On August 14, 2012 the BBC filed this report on the latest burst of urban violence in France:
Buildings and cars were torched overnight as youths and police clashed in
the northern French city of Amiens. Sixteen police officers were injured in the
clashes with up to 100 youths, some of whom threw fireworks, large-sized shot
and projectiles, say police. Reports suggest the unrest may have been triggered
after police arrested a man for dangerous driving. Interior Minister Manuel
Valls was jostled when he visited the area. A small group of people tried to
push through his security detail as he walked through the area, alternately
booing him, cursing him and trying to speak to him. President Francois Hollande
has vowed to beef up security resources to combat the violence, saying public
security was "not just a priority but an obligation".
This is not the first of these
outbursts as there have been many like these in France, some much worse than
the recent outburst in Amiens. Most of the explanations focus on youth,
marginalization and unemployment. Only a few bold commentators are able to point
out that the rioters are mostly from North Africa or the children of North
African immigrants, who have created a series of “no go” areas in various
French towns and suburbs where gangs proliferate and Islamic law is free to
offer up its medieval answer to social unrest.
Most of the explanations that
are now flooding the media emanate from the academic Marxists or Marxist
inspired left. They are only minimally persuasive. Let us look at them and see
if we can dig deeper to find more satisfying explanations for this social
unrest, as do archeologists when they are excavating a site.
Their first explanation is
poverty. North African immigrants, who are largely Arab, Berber and West
African Muslims, have a comparably higher rate of unemployment than the rest of
France. The classic sociological explanation here is that poverty plus
ethnicity equals violence. Yet England is awash with legal and illegal
immigrants from Poland and these men and women are noted for their non-violent
behavior.
The second and related
argument is that North African immigrants and especially young men, being
largely unemployed are “forced” into illegal activities such as theft and drug
trading. This is the argument that poverty leads to drugs and robbery
explanation. Yet if you go to any of the developing cities of India you will
notice that few of the millions of poor regularly riot, although there are
always the inter community Muslim/Hindu conflicts in India’s cities that began
with independence in 1948.
The third and related argument
is that the French people hate North Africans, Arabs, Berbers, West Africans
and anyone who is not French in the classic stereotypical sense and make life
miserable for them out of a deep and pathological hatred of the stranger. The
fact that when the economy was robust these immigrants were used for the menial
jobs that the other French would not do, only supports the economic argument
that the French do discriminate against immigrants who are different from the
secular or Catholic French majority in so many ways. Yet given the large
sympathy for Islam and Muslim immigrants by the left and government employees
this is simplistic to say the least. The door is open to those who will play by
the rules and no doubt, there is a fair amount of unofficial affirmative action
to those North Africans who want to join “the system.”
These three arguments are most
commonly used by the Marxist left to explain the oppressive nature of the
French state and the almost original sin status of its European majority vis a
vis North Africa. The argument suggests that the ideologies of multiculturalism
or national integration are a sham and that it is the host society’s fault that
these minorities are rioting. Followers of this line of thought will assume
that there will be a need for the French equivalent of a Royal Commission of
inquiry, more affirmative action and better social services.
Yet what if the rioters have
not adopted French culture for their own internal “cultural reasons”, what if
they do not believe in the brotherhood of man and do not really buy into
“liberte, egalite and fraternite?” If that is indeed the case perhaps it is
easier to explain what is driving their regularly occurring orgies of violence?
Perhaps we need a different set of arguments to make sense of their behaviour.
The first is that of the
politics of resentment. France managed to conquer and dominate most of North
Africa for more than one hundred and fifty years. In doing so it established
functioning colonies and provided Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia with a modern
administration, modern roads, railways, communications, ports and hospitals.
Along came Arab nationalism and French doubt in the justice of its colonial
empires and presto, North African countries were free to be the authors of
their own destinies. They joined the Arab league and countries like Algeria,
who were left with an advanced oil exporting economy and billions of dollars in
cash surpluses, descended into corruption and a recent civil war, which is a
sign of their inability to modernize. Now all three are falling into the grips
of radical Islam as best exemplified in the former moderate Arab state of
Tunisia.
Ultimately, the regimes of
these three countries have returned to their pre industrial patron client
economies and any economic well being that had come with or from the French has
declined, triggering a growing immigration to France where at least there was
and is a chance of employment. The resentment triggered by this string of
development and modernization failures must trigger a fair amount of anger
directed against the former colonial power, which has managed to flourish
economically without its former North African colonial territories.
The second explanation is the
culture of vendetta. It is not widely known that despite the fact that most of
these immigrants were and still are Arabic and Berber speaking peasants,
tribesmen and city dwellers, or their French born children, their culture was
and is heavily influence by Bedouin ideals. Vendettas, blood feuds and honor
killings were and are common. These are cultures based on female seclusion,
honor and shame where violence against women who do not guard their “virtue” is
a manly way of establishing one’s dignity. Therefore periodic expression of
manliness through rioting is considered to be something of a positive value.
The fourth is the heritage of
the Barbary Corsairs (pirates of North Africa who raided western Europe for
slaves that were brought back to north Africa). These immigrants are the
descendants of a people who once terrorized the coasts of France.
Psychologically the role reversal and stigma of working for the European must
be great indeed.
The fifth explanation has to
do with the historical nature of authority in traditional North Africa
especially Morocco. Before colonialism Morocco was divided into bilad
el makhzen (land of the administration) where the Sultan ruled and bilad
es siba (the land of dissidence) where the tribes ruled. Whenever the
tribes could, they would violently revolt against the authority of the state at
all and every opportunity. Peaceful negotiation was thought of as unmanly and
regimes were constantly attacked and replaced. So it is not too much of a
stretch of the imagination to consider the no go zones of Islamic urban France
are the descendants of these zones of dissidence or “bilad es siba.”
Finally there is the Islamic
explanation. That is to say, for the first time in its history France has an
immigrant minority who do not want to blend in with the secular values of the
majority. They do not want their women to live in freedom and they often attack
other religious minorities. They hope that Spain will be reconquered, that the
humiliation of the Battle of Poitiers will be reversed in the 21st century
and that Europe will once again fall under the authority of Islamic rule as it
once was in medieval Spain.
These last six factors taken
together have as much and perhaps more explanatory power than the first four.
They are anathema to Marxist scholars who refuse to take into account the fact
that “other tribes follow other scribes.” By doing so they leave most of the
motivations behind this ongoing orgy of urban violence “unexcavated” and
unexplained.
I could not find them in the
scores of articles on the Internet that try to explain the resilience of these
violent riots. Instead I derived my explanations from a number of readings of
Fernand Braudel’s magisterial The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip the II and from the many studies of the
Mediterranean that he inspired at the Annales school of social history that he
and his colleagues established in Paris. It would seem then that the
explanations for France’s problems are best taken from France’s best scholars,
but no one there seems to be doing so. What a waste of a national genius!
During the height of the civil
rights struggle in twentieth century America, African Americans suffered far
more discrimination at the hands of white Americans than North Africans have
experienced so far in France. They regained their civil rights through peaceful
protest and much personal sacrifice. There is now a growing and prosperous
African American middle class in the USA. Despite the superficial analyses of
the left, the North African immigrant gangs would do well to study the success
of the African Americans. It is
worth imitating.
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