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Controversial
Sois Musulman et tais tois! You cheese eating surrender Muslims…
Ooh, controversial!
In may of nineteen sixty eight the students of France, almost as one man, went on the warpath. No two people will ever agree on what exactly they were angry about, generally things like the Vietnam War and anti-fascist ideologies are cited and then the respectable historians move on to something more fun. So far as we are concerned the causes don’t really matter.
The recent riots in France are generally blamed on the poor conditions in which immigrant Muslims live. Commentators cite low income, unemployment and racism.
The Poosh makes a good point when he says that these privations are suffered by people who are neither immigrants, nor Muslims, yet they do not riot. In fact one imagines they are rioting, but they did not start the riot, and this is the good point.
France’s reaction to the riots has been execrable. In ’68 de Gaul reacted by laying down the law. He set up a military counter-riot office, and he authorised the police to use all necessary force. The riots nearly cost him his office (in fact they may have, but not immediately), but he crushed them swiftly enough. He prevented the sort of death and carnage which would have grown even greater had he pussy-footed around like the current administration.
Where are the water cannons? Where are the legions of armoured riot police? Where is the flash and staccato rhythm of sub-machineguns felling the unassimilated Mohammedan horde? I’ll tell you. Nowhere. Y’see Chirac has looked at the past, oh yes, and seen that de Gaul’s more, er, robust, response to the rioters made him unpopular with the left wing. Now the left wing are a powerful bunch in France today, and Chirac will not risk his les than sound position by doing his job.
In short, Chirac would rather people die than loose his job, and the left wing (not to mention the larger part of the global media) would rather see people die than see poor immigrant brown people made to abbey the law.
Actually, that’s not true, because of course the media, and the left wing, and most everyone else will not see anybody die. That don’t mean there will not be any death, just that the media will turn a blind eye, and no-one else will look.
This is the essence of the matter, regardless of the privations one might suffer, nothing grants the right to riot, to steal, to burn or to kill. If a man riots, then the Alchemist for one will look upon his plight with less, rather than more sympathy.
Well from Chirac’s point of view it is easy to understand. If he looses office then he goes to prison. And what is M. Chirac going to care about the good of the poor suffering rioting and death in the suburbs or the good of M. Chirac? He is a politician afterall.
Comment by chris — November 11, 2005 @ 4:34 pm