France at war.

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<p>But regardless of how one looks at those events towards the end of the 18th Century, there is now a serious doubt as to how much celebrating there can possibly be this year. It’s a little-known fact that France last used the guillotine as recently as 1977, and then finally got round to abolishing it altogether in 1981. And it’s just as well they did, because it appears that this time round in the summer of 2023, it’s the entire country which is in the process of losing its head. Rioters are clashing with both the police and the infrastructure of modern life, and the police are clashing back with the rioters. And everything appears to be going up in flames. For example, the latest outrage showing on social media site Reddit is the burning down of the largest public library in the city of Marseilles. One has to ask, “What harm was that library doing? And who is going to suffer from its loss?”<br />
These latest riots began as a protest to an event on 27th June 2023 when Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French youth of Moroccan and Algerian descent, was shot and killed by the police in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. Initial reporting on the incident, informed by police statements, say that Nahel was stopped by police for a traffic violation, then he drove off again, and then he was fatally shot as a policeman’s gun discharged. This was later contradicted by witness statements, while a video of the event posted online was and still is inconclusive.<br />
However, there is more to the story than just this. What we do know is that Nahel, with two passengers on board, was driving a high-powered bright-yellow Mercedes sports car at speed in a bus lane at 8.00 in the morning on a busy suburban road in Nanterre in the Paris suburbs. That is, he was extremely conspicuous, and was bound to attract the attention of any police in the vicinity. What is more, he did not have a driving licence, and he had been pulled over for a similar offence only a few days previously.<br />
However, while many people would say that these were sufficient grounds for arresting him and hauling him before the courts of justice, most would agree that these were not grounds for shooting him. But Nahel’s problem was that he did not stop when the police told him to. The exact step by step events of what happened next are disputed and are currently the object of an enquiry, so hopefully the truth will emerge.<br />
In the meantime, the officer who shot Nahel has been arrested and charged with manslaughter. Over the weekend, France’s two most prominent police unions issued a fiery statement about the protests, saying “we are at war” with “hordes of vermin.” It came after an extreme right leader, Eric Zemmour, called on authorities to crack down on the demonstrators. The language used in the statement can serve to highlight the extent of the hate speech and racism exhibited by certain French police officers against those of North African descent. The French far right and many French politicians as well, view them as the cause of the country’s problems.<br />
However, it has since come out in the press that last year there were no less than 13 fatal shootings by traffic police, which is a record number for France, and in fact these 13 fatalities came from over 150 occasions when firearms were discharged. So, it appears that, for some reason, there is a problem with guns going off in traffic stops made by the French police. This is despite the fact that there are clear rules laid down as to when guns can and cannot be used.<br />
This Nanterre shooting is surely set to be one of those symbolic moments that define the troubled relations between police and disaffected populations in the suburban cités, or estates. In the days following the event, many symbols of the state such as town halls, schools, and police stations, as well as other buildings, have been attacked. Including that library. And in a particularly disturbing example of violence, the house of the Mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a town in the Val-de-Marne Department, was the object of a car-ramming attack a few days ago. Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun was not at home at the time, but his wife and one of his two young children were injured in the attack. The authorities have since registered a case of attempted murder.<br />
The Interior Ministry have also reported that more than 5,000 vehicles had been set on fire, along with 10,000 rubbish bins. Also, nearly 1,000 buildings have been burnt, damaged, or looted, while 250 police stations have been attacked. And more than 700 police officers have been injured during attempts to quell the rioting. In other words, not to put too fine a point on it, we can say that France is at war.<br />
Now from a certain point of view, this is very strange, because the enemy that France is at war with is none other than a group of its own citizens. In the case of the last two weeks, it has mainly been at war with young men who are mostly either immigrants from the Maghreb or are descendants of immigrants from the Maghreb. By the Maghreb I am referring to those parts of North Africa which were formerly owned by France, that is, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. These young men mostly live in the high-rise apartments in the Paris suburbs, and they tend to see life in France as a case of “us and them.”<br />
“Us” are others living in the same apartments in the same areas, and this can include young black men from Africa and from the Caribbean. And “them” are the members of white French society, who, according to these angry young men, have all the advantages and wealth and who look down on the non-whites. That is what they believe, and since their lives tend to be lived mostly among their own communities, there is little opportunity for them to even meet white French people, much less find out how they are viewed.<br />
And what about white French society? As they live their lives in French cities, they probably don’t think so much about those in the suburbs. At least, not in the normal course of events. However, they will be aware of all the money that has been spent in these suburbs so that those living there can have access to schools and nurseries and cultural centres and the apartment blocks where they live. And they will also be aware of the high rates of crime which exist on the housing estates, with a tendency to be involved with dealing drugs. And so, they will be looking on in disbelief as these young men set fire to and destroy the very facilities which the government has provided for their own communities to use. And not only that, but they also then come into the cities and destroy town halls and shopping centres and they attack the police as well.<br />
Let’s look at it this way. To say the very least, we have two sides that do not see eye to eye. Most of the young men have roots from somewhere in Africa, and the French are from France. Most of the young men are Muslim as regards their religion, whether they are that observant, or not. But this will certainly be their cultural background. Most of the French are Catholic, and as is the way of the French, probably very few of them will be practicing, but this will be their cultural background.<br />
But here is a strange fact. The French government treats all these people as 100% French. It does not distinguish between anyone based on their ethnic origins or their religious beliefs or their cultural roots. Bravo, one might say. We are all equal, one might say. It would be wrong to label anyone, one might say. And yet, life is not like that. We are all different, and it would take being blind not to see the difference between a Muslim with immigrant roots, even if he was born in France, and a French Catholic.<br />
But the French state has persisted with its ideas. Another key French value which Muslim immigrants and residents in France have had difficulty accepting is laicity, a uniquely French form of secularism. Since they follow Islam, the immigrants have failed to embrace the concept of secularism, which has become an integral component of French republicanism. This secularism has even extended to banning any display of religious symbols, such as Muslim hijabs as well as Catholic crosses.<br />
But unfortunately, in the middle of all this lack of understanding, the immigrant and his community often feel that they have no redress. After all, the official line is that there is no race issue in France because everyone is French. Therefore, no statistics are kept as to how many people from this community or that community are stopped by the police, because everyone is French. Is it any wonder that tension and frustration build up between these communities, and that it only takes a spark, or a gunshot in this case, to ignite a riot? Until the French government addresses this unrealistic policy of simply saying everyone is all the same, there will continue to be problems of this nature in French society. And one day all the rioting and destruction might well open the door to the Elysée Palace for Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National (National Rally) party. By the way, her party is called that these days because she believes it sounds a bit better than the Front National (National Front), its former name.<br />
But the problems between the immigrant community and the authorities are by no means the only deeply divisive force which is currently active in France. There is also the opposition to the raising of the retirement age from 62 years old to 64 years old. If President Macron could get that into law, then the French government could save a lot of money. And the French workforce, every one of them, will be looking at an extra two years of work. And they are not happy at the prospect.<br />
And so, we have had marches and demonstrations, roads have been blocked, bins set on fire, with the police called in to keep order and then with people throwing things at the police. It is true that the demonstrations and riots may not have reached the levels of the recent riots after the shooting of Nahel, but they do seem to show that Frenchmen love nothing more than their freedom, their “liberté,” to get out on the street and start demonstrating and throwing whatever they can lay their hands on.<br />
And then there were the “Yellow Jackets” demonstrations of a few years ago. The government wanted to put up the price of diesel oil to achieve some progress in reducing carbon emissions. As a result, all the lorry drivers came out on strike and were out there blocking the motorways and doing all the usual stuff, such as throwing paving stones and setting fire to rubbish bins. And so on, and so forth.<br />
It is almost as though there is no moderating force in French society which allows people to complain and then work things out in any normal sort of way. Every dispute always seems to end up with a riot. Or maybe it’s just that the government see people out on the street and the police just go in hard to try and nip it all in the bud. But from what we can see, this appears to make things worse.<br />
If I had to put my finger on the problem, I would say that there is a distinct lack of moderation in French society, and we can trace this back for centuries. As I mentioned earlier, the French are about to celebrate Bastille Day, and “la Marseillaise,” the French National Anthem will no doubt be sung endlessly. And as always, it will recall the events of 1789 with some graphic imagery. “Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons…marchons, marchons” which roughly translates as “You citizens (by this time, probably a stirred-up mob), pick up your weapons, form into squads and get ready to move out (in the general direction of the enemy).”<br />
This is the way things are done “en France.” In 1789 it ended up with the regicide of King Louis XVI and his family, along with thousands of others. But it need not have been so. Instead of all this violence, there could have been a more moderate way of dealing with the problems of the time.<br />
But the problem was that the previous kings of France had not wanted moderation. In the 15th Century the Protestant Reformation had come to France from the German states and particularly from Switzerland. The main influence on France was due to a Swiss man called Jean Calvin. One of his followers was called Besancon Hughes which led to most French protestants being called Huguenots. At one point about 10% of the French population were Huguenot protestants. Without going into all the theology of their Protestant faith, let’s just say that this had an amazing effect on French society. These Huguenots became very wealthy and industrious with many factories and cottage industries, especially in areas such as glass blowing, the weaving of silk and textiles, and clock manufacturing.<br />
But France was a Catholic country and the kings of France decided they would not allow this Protestantism to continue. Kings Henri IV, Louis XIV and Louis XV all attacked the Huguenots with varying degrees of severity over the next 150 years or so, and between them they either killed or drove most of the Huguenots out of France. Louis XIV even claimed that the French Huguenot population was reduced from about 850,000 adherents to just about 1,500 during his reign.<br />
All of this had some very serious results for France. The economy took a big hit as all these productive industries left with their productive owners. Also, it showed that the French way of dealing with people who do not agree with one’s point of view is to simply destroy them or to evict them. It must be said that the revolutionaries of 1789 learned that lesson very well. “Pick up your weapons, citizens.” The kings of France, supported by the Catholic Church, had sowed the wind. And, in the words of the prophet Hosea, they reaped the whirlwind which blasted them away.<br />
And the citizens of France have been reaping whirlwinds ever since. Apart from all the problems at the time of the Revolution which eventually brought Napoleon to power, there have also been revolutions in 1830 and 1848. Then there was a second dose of Napoleon in the form of his nephew, who also declared himself Emperor in 1852 and whose military adventures were just as disastrous as his uncle’s. Then there was the Paris Commune with a complete breakdown of law and order with violence a-plenty and starvation in the capital. Incidentally, this is where Communism got its name, so we have the French to thank for that as well.<br />
And was there ever a more divided nation than the Third French Republic from 1870 to 1940? There was such a large degree of polarisation that it’s a wonder that anyone was able to get anything done at all. The people who supported the Catholic Church were against the people who wanted to do away with the power of the Catholic Church. The Republicans were fighting the Monarchists. The state itself had a nasty streak of antisemitism, as evidenced by the Dreyfus Affair, and the socialists were against the industrial capitalists. And then when Germany invaded France in 1940, the next four years were spent with part of the country collaborating with the Germans, while the other part tried to work against them.<br />
Since the Germans were chased out in 1944 to 1945, things have been a bit better, at least as far as polarisation is concerned. France has now been governed under the Fifth Republic since 1958, but this has not been without its problems. There were major riots in 1968 which brought down the government of President Charles de Gaulle, and once again, people in France were ripping up the cobblestones in the Paris streets and using them as ammunition. The fact that they were doing this yet again is one reason why the government has replaced those traditional cobblestones with other road surfaces in subsequent years.<br />
And this brings us up to the current day. What is the current motto of the Fifth French Republic? When one looks at modern French society, it’s hard to see much Liberty, Equality or Brotherhood. As we have seen, France came into the second half of the 20th Century with a huge amount of baggage. She has never recovered from the bad decisions made by those prejudiced and divisive kings in the 17th and 18th centuries, and so was never in a good position to receive such a huge influx of immigration from her former overseas possessions. But what has she got, going forward? There is nothing else except the power of the state. And that means the police and the civil authorities and the judicial system.<br />
Referring to the background of French police activity over the last years, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung called the 13 deaths from traffic stop incidents “a disgrace for the country.” It spoke about “a widespread problem of police violence in France.” Now that is something coming from a German source. It also evoked the scenes of repression against protests over the Sainte-Soline Reservoir a few months ago. “You can see the police giving the impression of going to war. It’s a miracle that no one died. It’s a bad tradition. In France, the police don’t protect citizens first and foremost, they protect the state. This fundamental principle permeates all units, from specialized intervention forces to road checks. The desire to de-escalate is foreign to many of them. As long as this does not change, such incidents will continue to occur.”<br />
And as we come up to Bastille Day, France is still trying to work out what the problem is. After all, no one will be able to solve it unless they can at least define what it is. The far left puts the violence down to wilful government neglect. France’s suburbs concentrate poverty, ill-staffed schools, and gang rule in remote city fringes. It is a grim realisation of life on society’s periphery. And yet billions of public funds have gone into renovating high-rise estates. Metro lines and tramways have been extended to city outskirts, apprenticeships expanded, primary-class sizes halved.<br />
The far right blames the rioting on immigration and, said Marine Le Pen, a “problem of police authority”. The rioters, so a statement by two right-wing police unions claimed, were nothing less than “savage hordes”. And yet Nahel was a French citizen, who grew up in France. And less than one in ten of those arrested for violence or looting was foreign.<br />
What then was the rioting about? It seems like we are no further forward. But when questioned by the media, the people who live on the estates of Nanterre repeatedly brought up one complaint. It was not about jobs, nor poverty, nor the mayor, nor Mr Macron. But rather, it concerned the excessive use of force by the police, and the sense that residents are singled out for police checks. “Officers need to be trained so that, when there are police checks, they don’t put the life of an under-aged boy in danger,” said one resident. “I’m convinced that the police stop us because of how we look. They are racist.”<br />
France does not like to think it has a policing problem, even as complaints about the disproportionate use of rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades pile up. And repression and hostility combine to reinforce each other. The question of racial profiling is hard to demonstrate, because, as we have seen, France bans ethnic statistics.<br />
In France, born several times over through revolution and rioting, the blazing urban fire carries a symbolic echo. In 1871 the Communards burned down the palaces of Paris. Pétroleuses, or female arsonists, became especially notorious for doing this. But the fires which are today’s weapon of choice for the rioters is more a howl of defiance against the forces of law and order. Burning cars and public buildings is self-destructive in the extreme because the real victims are the owners of those cars, the users of those buses and the pupils of schools who live in those very neighbourhoods.<br />
If you look at the direct consequences of the unrest, it becomes clear that these couldn’t be worse for the people living right there in the banlieues. As a result of the riots, there is now a soaring support for Le Pen’s right wing, there is devastated infrastructure in their neighbourhoods and a debate over police violence which appears to be limited to the far-left margins of society. Mehdi Bigaderne, a deputy mayor from Clichy-sous-Bois calls it “suicide.” “Why would you destroy your own neighbourhood? Because you don’t want to live there, and there is little left to believe in.”<br />
President Macron has been engaged recently in trying to work towards peace in the Ukraine War. However, as noble as that may be, he might be better advised to leave that to others and concentrate on the war in his own back garden. A few days ago, he was due to meet 200 mayors from towns that had suffered damage to municipal premises. The president has told his cabinet that he wants to reflect on a new strategy for handling the divisions that lie behind the latest unrest, the third outbreak in his presidency. As he does so, he would also be well advised to consider how to put right some of the egregious wrongs of the past whose effects still weigh so heavily on the Republic.<br />
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<h2>France at war.</h2>
<p>At the end of this week, on July 14th, France is due to celebrate its national holiday of Bastille Day. This will be the 234th anniversary of the fall of the Bastille Prison which was one of the key events of the French Revolution of 1789. With its slogan of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood/Fraternity) this revolution changed the country of France for ever. But did it change it for the better? The monarchy was abolished, the King went to the guillotine with his family, and, in his place, France eventually got the bloody reign of Robespierre. And after that came the endless wars of Napoleon, with this latter declaring himself as Emperor. So instead of a king, the French now had an Emperor. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”<br />
One has to ask, “Where was the Liberty, the Equality and the Brotherhood in all of this bloodshed and violence?” It would appear to be yet another case of “meet the new boss…same as the old boss.” Or maybe even worse than the old boss. I think Pete Townsend got it just right with these lyrics of his “Won’t Get Fooled Again” song.<span> However, these are the origins of the modern French state.</span><br />
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