City of Light, Cités Of Darkness
By JayReding Posted in User Blogs — Comments (22) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The great and brilliant sociologist James Q. Wilson noted that communities that tolerated small crimes, petty theft, vandalism, and the like were often quickly finding themselves facing worse crimes - and indeed, the last 7 nights of increasingly violent riots in Paris prove his point. The culture of lawlessness in France is paying out its terrible dividend as the ethnic ghettoes of the Parisian banlieues explode into anarchy. The violence in France reminds us that those nations which do not or cannot defend their culture will surely lose it...
Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent piece in City Journal that explores the decline of civil order across France:
The average visitor gives not a moment's thought to these Cités of Darkness as he speeds from the airport to the City of Light. But they are huge and important--and what the visitor would find there, if he bothered to go, would terrify him.
A kind of anti-society has grown up in them--a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, "official," society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust--greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years--is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them.
Their hatred of official France manifests itself in many ways that scar everything around them. Young men risk life and limb to adorn the most inaccessible surfaces of concrete with graffiti--BAISE LA POLICE, f**k the police, being the favorite theme. The iconography of the cités is that of uncompromising hatred and aggression: a burned-out and destroyed community-meeting place in the Les Tarterets project, for example, has a picture of a science-fiction humanoid, his fist clenched as if to spring at the person who looks at him, while to his right is an admiring portrait of a huge slavering pit bull, a dog by temperament and training capable of tearing out a man's throat--the only breed of dog I saw in the cités, paraded with menacing swagger by their owners.
There are burned-out and eviscerated carcasses of cars everywhere. Fire is now fashionable in the cités: in Les Tarterets, residents had torched and looted every store--with the exceptions of one government-subsidized supermarket and a pharmacy. The underground parking lot, charred and blackened by smoke like a vault in an urban hell, is permanently closed.
Places like the Sarcelles, Les Tarterets, and the other ghettoes in which hundreds of thousands of Maghreb and Arab immigrants were locked into soul-crushing logements have become breeding grounds for both social alienation and terrorism. They are places where al-Qaeda can find as much purchase as they could in Fallujah, Ramadi, or Baghdad. They are home to France's alienated underclass, areas of apartheid in a society that prides itself on the values of egalité, liberté, and fraternité. Unassimilated, angry, and hopeless, the inhabitants of the cités are inundated with violence and hatred.
French culture has consistently appeased the means of its own ongoing destruction. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote lovingly of the violent narcissism of Franz Fanon, who stated that "Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect." The violence in France is merely putting that bloody idea into practice.
France's combination of paternalism and racism have turned the 800 zones sensibles ("sensitive zones" in true Orwellian fashion) into hotbeds of violence and terrorism. The cités attempt to inculcate French culture into their inhabitants betray the fact that for all France's justifiable pride in their centuries of achievement, France is no longer truly willing to defend itself. La Zone is a no-go zone for French police, and when they try to enter into these centers of the French insurgency, they are pelted with rocks and Molotov cocktails. Law and order is completely absent in La Zone, and the violence that has resulted is a direct consequence of that cultural abandonment. The people of the cités are kept in a state of apartheid not out of direct racism, but out of a doctrinaire adherents to an extreme form of multiculturalism. France is trying to atone for its colonialist past by ignoring the problems which threaten to wash away their very cultural identity.
France has been one of the lights of the Western world. French writers, artists, and intellectuals have produced some of the greatest works in human history. Paris is still considered one of the greatest of the world's great cities. At the same time, no one should whitewash or brush aside the way in which France's glorious culture is being slowly eroded into nothingness - and indeed, the problems in the cités are fueling a pushback from radical and even neo-Nazi elements like the racist National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen. It is sad that the only public figures in France who have been willing to point out the brewing problems have been the hatemongers. The Chirac government has done little to nothing to change the horrid conditions of the cités until recently. Despite France's draconian anti-terrorism laws, places like the Sarcelles are ideal recruiting grounds for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
The situation in France is not something that anyone should gloat about or find a cause for schadenfruende. Our own unwillingness to assimilate immigrants and defend our cultural values could very well lead us to the same fate as the cités. We have an obligation to not only welcome those seeking a new life here in the United States, but to protect and defend the culture that made us that beacon of freedom worldwide. American animosity towards France should not make us forget that there but the grace of God go we all.
this is a very sobering situation. schadenfreud is indeed tempting though. Thanks for writing this .
It is sad that the only public figures in France who have been willing to point out the brewing problems have been the hatemongers.
I don't think you're giving Sarkozy his due credit. He's not a racist like Le Pen, but I think he's tackling these problems as well and as assiduously as he can. When he's elected president in 2 years, I will be even more confident that this stuff will not be ignored anymore.
... as Dalrymple pointed out in his excellent article. Crime is very bad even in "good" neighborhoods and getting worse. Police are paid based on reported crimes and hence refuse to take reports. Judges blame society and let the criminals go.
It goes without saying that France has very tough gun control laws, but the thugs are well armed:
When the professional robbers among them raid a bank or an armored car delivering cash, they do so with bazookas and rocket launchers, and dress in paramilitary uniforms. From time to time, the police discover whole arsenals of Kalashnikovs in the cités.
It will go badly for the native French if it comes to a war.
to a well written, informative and frankly shocking diary. Is this situation limited to Paris, or does it also exist in other large cities?
Crime is very bad even in "good" neighborhoods and getting worse.
According to whom? When I lived there in 2003 in a "good neighborhood," I traipsed around the city at 3 am drunk and didn't encounter a single problem. Same with my friends.
Now...I did get mugged at 7:30 pm on a Sunday going home from the bakery. But that's a different (and very long) story...
Suffice it to say that I don't think crime is bad in most Parisian neighborhoods, and people walk around fearlessly at all hours of the night. I'd be happy to be proven wrong with some statistics.
I concur. Sarkozy isn't perfect, but France could do much worse. And he hasn't shied from these hot potato issues.
Oh, it's in other cities, as well. Violence has recently reached Dijon. I wouldn't be surprised to see Marseilles completely explode, either.
This problem is pandemic in France. The more immigrants that are allowed to enter the country, the worse this will become.
When you say things like "I got mugged on the way home from the bakery one day" you invite curiosity. Tell us more!
If the stories I've read about the Paris riots are any indication, I am forced to conclude that George Wallace may have been born before his time ... and in the wrong country. No people, not even the French can put up with that kind of crap forever. The rioting has now spread to at least twenty towns in the vacinity of Paris. Predictably, the thugs target synagogues as well as police.
I'm not sure if there is a phrase equivalent to "law and order" in French, but I'll bet they're working on one right now. If there is a talented reactionary anywhere in France, now may be his hour. This is not schadenfreude on my part. I'm merely my speculation.
From Dalrymple's article:
The official figures for this upsurge, doctored as they no doubt are, are sufficiently alarming. Reported crime in France has risen from 600,000 annually in 1959 to 4 million today, while the population has grown by less than 20 percent (and many think today's crime number is an underestimate by at least a half). In 2000, one crime was reported for every sixth inhabitant of Paris, and the rate has increased by at least 10 percent a year for the last five years. Reported cases of arson in France have increased 2,500 percent in seven years, from 1,168 in 1993 to 29,192 in 2000; robbery with violence rose by 15.8 percent between 1999 and 2000, and 44.5 percent since 1996 (itself no golden age).
After reading the Dalrymple article it's apparent that the French have managed to create the same situation that one of their intellectual demi-gods (whose name will not be mentioned) described in Discipline and Punishment - a centralized prison surrounded by all-seeing but invisible jailers. Dalrymple's description of the press and public response fits the model as well; the French appear to have internalized the justificatons of their imprisonment and act accordingly.
Several years ago, a 1950's French fantasy novel was republished. The story begins with the sudden appearance of a vast fleet of formerly colonized people arriving in Marseilles. Does anyone know the name and author of this novel?
...is the title of the book you're looking for. Here's the obligatory Amazon link.
And yes, it's looking more and more prescient every day...
a million, Jay. I saw it in a footnote, lost the paper and have been trying to track it down for some time.
Wasn't 2000 five years ago? Also, I'd be interested to see what percentage of those crimes were in the 18th, 19th, and 20th. I'll bet it's pretty high.
I'm not denying there's crime in Paris. But I did things there at 3 am I'd never do in, say, New York at 3 am.
It was complicated, he saw my red jacket, thought I was some guy who worked in a bar and slept with his wife, then when he realized there was a case of mistaken identity, decided to rob me anyway. Or maybe the whole mistake thing was a front, we never really figured that out.
Since I didn't have any cash on me, we first went up to my empty apartment and spent fifteen minutes looking for expensive stuff to steal there before heading out into Paris where, an hour later, I bought him $800 worth of cigarettes.
He was arrested a few months later when they caught him on unrelated charges and found the cigarette receipts, which he'd decided to keep for, I guess, sentimental reasons.
The violence is moving inward toward central Paris:
seven cars were also burnt in poorer northern and eastern districts in central Paris.
A handicapped woman was set on fire:
According to prosecutors Friday, November 4, the 56-year-old woman was unable to get off a bus targeted by a Molotov cocktail late Wednesday, November 2, in the northern Paris suburb of Sevran.She was allegedly doused with petrol by one youth, then others threw a flaming rag on her. Rescued by the driver, she was taken to hospital with severe burns to 20 percent of her body.
I wonder if this wave of violence in mainly Muslim ghettoes will jolt the rest of French voters (including liberal/socialists who pride themselves on their tolerance) into insisting that respect of law and order is necessary for a peaceful society, and voting for those who will impose it, fairly and without racism.
I lived in France for 11 years, and the French people have a proverb: "La peur du gendarme est le debut de la sagesse" (Fear of the police is the beginning of wisdom).
For too long, gendarmes have feared the ghettoes. Hopefully, French leaders will now have the courage to teach the ghettoes to fear the police. It would be the beginning of wisdom.
fear the police. That hasn't made them better places to live or fixed their dysfunction. Let them stop adding ghetto dwellers by bringing in the Algerian underclass first. When you're in a hole, stop digging.
are almost as bad as the suburbs. I wouldn't even venture into those neighborhoods past 10 pm.
Europe's great dillema is its inability integrate immigrants into its societies, not just in France, but throughout the continent. Britain has done better, but even they've had violent riots by alienated south Asians. Germany's Turkish neighborhoods are reasonably tidy places, but they certainly stand apart, and the inhabitants are "Auslaender", not Germans. Only in the Netherlands have I really gotten an impression of integration and seen a significant number of interracial couples.
This is the dark side of Europe, the millenia old obsession with culture that Balkanizes the continent. Even amongst the indigeneous, regionalism is stronger than ever; think of all the internal dichotomies: Scottish vs. British, Basque vs. Spanish, Bavarian vs. German, etc. And those who are visibly different remain in projects and ghettos.
There's worse than the projects, though. I walked through a gypsy village in Slovakia that consisted of dirt paths, corrugated tin shacks, and one working water pump. It was utterly Third World. The inhabitants seemed too destitute and tired to undertake a riot. And this in the European Union. We always hear that we've still a long way to go here in America, but I think we've earned some back-patting for how far we've managed to come compared to some.
No shadenfreude here for the French...I find much to love and admire in their culture and have had some magic moments there. It's very sad to see this happening...and contemplate where it might lead.
this is an excellent example of the phrase "Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it".
For about thirty years now, Western European countries permitted Arabs and Turks to come in to solve the labor shortages rampant there at the time.
Now France has a large unassimalited minority that is full of potential terrorists. This rioting is capturing the attention of more then just Muslims. More ethnic French will be forced to delude themselves ro the more extreme right to solve their problems. In effect, events like these are going to force the balkanization of politics in countries like France.
Can anyone say President Le Pen?
will tsk tsk and go about their business until this spills over into La Defense or the Place de la Concorde. As long as this is confined to the immigrant ghettos there will be much wailing and editorializing. When it moves into the lives of the average Parisien ...