In my opinion, at the heart of the riots in France are France's post-colonial and migration policy and the failure of the republic to deliver to the public liberty, fraternity and equality. But similar problems exist across Europe, actually. There is a migration crisis in Europe that has been growing extensively in the past few years. And sooner or later there's a potential and possibility of same types of riots and uprising occurring in different places.
In France, what we have been seeing is a combination of class, ethnicity, race and religion and cultural dimensions that gave rise to the riots that we have seen now. Of course, the comments by the Interior Minister ignited the riots, but there were deep-rooted causes that brought about the continuation of the riots: The alienation of the youth, the -- France has continued to look at the post-colonial subjects as colonial subjects. That is, migrants from Algeria and other parts of Africa that were controlled by France are still considered as non-French, although they carry French documents, and that is reflected in the way they are treated economically, socially and politically.
The elders in the communities are tired. Their time is over. What matters is the young people -- 17, 18, 20 -- they have their whole future ahead of them, and what they have seen is the impossibility of living under these post-colonial subjective conditions, so they want to make a point. In fact, what is happening, the riots are a cry to be heard. They want to be heard. They want to tell the world that they exist and what their conditions are. In the past ten-fifteen years, there has no way for them to be heard. They're using this to echo their voice, to tell that they want a difference.
They want to become French. They are French, but they want to be treated as French. They want not to be discriminated because of being Muslim. That is, they don't want their Islam and the religion to be used as a pretext for discrimination. And in many ways, it’s stigmatization that is very hurtful, to be picked up by the police, to be harassed by the police, to be looked at by the public in a very different way and suspicious way.
It's impossible to see the crisis in Algeria today, the crisis in France today, without going back to the War of Independence, which lasted from between 1954 and 1962, which eventually gave Algeria not freedom in the democratic sense, but freedom from imperialism, from colonialism. And you've got to realize that the wounds of that war were never healed. The Algerians who fought for the French, the Harki, were never forgiven by the Algerian government or people, the pieds-noirs, the vast number of French colonial people who lived in Algeria, who regard it as their home, whose parents and grandparents were born there. By the way, you keep calling it a French colony. The French, of course, regard it as “France metropolitaine.” It was part of metropolitan France, but the Algerian “natives,” quote/unquote, didn't have equal rights. The pieds-noirs have never forgiven the Algerians for throwing them out, effectively, of the country.
President Chirac served in Algeria and won medals for his service, as General Ariel Sharon, now Prime Minister of Israel, constantly points out to him. Most of the older French leaders or most of the old statesmen of France did have a role in the Algerian war. What's interesting about France is that the French government's attitude towards war is quite different from the British or American, because unlike the U.S. administration and the titchy little administration of our own dear Mr. Blair, many French politicians served in Algeria and have seen war, which the Bush administration has either not done or chosen not to do and which the Blair administration is too young to have done. So you do have in France a great fear of war and violence. Mr. Sarkozy, I believe, has not seen war, which is why he's prepared to use these disgusting phrases like “racaille” -- “scum,” translated into English -- about the rioters, when quite clearly there are major problems here that need to be addressed, and calling people scum only overheats these problems. I think Mr. Sarkozy will be thrown to the wolves, by the way, because French governments always give in to violence, without exception. Always. And I think Mr. Sarkozy will be set out to be put out to dry and forgotten because of this.
While Europe Slept
Reply With Quote
Pillaging and Plundering since 2006
Originally Posted by Gaius Baltar
