The Status Quo Riots (It's springtime in Paris, bring out the barricades)

The Weekly Standard ^ | April 3, 2006 | Joseph Fitchett

[RWR8189]

THE CURRENT WAVE OF PROTESTS in France is regularly misportrayed as a pale remake of the 1968 student revolt that brought down Charles de Gaulle. The comparison gets it awfully wrong.

True, we are witnessing a ritualistic springtime skirmish between students and the authorities. But there is an ironic ideological twist: It is the French government that is advocating change while students on the moral barricades are defending the status quo.

As the conflict gathers steam, it offers a historically recognizable ballet--the government confronting student and trade-union demonstrators. This political trope enjoys special legitimacy in France, where factions and interest groups marginalized in government and parliament take their issues to the streets by strike methods and sometimes even violence that would not be tolerated in the United States or other European democracies.

The interesting point about the current French situation--and the reason it may matter--is that gusto for confrontation is coming not from the students but from Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. He has embraced the prospect of a showdown.

Normally, he would have been expected to shun conflict. Villepin, appointed last summer, is running for president and trying to jaw-jaw his way to popularity with piecemeal reforms that don't offend the left--reforms-by-stealth. So, logically, he should be trying to accommodate the students and avoid an embarrassing stalemate and possible defeat.

Instead, as of this writing, he is steadfastly refusing to dangle a face-saving compromise or stake out a line of retreat--a stance that is tantamount to escalation.

In the past, Villepin has often tripped over his own bravado. But something more is at work this time, perhaps even a new political dynamic in France. In his enthusiasm for a showdown with the protesters, Villepin clearly thinks he can find an unexpected foothold in his ascent to real power. He seems to be inviting a fall. But, if he succeeds, he may plant a crampon offering fresh leverage on the protracted struggle in France over how (and indeed whether) to modernize the nation's "social model"--meaning essentially how much protection French workers can expect against the pressures of competitive globalization.

Rash as it may seem, Villepin's gamble stems from an insight into the nature of the forces arrayed in systematic opposition to reformist change in France. Their key feature is their fragmented, diffuse, and fluid character as interest groups that are normally dispersed like tinder ready to be kindled when an issue strikes a match. Their own agendas are narrow--opposition to genetically modified crops, to changes in France's tax on personal wealth (a levy that costs more to administer than it brings in), to affirmative action for Muslim immigrants (decried in the name of French equality, with its mantra of one-size-fits-all), or to flexibility in labor regulations. When one of these interests is challenged, all these factions usually rally to the cause.

The fragmented nature of these factions makes them unable to offer leadership of their own, but enables them to survive as the fodder for massive shows of opposition to change, including action in the street.

To show that the country can be governed, a sensible agenda is not enough in the current circumstances. The strategic imperative, in Villepin's approach, is to flush out the dispersed stand-pat factions from their narrow agendas and get them to deploy for a frontal confrontation in which their reputation for invulnerability can be shattered.

A suitable flash point came with the new labor law. Hastily drafted last fall in response to a bout of youth unrest and arson in immigrant-populated suburbs, the law will probably have to be amended in the light of experience with employers once it goes into effect. Imperfect or not, the controversial law worked as a rallying point for the inchoate opposition in France. Now Villepin is using his initiative as a bayonet: Push until you meet resistance, then push harder because you know you have reached a point where it counts. If the opposition staggers, Villepin will have changed expectations and devalued the trump of an appeal to the street.

IT'S A RISKY STRATEGY, especially in the hands of Villepin and President Jacques Chirac, the duo who precipitated a politically disastrous confrontation with the French trade unions in 1995 by inciting Prime Minister Alain Juppé to go head-to-head with the deeply entrenched unions at state-owned French Railways and at Electricity of France, the giant state-owned utility. The ensuing conflict lasted two months, in which general strikes brought the country to a standstill right up to the Christmas holidays. Nominally about pensions and health care, the conflict was a struggle for control of the nation's political direction comparable to Margaret Thatcher's confrontation with British miners 15 years earlier.

In Britain, the Iron Lady famously won. But Juppé was proposing changes greater than the French were ready to swallow, and he folded. In an equally colossal misreading of the French public mood, the floundering government eventually called a snap election and lost. Both fiascos were the work of Chirac, the recently elected president, and Villepin, his top aide. Undeterred, the duo in 2003 positioned France against the United States on the Iraq invasion (Villepin had become foreign minister). The same buddies, reeling onwards like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, masterminded the failed campaign to ratify the E.U. constitution. They chose a referendum (instead of the parliament they control) to ratify the largely made-in-France initiative. The electorate rejected the constitution a year ago in a vote that dramatically repudiated all the mainstream French political parties.

That setback vaulted Villepin to the premiership of a country politically adrift. The referendum debacle revealed the hemorrhaging credibility of the French political establishment and the emergent power of a largely inchoate "culture of opposition" in France. The leaderless situation spoke for itself last fall in the eruption of anarchic violence in immigrant-populated suburbs that continued for weeks while Villepin and Chirac wobbled and waffled.

But the present squabble has stiffened them into a high-postured offensive stance. The issue itself seems modest enough in contemporary economic practice. The "First Employment Contract" put through parliament by the Villepin government would give employers the right to fire workers easily and freely when they are under 26 and have been in a job for less than two years. The idea is simple: Companies are reluctant to hire young people with no work record because it is too hard and costly to fire them if business shrinks or a new employee does not work out.

The pragmatic problem is real enough. Youth employment has become acute in France: Joblessness among 18-to 25-year-olds runs twice as high as it does in the rest of the working-age population and much higher than in similar age groups in the United States or Britain. The government claims that the change, breaking with the recent French mantra of equal protection for all working people, will bring job opportunities--and admittedly short-term risks--to many more French young people, especially job candidates who are not outstandingly well qualified and likely to convince employers to invest in them, such as young Muslim men in the ghetto-like suburbs.

Opponents of the new law depict it as the thin end of a wedge capable of prying away job security. The government counters that the critics simply want to prolong a system constricting job growth. In practice, the current stagnation amounts to protecting the unemployment benefits of people who will never get a job in their lives.

IN SEIZING THE OCCASION, Villepin hopes to demonstrate--for the first time in decades in France--that a government can push through an agenda for change against the implicit threat of a massive reaction in the streets.

The blackmail factor of street politics in France is not just a left-right issue. Socialist president François Mitterrand never recovered the political momentum of the French left after he succumbed to a massive conservative demonstration when he proposed taking government subsidies from parochial Catholic schools.

But it has been a special sensitivity for French conservatives since the collapse of the postwar Gaullist consensus in 1968. Since then, rightist French leaders--not sufficiently confident of their own legitimacy to risk a violent veto from the street--have rarely faced down a popular revolt from the left. Even rightist lobbies such as farmers or truckers have been allowed to hijack the political process with strong-arm tactics, apparently because conservative governments feared that a prolonged disturbance might play into "revolutionary" hands.

This implicit threat of "the street" has spawned a pervasive culture of paralysis. A mindset of defensive calculations exists in French society, including the mainstream political parties and the business community, which now calculates that attempts to introduce radical changes are doomed and therefore not worth fighting for.

If Villepin faces down the street, he can start making the most fundamental change of all in French attitudes--to a sense that change is possible and therefore a possible good. But after so many failures, what makes Villepin think he can succeed?

For one thing, he has no choice. Presidential elections are due in a year's time, and his only chance lies in demonstrating that he has a winning formula for conservative leadership. The fragmentation of French politics puts a premium on shoring up support in his own rank and file, devaluing the old formulas of broad coalitions.

Beyond his presidential ambitions, some social changes have improved Villepin's chances of succeeding with his confrontational strategy. Crucially, trade unions' strength has fallen drastically. Already near zero in private-sector industry and business, their membership and political clout are dwindling with the shrinkage of France's state-owned sector. More broadly, the lack of effective grassroots organizations (including mosques as well as unions) is a key factor in the social anomie in France's largely immigrant zones.

Villepin's strategy could never have coalesced without the catalyzing role of his conservative rival for the presidency, Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy. It is Sarkozy who lectured the French, in word and deed, on the need for plain talk about labor-law liberalization, education reforms, candor about race and ethnicity, checks on welfare abuse, reform of the court system, performance incentives in the civil service bureaucracies--almost all the sensitive subjects that have been taboo in party political discourse in France.

Thanks to the educational shock-treatment from the blunt Sarkozy, much of French opinion--this is another recent change in the political landscape--may be ready to acquiesce in Villepin's newly aggressive tactics. Until this act reaches its denouement, Sarkozy is overshadowed on the political stage. His presidential ambitions burn as hot as Villepin's, but he has no option but to back Villepin to the hilt. To do otherwise would expose Sarkozy to damaging charges that he betrayed his side and his own values in the crunch.

Villepin, who often invokes Napoleon as the historic model for success in leading the French into collective action, is applying his mentor's belief that a decisive small engagement can transform the battleground and alter the war. He is taking a make-or-break gamble, risking long obscurity if he fails. If he succeeds, he may just deliver a salutary jolt to France's largely paralyzed political system.

 

Joseph Fitchett covered French affairs for two decades as the chief political reporter at the International Herald Tribune in Paris.

[ArtyFO]

It's time to burn the Peugeots.

[John Filson]

How long before our pro-immigration rallies turn out like this?

[rikkir]

Ahhh, springtime, when a young mans fancy turns to.....teargas??

[spikeytx86]

I love the irony of the unemployed protesting against the possibility of becoming unemployed. What's the worst that can happen? they get fired and become unemployed like they are now. Or they get hired acquire skills and earn a decent living off of the system... perhaps thats the problem.

[starfish923]

Good article.

Crucially, trade unions' strength has fallen drastically. Already near zero in private-sector industry and business, their membership and political clout are dwindling with the shrinkage of France's state-owned sector. More broadly, the lack of effective grassroots organizations (including mosques as well as unions) is a key factor in the social anomie in France's largely immigrant zones.

This is the important section:
1. trade union strength fallen drastically
2. shringage of "state owned" sector -- That means private enterprise has taken up the slack. That explains, perhaps, the drastic falling off of the trade unions effect/clout.
3. grassroots efforts are at a low -- Where are all the "angry, young" altruists, the non-profits, the pro bono, altruistic lawyers? Sounds like the French are a bit on the materially "comfortable" side and aren't so angry at their lot in life these days.

Perhaps it's the counteraction to so many immigrants and the war on terror. The French haven't been victimized like Spain, Great Britain, the U.S. and other countries, but they still see it and know that they don't want it to happen there.

[starfish923]

I love the irony of the unemployed protesting against the possibility of becoming unemployed. What's the worst that can happen? they get fired and become unemployed like they are now. Or they get hired acquire skills and earn a decent living off of the system... perhaps thats the problem.

It's not the unemployed protesting. It's the new change for a labor law that the young people are protesting. It's simply that it would be less difficult to fire young people who worked less that two years at a job.
Young people are protesting because they don't want to be fired so easily. They assume that once hired, they are never fired. Not so with the proposed new law.

The university students see the writing on the wall: free pass is gone. Even if they do get a job, they can be fired easily -- rather, with less difficulty.

It's not even a law that's passed but the French students see it as a HUGE change in the status quo and they don't like it.
The second paragraph stated it: But there is an ironic ideological twist: It is the French government that is advocating change while students on the moral barricades are defending the status quo."

[Tax-chick]

ping

[B4Ranch]

If they do, put on the wargear or get outta town because in America we are allowed to carry weapons and we are allowed to protect ourselves.

Lots of folks are stocking up so IMO they would be fools to even think about it.

[B4Ranch]

I wonder if they had those same concerns when Kailfornia decided that they should ban the .50's?

[John Filson]

The rioter's weapon of choice is a beverage bottle filled with petrol and stuffed with a rag.

[B4Ranch]

I was referring to our officials attempting to restrict American usage of .50's to protect our homes from mass marchings.

[dfwgator]

Yep, rioting looks really good on a resume...not!

[Southack]

"How long before our pro-immigration rallies turn out like this?"

I'm armed, as are 90 million U.S. households, so what you allude to won't happen here. But in France, where gun ownership, law, and order are more rare, this is what happened so far this weekend:

BRITONS have been warned: Stay away from riot-torn Paris.

The Foreign Office says the French capital — which has been rocked by violent demos — is too dangerous.

Protests against a new employment law have erupted into riots, with fierce fighting in the shadow of famous tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral.

Cars have been set alight, shops looted and gangs of youths and masked men swinging baseball bats and wooden planks have had running battles with riot police who have used water cannon and tear gas.The Foreign Office alert is a huge blow to France, which has always considered itself a haven of fashion chic and culture.

Pictures flashed around the world show a new Paris racked with class division. That was illustrated yesterday by photographs of an elegant woman in high heels set upon by youths in the trendy Esplanade des Invalides.

They harried the defenceless woman like a pack of wolves, oblivious to watching police and photographers. One ripped her handbag away while another rifled through her pockets.

Some hotels around the famous Left Bank of the River Seine — usually full of romantic couples strolling hand in hand — have boarded up their windows up as armoured vehicles with water cannons patrol the streets.

Paris’s mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, called the situation “explosive” and added: “The government’s obstinacy is creating an extremely dangerous situation that is sinking into further violence and further danger.”

French President Jacques Chirac, in Brussels at an EU summit meeting, called the violence “intolerable and unacceptable” and ordered authorities to punish troublemakers “with all necessary severity”.

The violence — which has spread to other cities — has led to more than 1,400 arrests and more than 450 cops being injured.

[John Filson]

Ha! Never thought of that.

[livius]

Interesting article. The thing that I cannot determine from it, or from the photographs, is exactly who is in charge in France. It seems to me that the whole country has spun out of anyone's control, and discussing left-right politics as usual at this point is almost a joke.

[John Filson]

You're armed, but are you free to speak your mind without posting anonymously? I think freedom to denounce immigration and even advocate deportation is as important as arms. I also think the elites have already demonstrated their plans with the Katrina checkpoints and home-invasions for confiscation.

[RJL]

I think there is some money to be made in France.

French demonstrations, strikes and riots run almost like clockwork. If it’s not the trade unions, it’s the Muslims, or the street artists, or the farmers, or the transportation workers, or the students, or the vintners, or the anti-American buffoons.

How much would an American moonbat liberal pay to go to France to join in the fun, hang out smoking dope and drinking French wine on the left bank during the day, maybe burn a few cars at night and generally raise hell?

I could probably fill several of the new 840 seat Airbus A380s on a good riot.

I just need to come up with a catchy name for the enterprise.

[spikeytx86]

Muckraker Tours? Marxists-R-Us? Flamin Lefty Safari?