Rebels Without a Cause

I have been paying attention to the riots in France and to the occasional pieces in the media about them. Most are incomprehensible.

The language is a problem. “French” and “immigrant” have different meanings in France than they do in just about any other country of which I am aware. There are no hyphenated residents of France. If you profess Frenchness, you are French. If you don’t you are an immigrant. France doesn’t keep track of its citizens by race or origin.

In some ways that’s admirable. However, it does make solutions to the present unrest elusive.

At iNews Leo Cendrowicz remarks:

The rioting has also transformed the political discourse. The initial horror over the shooting of a teenager has now turned into a debate about law and order.

This is fertile territory for Ms Le Pen, who has long railed against what she sees as France’s drift into permissiveness and lawlessness. She lambasted the government on Twitter on Sunday as “a power that abandons all constitutional principles for fear of riots, which contributes to aggravating them”, adding, “Our country is getting worse and worse and the French are paying the terrible price for this cowardice and these compromises.”

She did not directly address the shooting but condemned the National Assembly for holding a minute’s silence for Nahel last week, saying, “Unfortunately, there are young people in our country every week…It’s terrible, but I think that the National Assembly should perhaps measure a little the minutes of silence that are carried out.”

And in a video address yesterday she lambasted the “anarchy”, called on authorities to declare a state of emergence or curfew, and attacked Mr Mélenchon for “conniving” and “morally exempting these criminal acts”, promising that they would face a reckoning with “the nation and history”.

to which I would point out that “left” and “right” are different in France, too.

It should be observed that French opinion to the statements of various French politicians is most favorable to Marine Le Pen and least favorable to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, effectively the spokesman for the “left-wing opposition”.

I try to avoid offering opinions on the political turmoil in countries other than my own but I do regret the violence and destruction in France. It mostly hurts the poor people of the suburbs (“suburbs” means something different, too) and it is without clear objectives. A cri de coeur rather than a call to arms.