Posted on 11/07/2005 9:20:02 AM PST by Dane
Violence exposes France's weaknesses
By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor
The violence in France has been brewing for some time Last spring, over dinner in Paris, a close friend of mine who runs one of the biggest opera houses outside the French capital told me: "I've got this persistent feeling that 1968 is just about to happen all over again."
He had no idea that the violence would erupt in the dreary, featureless suburbs.
He thought it was because the French political system had run out of ideas and credibility, and he knew the French.
These moments of weakness are the times when trouble always seems to break out.
Moment of weakness?
If President Jacques Chirac and the centre-right government which supports him had been in full control of France's political life, it is hard to think these long days and nights of continuous rioting would have taken place.
The feelings of resentment and simmering anger in the suburbs would have been just as strong, but the crowds would mostly have held back.
Chirac must control the rioters or his image will be fatally damaged
Years of reporting on riots and revolutions have shown me that crowds display a mysterious collective sense which somehow overrides the perceptions and fears of the individuals who make up the mass. And crowds have a remarkable feeling for the weakness of government.
There is of course a huge well of fury and resentment among the children of North African and African immigrants in the suburbs of French cities. The suburbs have been woefully ignored for 30 years.
Violence there is regular and unexceptionable. Even on a normal weekend, between 20 and 30 vehicles are regularly attacked and burned by rioters.
Power decline
This time the riots are joined up, pre-planned, co-ordinated. At some level of consciousness, the demonstrators know that the governmental system they are facing is deeply, perhaps incurably, sclerotic.
Mr Chirac, standing back until his ministers showed their inability to agree a clear line on the rioting, seems not to have the answers when he speaks now. His presidency is overshadowed by an inescapable sense of past corruption and weakness, and he has governed France at a time when its economy and its position in the world have both declined sharply and markedly.
Violence in the poor suburbs is a frequent occurrence
No matter that events have thoroughly borne out his criticisms of the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Muslim teenagers who briefly applauded him then have long since forgotten all that - though of course if he had supported President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair then, he would be in even greater trouble now.
In 1968, too, President Charles de Gaulle and his ministers spoke sternly of the need for order to be restored immediately, and yet they did nothing.
If the riot police could have restored order they would have done so, but they were overstretched and outwitted, and their only response was more of the kind of violence which made the crowds even more ferocious in their turn.
Anti-French tone
I remember the 1968 riots very well. But of course the differences between then and now were as great as the similarities. For a start, the riots of 2005 are still all about the bitter and genuine grievances of the Muslim and African communities, ignored and demeaned and kept in poverty by a system which cares very little about them.
Sarkosy is appealing to right-wing resentment
Only if a much wider swathe of French society gets involved on their side will the situation become truly pre-revolutionary, in the way that the crowds of 1968 were.
And since the riots have taken on a fiercely anti-French tone, and the violence and destruction have sickened so many people in the suburbs themselves, that seems unlikely at present.
France, though, tends to move forward in fits and starts, rather than organically, and these fits and starts are often associated with violence.
Spirit of revolution
Thanks to the Revolution, violence even has a kind of virtue which it simply does not possess in a country like Britain. When government becomes incapable of change, the crowds in the streets have to do the changing for themselves.
There is a great deal that has to be changed. I have seen many times for myself how the CRS, the deeply aggressive and ferocious force of riot police, have attacked Muslims and Africans in the streets in times of trouble.
The police have failed to bring the rioters under control
Last April, Amnesty International singled out the violence and racism of the French police towards the non-white people of the suburbs for particular criticism.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, now seems to be playing politics with the situation by appealing to the most basic and resentful attitudes of conservative France.
Much of the violence on the streets of France's cities is mindless; some of it is malign. But simply stamping it down will not work - and anyway the CRS and the civil police have tried that, and their toughness has only made things worse.
France is going to have to change towards its unwilling, often unwelcome young second-generation population, and accommodate them better.
It is not enough to demand that these people drop their sense of themselves and fit in with the way France has traditionally ordered its affairs.
But most of all there has to be change in attitudes at the top. And if Mr Chirac cannot do it, he will be fatally damaged as president.
Do you agree with John Simpson's view of the violence in France? How should the authorities tackle it? What are the major challenges in store for French society? Send us your views on the form below. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
The leadership in France is directionless and bereft of new ideas. When was the last time anyone looked to France for any initiatives on the international stage? If the French treat large segments of their own population to the same arrogance they do the rest of the world, is it really any wonder that it ends in mass rioting? France needs to focus on its domestic affairs and inject some fresh thinking that doesn't involve referring to French citizens as scum. After all, can anyone imagine a UK minister still being in office if they ever used similar language? Luigi Pacelli, UK
John Simpson's article is a good one as always, but it is impossible to encapsulate such a complex issue so briefly. For me the biggest danger is the French penchant for rebellion. This is a country where striking is something of a national sport, where paralysing transport strikes are tolerated and supported even by those most affected, where the anti-state violence of 1968 is revered, and where the current government (and whole political system) is deeply unpopular and therefore a ripe target... and now where many newspapers are legitimising the violence, essentially saying "well, if you live in such squalor, with no job, money, hope or respect, rioting is the only way to draw attention to your plight". There's no quick fix, but the government must protect the majority of peace-abiding citizens, and Sarkozy, for electoral reasons, will get even tougher, and he won't mind Chirac's popularity tumbling further. A curfew might not be far off... Phil, France
One very important point that one has to keep in mind is the 2007 presidential elections in France and the fact that both Sarkozy and Villepin are likely candidates and have both started their "campaign" , the weak left isn't to be forgotten about either and is definitely using these events to point out the flaws of the current government , forgetting that the "Mitterand years" were the exact opposite of the current policy , a way too laxist approach that "victimised" people caught in the circle of crime and violence in these already difficult neighbourhoods. Last but not least, the televised media airing Sarkozy's interventions ( if you have access to the footage you will notice that he is actually answering pleas of the locals to do something about the growing criminality and insecurity, but who definitely should have been more careful in the choice of his wording,) in the "banlieues", outside of their context just amplified an already tense situation David A.N. Barbanti, Mamer, Grand-Duchy of Luxemburg
I also remember the 1968 riots and the congruence of forces has not yet occurred in the current rioting. If the student population becomes engaged in the struggle for social justice then perhaps the situation could change. But, the hypnosis of materialism has co-opted much of this critical sectors' energy, a materialism that the protestors are both lured to and object to. If fundamentalists become even more influential by the ruling class' rhetoric and reactions, then France and the other postcolonial powers are in for even more troubled years ahead until they squarely and justly address the issues the protests raise. Confrontation will not work. Dialogue across the divide is what is required. Christopher Nolan, Clermont, New York, USA
Amazing the above is from the BBC, and they can't blame GW Bush.
Malaise? Send the expert - Carter.
Please stop the rioting at once! Or we shall ask you pretty please tomorrow!! And pretty please with a cherry on top on Wednesday!!
Toughness??
"But, the hypnosis of materialism has co-opted much of this critical sectors' energy, a materialism that the protestors are both lured to and object to"
Uh oh, dey done been hipmotize.
Gotta love the Beeb. Pravda in the Queen's English.
Chirac may actually have to grow a pair this time and write a strongy worded letter to Le Monde.
WILL BE????
It is not enough to demand that these people drop their sense of themselves and fit in with the way France has traditionally ordered its affairs.
This author is a classic example of a "useful idiot" - Tom
Interestingly, just a couple years ago I read the French novel The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail because someone pointed out to me that it was "prophetic".
He was right.
Centre-right?
"Much of the violence on the streets of France's cities is mindless"
This brings to mind a trailer for the old "Space: 1999" series, in which Martin Landau gravely intones "We do not commit MINDLESS violence," speaking of the beeb.
ATTENTION: To all you socialist, liberal , social justice at any cost crowd. Take notice of this French unraveling toward these immigrant thugs... Appeasement and coddling of these dysfunctional muslim neanderthals has brought these violent results. Play with deadly snakes and risk getting bit. WAKE UP wussie French....repent of your welfare socialistic state of delusions.
IMHO, the 5 million muzzies inside of France are the main reason that France did not back us on the Iraq war. In short, they were afraid that that if they backed the US, that the muzzies would burn France to the ground. Looks like France only bought itself a measley 2 years. They could have spent that time getting ready for the intafada that they are now fighting. The sick twisted socialist European mind will never learn.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last. - Sir Winston Churchill - (1874 - 1965)
My first thought as well. How many punks tossing molotov cocktails into buildings have been shot dead in their tracks by the French police? Clubbed by the French police? Received a stern look by the French police?
The best I can tell is the the police are only observing.
When the French Police start acting like the Italian Carabinieri did in Genoa in 2001, then they can be accused of "toughness." Don't forget, the Caribinieri only needed to shoot one person dead to quell the G8 riot.
(I'm enjoying this way more than I should.)
Looks like the inmates are running the asylum in France...
France is in more of a prison than they know.
If you stand for nothing...you will fall for anything.
A little "old news" from Time Mag. in Sept 2001 - i.e. for those few that continue to believe this is just all about "poverty"....
Time: Fighting Terrorism: Lessons from France
http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...176139,00.html
In the early 1990s, Islamist radicals found a pool of willing recruits in the cauldrons of youthful rage found in the impoverished suburban ghettoes that house many of France's 5 million people of Arab origin.
The point of connection between the suburbs of Paris and Marseilles and Osama Bin Laden's Afghanistan-based networks came via Algeria.
There, the military-backed government overturned elections won by the Islamists, banned their party and drove its most extreme elements underground — where they've led a merciless war of terror against politicians and citizens alike.
The most notorious Algerian terror faction, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), had been founded by men who'd fought as volunteers alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan's anti-Soviet 'jihad.'
When that war ended with the Soviet withdrawal, the men moved into France and began recruiting young thugs and exploiting their larcenous talents to raise money and build an infrastructure to attack France for its support of the Algerian government.
A far-reaching law
Operatives recruited in France helped staged a series of bombing attacks during 1995 that left eight dead and around 150 wounded….
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