Burning down the house
53% of young people in France aged 15 to 24 disapprove of Interior Minister Sarkozy’s use of the words rabble and thugs.
66% disapprove of the ongoing acts of violence and vandalism.
33% disapprove but “sympathise to an extent.”
– Ifop poll, 5/11
The riots in the grim slums have slipped from the headlines but not the streets; this is the way the news goes.
I’ve been reading and watching the coverage in the past two weeks, and don’t really know how much I can add to the noise. It remains a delicate situation.
The large population of French people of North African descent is a result of earlier French colonisation and the wave of immigrant workers who were invited in to help in the grand reconstruction that took place over 30 years after WWII.
The subsidised housing, now become wretched ghettos, sprang up to house them – they are not “forced” to live there, nor is the community exclusively Maghreban, as many a report would have you believe. Now the jobs have dried up but the economic situation in former homelands has little improved, and so France remains a mythical land of promise for many.
There are problems of racism and neglect. Neglect by the State and the parents – most taking part are mere teenagers.
There is the problem that merely putting liberté égalité fraternité on a banner does not make it so. And Interior Minister Sarkozy – already campaigning for the presidency – has chosen his deliberate words poorly, to say the least.
It’s a cry of rage and boredom and frustration, and it’s been a long time coming. And if their first act had been to blow up a McDonald’s, they may well have been heralded as heroes. France is, after all, the land of protest.
But they’re destroying their nursery schools, shops and community centres; they’re torching their equally struggling neighbours’ cars. They’re burning down their own house. Despite the rage against now imposed curfews, which some are denouncing as a reminder of the horror that was Algiers, these acts of vandalism are not fuelled by politics or religion. They’re powerless youths suddenly drunk with power, egging for airtime, and committing puerile and futile acts. And it’s been a long time coming.
When the powerless taste the elation of power, it’s hard to bring them back down, and difficult to know whether to bring them down hard or gently.
And as dismaying as watching French politicians writhe and sweat these past two weeks, has been the spectacle of the coverage overseas. If some reports were measured and thoughtful, a righteous many once again revealed that what they lack in knowledge, they will make up for in giddy jingoism – pointing out, as if it needed to be said that, this time at least, it was not their fault.
It would be disingenuous of me to say that I’m surprised to see this glee of schadenfreude on display, justified by the continued promulgation of the misinformation of the French having celebrated America’s tragedies. Let me just state for the record that I have witnessed nothing but goodwill and generosity in the aftermaths. But let’s not get into that.
Even if it’s been a long time coming.
· · • · ·
Comment
- As always, your post is eloquent and informative.
Thank you for writing up the situation more succinctly than I’ve been reading in other sources during the past 12 days.
— roggey Nov 10, 4:27pm # - Is the schadenfreude to which you refer in the U.S. press, Gail?
I ask because the German coverage has been fairly calm – my criticism would be that it turns very quickly to soul-searching as to ‘Will it happen here?’, with some lack of concern for the French, but then, that’s abroad.
But there’s an American weblog about the German media that is frothing with indignation that the German coverage is so low-key, whereas it claims the German media was united in schadenfreude about New Orleans (which I dispute).
— Margaret Nov 10, 5:03pm # - As dismaying as watching French politicians writhe and sweat these past two weeks, has been the spectacle of the coverage overseas
Très bon résumé... et merci pour l’empathie et pour le tact de votre analyse.
NB : The subsidised housing, now become wretched ghettos... This cannot be said of all the HLM, you know
— Thierry Nov 10, 5:27pm # - Yes, Margaret, I was. I know that European coverage was more tempered. And, despite your misgivings, I do think it could happen anywhere where a similar situation exists (and has).
Coverage in France was from all points of view, somewhat anxious, and left none of the parties involved blameless.
Et, oui, Thierry, vous avez bien fait de le dire.
— gail Nov 11, 11:45am # - My reflex is to sympathize with the kids, but I didn’t need to read it in the newspapers to know that a teenager is not working with a fully developed and functioning brain. I used to be a teenage boy and I therefore have strong reasons for suspecting that none of this would be happening if burning stuff and angering the police and generally running wild (1) was not fun as hell or (2) required any work or (3) made you look boring or subservient. If, say, sitting in school every day studying hard, or if protesting quietly in sit-ins and so on, was guaranteed to get these guys what they want (regular jobs?) many would prefer to riot.
Still, my reflex is to sympathize with the kids and not the cops. Until they hurt people.
— eeksypeeksy Nov 12, 1:48am # - I think my second comment got lost, so here it is again: I did not say and do not think that this could not happen anywhere. Apologies if I expressed myself confusingly. No ‘misgivings’!
— Margaret Nov 12, 10:59am # - Sarkozy “chose his words poorly” or maybe not.
In the US, the scroll under the lurid CNN images of burning cars – a kind of measurement of the violence and its intensity: 1300 cars burned today! only 470 cars today! – was “Most of rioters are young Muslims, Arabs”.
And the cheerleaders of the Apocalypse, or professional talking heads, are all up on the “Clash of Civilizations” thing.
Sarkozy may well feel safe in pouring gasoline on the fire. He may think he’s part of the rising tide of triumph. He might have chosen those words with some care, to have precisely the effect they did.
Now that Germany’s slipping into the neo-con pocket, that leaves…
France and Spain, n’est-ce pas?
They’ll have a harder time with Spain I think. And France isn’t stuck with a choice between Le Flic and Le Pen is it? Or is it?
— Juke Moran Nov 12, 12:39pm # - The remarkable difference with propably every ‘uprising’ or ‘protest’, is the not-opennes of the actions as we see them.
It is not an individual thing, since peerpressure and friendshipstructures are clearly at hand. It is a society on the other – outcasted – side of the construction France has always been since the revolution.
Do rent ‘La Haine’, if you did not already.
It seems to me an unbelievable act of self-discipline, that no more people are hurt.
These youngsters are not stupid. They know that nothing structural is done for a situation that is no less than hopeless. So nothing structural from their part should be expected.
Ghandi has never been more dead.
— Crachà t Nov 13, 1:06am #
commenting closed for this article