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Heaven help the French; they can't help themselves
PowerLine blog ^

Posted on 11/06/2005 8:17:38 PM PST by quesney

November 06, 2005

I haven't written about the Paris (and now perhaps French) intifada, partly because I've been too busy and partly because it's so sad. I've been saying since the early days of Power Line that France is done-for, but seeing this evidence of the phenomenon is much more harrowing than contemplating the concept. Despite my frequent and harsh criticism of France and the French (too frequent and harsh to suit my French wife), I love the city of Paris and some aspects of French culture. The demise of that city and that culture, for all the faults of both, is tragic.

The riots in themselves signal no such demise. We had our race riots in the late 1960s. But these riots are fundamentally different. Although our rioters had reason to hate America, deep-down they didn't. Our riots came at the tail end of the great and peaceful civil rights revolution. By the time they occurred, Congress had already passed the legislation that would vastly diminish the injustices that sparked them. The movement that Martin Luther King led was profoundly pro-American. It challenged America to live up to its creed. The rioters were kids who, to the extent they claimed to be separatists, were fooling themselves and no one else. It was their impatience with the pace of integration which caused them to embrace the shock rhetoric of extreme black nationalism.

As far as I can tell, the situation in France today is nothing like that. These riots are not the tail-end of a peaceful, pro-French civil rights movement. They are a manifestation of raw hatred of France. The anti-French rhetoric is not the result of youthful hot-headedness or a desire to shock the French into living up to their creed (if what France stands for can be called that). It is, at least in part, the product of a religion with its own diametrically opposite creed. The leaders of the movement behind the riots aren't demanding that the French embrace them. Their objective is to transform France into an Islamic state. The intention is not to do away with the vestiges of slavery. At best, it is to preserve their ability to act outside of the constraints of law and western civilization. At worst, it is to terrorize the French until they convert to Islam, and to enslave those who don't convert.

France's situation may not be hopeless, but it's not easy to see the way out. The best hope may be that the U.S. succeeds in its efforts to transform the Middle East to the point that Muslims perceive themselves as having a stake in the democratic project (as American blacks did) and in the global economy. Ironically, France has done just about everything it can to undermine this effort by the U.S.

Posted by Paul at 07:12 PM


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: france; frenchmuslims; insurgency; parisintifada; parisriots; uprising
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To: quesney

The USA has already sent help to the French -------

His name is Johnny Depp

Alec Baldwin may go too !


41 posted on 11/06/2005 9:00:44 PM PST by jcon40
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To: claudiustg
The only practical way to deal with the situation is to put large numbers of them in jail for long periods of time.

I can think of a much quicker method that doesn't involve messy trials and it is a permanent solution.

42 posted on 11/06/2005 9:01:14 PM PST by notpoliticallycorewrecked (God Bless our military)
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To: bnelson44

How's the fact that the behavior is identical to that simultaneously occuring in the Netherlands with explicitly jihadist PR? And also that it's the same modus operandus as Islamist populations have used worldwide (e.g. against Israel, Serbia, India, Denmark, Sweden, and so on)?


43 posted on 11/06/2005 9:02:36 PM PST by thoughtomator (Alito Akbar)
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To: thoughtomator

Behavior is also identical to our race riots. No, sorry, that isn't the link.


44 posted on 11/06/2005 9:06:14 PM PST by bnelson44 (Proud parent of a tanker!)
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To: bnelson44
I don't see the Islamofascist links. Someone needs to show me people involved in the riots in France calling for a new caliphate or any of the other Islamofacist goals.

There are reports that the insurgency is no longer spontaneous but is being directed.

I would wager that those who are doing the directing support Islamofascist goals.

45 posted on 11/06/2005 9:07:31 PM PST by okie01 (The Mainstream Media: IGNORANCE ON PARADE)
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To: TheForceOfOne
Any country with nuclear weapons must be watched carefully when its social structure faces a meltdown or possible loss of government control to those who are our sworn enemies.

Darn, I guess that it means that we have to go in and save their butts AGAIN.

46 posted on 11/06/2005 9:07:34 PM PST by notpoliticallycorewrecked (God Bless our military)
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To: quesney

IMO, it will all come down to whether the muslims overplay their hand.

If they bide their time, multiplying like rabbits and sucking dry the resources of the French state, then in a couple more decades they will have French society in the palm of their hand without having to explode a single bomb. The native French are too degenerate to themselves multiply, as children just get in the way of their hedonistic lifestyle. In certain ways, this is not unlike what happened in Algeria, as what began as a relatively small native Algerian population in the 1840s exploded over the years, eventually vastly outnumbering the French colonists, who had transformed a veritable wasteland into a flourishing agricultural region with thriving cities. Eventually the native Algerian population grew too large to be mastered by the French, and refused to be assimilated into becoming “Frenchmen” themselves.

On the other hand, if the muslims choose violent confrontation now, they will be destroyed. Anyone familiar with history knows that the French are a far more brutal people than we. The French do not allow political correctness to get in the way of their own interest, they regard that as utter foolishness. Political correctness is something to be preached to others, like the stupid Americains. There is no people on Earth more cynical than the French. For themselves, the French recognize no principle higher than their own narrow self-interest.

Politically-correct liberals decry nuclear power plants. The French blanket their country with them.

Liberals prattle on about banning nuclear tests. The French conduct open-air nuclear explosions in the South Pacific, and sink the ship of the liberals trying to harass them.

Liberals wail about unilateral intervention in the affairs of other countries (no matter how tyrannical or genocidal). The French intervene military in various African countries dozens of times over the last 40 years to suit their own interests, most recently in Cote d’Ivoire. If genocide is not contrary to French interests, as in Rwanda, the French will either turn a blind eye or abet it.

Liberals wag their fingers about the Geneva Convention. The French torture Algerians or Indochinese opponents whenever it seems doing so furthers their immediate objective.

Liberals denounce the “merchants of death” of the arms industry peddling their wares to violent regimes around the world. The French are world class leaders in this industry, which is one of the very pillars of their economy.

Liberals constantly defame “Big Oil” and its partnerships with authoritarian oil-producing countries. There are few oil interests bigger than the French oil company, Total, and they happily hop into bed with the most unsavory regimes (including the French government itself!).

And there are many other examples that could be given.

So therefore, my prediction is that if the threat from violent action by the muslims rises to the level where the native French feel they are existentially threatened, then there will be an ethnic cleansing in France that Milosevic could only marvel at. However, it will take more than property damage to provoke the French into this. If the muslims start killing significant numbers of ethnic French, then they will have signed their own death warrant. The French are not fighting the Wehrmacht here. The French have all the weapons. And they are beyond Christianity, the French will not be constrained by Christian principles of mercy.

So it is in the hands of the muslims. Will they overplay their hand and lose? Or will they patiently wait out the French, and win? We shall see.


47 posted on 11/06/2005 9:09:10 PM PST by SirJohnBarleycorn
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To: okie01

I will change my tone very rapidly if that can be shown.


48 posted on 11/06/2005 9:09:20 PM PST by bnelson44 (Proud parent of a tanker!)
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To: notpoliticallycorewrecked

Depends, France may wake up and smell the coffee, who knows. I guess that if what we are witnessing in France was inevitable then getting it out in the open is the best way to address the problem instead of it remaining a silent killer.

Western society better wake up soon and join us or they will all pay dearly for their mistakes.


49 posted on 11/06/2005 9:14:07 PM PST by TheForceOfOne
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To: okie01

"Someone needs to show me people involved in the riots in France calling for a new caliphate or any of the other Islamofacist goals."

Where are you looking now for your news? I am just wondering where it's NOT being mentioned.


50 posted on 11/06/2005 9:17:14 PM PST by austinaero
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To: paul51
France has done just about everything it can to undermine this effort by the U.S.

Well then, there you go.

Pissing in the face of America has *never* been a winning proposition...

51 posted on 11/06/2005 9:18:03 PM PST by papertyger
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To: quesney
The leaders of the movement behind the riots aren't demanding that the French embrace them. Their objective is to transform France into an Islamic state. The intention is not to do away with the vestiges of slavery. At best, it is to preserve their ability to act outside of the constraints of law and western civilization. At worst, it is to terrorize the French until they convert to Islam, and to enslave those who don't convert.

I doubt that. The thing is, that those kids are far from any position to enforce such goals. The effect is rather that the (christian) French people are starting to stand up against this new "intifada" and its initiators. Those guys from the mosques who usually take the lead, are trying to calm down the situation, since they are afraid of the time after this "inifada". Yesterday I called my aunt in Paris who is living in a wealthy suburb (Bussy St. Georges) and she told me that this revolution hasn't reached their neighborhood yet. Those idiots are obviously busy to burn the cars of their own parents in their own "banlieues". In Bussy the neigbours founded a sort of militia and try to secure their homes with patrols although there weren't any hostilities yet.

The situation between the US in the sixties and contemporary France is not comparable. Those muslim guys who are rioting now have a big social problem which Martin Luther King and his friends didn't have.. On one hand they are proud Arab males, on the other hand they are undereducated, unacknowledged and they form the lowest class of the society. In fact they are "parias" (untouchables) to most of the French. Usually they do not have the chance to find a job or a apprenticeship training position. They grow up in hopelessly ugly parts of the town with no chance to leave this place. Therefore this outburst of violence is to a lesser extent a religious thing but it is rather a social problem. French socialism has not found the right answer to bring wealth and contentedness to its immigrants. This is what this "party" is all about. Islam is just a vehicle of their own identity (which in fact doesn't exist).

P.S.

I suppose that the French gouvernment will drive a hard zero tolerance course against those rioters and immigrants just like in the Netherlands after the murder of Theo van Gogh. Therefore those idiots will achieve the opposite of what they originally wanted to. Furthermore the French public is now alarmed. This is the reason why those "happenings" aren't that bad at all.

52 posted on 11/06/2005 9:18:04 PM PST by Atlantic Bridge (O tempora! O mores!d)
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To: quesney

I want to start an arabic rap group. I'm goingto call it NT-fada

ah-ight? Check it, money.


53 posted on 11/06/2005 9:18:18 PM PST by emiller
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To: bnelson44

I'm sure you'll soon enough run across evidence suitable to your needs... for my part, I can see it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and thus am not too skeptical on that point.


54 posted on 11/06/2005 9:18:28 PM PST by thoughtomator (Alito Akbar)
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To: notpoliticallycorewrecked

---I can think of a much quicker method---

Yes, but you can't kill that many people in Western Europe nowadays, without throwing the whole facade of western democracy out the window and no one is willing to do that, for now. It seems these thugs can't simply be deported either. So you make a decision just as we did with our inner city problems and you start budgeting for jails to hold a lot of people.


55 posted on 11/06/2005 9:18:54 PM PST by claudiustg (Go Bush! Go Sharon!)
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To: claudiustg

But you won't have to kill all of them, just some of them. They will get the message real quick that someone is playing for keeps.


56 posted on 11/06/2005 9:22:07 PM PST by notpoliticallycorewrecked (God Bless our military)
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To: papertyger

What goes around comes around http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?%20id=5720


57 posted on 11/06/2005 9:22:27 PM PST by paul51 (11 September 2001 - Never forget)
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To: HangnJudge

I'm thinking our Constitution needs an amendment prohibiting religions that have no tolerance for others. A religion that wants me and mine either dead or members of their hord is a religion worth banning.


58 posted on 11/06/2005 9:23:40 PM PST by PeoplesRepublicOfWashington (Dream Ticket: Cheney/Rice '08)
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To: quesney

"Their objective is to transform France into an Islamic state."

To the author of this piece:

Please have eyesight, hearing and synaptic function tested......it is islam's objective to turn EVERY country into an islamic state. If you aren't seeing this, please send your defective brain back to the factory for refund or replacement at the discretion of the maker.


59 posted on 11/06/2005 9:24:43 PM PST by RouxStir (Islam is a slower moving, more deadly "Nazism".....but the results are the same.)
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To: bnelson44

It can start one way and end in another. They found a molotov cocktail "factory" the other night, reports of websites calling for recruits for rioters, authorities seeing more organised approach.
Time will tell but it doesn't look good, the failure of the French to act vigourously to stop it is a sign of weakness, likely to be exploited.
Remember how a shot in a strange land started WW1.

Even the BBC is rather pessimistic now:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1517050/posts


60 posted on 11/06/2005 9:32:21 PM PST by 1066AD
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