Posted on 11/14/2015 6:40:10 PM PST by 11th_VA
Tonight, the golden triangle of Parisian youth culture is covered in blood.
We do not yet know the full extent of the terrorist attacks in Paris that started Friday night, or even how many attacks there were. But we do know that the coordination and the scale of the attacks is unprecedented, at least for Paris. The latest victim count is north of 120 dead, according to Paris's prosecutor, and dozens more wounded.
The attacks were concentrated in the center of Paris, on the Right Bank. These are places and streets that burst with life on a Friday evening. It is where young and hip Parisians gather to drink and socialize. Le Carillon, La Belle Equipe, Le Petit Cambodge: these are ordinary neighborhood joints where you meet your buddies for a quick "demi" of watery French beer or a snack before going out somewhere else.
I know these places well. This is where I meet up with my old friends whenever I go to Paris. In the early 90s, I saw Prince playing an aftershow at the Bataclan-now a venue which will forever be associated with tragedy and death. This is not the side of Paris seen by tourists or business travelers; rather, it's an area where actual Parisians and people from the banlieues hang out and mix together. They might have gentrified, yet these neighborhoods have retained their proletarian and ethnically-mixed flavor. That whiff of authenticity is part of the neighborhood's attraction for Parisian Bobos, as they call themselves. The banlieues are the cities and housing projects surrounding Paris, where most of the French youth of immigrant descent live (contrary to popular imagination, the banlieues are far from desolate ghettos, "no-go zones"or breeding grounds for jihadists: they are difficult yet vibrant and dynamic places).
This is the land of hipster socialists. These neighborhoods recently elected a female socialist mayor, as well as a slew of Green Party candidates, even as the rest of the country voted for the more conservative and anti-immigration parties on the Right.
The attackers, whomever they may be and whatever their motives, went after the heart of progressive Paris. They did not attack the more touristy Champs-Elysees or Notre Dame, or the more bourgeois and conservative left bank, where most of the government ministries are located.
That message is reinforced by the site of the other attack, the Stade de France. That particular stadium is one of the few places where the promise of a more integrated France is realized, if only intermittently. The French soccer team, known as "Les Bleus,"is the paragon of the 'black-blanc-beur' ideal (black, white, arab). The national team is republican meritocracy in action, and it works. The Stade de France is where a French team led by the Algerian-Frenchman Zinedine Zidane won the greatest trophy in sports, the FIFA World Cup, in 1998.
Tonight's attacks show the same uncanny sense of symbolism as the January massacres. They targeted neighborhoods where people are more inclined to be tolerant, liberal and progressive. And they targeted the greatest monument to France's multi-ethnic, pluralistic success: the hallowed ground of the Stade de France.
These attacks will almost certainly strengthen the hand of hard-line conservatives, from anti-Islam popular intellectuals like Eric Zemmour and Michel Houellebecq to right wing extremists like Marine Le Pen. There are important regional elections coming up next month, and these attacks could seal the National Front's victory in several regional governments.
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris and the granddaughter of Spanish Republican immigrants, called for unity in a tweet.
I doubt that she will be heard.
Yup.
Some how I’m reminded of the recent news article about
the drunk woman who thought she could pet the tiger.
It is the SAME THING.
Islam doesn’t consider it’s victims as innocent.
We owe them the same, to do otherwise means our
extinction.
Hipsters? How would you like to be referred as a “hipster” in death?
Who knew that Blazing Saddles would apply?
/johnny
Of course the psychopaths went after the young adults. They’re the ones most likely to have kids.
The muzzies are very aware of the demographic aspects of their long term jihad.
They attacked targets that symbolize what France is all about. An effective attack on the U.S. requires a strike on the Pentagon and on two massive office buildings where tens of thousands of people go to work every day. An effective attack on France involves entertainment venues. That says everything you need to know about the two countries.
The Spanish communists called themselves Republicans, and there was even an “Abraham Lincoln Brigade” fighting on their side. BIZARRE!!!;)
This is a form of guerrilla theater, underlined in blood. But it is still theater. The actual casualties are less than a mosquito bite on an elephant's ass in a city so vast.
The psychological effect is what the terrorists wanted .... if everyone keeps his head and French eclat remains unhurt, the terrorists will have failed.
Any material hurt to France or Paris is purely illusory. For that, the terrorists would need nuclear weapons, or worse.
From what we know now about OBL's safe house in Abbottabad and his increasingly exposed relationship with the Pak ISI, it isn't hard to guess what the source of Al Q'aeda's prospective nuclear shipping containers would have been.
And never forget that it was the Chinese "dropped knife" strategy that started all this ... arming all America's worst enemies with nuclear weapons. We haven't yet informed the Chinese what their price will be, of a nuclear attack on the United States, and so this policy will continue to go forward until we do.
Nope. The Spanish Republicans were Nazis led by Franco.
Err, sorry...I got that backwards. The Nationalists were the Nazis...and they were Republican generals who rebelled against the Republican (Communistic) government.
We're talking about target selection, and how far symbolism ranks over the more prosaic aims of finding the optimal target based on casualty rates and the like. I quite agree with you that a soft target is a criterion. And although I think the author's case is intriguing, I suspect that the symbology here is likely to focus more on Paris as an avatar of Western culture than any subcultural component such as he details. Still, it's an interesting case.
The terrorists at the theater did proclaim that the purpose was punishment for France's involvement in Syria, and it may be that their planners felt that an attack on this demographic was likely to bear fruit in French politics, i.e. that the young, affluent, comfortable class might sway their leadership away from involvement given that they now were targeted. There are a couple of problems with this point of view, though. For one thing, tourist areas definitely were targeted - the Metro station, for example, with its exit to the Louvre, is not the demesne of the young and hip, but of the foreign tourist. But the employment of half the attackers on a concert auditorium appears to me to buttress the author's case.
We may never know. For the overall strategy of infiltrating European countries with a young, male, military-age class, this is probably a setback. You don't want to spotlight that until it's a done deal. For the objective of French disengagement in Syria, it may be better suited. How effective that will turn out will be a function of the terrorist command's assessment of Hollande and his administration's willingness to fight, and whether the latter is more or less likely to disengage after the attacks. That we will learn in the coming days but I'm not getting a lot of accommodationist vibes from the existing administration, faced with an obvious threat in Le Pen. Could be they feel their jobs are on the line. Back a rat into a corner and sometimes he comes out fighting because he doesn't have any other choice. Just a thought.
Mel Brooks...
We used to say "a conservative is a liberal who had been mugged." Sadly the mellinials don't have what it takes to make this mature progression. They will be lib for the rest of their nasty short brutish lives.
They are the beheadable millenials.
soooo,
What are you French going to do?
Plant trees so the mooselimbs can march in the shade as they enter Paris?
Or are you going to grow a set and take up the fight against islam?
We here in America will have to wait til our current mooselimb president is gone.
France and the rest of the EU hung up thier “gun free zones” signs
Twitter away canary. Breathe the fresh air of the collectivist/totalitarian mind.
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