Perhaps.
But tell me, how close were/are the French elections to both 1968 and 2005 riots?
Posted on 11/04/2005 11:53:25 PM PST by Southack
It's good to remember History. Old tricks should be remembered, lest they be played on us again.
During most of the month of May in 1968, France had riots not unlike today. De Gaulle's government was even at its lowest point of popularity back then...strikingly similar to the 23% French approval rating today (in 2005) of Chirac.
A general insurrection broke out across France that month in 1968. It soon began to reach revolutionary proportions before being discouraged by the French Communist Party, and finally suppressed by the Government. This rebellion was an important revolutionary event of the Twentieth Century because it appeared to be a purely popular uprising, superseding ethnic, cultural, age and class boundaries.
It began with student strikes that broke out at a number of universities and high schools in Paris following confrontations with the police. The de Gaulle administration's attempts to quash those strikes by further police action appeared to inflame the situation further... leading to street battles (with the police) in the Latin Quarter. Ten million French workers, roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, then led a protest strike.
The protests caused De Gaulle to create a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest, dissolve the National Assembly, and call new parliamentary elections for June 23, 1968.
The French government again appeared close to complete collapse at that point, but then something interesting happened; the revolution evaporated almost as quickly as it arose.
Upon urging by the Confédération Générale du Travail, the leftist union federation, and the Parti Communiste Français, the French Communist Party, workers simply went back to their jobs.
But the Left was not rewarded in the polls. When the elections were finally held in June, it was the Gaullist Party that emerged even stronger than before.
De Gaulle won the elections, not the Communists and assorted Leftists who were blamed for instigating the protests and who admittedly called for "their" protests to cease.
Which is to say, a French government with horrendous popularity (lack thereof, really), benefitted from the very riots against it.
Don't get me wrong, the events in Paris and Denmark should probably be taken at face value as radical-islamic insurgencies with no bearing on French elections (which are rapidly approaching), but even so, in the back of our heads we should remember that an unpopular French government at one point benefitted mightily from French protests that appeared to come from people opposed to those in current power.
Yeah. This was probably set up just so Chriac can show his "tough guy" image to everyone. ;)
And his various nefarious trips behind the iron curtain..... never explained.....setting up a safe house in Prague I bet.
"This (1968) rebellion was an important revolutionary event of the Twentieth Century because it appeared to be a purely popular uprising, superseding ethnic, cultural, age and class boundaries."
I see what you mean though. Although I'm not sure anyone believes that these riots are "popular" and have broad appeal. I think that as the days and weeks go by it will be determined that these riots may have started spontaneously, but were continued by the Imams, etc. of the local mosques.
And thanks for the history lesson. Some article had said "worst riots in decades" but left it at that. This helps explain things.
I doubt this seriously.
If anything this will bring down Chirac, and probably replace him with the Mayor. But not by anyone's design.
Its been brewing for a long time. It will require troops to put it down. If troops are not used soon thre will be a permanant muslim enclave in France - A Palistine on the Seine.
Why I became a conservative
by Roger Scruton
I was brought up at a time when half the English people voted Conservative at national elections and almost all English intellectuals regarded the term “conservative” as a term of abuse. To be a conservative, I was told, was to be on the side of age against youth, the past against the future, authority against innovation, the “structures” against spontaneity and life. It was enough to understand this, to recognize that one had no choice, as a free-thinking intellectual, save to reject conservatism. The choice remaining was between reform and revolution. Do we improve society bit by bit, or do we rub it out and start again? On the whole my contemporaries favored the second option, and it was when witnessing what this meant, in May 1968 in Paris, that I discovered my vocation.
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/feb03/burke.htm
1. Those were french citizens in '68, today they are foreigners and people who dont want to asimilate into European culture
2. The people in '68 went back to their jobs, there are no jobs today
Need I continue?
They deserve each other.
Perhaps.
But tell me, how close were/are the French elections to both 1968 and 2005 riots?
Ah, yes. The May 1968 riots. If anyone has ever figured out what these protestors were protesting, get back to me.
What a waste the 1960s were. Just a bunch of people fighting the system for no reason other than it was the thing to do.
dude, the elections dont mean squat. Chirac has been unpopualr for a good while now. Employment has been very high for some time.
On the contrary, De Gaulle was set to **lose** the election until after the French students protested **against** him.
today the rioters arent protesting Frances leader....they are protesting against EUROPEAN CULTURE. Stop trying to draw comparisons.
I keep thinking about what step two is, and step three. I figure they want to topple the government and exercise sizable power in the next, but then what?
This article is an absolute absurdity. The situation in France today has no comparison to the earlier event. In effect, the riots will help the hard-liner Nicolas Sarkozy, the Minister of Interior, who the Muslims hate. Sarkozy has been fighting with the Union des Organizations Islamiques de Franch, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports the riots.
Chirac is ineffectual and will not run again. The French are not ready to forget that it was Chirac who, in 2002, was the first French leader, with hat in hand, to make an official visit the Grand Mosque in Paris since its opening in 1926. And even the French have tired of the mincing Villepin. The riots almost ensure that the next President of France will be the tough-minded Sarkozy who is determined to save France from itself.
The problem with the theory is that in 1968 the strikes were supported by the main body of the French, and the tumoil was leftist v. far leftist (DeGaulle v. Stalinists).
The current unrest is between "outsiders" and a faction-strained centrist government. If people react against the uprising, will the credit go to Chrirac, or the Polish "political plumber," Sarkozy?
(Not a Watergate reference: Sarkozy is a Polish immigrant who is secretary of the interior and leader of conservatives within the UMP party, and the primary political opponent of Chirac's right-hand man, de Villepin. The French left has tried to direct anti-immigration anger against Polish Catholics, making plumbers a stereotypical "scary foreigner." Apparently the French have already learned to rely on Poles to get rid of the sh!t they create.)
>> If troops are not used soon thre will be a permanant muslim enclave in France - A Palistine on the Seine. <<
>> They deserve each other. <<
And when the Franks are confined to a narrow strip of land along the ocean, and millions of angry Muslims keep blowing them up with home-made bombs, and the UN condemns the Franks for building a wall to protect them from the Muslims, the cry that rings out across the globe will not be for the Remnant France, but will be:
FREE PARISTINE!
DeGaulle's heroism was a fiction of Eisenhower's and Roosevelt's need to create a national hero so France could appear to be "liberated" by Americans, rather than "occupied," as they keep saying about Iraq. The difference, of course, between 1944 France and 2002 Iraq? The Iraqis opposed Hussein; DeGaulle and the French admired Hitler.
I happened to be living in West Berlin in 1968, as an Air Force wife. Travel to Eastern Europe and Russia was not done on a lark, as so many reporters apparently think. It was very different from how travel to those countries is done today.
You had to get a visa from the country you were visiting. The Communist countries didn't let you just waltz across the borders for sightseeing. Anyone traveling in a Communist country was limited in where they could go. The governments sent "minders" with the few tourists they had, and tourists were kept from having too much contact with citizens.
Clinton went to Russia with the permission of the Soviet government. Ditto Prague. He was watched the whole time, and any contacts he made were with the approval of those governments. He wasn't just some wide-eyed rube eyeballing the sights. He went there with a purpose, and I want to know what it was.
If Putin wants to help President Bush, I am certain that there are records of that trip buried somewhere in the Kremlin.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.