As unrests spreads from poor suburban Paris to other parts of France - and neighboring countries - so does the use of the word Intifada - particularly on a lot of right-of-center Web sites. The word means resistance, and is the name taken by the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of pre-1967 territories.
Sunday marked the 11th night in a row of violence in France. Rioters opened fire at police, hitting 30 with shotgun pellets. Thousands of cars have been torched over the past few days. The trouble began Oct. 27 in the poor suburbs of Paris, where immigrants from North Africa and the sub-Sahara are packed into stark high-rises called the banlieus. The rioters are largely young and Muslim, and sites like "Right, Wing Nut!" are writing:
"The Paris Intifada has reached the city walls - the barbarians are at the gate; how long, if at all, can they be held back?"
Coming to an American street near you? asks LaShawn Barber, a black female Christian former liberal (and Temple Law grad), as she identifies herself. She writes, "Paris is reaping what itÂ’s sown, and if we donÂ’t heed the warnings (as if the murder of thousands and destruction of two buildings in New York City werenÂ’t enough), we can expect the same. Lax immigration policies, prostration to the god of multiculturalism, and the refusal to fight fire with fire are three reasons why Muslim "youths" in Paris are rioting in the streets."
In France, Web sites are urging youths to fight in other cities. And, voila, unrest has spread to Nantes, Orleans, Rennes and Rouen.
What is causing the violence to rage? The rightish the Brussels Journal writes: What is happening in France has been brewing in Old Europe for years. The BBC speaks of "youths" venting their "anger." The BBC is wrong. It is not anger that is driving the insurgents to take it out on the secularised welfare states of Old Europe. It is hatred. Hatred caused not by injustice suffered, but stemming from a sense of superiority. The "youths" do not blame the French, they despise them.
For smart and slightly chilly view on what is happening, read John Robb. I've quoted the systems analyst before - he keeps honing a post 9/11 theory of how extremists operate in the computer age.
"It has become clear that a classic riot over a lack of economic opportunity and justice has morphed into something else entirely," he wrote Sunday.
He calls it open-source war and systems disruption.
Open source war emerged spontaneously in France due to its particularly potent combination of criminal networks and Islamic extremism. The bonding of the two, the economic self-interest and techniques of criminal networks with the moral cohesion and antagonism of Islamic extremism, provided all the necessary preconditions for this outbreak....
The spark that took this from a riot to open source war, was the attempt by the French Interior Minister (Sarkozy) to eliminate the parallel criminal economy (a type of primary loyalty energized by globalization) that provides the main means of economic advancement and status in many of these immigrant communities. Since we all now live in a flat globalized economy, where each individual is in direct competition with everyone else in the world, this action threatened economic annihilation. France is clearly unable to offer any meaningful alternative economic opportunity to this criminal economy, and these boy/men know it.
Another take worth heeding comes from Olivier Roy, an expert in political Islam, whom I interviewed several times when writing about al Qaida in Europe. Roy. He was quoted in the New York Times as saying:
"It's a game of cowboys and Indians," said Olivier Roy, a French scholar of European Islam. He is usually keen to warn Europeans of the potential danger posed by Islamists living among them. But in this case, he said, the danger is a long-range one. So far, he said, the attacks on the police and the torching of cars has less the character of a religious war than of "a local sport, a rite of passage."
Whatever it is, please don't call it the Intifada, says London's Independent newspaper, which produced a helpful Q & A. (Blinq thanks Ed Ward for suggesting this. See comment.)
Wait, maybe you could call it wannabeism. This Sydney, Australia paper notes that the protesters identify with American gangsta culture.
Der Spiegel's blog does a service by translating bloggers' comments in solidarity with the two teens who were electrocuted.
Global Voices has been finding minority bloggers in France. One, the Senegalese SEMEtt ou l’étincelle noire, on how minorities feel in today’s France:
France has to get a grip of itself. It is becoming less and less a prized destination because of the increasing racism and the incongruous nationalisms and xenophobia. The bad treatment of Africans and minorities in general such as the fires in the buildings and expulsions from our point of view constitute violations of our human rights. This makes us look at the coup dÂ’etat of the French National Front at the last elections as the symptom of the social explosion that is lying in wait for France.
I'd recommend The Independent's Q and A on it from this morning's paper. A bit more sober than the analyses posted above, and, likely, closer to the actual situation: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article325218.ece
That's a good pick, Ed. I read it last night, and should have posted it. Will fix now. You get a byline!
There's also this piece by Mark Steyn, who's been writing about the possibility of this for quite some time. This ain't exactly no surprise.
There's also this piece by Mark Steyn, who's been writing about the possibility of this for quite some time. This ain't exactly no surprise.
If it's not a France's intifada then why spare Islamic-owned businesses? http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/11/07/do0701.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/11/07/ixopinion.html
If it's not France's intifada then why spare Islamic-owned businesses? http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/11/07/do0701.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/11/07/ixopinion.html
This is big news because finally, immigration threatens the government. Well the Mitterand regime never cared when immigrants threatened lower and middle-class French city life. They never cared when French jobs were taken away, and French culture profaned by unassimilable immigration. The French people should defend themselves but not their government. They should not send their sons and daughters to die for a government that sells them out. And neither should the grassroots here in America.
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