th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
MSNBC has a story that shows just how bad the unemployment situation in France is. The under-25 age group has an average unemployment rate of 25% and has for many years. In some of these Muslim areas it rides as high as 33%. All the result of the welfare state/protectionist policies of the past few decades. Even small businesses can’t fire people as they need to, which makes them not inclined to hire people even in good times.
Add to all of that a growing immigrant minority (they have lots of children) in ghetto housing that has not (or will not) assimilate into French society, and you have an explosive combination.
We do need a strong France. But their own social policies will cause their downfall, if they don’t recognize the problems where they begin: the welfare state.
November 4th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
Thanks for providing these unemployment figures, Jon Buck!
It puts the situation into perspective and demonstrates the impact of France’s welfare state philosophy upon this group, as well as the seeds for the violence and desperate behavior that’s being exhibited in the Paris suburbs.
November 4th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
I wasn’t referring to any one poster with the schadenfreude comment. I feel it myself. And it IS like the pleasure liberals/Democrats might take in seeing the Bush Administration tangle itself up over re-war Iraq intelligence. Whatever pleasure you may feel in that, then stop and think, what are the consequences of defeat and failure? The demarcation line bwtween the sane left and the looney left runs through that territory. The root of the rioting is not in Islam per se. Most of the rioters are not immigrants themselves, but children of immigrants who came over in the ’70s. I saw the same immigrants in Germany in those years.
But the disaffected youth with no sense of future and a vague awareness of its Islamic past is fertile soil for al Qaida and groups like it; cf, London bombers of this past summer. Look for more of that in the future.
When America faced a somewhat similar crisis 40 years ago, there was Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin. Appreciate them. It’s been said the Islamic world needs a Martin Luther right now. The part of it that lives in majority non-Muslim lands also needs a Martin Luther King.
November 4th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
A part of the problem is that immigrants to France never become French. The French, unlike the Americans, are a “people.” France is the land of the French, not a nation formed around an idea. Even the children of immigrants aren’t considered French.
Having been lectured by French people on more than one occasion on the failures of American society, there is definitely some schadenfreude on my part. The French deride our Anglo-Saxon culture and its presumed indifference to equality, quality of life, culture and so on, and then the French lose better than 10 thousand old people because of a summer heat wave, or watch their suburbs turned into war zones because they cannot find a way to assimilate millions of Muslims.
That having been said, we have plenty of things to explain away here at home — the BTK killer, the Washington sniper, high minority infant mortality rates, a laughable public education system and most recently New Orleans. Probably we should leave the French to their mess and see if we can do something about ours.
November 5th, 2005 at 12:12 am
I’m still a bit agog at discovering, buried in an AP article, France’s “minister of social cohesion, Jean-Louis Borloo.”
Yer doin’a heck of a job, Jean-Louis.
November 5th, 2005 at 11:52 am
And what will happen to France (and other European countries) when enough Muslims manage to get elected, that they can begin to effect policy? I hope that’s just a conspiracy theory I’ve cooked up after a few too many IPA’s, but it just makes to much sense. Europe is in trouble in the next 50 years. It may become the next Muslim state.
They can use the liberal laws of those countries to get into power, and then wipe all of those liberal laws of the books.
I hope the American left is paying attention to this on many different levels.
November 5th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Mr. Reynolds —
You write: “The French, unlike the Americans, are a “people.â€Â? France is the land of the French, not a nation formed around an idea. Even the children of immigrants aren’t considered French. ”
According to American Muslim Society, “For a long time, the French citizenship law declared every individual born on French territory a French citizen.” So I’m not sure if you talking legal French citizenship or culturally disconnected.
This is the very problem with multiculturalism in the United States. Bearded pinko Marxist professors and their political and media-cultural love muffins encourage the “cultural mosaic” theory of the United States, rather than assimilation; Assimilation into an idea of free markets and capitalism, a meritocracy rather than centralized income redistribution system.
One way of doing that is to support “identity” politics — thus no one is an American, except rich white males, but rather a Caribbean-American, a Haitian-American, a Chinese-American and, yes, African-American. As such, no conversion of virtuous American ideals is required and despicably this Marxist ID politics piggy-backs the Civil Rights Movement. It is PC-newspeak and it is a testament to the power of language.
France doesn’t have a Muslim problem and these aren’t Muslim riots. These are French people rioting and France should deal with them as needed as French criminals. Without passion or prejudice.
Of course, the French won’t, because they are French and they will appease, because that is what the French do — is appease and if appeasement doesn’t work they surrender. So yes, we have every reason to be afraid.
It reminds me of the movie with Johnny Depp, What’s Wrong with Gilbert Grape, where his autistic brother climbs the telephone pole and won’t come down. Once again, American (Johnny Depp) will have to drop what we’re doing (winning a war) and deal with our autistic brother (the French) fifty feet in the air with no fathomable idea on how to get down.
Everyone should calm down. They’re torching cars and low-income housing. God creates wild fires in Yosemite to create new life. God creates riots in ghettos to create new opportunities. But I guarantee, the French will fungle up the opportunity…because their French and unfortunately we’re related and we’ll have to talk them off the pole. The exact sentiment I have towards one of my brother-in-laws.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:39 am
DosPeros:
You’re wrong about the French appeasing rioters. On the contrary, the French are had asses when it comes to terrorism laws or anything that affects domestic tranquility. You might want to consider that French riot cops are equipped with fully automatic weapons standard.
And while we’re at it, a few more words on behalf of the much-maligned French. They took horrifying losses in WW1 but unlike the Russians did not fold up but fought on to the end. In WW2 they still lost more men than we did, despite their military collapse. In Viet Nam they fought hard and lost — just like we did. They fought hard in Algeria. They were in Gulf War 1 with us and have made a number of forays into Africa.
It was our friends the Brits, incidentally, who attempted to appease Hitler: Chamberlain was not a Frenchman. The French reputation is not for appeasement but for collaboration. This derives from Vichy, a rump government set up with French fascists and under the threat of German occupation. Vichy is a very dark mark on French history, but let’s recall that we also have appeased more than once: after all, we sat out WW1 till the very end, ignoring German outrages, and we sat out WW2 until the Japanese forced our hand. Even then we did not declare war on Germany, they declared war on us. Part of the reason we sat out WW2 in the early years was a huge American contingent of appeasers and Hitler sympathizers who were not silenced until December 7.
Our own history with terrorism is much the same: Carter appeased Iran, and so did Ronald Reagan with his tail-between-the-legs scurry from Lebanon. Bush pere sat on his thummb while Saddam masssacred the Shia we had encouraged to rebel. Clinton took no determined action in response to the attack on our destroyer and Khobar Towers, and Bush junior likewise did nothing until 9/11 forced our hand.
We Americans have a richly undeserved reputation for unrelieved toughness in all cases. Sometimes we bargain with terrorists, sometimes we run away, we appease, we ignore, we pretend things aren’t happening, sometimes we win, sometimes we pull out a draw, and sometimes we lose. Much like the French.
November 7th, 2005 at 12:52 am
Point well taken, Michael, regarding French military history. I certainly hope that they start to effectively control the horrible situation. I don’t think our sitting out of the initial stages of WWI & WWII were based in appeasement so much as isolationism, though. The fact remains that France and the rest of Europe were protected by the military (particularly nuclear) strength of the United States since the end of WWII.