Is Paris burning?
Chirac fiddles while Paris burns
November 13, 2005
Fred Hutchison
RenewAmerica analyst
The rioting and arson in Paris reminds me of the book Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique La Pierre, and the 1966 Hollywood movie of the same name.During August 1944, the Germans were preparing to evacuate Paris because the Allied troops were approaching the city. Hitler ordered the German commander of Paris to destroy the city. The bombs were rigged throughout Paris, but were never detonated. The story line of the movie revealed how Paris was barely saved from destruction. At the end of the movie, a German voice from Berlin spoke into a phone with no one at the receiver, and repeatedly asked, "Is Paris burning?" The camera zoomed to beautiful Parisian scenes accompanied by joyous music. The great city was saved.
Paris escaped burning in 1944, but it is burning now. It has fallen into the hands of a new set of incendiary thugs. The fallacious analysis of the cataclysm offered by wire news services (Associated Press, United Press International, and Reuters) indicates incomprehension of why young Muslims have been burning precincts of Paris and three hundred other French cities. The stunned and confused French government has responded to the crisis with astonishing weakness and embarrassing rationalizations of criminality and appeasements of evil. The self-deceived and dithering French President Jacques Chirac must pull his head out the sand and ask, "Is Paris burning?" The answer is, "Yes, and you have not done much to stop it, unlike the French Resistance of 1944."
French denial, self-deception, and moral paralysis
This fiasco is a case study of the weakness of Postmodern liberal leadership during a crisis. The fallacies of Marxist sociology and the unexpected and dysfunctional effects of socialism are exposed by this meltdown. The policy of permitting massive immigration of third world Muslims to France, combined with a foolish multicultural policy of non-assimilation of Muslims, heavily contributed to the social meltdown. The failure of the French government and the press to consider the jihadist ideology of young European Muslims and the criminal ties of the rampaging street gangs is part of a great muddle that has led to a crisis of ever-growing proportions.
The weak response of the French government is getting little play in the mainstream media. The suburban riots were not taken seriously by the government until the invasion of central Paris by arsonist gangs. The crisis could no longer be ignored, but the government used half-measures and procrastinated about using their more powerful weapons. The French emergency law was available, but was not used until the twelfth day of the general conflagration. This law was passed in 1955 to deal with domestic insurrection by Muslim Algerians, who were inflamed by the revolt of the Algerian nationalists against their French colonial masters. Surely Chirac studied this when he was in school. Why did he think that this time was different?Chirac should have declared a state of emergency on the second day of rioting and decreed a curfew that would made it illegal to appear on the streets during nighttime hours, which are prime hours for arson. Incredibly, a weak curfew was put into effect at midnight (instead of a strong curfew at 7 P.M.) on the twelfth day of the insurrection! Three hundred cities and towns were in flames before this weak step was taken by the timorous government. On Sunday evening, November 11th, the night before the first curfew, hoodlums burned 1,400 vehicles, nearly doubling the number of vehicles burned during the whole course of the insurrection. The left-wing government, blinded by self-deception and frozen by moral paralysis, could only be moved to tenuous action by a tremendous shock. The police were exhausted and demoralized, yet the government still refused to call out the army. Why? Is the leftist government paralyzed by their anti-military reflexes?
Instead of tough talk, Chirac lamented the French insensitivity towards alienated Muslims, and promised plushy new government-financed benefits for the Muslim community, as though to appease their wrath and to reward them for rioting. Chirac might just as well have said, "It is our fault that the Muslim teens are burning Paris. Please kids, don't hurt us again. Here is the loot." President Chirac is exploring new dimensions of the French art of surrender.
The suicide of the West?Postmodern liberalism dominates the left wing of one American political party, but is the mainstream ideology of French politics. Postmodern liberal ideology is full of ideas that are hostile to the Western cultural tradition and to the idea of national unity and patriotism of a nation's citizens. As Europe progressively commits cultural suicide, I have often wondered if Western civilization in Europe will eventually collapse. The strange weakness of the French government in the face of rampaging Muslim jihadist and criminal teenagers, and the incapacity to understand what is happening, might signal the twilight of the West. We can only hope that this shocking crisis will awaken the French from their postmodern slumbers, because hopefully, they still want to survive. Perhaps the survival instinct will drive the French to fighting their enemies and surviving as a people, a culture, and a nation. Unfortunately, the assertion of manhood, nationhood, cultural identity, and national survival instead of suicide is not politically correct to the left-wing elites.
The collapse of France would indeed be the twilight of the West, for France is the cultural leader of Europe. The Germans, of all people, have taken to following the French. John Kerry is worried sick about how the French feel about us. Justices Kennedy and O'Connor listen closely to the French-speaking European court in Strasbourg, France.
Europe is slowly committing demographic suicide by the refusal of young "liberated" women to bear children and the encouragement of heavy immigration from Muslim countries. France is now 10% Muslim, a result of heavy immigration from Arab and black Muslims who lived in former French colonies in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East.
Muslim teen crime and jihadism
Most of the rioters are teenage gangs of Muslims, with peripheral assistance from criminal elements who supply drugs and weapons. 50% of the arrested gang members have criminal records. The gangs have grown powerful, and crime has soared after years of weak police policies and lack of courage and resolution to take back the streets from the wolf-packs of Muslim teens. Some of the gangs have Muslim jihadist tendencies. Muslim teens burned churches and synagogues while crying "Allahu akbar" (Allah is great), the Islamist slogan. Some non-jihadist gangs have opportunistically joined the party for the fun of it. The mindless pleasure of burning Paris is something only a Nazi or an adolescent gang member can understand. In the case of teen gangs, a drug-assisted testosterone intoxication is expressed through the gang cult of destruction. Their joy in looting and burning is comparable to the blood-thirsty euphoria of wolves when they are hunting in packs and have caught the scent of fleeing prey.
Gwynne Dyer, a left-wing British columnist, has become an apologist for rioting Muslim teens. He makes the dubious assertion that half the rioting teens are non-Muslims, and therefore, the insurgency is not a Muslim phenomenon, but a class phenomenon. His facts are wrong, and he is stuck in the threadbare Marxist theories of economic determinism. As a multiculturalist like Chirac, Dyer cannot bear to see blame assigned to an non-Western culture.It is true that some non-Muslim teen gangs have joined the rampage, but they are nowhere near 50%. Their participation has little to do with social class and a great deal to do with excitement, crime, and gang power on the streets. As a rule, gang members are creatures of the gang, not their social class. Teen gangs are counter-cultural and defy the values of their upbringing. So much for Dyer's Marxist sociological claptrap.
It is true that French Muslim organizations have denounced the violence, but it is naive to suppose that the Muslim jihadist ideology had no influence on the teens who are burning cars and buildings. In fact, the influence of radical mullahs has rapidly increased in France, although it is not yet clear if there is a direct link between the radical Mullas and rampaging Muslim teens. The involvement of al Qaida is suspected, but unproven. 120 foreigners were arrested during the riots and will be deported. However, it is fair to assume that the agitation of radical mullahs has had some degree of influence on the teenagers of the Muslim community. The radicalized Muslim teens from English working class neighborhoods who bombed the London subways are not unlike the rioting Muslim teens in France. The stunning speed with which the insurrection caught on with Muslim teenagers throughout France is powerful circumstantial evidence of the widespread influence of jihadist cult ideas.
Historically, Muslims of French colonies have been especially prone to radical ideologies. Nazi ideology, including anti-Semitism, was exported to Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Algeria by the Vichy French during World War II. This malicious ideology was incorporated into the Baath party, which poisoned the mind of the young Saddam Hussein. Saddam became a professional assassin, murdered his way into power, and looked to Hitler and Stalin as role models. During the eight-year Algerian revolution (1954–1962) against the French colonial rulers, there were insurrections by French Algerians in France. These insurrections were inflamed by radical ideology that included Marxist revolutionary ideas and tactics.It Is naive to suppose that the radical ideologies of the Algerian French have been forgotten by the large population of Algerians now living in France. The Algerian insurrection may have been forgotten by Chirac, because postmoderns do not care for history, but the Muslim community has a long memory. They cherish the memory of how the Algerians drove the French out of their North African country. The Algerian rebels persevered and the French capitulated. The Algerian French are noticing the French tendency to capitulate as they observe the weakness, procrastination, and appeasement of President Chirac.
The confusion of the press and the French government
The rioting teens who are now on the streets were born in Muslim enclaves in French cities, and speak both Arabic and French. They are French citizens, were educated in French schools, and enjoy lavish French welfare, health, and education benefits. Contrary to news reports and the confused Mr. Dyer, French Muslims do not live in enclaves because of discrimination in jobs and housing — but because of non-assimilation policies of the Muslim leaders, the French government, and the European Union. Multicultural liberalism has unwittingly conspired with Muslim nationalism to create a Muslim nation within a nation in France, Germany, England, and the Netherlands.
Muslim leaders are committed to the preservation of the Arabic language, religion, Sharia law, and Muslim ideology in their communities. The young rioters have no loyalty to the French nation or culture. They are loyal to the Muslim community and ideology. As the Muslim leaders become more bold and the French leaders become more obsequious and fawning, the Muslims will inevitably demand the independent political sovereignty of the Muslim community in France. Radical Muslims are already talking about it. Chirac is blazing the trail towards new and more astonishing capitulations. France, a once peaceful nation, might soon resemble Palestine and Lebanon. A century hence it might be a Muslim nation.The desperately confused news media and the baffled French government are using Marxist sociology to explain and excuse the rioting. Poverty and unemployment in the Muslim ghettos are offered as explanation and justification for the looting, rioting, and burning on the street. This rationalization is pure nonsense, of course. Muslims have high unemployment rates because they refuse to leave their enclaves to find jobs wherever in Paris or in France they are offered. They can afford to stay in the enclaves because of lavish welfare, medical, and educational benefits and because of the economic communalism of Muslim family groups. The government is subsidizing their unemployed solidarity. The French Muslims, as a whole, prefer to stay in their enclaves because of their intense loyalty to the Muslim community. The foolish government has financed and encouraged the rapid growth of a hostile alien nation within the French nation.
Teenage Muslims have the leisure to remain in school because of the plush welfare and educational benefits offered by the government. They do not have to scrape for jobs in order to have food, clothing, shelter, or tuition. The press is constantly harping on the high employment rates and poverty of Muslims to explain why the teens are rioting. Their parents might be concerned about unemployment, but not enough to induce them to leave the Muslim community. This unwillingness to leave the old neighborhoods is exacerbated by the French social code that a new employee should work all his life for a single firm. If one resigns from a good job, he will be regarded as a pariah by employers. If a Muslim leaves his community for a lifetime career opportunity elsewhere, he will likely never return. If he returns, he knows he might never work again.
The last thing on the mind of the rioting Muslim teens is career opportunities in other parts of the city or in the provinces. The teens run in vicious gangs who indulge in the mob group-think of crime, and to some extent, the jihadist ideology of hate and violence. The delinquent teens prefer the excitement of the streets, the stimulation of drugs, and the easy money of crime to the mental rigors of the classroom. The notion that these brigands are burning, raping, and pilfering because they feel excluded from French society is laughable. I can imagine a nasty kid on the streets ridiculing the silly old duffer Chirac, as he throws another Molotov cocktail. "Papa Chirac, feelings of exclusion and alienation made me do it." Crash!
The press is obsessed with the idea that French racism and anti-Muslim bigotry make Muslim youth feel excluded and alienated. However, the Muslim enclaves were not created by racism, but by the non-assimilation policy of the Muslim leaders. The government cooperated with the non-assimilation policy of the Muslims, because as multiculturalists, the government respected Muslim culture and rejected the American idea of the integration of minorities and the cultural assimilation of immigrants. Individual Frenchmen may or may not be racists, depending on their personal proclivities, but this is a secondary question, not a primary cause of social upheaval. Openly racist politicians in France, like Jean Marie le Pen, are routinely defeated in French elections, often by a wide margin.
A short history of French foreign fiascosIn the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, France competed with England and Germany for colonies. Among third world colonies, French rule was consistently the most abusive. French rule of Haiti was particularly vicious, and the rulers were thrown out by a slave uprising. Today, Haiti is arguably the most wretched nation in the world. Southeast Asia, formerly known as French Indochina, became virulently anti-Western under French rule, as the Americans found out when they went to Vietnam. After the liberation of the Arab Levant from the Ottoman Turks by the British General Allenby with the help of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), the French reneged upon promises to the Arabs and took control of Syria and Lebanon. The French misrule of these nations was comparable to the decadent administration of the fading Turkish empire. Exacerbating the mess that the French colonialists left behind was the export of Nazi ideology to the Middle East by the Vichy French.
The colony of French Algeria was in continual revolution for eight years until they won their independence in 1962. For years afterward, rumors of impending sabotage by radicalized Algerians living in France disturbed French equanimity. A half dozen French colonies in Africa obtained political independence and have suffered in wretched dysfunction ever since. Multitudes of Muslim Arabs and blacks have clamored to escape their African misery and to sink into the deep pillow of the French welfare state. In their golden years of freedom from penury in France, they have had time on their hands to breed indolent teens and fantasize about jihadist ideology.
After World War II, France depended upon America for defense against the expansionist Soviet Empire. In gratitude, the French adopted anti-American policies. The first insult was president Charles De Gaulle's decision to order American troops out of France, knowing full well that American troops would remain in Germany and protect them. In order to posture as a great power, France acquired nuclear weapons, built a world class air-superiority fighter, the Mirage jet, dabbled in African and Middle Eastern politics, and strutted around the U.N., poking their noses into everyone else's business. I remember a British newspaper cartoon that depicted De Gaulle's exceptionally large nose protruding into a small globe.
After the British left Iraq, the French became very friendly with the Iraqis in pursuit of oil and trade. America went into the First Gulf War as part of an international alliance. The French disapproved of pressing on to Baghdad and ousting Saddam Hussein after rescuing Kuwait. The French were secretly on intimate terms with the brutal dictator. President Chirac became an apologist for Iraq, while enjoying lucrative secret deals with Saddam Hussein to defraud the UN's Oil-for-food program. The French were masters of international intrigue and shady dealing because of their long experience as corrupt colonial rulers. The international Oil-for-food swindle was so massive in scope that it makes the pyramid scheme of Charles Ponzi look insignificant by comparison. Chirac used clever international diplomacy in an attempt to foil the American effort to obtain international backing for a return to Iraq in 2003. Indeed, the French have resisted America in the war against terrorism every step of the way.The French had four motives for blocking America: (1) the secret raid on the Oil-for-food program, (2) resentment that America is now the sole superpower and France no longer is a great power, (3) French left-wing dislike of American conservatism and Christianity, and (4) appeasement of the Muslim terrorists.
President Chirac hoped that his pro-Muslim policies would induce international terrorists to exempt France from their depredations, or at least to postpone striking France until late in the game. History teaches that those who appease evil are destined to be swallowed up by evil. He who feeds the wolf, hoping that the wolf will be satisfied, will be eaten by the wolf — but he who fights the wolf will survive. Wolves always run away when one comes after them openly, boldly, and fiercely with threats of violence. They will never stage a frontal attack against a defiant and healthy enemy.
Chirac has become so accustomed to appeasing Muslims that he allowed an insurrection of Muslim teenagers to grow for twelve days without forceful opposition. In the face of weakness, the wolf pack became bold and aggressive. The evil insurgency on the streets grew exponentially from day to day. It's obvious that evil grows rapidly when those with power and influence refuse to expose it and resist it.
Moral bankruptcy of leaders
The challenge to the French nation by Muslim teen gangs could only have happened because there was extraordinary moral weakness by those in authority. The moral bankruptcy of the French comes from decades of moral and cultural relativism. The pandering of president Chirac to the vandals
reminds me of the pandering by the feckless Aztec emperor Montezuma to Cortez, who led a few boatloads of Spanish adventurers. Montezuma ruled an empire comparable in size and wealth to the Roman Empire, but was defeated by two hundred Spanish freebooters.America is being inundated by a flood of illegal aliens from Mexico and Latin America. The sheer numbers of those sneaking across the border are too great to assimilate in orderly fashion. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have had the moral courage to take back the borderlands and restore order where chaos reigns. Drugs, criminals, kidnappers, and terrorists easily cross the border. The astonishingly weak American policy defies the desire of large majorities of Americans who want law and order restored along our nation's borders and sane, safe policies of immigration.
The liberal education establishment is mimicking the French in their advocacy of teaching classes in Spanish, glorifying Hispanic culture, and ignoring America's cultural traditions. The old American melting pot that assimilated immigrants is now a politically incorrect idea among the liberal elites. Limitation and control of immigration is regarded by them as "racism."
Mark Krikorian, Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote on 11/9/05:
"As riots engulf France's immigrant communities and threaten to spread across Europe, government leaders are learning — perhaps too late — that immigration numbers and integration matter. The United States, with its successful history of immigration and assimilation, still has time to avoid going down the same path. However, proposals for huge new foreign-worker schemes, that could dwarf even the great wave of immigration we have experienced over the past generation, would create for the United States many of the problems Europe is experiencing."Conclusion
Is Paris burning? Yes. Will San Diego and Los Angeles be burning a generation from now? Maybe. It does not have to happen. If America changes its course on border control, law enforcement, illegal aliens, and assimilation, the nightmare can be avoided. It is high time that the Army be sent to police the border. A national dialogue about how many and what kind of legal immigrants we will accept is imperative. The lawless Hispanic teen gangs in San Diego, Los Angeles, and other large cities must be put out of business by strict law enforcement and curfews in gang-infested neighborhoods. The schools should teach Hispanic teens American history, law, culture, patriotism, and civic values and throw multiculturalists programs into the waste basket. Our goal must be assimilation and integration, not separate cultural enclaves.
Republicans! Our president Bush has been consistently worse than the liberals in his policies on illegal aliens. But now that his administration is under fire and has lost a lot of support from his conservative base, he is trying to make amends with his judicial appointments and immigration policy. At this moment, he is making compromises with conservative legislators and proposing half-measures about enforcement of the law on the border and dealing with illegal aliens. However, do not count upon a change of heart. The new policies are half-hearted compromises.
Hillary Clinton has moved to the right of Bush on illegal immigration and will certainly win the 2008 presidential election if she remains to the right of the Republicans on this subject. The successful conservative revolt set off by the Harriet Miers judicial betrayal would not have been possible if conservatives had not already been disaffected with Bush about illegal aliens and reckless government spending. This is a golden opportunity for conservatives to raise the heat on illegal aliens. Victory in 2008 is at stake. The avoidance of a debacle in the mid-term elections of 2006 is still possible. There is still time to learn from the French mistakes about immigration and multiculturalism, and to avoid the disasters that have come upon them.Conservatives! We finally are being taken seriously by the administration and Congress and have some real influence. Let's use it!
RenewAmerica analyst Fred Hutchison also writes a column for RenewAmerica.
© 2005 Fred Hutchison
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