Thanks for remembering that day. It changed my life forever and was essentially how I lost both parents. Victims of that night but indirectly. Dad searching me and Joseph out in the running crowds after a heart illness and winding up with a stroke. Mum losing the will to live after that event and dying a few months later. The shock lives with me to this day and I can never remove images of dead kids blood or the sounds which to this day keep me awake at night.
I spent most of the mid to late nineties in France and did my university dissertation on French integration. I had a good friend wannabee boyfriend called Karim and spent months with him and his friends absorbing Algerian culture.
You are absolutely accurate about the banlieues and a total lack of integration. I would say that I never got the sense the children of the first immigrants to France felt attached to history. They were irreligious and very much wanted to be seen as French. You’re totally correct that they loved Britain. One friend told me on visiting how accepted and normal he felt here. How welcomed.
In France I recall getting on a bus with my Algerian friends laughing and enjoying ourselves. An older French woman looked at us in disgust and audibly muttered “sale árabe” at my friend. He bristled but said nothing. Her hate was palpable and he had no clue what to say or how to react.
The hatred I recall most was their hatred for Israel and Jews. Not the French they lived amongst. I have never experienced hatred like that. It was ALL they talked about Day in Day out. And America. Absolute hatred because they were seen to protect Israel.
I can never return to France after what happened. My family lived there for 15 years and loved all of it.
So much more to say but I feel sad and nostalgic writing this so will park it.
Overall I think you’re accurate in your observations but I genuinely think Jew hatred fuelled so much and Osama bin Laden attached an identity to this hatred of Israel and America is what initially drove the madness which saw them ultimately attach to faith. As though it was a gang culture. A global one in the end.
And now fuelled by americas intifada in Portland and beyond they’re inspired to attach all the hatred to history and so it goes on and on forever.
It’s a modern political drive (Britain isn’t attached to a hatred of Rome or the Saxons or French following major invasions for example).
I see your points and they do absolutely contribute but I 100% blame the American Left.
My French is good enough now that I've been able to follow the media chatter about the recent unpleasantness in the francophone media*, and the extent to which supposedly left wing France's Overton Window is *significantly* to the right of ours is kind of extraordinary. Media commentators regularly say things that over here would get one 'annulé' if said in English.
Eric Zemmour, for instance ('France's Tucker Carlson') said that France was in the first stages of an 'ethnic and racial civil war' and called for deportations. He ran for the Presidency last year as leader of a new party called Reconquête (as in 'Reconquista') and openly talks about 'le grand remplacement'.
Over here he'd be treated like Nick Griffin, but although disliked by most of the media class in France, such statements don't stop him appearing seemingly every day in the media. These are things one can say over there.
*One revelation in the French press I didn't see picked up here is the very likely fact that the rioting died down at least in part due to pressure from the drug lords and imams who actually run these places, as the looting was bringing in les flics and was bad for business. This rather supports what Hussey says about the role of local chiefs keeping the kids in line etc. (Also, wasn't it interesting to see the reality of the majority-Muslim 'No-Go Zone' actually recognised in liberal media in their reports, having been told for years that this was a racist conspiracy theory?)
If the supply of potential immigrants was reasonably finite then the British attempt not to alienate, in contrast to France's more brutal approach, is clearly better both morally and practically. But the supply of potential immigrants is not reasonably finite, and attempts not to alienate have rapidly morphed into privileging immigrants over the indigenous, in so many ways. Presumably, this is why the French immigrant population peaked about a decade ago and is now falling and also why the boats keep rolling in.
This issue is one of identity and can only be solved by asserting unapologetically and inhumanly as to what identity fance wants to be, skirting the line with secular centrism will tear everyone down.
France will be French or Arab, those are your choices.
To be clear the violence committed against so many French people is wrong and the state has an obligation to protect them but isn't there something of an irony with so many uniformed people deployed to oppose extremism on a day dedicated to celebrating an event that led to murder, mayhem and eventually several decades of war as Republican France sought to export it's brand of extremism?
Grimly edifying as always. Still, there's always a minor gem tucked away. I am much taken with the term 'fils de Clovis'. Those of us of the Anglo-Saxon persuasion might consider referring to ourselves as the 'sons of Alfred'.
I haven't read Hussey's book. I did flick through it in a bookshop once. What put me off was that he described Bruno Gollnisch going to take up his teaching post at the University of Lyon, and being prevented from entering by left-wing protesters. Hussey mentioned that Gollnisch was accompanied and supported by (I quote from memory) "FN thugs." I was like "OK, so if you try to block a right-wing professor from entering his classroom, you're a 'protester'; if you support that professor's right to teach his class, you're a 'thug'. Got it." I put the book back on the shelf. But I'm half-thinking of buying it now. I look forward to part 2 of your review!
None of this was a significant issue in the 90s. The same issues existed and same tensions and same flare ups occasionally but never on this scale. What’s fuelled everything is the evolution of Islam this century, Antifa entitlement and American politics. Under this useless French president who has done nothing to get a grip on the States thugs aka riot police and police generally, it was bound to explode into significant chaos if it ever took a cultural turn.
I'm completely unqualified to discuss French politics and culture, but I find Hussey's observations very interesting in light of James Baldwin's claim that he never felt black in France.
Hi Ed
Thanks for remembering that day. It changed my life forever and was essentially how I lost both parents. Victims of that night but indirectly. Dad searching me and Joseph out in the running crowds after a heart illness and winding up with a stroke. Mum losing the will to live after that event and dying a few months later. The shock lives with me to this day and I can never remove images of dead kids blood or the sounds which to this day keep me awake at night.
I spent most of the mid to late nineties in France and did my university dissertation on French integration. I had a good friend wannabee boyfriend called Karim and spent months with him and his friends absorbing Algerian culture.
You are absolutely accurate about the banlieues and a total lack of integration. I would say that I never got the sense the children of the first immigrants to France felt attached to history. They were irreligious and very much wanted to be seen as French. You’re totally correct that they loved Britain. One friend told me on visiting how accepted and normal he felt here. How welcomed.
In France I recall getting on a bus with my Algerian friends laughing and enjoying ourselves. An older French woman looked at us in disgust and audibly muttered “sale árabe” at my friend. He bristled but said nothing. Her hate was palpable and he had no clue what to say or how to react.
The hatred I recall most was their hatred for Israel and Jews. Not the French they lived amongst. I have never experienced hatred like that. It was ALL they talked about Day in Day out. And America. Absolute hatred because they were seen to protect Israel.
I can never return to France after what happened. My family lived there for 15 years and loved all of it.
So much more to say but I feel sad and nostalgic writing this so will park it.
Overall I think you’re accurate in your observations but I genuinely think Jew hatred fuelled so much and Osama bin Laden attached an identity to this hatred of Israel and America is what initially drove the madness which saw them ultimately attach to faith. As though it was a gang culture. A global one in the end.
And now fuelled by americas intifada in Portland and beyond they’re inspired to attach all the hatred to history and so it goes on and on forever.
It’s a modern political drive (Britain isn’t attached to a hatred of Rome or the Saxons or French following major invasions for example).
I see your points and they do absolutely contribute but I 100% blame the American Left.
Time to deploy my usual line WRT to this topic: Imagine what all this is going to be like in 2050 or so...
My French is good enough now that I've been able to follow the media chatter about the recent unpleasantness in the francophone media*, and the extent to which supposedly left wing France's Overton Window is *significantly* to the right of ours is kind of extraordinary. Media commentators regularly say things that over here would get one 'annulé' if said in English.
Eric Zemmour, for instance ('France's Tucker Carlson') said that France was in the first stages of an 'ethnic and racial civil war' and called for deportations. He ran for the Presidency last year as leader of a new party called Reconquête (as in 'Reconquista') and openly talks about 'le grand remplacement'.
Over here he'd be treated like Nick Griffin, but although disliked by most of the media class in France, such statements don't stop him appearing seemingly every day in the media. These are things one can say over there.
*One revelation in the French press I didn't see picked up here is the very likely fact that the rioting died down at least in part due to pressure from the drug lords and imams who actually run these places, as the looting was bringing in les flics and was bad for business. This rather supports what Hussey says about the role of local chiefs keeping the kids in line etc. (Also, wasn't it interesting to see the reality of the majority-Muslim 'No-Go Zone' actually recognised in liberal media in their reports, having been told for years that this was a racist conspiracy theory?)
If the supply of potential immigrants was reasonably finite then the British attempt not to alienate, in contrast to France's more brutal approach, is clearly better both morally and practically. But the supply of potential immigrants is not reasonably finite, and attempts not to alienate have rapidly morphed into privileging immigrants over the indigenous, in so many ways. Presumably, this is why the French immigrant population peaked about a decade ago and is now falling and also why the boats keep rolling in.
This issue is one of identity and can only be solved by asserting unapologetically and inhumanly as to what identity fance wants to be, skirting the line with secular centrism will tear everyone down.
France will be French or Arab, those are your choices.
To be clear the violence committed against so many French people is wrong and the state has an obligation to protect them but isn't there something of an irony with so many uniformed people deployed to oppose extremism on a day dedicated to celebrating an event that led to murder, mayhem and eventually several decades of war as Republican France sought to export it's brand of extremism?
Grimly edifying as always. Still, there's always a minor gem tucked away. I am much taken with the term 'fils de Clovis'. Those of us of the Anglo-Saxon persuasion might consider referring to ourselves as the 'sons of Alfred'.
High Time for France to start seriously considering repatriation as a solution.
It's alleged by Melanie Phillips that the rioting stopped when France's top Islamists and Muslim drug barons called off the young men.
This idea, that France now contains an Islamist state-within-a-state, is scarily persuasive.
I haven't read Hussey's book. I did flick through it in a bookshop once. What put me off was that he described Bruno Gollnisch going to take up his teaching post at the University of Lyon, and being prevented from entering by left-wing protesters. Hussey mentioned that Gollnisch was accompanied and supported by (I quote from memory) "FN thugs." I was like "OK, so if you try to block a right-wing professor from entering his classroom, you're a 'protester'; if you support that professor's right to teach his class, you're a 'thug'. Got it." I put the book back on the shelf. But I'm half-thinking of buying it now. I look forward to part 2 of your review!
There's a yuletide song with the words:
"It's getting to look a lot like Christmas,
Everywhere you go"
Substitute "Islam" for Christmas and you get a much less festive song, which does however describe today's Europe rather well.
None of this was a significant issue in the 90s. The same issues existed and same tensions and same flare ups occasionally but never on this scale. What’s fuelled everything is the evolution of Islam this century, Antifa entitlement and American politics. Under this useless French president who has done nothing to get a grip on the States thugs aka riot police and police generally, it was bound to explode into significant chaos if it ever took a cultural turn.
I'm completely unqualified to discuss French politics and culture, but I find Hussey's observations very interesting in light of James Baldwin's claim that he never felt black in France.
Absolutely fascinating. Looking forward to part 2.