The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris (The Underclass in France)

City Journal ^ | Fall 2002 | Theodore Dalrymple

[July 4th]

If you go to Paris and stay at least a couple of days, the odds are overwhelming you'll be robbed or will witness a robbery, often in front of a flic armed with a machine pistol. I'm 3 for 3 my last 3 visits.

I was there for about 6 weeks a few months ago, and didn't see any robberies. However, I did see "les flics" beat the crap out of a homeless guy on the other side of the metro platform for harassing a tourist. Rather entertaining - one of the officers shouted "look away" in French while they beat the guy.

[Man of the Right]

Good to hear. A little police muscle against street thieves is welcome and long overdue.

[Barset]

Thank you for posting this. Dalrymple's most recent book, "Life at the Bottom: The World View That Makes the Underclass" was turned down by major publishing houses here and in the UK although his previous works had been published without a problem.

In the 1980's in France if you questioned the policy of putting unemployed immigrants (and their several wives)into these government slums alongside native French workers, a great cry of "Racisme" went up from the elites who did not have to lie awake all night while their "differently cultured" neighbors visited back and forth, amid loud, unceasing music and shouting, and sounds of menace and actual violence right outside their doors, and then get up exhausted to go to work on the assembly lines at the Renault factory, while the immigrants, "les pauvres," slept through the day until the night's activities began again.

Billboards with "Say No to Racism" sprang up all over Paris, students marched, intellectuals sobbed into microphones, the elites of academia and the press lectured "les betises," the native born underclass, who, stupid from fatigue, and crazed by fear of their neighbors and by the indifference of their government to protect them tried desperately to get out or committed suicide.

The working poor in France are rarely seen by tourists or written about by Francophiles. A few years ago there were quite horrific riots that lasted for days in a suburb of Rouen. Though you could hear the noise and police klaxhorns and see the smoke from burning cars it was not reported on local television news, nor in the newspaper.

What a pity that those who create murderous utopias are not required to live in them.

Thank you again for the post.

[Barset]

Thank you for posting #71. I'm no good at deep stuff when it comes to analyzing why something horrifies me. I just think, g-d, that's not close to being human. But that's how the Collectivists see us, we're things to them. You gave voice to what I feel when faced with the Left's busy, bustling, business of dehumanizing us. Thanks again.

[spodefly]

It is for articles and threads like this that I come to FR. I usually wade thru City Journal, but had missed this piece. Thanks for posting it.

I like Paris and have never had any issues in the city center. One night after work at the convention center I jumped on the Metro and ended up in an area that bordered the areas described in the story. It was clearly a bad place for a blue eyed white boy to be. I was careful to double check the map the next time.

Between the illegal aliens and the hyphenated Americans, we are not in much better shape here in the US.

[Bon mots]

bttt

[MaggieMay]

I agree this article does deserve a bump!

[Zviadist]

Nothing reflects the spiritual order--or disorder--of a civilization as clearly as its architechture.

Amen. I've lived in a totalitarian housing structure and I cannot agree more with your above statement. Thankfully, I had the option of leaving any time. The others did not. Architecture is much more central to our lives -- particularly in cities, of course -- than most understand. That makes it a useful tool for social engineers -- as it has been used for centuries (though under my glorious Habsburgs it was used for higher purposes, to establish order in society and to celebrate the beauty that comes from God).

[LaBelleDameSansMerci]

In Raphael's School of Athens Aristotle and Plato are discussing something. Plato is pointing to the heavens arguing, perhaps, for the sublime perfection of the ideal. Aristotle, on the other hand, is gesturing outwards as if to say that we CAN know truth and beauty by lookiing around us; that we can even penetrate to the very nature of things by the power of observation.

Here is Dalrymple's first paragraph again:

...Everyone knows la douce France: the France of wonderful food and wine, beautiful landscapes, splendid châteaux and cathedrals. More tourists (60 million a year) visit France than any country in the world by far....

Whether the francophobes around here like it or not---this is true. And what is the most immediately observabledifference between la belle France and that other France which he so brilliantly writes about in this article?

As somebody--I forget who--said: "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists." I believe "terrorists" have been waging war against human beings on many fronts long before Osama ever minced his way onto the world scene. And architecture is evidence of it...

[Orual]

As somebody--I forget who--said: "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists."

Let me refresh your memory, it was President Bush.

Nice quotes, nice photos, but none with any relevance to the situation described in this article.

I believe "terrorists" have been waging war against human beings on many fronts long before Osama ever minced his way onto the world scene. And architecture is evidence of it...

I believe Osama did more than "mince" onto the scene, there are 3,000 dead bodies to attest to that fact. You present no compelling argument to support your statement. Architecture is now equal to waging war against humans and terrorism? What a leap - and into a bottomless pit of muddled rhetoric, at that.

[Zviadist]

Theodore Dalrymple is a psychiatrist who lives in the UK.

He is one of my favorites. Thank you for posting this.

[Zviadist]

Socialism: the breeding ground for Islamic terrorism.

[Zviadist]

There's only one way to rid your country of these people, the Spaniards were one of the only countries ever to free themselves of Islam.

But you miss the whole point of the article: it is not "those people" who are most deserving of contempt. It is the French socialist system that acts as a incubator of this kind of lawlessness and extremism. You are missing who the real bad guys are: socialists.

[oyez]

BFL long article.

[Semaphore Heathcliffe]

BTTT

Dennis, please put on your list. thanks.

[Jim Noble]

Europe will fall to Islam within the next fifty years.

I'm not sure about the UK.

[dennisw]

Are you sure? That's my Israel/MidEast/Jihad ping list. You are on my immigration ping list.

[Zviadist]

I believe "terrorists" have been waging war against human beings on many fronts long before Osama ever minced his way onto the world scene. And architecture is evidence of it...

Truer words were never spoken. The distraction from the real war is breathtaking. Even great Romans like Orual have been taken in by its intoxicating melodies...

[dennisw]

From your lips to ungod Allah's ears. Jihadists and Muslims love your type. Liberty my a$$! LOL!

[Zviadist]

Are you intoxicated? I don't understand a thing you are writing. I guess it's just your usual hate speech fouling the air here.