Eric Marliere on the French riots

24 thoughts on “Eric Marliere on the French riots”

1. The concern is not an existing connection between the banlieuers and religion but the POTENTIAL for exploiting their joblessness and alienation by cynical Muslim extremists.
   Yes, Marliere is correct that “Islam condemns violence and anarchy” but that is of little solace to the relatives of the wedding party at the Radisson Hotel in Amman, to cite just the latest of a very long string of Jihadist outrages.
   The challenge is for the French to find a model of assimilating the 6 million North Africans in a way that makes them feel as valued French citizens.

2. Isn’t the cultural origin and religious background the main difference between these marginalized youngsters and the mainstream French youth?
   Isn’t a serious grievance that of differential unemployment figures based on African and Arab names?
   Haven’t we heard it from the horse’s mouth by reading Zacharias Mousawi’s biography?
   Are the other minorities rioting? I was in Paris during the riots, and believe me the vietnamese are hard at work in the daily challenges of building a future, like most of us are.
   The French TV interviewing an Imam was asked to please do the interview in a closed room inside the mosque because the muslim youth at the mosque would otherwise take their anger on the TV crew. Maybe Christiane watches a different channel. Give me a break, whitewashing the religious component is a sad denial that will continue to blow in the French faces. Just like claiming that at 500 cars a night the riots are fading…
   David

3. In the Dutch Trouw was an article about one of our Imams. Though known as a ‘radical’ he strongly condemned the rioting in his sermon. Racist behaviour of the French police is no justification he said – tit for tat. Also he says the youth should count themselves lucky that they have not used more violence yet; in their lands of origin there would in all likelyhood be tanks rolling over their heads after riots like that.
   He condemned the riots not just on principled, religious grounds, but also on logical grounds. “No matter how much the muslim religion will grow, we will still be a minority in Europe. What do we do when others start torching our poperty? Our daughters can savely travel the tram in the evening. What if a racist moment starts?”
   He also said that the riots were partly due to a failure on the part of the moslim organisations, both in France and in the Netherlands, because they busy themselves more with getting government subsisied that with the problems in the muslim community. The youngsters didn’t obey the fatwa’s that condemned the violence because they never heard of the organisations issuing them before.

4. David spent a night in Paris, or a few days, and he thinks that he knows better about the situation in the suburbs than an academic researcher who has been writing on the issue for several years…
   I’m not completely in agreement with Marliere either. The Frenches tend to make a purely social reading of the frustration and events exploding in the suburbs, but the youngs also revendicate consideration and dignity; they protest against the fact of being treated like citizen of second order. That said, you don’t find Indian or Vietnamese among them, because 1) they are far less numerous (former Indochina : 3.7% of the total immigrated population, other Asia : 5%, Maghrebi and Africans : 39,3%, Europe : 44,9% – census data from 1999) and 2) they have got jobs and often good jobs at that, so they don’t share the same social-economic injustice.
   The issue of the veil which has lead to so much ink in foreign newspapers isn’t as much a religious question as an identity question : many young women wear the veil in order to claim that they are proud of their culture; it is another way to claim for their dignity. Other are constrained by their brothers and fathers, that’s true, but the reason of their brothers and fathers follows the same pattern.
   The French politicians, especially Sarkozy, have stigmatized what they call “communautarisme” aka the split of societies second ethnic lines. The right, especially, has a discourse amalgamating religion with these two real issues : social exclusion and racism. Yet, the fundamentalist islamist movements are absent of the riots; they don’t even comment upon them. I don’t think that the riots will help them make more new recruits, because the motives aren’t new, they were already there since a long time and the suburban revolts isn’t a new fact either; during the last ten-fifteen years, there were already about a tenth of these riots (of lesser intensity however). Also, the fundamentalists are just a tiny minority in the suburbs. Most of the youngs don’t want the kind of ascetic life promoted by the jihadists, on the contrary, they want their share of the consumption society. Great damages were made to many many public buildings, including schools and leisure centers, but not to Christian churches.. Yet, a tear-gaz bomb has been thrown against a Mosquee by the cops, causing a panic in the women’s prayer room and a Mosquee has been inflammed by unknown extreme rights activists yesterday. To sum up : the youngs in the suburbs aren’t waging a new religious war, they aren’t jihadists. If anything points to religious war, it’s rather the extreme right.
   ******************
   For those who understand French and want to read more on the subject, most of the important media have opened forums discussing the riots. Here are for instance :
   Le Monde
   Le Nouvel Observateur has opened eight different threads on the issue, starting from the motives of the riots and going to the answer of the government; there is even one entirely dedicated to Sarkozy.
   Liberation
   Le Temps Or the French riots as seen from Switzerland.

5. I”m amazed. “watches a different channel”, “a very long string of Jihadist outrages” ???
   Whose window on the world are people looking through?
   As anyone with personal experience in modern warfare is quite aware, there are scores of deadly, outrages being perpetrated daily that scarcely get a moments coverage in the mass media. Outrages that run the gambit from dropping 500 pound ‘smart’ bombs on civilian targets, to using white phosphorus in urban warfare, that are scarcely covered in the various state regulated, if not sponsored, forms of media.
   It is the very nature of the mass information structure (particularly television with its one way, heavily regulated, capital intensive, nature), that the suffering we see is suffering caused by the enemies of the state and owners (which on one level are hardly distinguishable) .
   To think that television, or for that matter, mass media in general, is somehow giving us a glimpse of the world that is not as heavily manipulated as a dimestore novel is, at best, naive.
   When looking at images on television we should be asking ourselves whose eyes are we looking at the world through?
   Eric Marlière’s comments obviously are at odds with the paradigm our masters would like us to use in interpreting the world.
   When consuming mass ‘news’ stories we would learn more by asking ourselves not ‘why is that happening?’ but instead ‘why have our owners decided to show us this event rather than the dozens if not thousands of other events of equal news worthiness on any one day?’
   (why do we see images of cars burning rather than images of French police beating youth of North African origin? Why bombings in Western hotels in Jordan rather than ‘percision’ bombs dropped on villages in Iraq? Why not stories about bringing those police to and those bomber and helicopter pilots to justice rather than stories about bringing those car burners and accomplishes of the hotel bombers to justice? Those are the interesting questions).

6. Leigh
   oui, the media is clearly in the pockets of the ruling class by inexplicably constantly feeding us images of suicide-bombed backpackers in Bali, commuters in Madrid and London, hundreds of murdered schoolchildren in Beslan, wedding guests in Amman, kidnappings and beheadings of aid workers in Baghdad, Shiite mosques in Basra and Islamabad, Christians in India, etc., all utterly unnewsworthy events!
   By demonizing the legitimate grievances of the defenders of the faith, the global capitalist class and their running dog mercenaries in the media hope to take our minds off the REAL outrages perpertrated on the Global Proletariat in places like Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
   better?

7. Hammurabi, you express very well the sneering condescension of the ruling class, even if you yourself will never be a member of that ruling class.
   In doing so you reinforce Leigh’s point. Thank you for that, because Leigh is right.

8. Hammurabi,
   Better? No, in fact rather childish.
   Are you somehow trying to support the argument that the various ‘news’ outlets do not have a political agenda? And that somehow there is an objective criteria of newsworthiness that news outlets follow?
   Perhaps this criteria of newsworthiness is based on reporting brutality and social disorder (criteria that both the recent bombings in Jordan and the car burnings in France obviously fulfill).
   But if brutality is a criteria of newsworthiness why isn’t CNN reporting on news like… water privatization? There’s an issue that ranks above the bombings in Jordan with a higher brutal death quotum. How many deaths a day are caused by the commodification of this basic human right? Wouldn’t it be just as news worth to show children dying from IMF policies that ruthlessly kill thousands of children every day? We could see on television the faces of the victims and then we could have follow up on who was responsible. How much money was made off of those deaths?
   Or, if death by dysentery isn’t glamourous enough for CNN, how about death due to transfer of resources through World Bank loan conditions that deny food to literally millions of children throughout the world? How many daily deaths there?
   The question is, Hammurabi, what is the criteria for news worthiness? To try to pretend that the news story de-jour on CNN and Fox isn’t politically motivated is to be, at best, naive..
   I think the oft stated rule here is the media doesn’t tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
   To have us discussing burning cars and suicide bombers accomplishes its purpose by not having us discuss other more horrific issues.
   Wouldn’t it be interesting to discuss issues of basic needs denial with the same in-depth detail that we examine, over and over, the relatively (as opposed to the large number of brutal deaths caused by policies that lead to malnutrition and unsanitary water) unimportant issue of burning cars in France?

9. I think the oft stated rule here is the media doesn’t tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.
   Its all about building inside you the fear and awareness to support their political agendas that they will follow in with a complete package with other tools and channels needed nationally and internationally, as we saw before with Iraqi invasion it takes 13 years to make you accepted and believe in going to war in Iraq its right and its the only option available, there are no ways to solve the case with Iraq…
   Then we all weak up with all the stories of fakes documents and staged confession of MDW weapons and all of that.

10. To have us discussing burning cars and suicide bombers accomplishes its purpose by not having us discuss other more horrific issues.
    Of course one way to take burning cars and suicide bombers off the agenda is for the people burning cars and becoming martyrs by blowing up innocent civilians to cease their acts of indiscriminate violence.

11. JES, you are beginning to sound like Colonel Blimp. Nobody is saying you must not know about the car-burnings, least of all the car-burners themselves. What is wanted is reportage of the “other more horrific issues”.

12. The concern expressed by Leigh is that,
    [t]o have us discussing burning cars and suicide bombers accomplishes its purpose by not having us discuss other more horrific issues.
    What I was saying is that, if those “horrific issues” are so important, then perhaps the best way to ensure that we are not sidetracked by car burnings and sucicide bombings would be to end the latter, rather than encouraging them!
    As it stands, you and Leigh are perfectly free to know about (which you apparently do) and discuss them (which you do all the time).

13. Now you are reeling out a learnt script, JES, like a Blimp Chimpsky.
    It’s not that one can’t make media. Helena does it and so do I. The Internet is full of possiblilities and leaflets are still effective and even street events with placards and soap-boxes. Don’t worry, all of that is in hand, and more.
    No, what is being pointed out to you here is that you, in particular, are just regurgitating stuff that is fed to you by the masters of war. And what is the use of that?

14. Dominic,
    Thank you for having the patience to explain that to me. Here I was thinking that I had the ability to think and interpret information on my own, while in reality I am just a chimp repeating what I am fed by those who control me.
    You know, for someone who complains about others, you certainly are a condescending SOB!

15. Christiane,
    I don’t know better, I just convey the impressions I got, and if I recall correctly you have been opining on my country with very little basis other than the depth of your bias. If you trust scholars more than lay people why don’t you add Pipes’ views to your list. He is a scholar and unlike your expert du jour, Pipes has been warning about what is coming in France for at least two years.
    http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3113
    David

16. Daniel Pipes
    “His anti-Islamist bent is not a new endeavor for Pipes. He founded and still directs the Middle East Forum, “a think tank” aimed at defining and promoting American interests in the Middle East …. seeks a stable supply and a low price of oil; and promotes the peaceful settlement of regional and international disputes.” But regardless of this anti-militant Islam bent,
    “Pipes himself has written that Muslim immigrants are “brown- skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene”
    “Another organization that Pipes established, Campus Watch, tracks down university professors who are perceived to be anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, or pro-Islamist. Seen by many as an affront to academic freedom and an attempt to silence criticism of U.S. policies toward Israel and the Arab world, the web site encourages students at colleges and universities to report any teachers who exhibit such behaviors in the classroom.”
    “I worry very much from the Jewish point of view that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims…will present true dangers to American Jews.”
    Daniel Pipes speaking before the convention of the American Jewish Congress, 10/21/2001
    A very racists and full of hate person
    

17. “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
    – Samuel P. Huntington

18. What France really thinks :
    http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051115-040623-4716r

19. Salah,
    Judging by the trial of professor Sami Al Arian in Florida Pipes was correct again. Campus Watch may expose the tip of some nasty icebergs. I learned about Pipes in Juan Cole’s web site, and anybody that is attacked by both Cole and Salah cannot be that bad…
    But heck, why listen to me, just follow his link and judge on the merits of what he writes about the Ramadan riots.
    David

20. Simpleman,
    What is perfectly described in the link you offered isn’t what France really think; it is what right wing Le Penists think. It is what racists think. The riots of course will attract some new partisans to that kind of xenophobe movements, but such position are far from representing the majority in France.
    Also, many like to remember that at the last presidential elections Le Pen won over Jospin. But this was only possible because the left made a bad strategic analysis, offering too many candidates at the first row of the elections. Numerically, the left is much stronger than Le Pen’s current in France.
    David,
    I think that with the uncritical support you are offering to Pipes, you have completely discredited yourself. Anyone now knows from where you are speaking.

21. Christiane,
    c’est une pièce au dossier, pas la Vérité (espérons-le). A lire, et à commenter.

22. “Numerically, the left is much stronger than Le Pen’s current in France.”
    Which is why, I suppose, that Le Pen made the runoff in the last election and Jospin did not.

23. Also, many like to remember that at the last presidential elections Le Pen won over Jospin. But this was only possible because the left made a bad strategic analysis, offering too many candidates at the first row of the elections.

24. Okay, have I traveled into some strange parallel universe in which the following events never happened?
    The Irish New York Draft Riots of 1863
    The Watts Riot of 1965
    The Detroit Riot of 1967
    The Rodney King Riot of 1992
    What is wrong with you all? No one mentions these American riots? Every one of which had a large death toll?
    What better proof can there be that the non-white rioters of France are not Moslem terrorists, but the French equivalent of blacks? (Or in 1863 New York, the Irish?) Gee, did the Irish take over America and turn it into a drunken anarchy of Popish potato-poppers? No, they stayed in poverty until they united with other minorities in a radical egalitarian movement that saved America from a disaster caused by out-of-control Republican capitalism in 1929. If blacks did that now, we’d call them terrorists.
    Racism is a real fact of capitalist democracy. Capitalism is culturally loaded and favors a few cultures over all others to the point of eradication. The bull about model minorities like the Vietnamese French is exactly the same used about Asians against blacks in America. There is not a single new thing in the French riots other than that the rioters only killed one person. Violence is as American as apple pie.
    It’s horrifying that the Right has erased so much of our knowledge of our own society that no one bothered to bring up our race riots. We’ve bought into the GOP lie that we’re a color-blind society, that the riots in Los Angeles and Miami were ancient history. That lie always reappears in America when things are the worst for blacks.
    Everyone who calls the French rioters terrorists, ungrateful, lazy, unassimilated and liars says the same about African Americans involved in riots. Let’s have a roll call of you all. Hey, right-wingers smeared the black victims of New Orleans with all the exact same insults on blogs, so how offensive could it be?
    Now’s my turn to be offensive. People have a right to insurrection. There is no difference between black rioters and Crispus Attucks, the black man killed by redcoats in the Boston Massacre. Attucks was just a political punk like his white buddies looking to provoke the police into violence to spark a larger movement, an old terrorist trick. The problem is, he was also right. And I dare anyone to prove that the injustice he faced is essentially different than what non-whites get from cops now – beatings, shootings, frame-ups, differential sentencing.
    The vibe I get from supporters of Israel around here is basically that capitalism is sacred and inerrant, and if Arabs (and blacks) fare poorly under it, they do not have a right to rebel against it, but must instead assimilate. But if commies prevent the bourgeoise from expressing their natural superiority in the marketplace, then all hell should break loose. The ghost of Emma Goldman should fly over your houses and take the lives of your firstborn. The greatest contribution Jewish Americans have made to our society was the recognition that economic inequality is racist, undemocratic, and certain to increase infinitely without political intervention. All of which is now being proven by the pro-Israel Bush regime, so I guess now it must all be denied. It has become anti-Semitic to be against the grotesque and exploding race/class inequality of our time.
    James Baldwin warned you all there would be a fire next time. If Jews get paid and abandon the foremost struggle of the Left against the tyranny of wealth, then they have no right to complain that the struggle fell into the hands of those who replaced them in the ghetto. The poor have the right of revolution, for the simple reason that economics only exists to serve people, not the other way around. Each individual has the right to make his own calculation as to whether he would rather die than live a servant of economics. And if you’re claiming that a black or Moslem decides that only because he’s lazy, you’re the monster, not him. The riots will spread from France and America all over the global ghetto because the monsters demand infinite profits for stockholders and infinite punishment for the “non-entrepreneurial”. The riots already swept South America, and they’ve moved to the next stage of revolution. Will you call Bolivian Indians anti-Semites or jihadists too? When it reaches Mexico, will you say it’s a black thing?

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