Why is France Burning?

[callady]

This is not about "A bunch of kids with too much time on their hands" this has deep historical roots in a grotesquely unjust and criminal unjust economic system, the same one we in the US endure each and every day.


WHY IS FRANCE BURNING? The rebellion of a lost generation

If France's population of immigrant origin -- mostly Arab, some black -- is today quite large (more than 10% of the total population), it is because there was a government and industrial policy during the post-World War II boom years of reconstruction and economic expansion which the French call "les trentes glorieuses" -- the 30 glorious years -- to recruit from France's foreign colonies laborers and factory and menial workers for jobs which there were no Frenchmen to fill. These immigrant workers, primarily from North Africa, were desperately needed to allow the French economy to expand due to the shortage of male manpower caused by two World Wars, which killed many Frenchmen, and slashed the native French birth-rates too. Moreover, these immigrant workers (especially Moroccans, particularly favored in the auto industry) were favored by industrial employers as passive and unlikely to strike (in sharp contrast to the highly political Continental French working class and its militant, largely Communist-led unions) and cheaper to hire. In some industries, for this reason, literacy was a disqualification -- because an Arab worker who could read could educate himself about politics and become more susceptible to organization into a union. This government-and-industry-sponsored influx of Arab workers (many of whom then saved up to bring their families to France from North Africa) was reinforced following Algerian independence by the arrival of the Harkis.

<snip>

Moreover, those Harki families who were saved, often at the initiative of individual military commanders who refused to obey orders not to evacuate them, once in France were parked in unspeakable, filthy, crowded concentration camps for many long years and never benefited from any government aid -- a nice reward for their sacrifices for France, of which they were, after all, legally citizens. Their ghettoized children and grandchildren, naturally, harbor certain resentments -- the Harki tragedy is still an open wound for the Franco-Arab community.

France's other immigrant workers were warehoused in huge, high-rise low-income housing ghettos -- known as "cités" (Americans would say "the projects") -- specially built for them, and deliberately placed out of sight in the suburbs around most of France's major urban agglomerations, so that their darker-skinned inhabitants wouldn't pollute the center cities of Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Nice and the others of white France's urban centers, today encircled by flames. Often there was only just enough public transport provided to take these uneducated working class Arabs and blacks directly to their jobs in the burgeoning factories of the "peripherique" -- the suburban peripheries that encircled Paris and its smaller sisters -- but little or none linking the ghettos to the urban centers.

Now 30, 40, and 50 years old, these high-rise human warehouses in the isolated suburbs are today run-down, dilapidated, sinister places, with broken elevators that remain unrepaired, heating systems left dysfunctional in winter, dirt and dog-shit in the hallways, broken windows, and few commercial amenities -- shopping for basic necessities is often quite limited and difficult, while entertainment and recreational facilities for youth are truncated and totally inadequate when they're not non-existent. Both apartments and schools are over-crowded (birth control is taboo in the Muslim culture the immigrants brought with them and transmitted to their children, and even for their male grandchildren of today --who've adopted hip-hop culture and created their own French-language rap music of extraordinary vitality (which often embodies stinging social and political content) -- condoms are a no-no because of Arab machismo, contributing to rising AIDS rates in the ghettos.


(... a fireman tries to extinguish a burning car in the surban ghetto of Les Mureaux northwest of Paris, yesterday.)


UPDATE MONDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 7: Far from losing steam, the rebellion is growing and spreading to cities in the south previously untouched. Sunday night in France saw 1408 vehicles burned, some 250 more than the previous night (according to a dispatch from Agence France Presse), while 34 policemen were injured by shotgun fire and stones when they were attacked by 200 rioters in Grigny, a suburb south of Paris. In the southern city of Toulouse, police fired tear gas grenades to push back club-wielding rioters. Violent attacks were also reported in Orleans, Rennes and Nantes.

Full article here:
website: http://direland.typepad.com/

[Lost-in-FL]

1. I might get burned for this one but...

I have not read of any African Americans rioting during the segregation years and they succesfully achieved a lot at that time when it comes to Civil Rights with peacefull demonstrations and well coreographed civil disobedience. There is NO EXCUSE for what is going on in France.

[FyurFly]

3. If Chirac doesn't get this under control...

The peaceful French will riot and put someone like Le Pen in power.

[smirkymonkey]

21. I sometimes wonder if that's why they are letting it go on without

a strong response - the French right wing needs to drum up support for it's agenda.

[Skelington]

4. Totally agree,

The LA Pressure cooker was a similar example. The cause of the anger and frustration are not an excuse for the riots. The damamge to person and property are done to people suffering the same fate as the people rioting. A brutal circle of destruction.

[callady]

6. During the civil rights "era"

the blacks in the south were being moved off the land, not leaving voluntarily, systematically at record clips. Just as they were purportedly gaining more "rights" they were being systematically uprooted. We see the result, at least those of us who have lived there, in the American bantustans of Cabrini Green, East St. Louis, New Haven etc....

Dreams deferred.

There are REASONS for what is going on in France and elsewhere. It's all connected.

Only with land and economic power is there freedom and equality.

[K-W]

13. Who has made excuses?

Obviously indescriminate destruction isnt excuseable. Who would argue that it is?

[Tom Joad]

14. I have not read of riots in the USA? Ever read a history book?

There is no excuse for oppression or racism. Why not give advice to the oppressors as to how to stop their violence, which is much worse.

[mopinko]

15. your history has holes in it.

there was the little incident of the watts riots, and a fellow named malcolm, just to name 2.

[Arianrhod]

33. Actually, the Watts Riots of 1965

were the result of segregation policies. They were sparked by the state attempting to circumvent the Civil Rights Act. (I still remember seeing the smoke from the burning buildings. I lived about 10 miles from Watts at the time.)

And of course, the riot in South-Central Los Angeles in 1992 was caused by the Rodney King incident--another violation of civil rights.

[UTUSN]

2. Envy n/t

[cigsandcoffee]

5. Classism

In America, there is at least a hint of a chance that people can get ahead, and move up in the social classes. That's becoming rarer, to be sure, but it's still ingrained in to all Americans, and even to the immigrants who come here.

In France, that simply can't happen. They're not nearly as much of a "melting pot" as we try to be over here (at least in theory). There's no such thing as "The French Dream," and the dissafected immigrants and their children know it.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

17. Thank you for posting that.

I think it may be difficult for people who've never traveled to Europe to understand exactly how different it is from the US.

Rant: Why the hell does everyone in the US feel the need to view everything that happens in the world through the lens of the problems in the US? Is it so unfathomable that other parts of the world run on a different system? Is it so difficult to believe that the problem in France is a specifically French problem and not part of some larger worldwide battle of rich vs. poor? Is it so difficult to understand that Europe is not the liberal utopia that it's made out to be? Jesus God, Europe has problems. BIG problems. In a lot of ways, they're bigger than the problems in the US, especially when it comes to immigration! I laughed last month when everyone on here was hurrah-ing France's efforts to "protect" its "culture" by banning various imports. An obnoxious, racist policy being cheered on by supposed liberals.

Guys, France is a MESS. Their economy is stagnant. Their social model is failing. Their government is impotent because the people are frightened of change. It's not much better in Germany. And China is breathing down everyone's necks (not that you'd know this in continental Europe, where cultural elitism and racism cause many people to pooh-pooh the idea that those silly orientals could ever compete.)

So France wants to reject the EU constitution because it's too "British." Great. Europe can either stick together or fail separately. You want to know why Tony Blair is such a Bush sycophant? The alternative is teaming up with Chirac.

End Rant.

[cigsandcoffee]

28. Living in Europe is what made me love America

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved it. There are facets to their culture that absolutely shame us over here, but there are also areas where we're light years ahead.

The most shocking thing to me was the very distinct and entrenched classism in the people. When you come from a certain area or postal code, that essentially defines you for life. My guess is that Europe was having such a hard time integrating the different classes of their homogenous white society that they were in no way prepared for the mass immigration from other ethnic cultures. When a South Side Dubliner is societelly engineered to look down on a North Side Dubliner - to the point that it's a city divided by a class barrier more real and distinct than the river Liffey - how on Earth is he going to allow himself to classify a poor and newly immigrated Nigerian or their children as anything equal to himself?

"The American Dream" is a concept designed to soothe the poor and weary, and offer them incentive to work hard and earn the respect of their labor - almost in the way early religion was designed to soothe the miserable poor in to enduring hardships and giving meaning to less-than-stellar lives. The truth of The American Dream is very debatable, but the fact that the concept strongly exists and is widely perpetuated is not. The poor here can still dream.

If you take away that hope for equality and respect, then you end up with what we've seen in Paris over the last two weeks. And France is not the only country with these deep rooted problems now bubbling to the surface - it exists across Europe. There, you can make all the money in the world, be a wonderful person, and still face widespread and sneering classism from people born in to "better" postal codes. The era of Lords and Barons isn't in their too distant past, and isn't fading from memory anytime soon.

[smirkymonkey]

44. Excellent point.

I have always held an idealistic view of European society, but I think lately the dark underside is being revealed.

Class structure is nothing but a social construction, and does not imply the natural order of things (although we are so used to it, we believe it does.) There will always be stronger, smarter, richer, etc. but the value we place on those things - the black and white need to place everything on a scale of better/worse is unevolved.

Ultimately, hierarchy is about ego and therefore false. I hope humanity progresses spirtually in trancending our ego-based notions of superiority/inferiority because I don't think we will survive very long unless we do. The have-nots and the underdogs are getting more than restless, they are (understandibly) getting increasingly violent.

[donheld]

7. This article explains a lot

Thanks for posting.

[radwriter0555]

8. Nah, the whole action is totally blown out of proportion and over-analysed

to bits and pieces.

This really is nothing more than kids being kids and having nothing better to do.

After all, look at their primary 'targets'-- it's themselves. There is no action against "the man" of any sort, against the 'rich', against the bourgouis. Every action is taking place against their own. In their own nieghborhoods, in their own streets against their own neighbors.

When a man murders someone who knows him, he tends to brutalize the face of that person, especially the eyes...

When a man commits a murder against a stranger, he doesn't care about that that stranger thinks, so he doesn't damage the face.

These kids aren't lashing out at anything but themselves, crime always being crime with certain psychological actions predicated.

There isn't a country on the planet that is less racist than France. I see more inter-racial families here than anywhere else ever. People choose where they live, and people live close to what they know best, and in nieghborhoods where they're the most comfortable.

[callady]

9. My experience in France

showed great racial divides. Lived there for a year and the racist structures were obvious.

'Kids having nothing better to do"? Sorry that is no explanation at all. except denial of the obvious and the historical truths of a blatantly mercantile and industrial slave nation.

[dennisnyc]

12. maybe you missed the reports of burning police stations?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

18. Indeed.

and having nothing better to do.

Because they're barred from being part of society, yes.

After all, look at their primary 'targets'-- it's themselves. There is no action against "the man" of any sort, against the 'rich', against the bourgouis. Every action is taking place against their own. In their own nieghborhoods, in their own streets against their own neighbors.

This is a common feature of many riots. Would you suggest that the race riots in the United States during the past 40 years were simply the result of kids with too much time on their hands?


There isn't a country on the planet that is less racist than France.

Oh bull fucking SHIT.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/124532.stm

Lemme guess. That's because it's from the French-hating BBC, right? :eyes:

I see more inter-racial families here than anywhere else ever.

Of course you couldn't prove that because the French government refuses to keep any statistics whatsoever on race, which makes it conveniently simple to ignore the whole problem.

[Karenina]

24. If you are in France

and cannot see the institutionalized rabid racism there, you must be...








Wait for it...










white! :evilgrin:

[radwriter0555]

26. Yeah, I'm white and my family is black.

Now what can you accuse me of?

[Karenina]

34. What a strange response!

White privilege often blinds even the most well-intentioned to the daily
soul-destroying drudgery dealing with institutionalized racism heaps upon the heads of those considered "the other."

[radwriter0555]

36. ah yes, that must be it. I'm blind to racism.

I see.

I live in France, and am appreciative of the astounding lack of racism here, especially after having grown up in the USA; I lived there in New York, Tallahassee, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles in rural settings, in urban settings and in settings you cannot possibly imagine. From little tar paper shacks on dirt roads out near the sink holes of Appalachicola and the tobacco roads of Bainbridge Gawga; at my grandmother's pig farm in North Carolina where the slave cabins still sat out back; and in living on the edge of "the hood" in El Aye where my kid's fancy friends were afraid to come to our house because you know, there were BLACK people and Mexicans living on my street; how about having the white couple from Santa Monica withdraw their offer on my house in March 2005 because a white cop told them that gangs drive up and down the street shooting each other every night... and that doesn't even begin to address my family, my closest friends, the loves of my life of every color and what we have learned together over a lifetime of love from each other about the world and the racism in it... but that lifetime of learning is so far above and beyond your comprehension.... yet, I'm suddenly now blind to racism.

Maybe you know absolutely nothing, and I do mean NOTHING about who I am, what I know, what I see and what I have learned about what I have seen in my 45+ years of life, my travels all over the world, of love, of family and friends and work.

You should reserve your pithy, baseless judgement for that and those you know up close and real personal, and back the fuck up off of me.

[Karenina]

37. I am simply responding to your post, Radwriter0555

What you wrote in your post #8 expresses a point of view inconsistent with a developed understanding of or sensitivity to the ravages of historic and institutionalized racism. If you live in France and are unable to see it, then obviously it doesn't affect you and nothing requires you to think more about it than to catergorize "them" just as you have. Would that you were to communicate with some of the "stateless" there. I know your heart would just break in the face of new information.

The defensiveness, aggression, self-justification and denial that jump off the screen in the above post are part and parcel of the collective agreements that serve to block out the truth. Clearly, I have pushed one of your buttons and you're not quite ready to look at the picture it projected onto the wall. If you are "astounded" at the "lack of racism" in France, I stand by my "baseless judgement" that you simply are NOT paying attention. It's all FINE, Rad. :hug:

[callady]

38. Read More- Dispatches From Paris

http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/

No Justice, No Peace!

The events that have shaken the French suburbs for almost two weeks now are definitely the expression of a rebellion with an undeniably political dimension. The riots are obviously against the representatives and symbols of a social order that is unequal, racist and oppressive, which considers young people from the popular neighbourhoods to be “trash” which need to be cleaned with “Karcher” and then sent to rot in prison. In this context, setting fire to a car, a public building or a business, is a political act. Even though we might question the wisdom of these actions, especially as they cause more problems for the people than for the bourgeoisie and those who are truly to blame for this situation, the fact remains that this is the only way that these young people can make themselves heard, for this society has nothing to offer them but servitude, frustration and cops. In order to be able to put in place repressive policies, and to criminalize the suffering of the suburbs, the social origins of this violence must first be denied.

Read more...

Communique from the Mouvement de l'Immigration et des Banlieues*



“Die in peace my brothers, but die quietly, so that we hear nothing but the faintest echo of your suffering…”

Anyone who does not understand why people are rioting either suffers from amnesia, blindness, or both. For the past thirty years the suburbs have been calling out for justice. For twenty five years the rebellions, the riots, the demonstrations, the marches, the public meetings, and cries of anger have been making very clear demands. It is fifteen years since the Ministry of Urban Affairs was set up to deal with the poverty and exclusion of the so-called underprivileged areas. Ministers come and go with their promises: a Marshall Plan, Economic Free Zones, DSQ, ZEP, ZUP, Youth Employment, Social Cohesion, etc. … The suburbs serve as a dumping zone for the ministers, politicians and journalists with their deadly little sound bites about “lawless areas”, “irresponsible parents”, organized crime and other “consequences of Islamic fundamentalism.”

Rage in the Banlieue
By DIANA JOHNSTONE
Montmartre, Paris.
The furious youth in the French suburban housing blocks known as the banlieue are expressing themselves by setting cars on fire. And not only cars: schools, creches, sports centers. So far, they are not using words, at least not audibly. So everyone else is free to speak for them, or against them, and offer his or her verbal interpretation of what these actions mean, or should mean. Since these interpretations differ sharply, there is a polarizing debate going on as to what this is really about and what should be done about it.



I live on the northern edge of Paris, on the non-tourist backside of Montmartre. It is probably the most mixed neighborhood in Paris. It includes Barbès, the setting for Emile Zola's working class novel "L'Assommoir", which later became the main pole of North African immigration. More recently, there is a large and growing population of sub-Saharan African immigrants, as well as a considerable Tamoul community.The streets are full of life, lots of young children, African grocers, all sorts of shops and people, and despite a certain amount of drug dealing, I feel perfectly safe, even late at night.
This neighborhood is not far from the northeastern banlieue where the riots began. But the banlieue is something else. Its specific nature is one of the factors behind the current outburst of violence. But it is only one of the factors.

1. The rioters themselves.
Only the right, or more precisely the far right, would reduce the problem to the rioters themselves. The National Front is, predictably, describing the situation as "civil war" and calling for the government to send in the Army. This is a very minority position. So far as I am aware, its strongest expression has come from the United States, in an article by Daniel Pipes in the Jewish World Review charactizing the riots as an Islamic "intifada" as a "turning point" in a new religious war in Europe.
Who exactly are the rioters? So far, this is not very clear, since the hit-and-run arson attacks appear to be imitative but unorganized. The rioters are young males, mostly, it seems, in their mid-teens, who identify with the two teen-agers who were accidentally electrocuted last October 27 when, running from police, they scaled a wall and took refuge in an industrial generator. Ironically, in this crucial case the deaths were the result of fear rather than of direct police brutality. This widespread fear of police reflects gratuitous and heavy handed police harassment, but there is also the undisputed fact that in areas with 40% unemployment and large numbers of school dropouts, there has been a proliferation of drug dealing and various forms of petty crime, often in the form of forcing school kids to surrender such items as cell phones. Police toughness has had no visible success in stemming such activities.
The rioting youths seem to be predominantly, but not exclusively, of African or North African origin. They are certainly not all Muslims, and there is no indication that most of them are particularly attached to any religion. Muslim religious authorities condemn the riots, and one has gone so far as to issue a fatwa against the violence, but this seems to serve more to distance the Muslim authorities from the rioters than to influence them.


http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2005/11/rage-in-banlieue-counterpunch.html#jumpto

[radwriter0555]

40. Soooo where are the photos of all the rioters en masse marching through

the streets?

[Karenina]

42. Huh?

:shrug:

[Karenina]

43. Please pay attention.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1641567,00.html

There are excellent links at the bottom of that page.

[achtung_circus]

10. There is more good stuff here:

<http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/problem-with-frenchness-readers-have.html>

"Mark Steyn of the Chicago Sun-Times commits most of the gross errors, factual and ethical, that characterize the discourse of the Right in the US on such matters.

For instance, Steyn complains that the rioters have been referred to as "French youths."

''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.



This paragraph is the biggest load of manure to hit the print media since Michael Brown (later of FEMA) and his Arabian Horse Society were profiled in Arabian Horse Times.

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American. Perhaps the Steyns came before the Revolutionary War, but a very large number of us have not. The US brings 10 million immigrants every decade and one in 10 Americans is now foreign-born. Their children, born and bred here, have never known another home. All US citizens are Americans, including the present governor of California. "The immigrant" is always a political category. Proud Californio families (think "Zorro") who can trace themselves back to the 18th century Spanish empire in California are often coded as "Mexican immigrants" by "white" Californians whose parents were Okies."

[dennisnyc]

11. See also, Democracy Now Wednesday's show spent the hour

on this--a lot on the history, with Robert Fisk.

www.democracynow.org

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

16. I am curious.

What makes you think the system in France is the same as the system in the US?

[Ron Green]

19. In the broadest sense, the system is the same everywhere.

One group of people will oppress another group of people, mistakenly thinking that they are different. The truth is that there are no differences among people, but we spend our lives on this earth dealing with illusions, tending them and maintaining them by trickery, force or fear.

Races, cultures, genders - - to focus on these is to live in lies, but it's what we do. And it's the same everywhere people are bound by time and space.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

20. In the broadest sense...

...we and dogs and sheep are all mammals, but I wouldn't use that as a basis for saying that marmots are going to riot. The OP was addressing a specific idea "That it can/will happen the same way in the US" for which I find very little supporting evidence because the way the US deals with its immigrants is decidedly different (and better) than the way most of continental Western Europe deals with theirs.

This is not to say that the US doesn't have issues with immigration and race, but it's not universally bad, as in France, which is why you're seeing riots in every part of the country.

[callady]

22. The same

economic structures, nominal differences. The same hierarchical social structures. The same industrial commodified and corporatized mechanisms in places of social control. The same socially commercialized educational strucutres, though the French educational system is much less polluted than ours. The same basic land structures as practiced in real terms with similar results.

France is a VERY racist nation and has a rich tradition of imperious behavior.
Colonizers all- The US-French-Dutch-Brits-etc.

For recent case studies look at France's role in Aristides overthrow in Haiti.
No nation is more mercantile than the French.

BTW I loved my time there.

Now contending that there are in all meaningful ways striking similarities between France and US (And too many others to list) and becoming more alike each year, I will say many of the French are really trying to retain their uniqueness.

Also the rich tradition of street protest in France is difficult for Americans to understand. It is quite common for the truckers in France, Greece et al to block the highways if their demands for equity aren't meant. We just tend to have big rallies and sign petitions.

More to say but these somewhat awkward general statements must suffice for the moment.

[deutsey]

23. For the same reason that America will be burning in 5 to 10 years

if we don't stop the current path we're on.

[Karenina]

45. I doubt it will take that long.

Winter is coming and the blankets have been burned by the neo-cons. Those who survive will likely be somewhat perturbed.

[Rocknrule]

25. It's God's punishment

for the French not supporting His representative on Earth's holy war in Iraq
:sarcasm:

[ReadTomPaine]

27. Because it is flammable.

And because there are people willing to burn it. The first problem cannot be fixed.

[upi402]

29. Oh that's *rich*!

You funny poster.
:headbang:

[kentuck]

30. Two kids watching the rioting in Argentina the other day....

..when Bush was there, and it turned into a copycat riot, perhaps?

[Selatius]

31. The problem is GREED + RACISM

It was GREED that motivated this cheap labor policy of shoveling in these people and stuffing them away into gigantic block tower ghettos, and it is RACISM that prevents many of these people from moving out of the fucking ghetto and into French society. The result is an angry, alienated people.

It's time for France to fight its own version of Jim Crow.

[Karenina]

35. First, they'll need to admit it.

The French AND the Dutch have hidden behind their constructed myths of tolerance for so long, they barely recognize the truth af their attitudes, policies and actions.

[Wilms]

32. .

[Karenina]

39. What? No comment?

;-)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

41. Same reasons that it burned in 1789. Poverty, hopelessness.

Throw in racism to add to the conflagration.