France in flames – The Carpetbagger Report

It’s been a rather tumultuous past year or so for the French.

Last November, there were the riots — a state of emergency, if not quite another revolution — that, with multiple triggers sending alienated and in some cases highly politicized youth into the streets, exposed the deep cultural, political, and economic rift between mainstream French society and the largely ignored and depressed immigrant communities throughout the country.

Then, this past March, barricades were once again erected in Paris, in and around the Sorbonne, this time in response to proposed employment legislation.

The government gave in on the employment legislation, but the violence in some of the country’s immigrant suburbs continues. The Times reports:

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

To my understanding, this is a French problem more than, say, a Europe-wide problem, or a problem specifically about Muslim immigration. France’s immigrant underclass is indeed alienated from the rest of the country, and it makes sense to me that its young people — who want to join French society, not separate from it; who want to share in the country’s wealth, not destroy it — would take to the streets to express their anger and frustration. It’s just alarming that this violent expression of anger and frustration is still going on a year later. The French government promised to do something about the root causes of the riots. It has evidently failed to do so.

“To my understanding, this is a French problem more than, say, a Europe-wide problem, or a problem specifically about Muslim immigration.” — Michael Stickings

Um… I wonder how old you might be… 🙂

Germany (West, when they were still divided) used to have a problem-a-year with their invited “guest-workers” (mostly Turkish) when I was still a teen back in Poland (40+ yrs ago). They *thought* they could invite cheap labor, without giving it any benefits and then get rid of it when it became expedient. It didn’t work. The “guest workers, instead of leaving, pushed for “joining the families”, came in in greater numbers and demanded (rightly so, IMO) equal treatment. Which strained the “social cradle” of the West Germany to the breaking point (among other things, Turks were used to living on a shoe-string. So they didn’t stop breeding because an extra mouth to feed meant the kids didn’t have a separate room *each*, or that the family would have to forgo the third TV set).

Once East Germany was re-absorbed, things got *worse*, because East Germans were also used to living on a shoestring but they were also *Germans*. And used to “drastic measures” (thanks to the communist gvt and Stasi). Most of the immigrant compounds/neighbourhoods which were torched in the past years were torched by the *East German* “skinheads”, who are as disenfranchised as the Turks and competing for jobs with them.

It’s only in the past few (10 at most) years that laws regarding “guest workers” have changed and limit each stay to 5 months a year, to prevent putting down roots (my cousin’s SIL goes in every year and works on the same farm. Has done, for over 20yrs. But he used to stay there 8 months out of 12, allowing him to take a vacation for the remaining 4. Since the change, his wife’s become the main breadwinner, while his income is suplementary)

France is somewhat different. Unlike Germany — which was on the losing end of WWII and had little to say about anything for the first 10 or more years following — France (like UK and Holland, and even Denmark) “played nice” when their far-flung empires fell apart after the war. They all allowed the fleeing population of the erst-while colonies become citizens right away. But the white “natives” had as hard a time absorbing that population as did the Germans absorbing the Turks.

I grew up in *Poland*, which liked to pretend that the Western Europe didn’t exist (alternatively, it was full of burgeois monsters), but France’s problems with Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon and Vietnam were the daily bread of graffitti, superimposed on the official “this building has been checked for bombs”. Ditto Britain’s problems with India (and India’s with Pakistan). I didn’t realise, until I was 19 that similiar problems with the immigrant (mostly Muslim) influx were evident in Holland, and Denmarks situation was a closed page to me until I visited the country in ’01.

There are *countless* books written on the subject of Muslim immigration into the Western Europe — both from the POV of the immigrants and from the POV of the erst-while-liberals -turned-xenophobes (the dyed-in-the-wool xenophobes neither write nor read ). Just reading *fiction* is enough to open one’s eyes wide, especially if one bothers to do some “back checking” of historical facts.

But there are also *films* — an easier way to knowledge 🙂 The latest that I can think of is French “Hidden” (Cache), which “strays” into the issue of the early Arab immigrants and how they were treated (though, it too, needs “checking up”, to understand. Every Frenchman old enough *knows* that the Arabs had been called “for a national meeting” and that the police drove them into the Seine to drown. But, unless you know that, you don’t know how come one of the main characters becomes an orphan. And the rest of the plot hangs on that)

I was amused when, with the outbreak of Muslim *violence*, France was discovered by US as a sore spot. France has been at the sub-boil point (with an occasional erruption) for the past 50 yrs. And so have been most (or, perhaps, *all*) the Western-European countries. Just because US has been “otherwise engaged” (navel-gazing) all those years, doesn’t mean those erruptions are actually *news*.

PS On this list, Tom Cleaver is the guy who’s aware of the cinematic “scene”. Remember all the French films made between 1965 and 1975? I don’t think *any* of them was strictly a-political. Or, maybe, we (in Poland) got to watch different films 🙂