Barbarians At La Gare

Elections: As France prepares to elect a president, riots in Paris have again brought the issue of "youth" unrest front and center. The melees look randomly thuggish. But the participants clearly have a political aim.

Interesting the very explicit calls of the mobs to defeat Sarkozy. This has the strong scent of semi-organized action to it.

Royal has leapt to the forefront, criticizing Sarkozy for it.

Now, this could go either way, but I think it will improve Le Pen's numbers whilst Sarkozy stays stable and Royal does not benefit, nor Bayrou.

There is something too obvious about the "Vote down Sarkozy or we will riot" aspect of this that I think is going to really irritate French people, and cause them to lean law-and-order (and racist too, hence the move towards Le Pen).

I have been wrong on many things before, and I will not even attempt to call the French election at this point, but my sense is that Sarkozy is not going to be the loser in this public relations battle. We shall have to watch the new polls. I think Le Pen may gain, at the expense of other right wing candidates. I think Sarkozy will not plunge, and may even gain a bit.

...while the Brits act like quivering wimps in the face of Iranian thugery.

Let's not count out our best ally yet. While the "nuke 'em 'til they glow" approach has its appeal, Britain's response doesn't make them "quivering wimps" yet. It ain't over until it's over.

this "semi-organized" resistance is being promoted by France's largest media conglomerates through the French rap/hiphop/urban culture market. France's largest corporations are advertising and branding the rappers' product too.

CocaCola in France is now advertising on video websites that already had hundreds if not thousands of jihadi video clips on it before Coke signed on as an advertiser.

Unless the summer of '68 crowd stop the televised revolution, the youth revolutionaries of '05 will replace the '68er's bloodlines in the French halls of power.

There's no way to stop the televising, etc. France is a free country.

But the French are not stupid. This has the scent of organized thuggery of the union movement sort. It's the sort of thing the radical left does. Royal was ready to use it against Sarkozy, or to try to, but I just don't think the French are going to be swayed to vote AGAINST Sarkozy because there are voyous in the streets (or train stations) again, causing havoc. This accentuates the difference between the Socialist appease-them-through affirmative-action-and-ignore-the-lawbreaking approach, as opposed to the UMP appease-them-through-affirmative-action-but-enforce-the-law approach.

I don't think this is going to hurt Sarkozy. It might help him a little. The big winner here, I believe, will be Le Pen, because the beat-their-asses-and-drive-them-from-the-country approach of the Archie Bunker of French politics is precisely what a lot of French people, especially men, think in the back of their minds when they see these punks doing this crap. A whiff of grapeshot would have cleared the Gare du Nord. We're too civilized for it nowadays, but the impulse is still there. Reason will prevail, which is why I think Sarkozy will not be hurt. The anger will remain, which is why I think Royal will not be helped. And more people will be exasperated enough to vote for Le Pen. Just as long as those Le Peniste votes come from the fragmented right, it doesn't change the outcome.

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