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.
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.
The left say it’s inhuman but is it. People who are truly uncomfortable with a less apologetic expression of French culture can move, at anytime, to a place where their preferred cultural expression has free rein. People with a french cultural preference (presumably the majority,) have no equivalent option.
This is true, though if you are born in a given area you are not likely to want to move from it for various reasons, so these people want to be in France but do not want to be French.
So they will have to be removed in some form from France, and that is not nice in any way you cut it.
It's todo with the French enlightenment philosophy emphasing secularism as opposed to an actual identity that is ethnic/ racial in origin, simply put everyone is a citizen of France and your not allowed any other view.
The French government is actually upholding their belief that anyone can be French.
On another note this has been proposed as a solution about a year ago in Britain from labour wanting a Year Zero start for the new era.
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?
We all need our national myths, even the French, and thank God for them (the myths, that is).
Historians and miserabilists may turn up their noses at the events of 1415, for example, but who among the sons of Alfred can fail to be inspired by the words of the spin-master of Warwickshire:
"This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile".
I'm told these distinctly unrepublican words have even inspired those shameless revolutionists across the pond.
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.
Alison I am so sorry, that is heartbreaking. I don't know what to say.
(ah just realised you're the same Alison I know from Twitter, from your email.)
Sorry, have to ask: where does the American left fit into this?
Yes. It’s been an eventful decade
Time to deploy my usual line WRT to this topic: Imagine what all this is going to be like in 2050 or so...
Outright warfare for the soul of France
It might just burn out. You don't have 6 kids in an apartment block in the banileus. Harder to run from the police with a 40 or 50 somethings knees.
Beyond that France invented the neutron bomb.
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.
Morgoth's reviews did a recent video on this power structure.
https://youtu.be/vwPTOVG9SyQ
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.
The left say it’s inhuman but is it. People who are truly uncomfortable with a less apologetic expression of French culture can move, at anytime, to a place where their preferred cultural expression has free rein. People with a french cultural preference (presumably the majority,) have no equivalent option.
This is true, though if you are born in a given area you are not likely to want to move from it for various reasons, so these people want to be in France but do not want to be French.
So they will have to be removed in some form from France, and that is not nice in any way you cut it.
similar here where secularists used the problem of segregation to close down religious schools.
It's todo with the French enlightenment philosophy emphasing secularism as opposed to an actual identity that is ethnic/ racial in origin, simply put everyone is a citizen of France and your not allowed any other view.
The French government is actually upholding their belief that anyone can be French.
On another note this has been proposed as a solution about a year ago in Britain from labour wanting a Year Zero start for the new era.
Interesting, though how does that aline with the FN or ND (1960) ect in France who do seem to express some ethnic position.
Unless I'm reading that ethnic position incorrectly, please let me know.
Thank you for this tid-bit of information lad.
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?
We all need our national myths, even the French, and thank God for them (the myths, that is).
Historians and miserabilists may turn up their noses at the events of 1415, for example, but who among the sons of Alfred can fail to be inspired by the words of the spin-master of Warwickshire:
"This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile".
I'm told these distinctly unrepublican words have even inspired those shameless revolutionists across the pond.
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'.
Sons of Alfred it is!
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.
Or motherlover as the maltesers advert has it. Heinous yet twee