Recently I visited the Toshogu shrine in Nikko Japan where the famous 3 monkeys - See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil - are depicted. In a schadenfreude sort of way they seem remarkably appropriate to the recent riots by the mostly Islamic immigrants in cities across Europe and particularly around Paris. The problem is not so much in the reporting of what is happening now - although the lack of coverage compared to (say) the Blunkett mess is striking - as what we haven't seen in the years gone by. Not having lived in the UK for 15 years, I cannot confidently say whether the situation in the UK is as bad (but I'm pretty sure it is); however in both France and Germany (countries where I have lived/worked recently) it is blindingly obvious that the media and governing classes have wilfully ignored warning signs and, indeed, have gone out of their way to explictly deny that any problem exists. I believe much the same applies to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Belgium and probably other countries too. The three monkeys are a remarkably good way to examine the disconnect between the elites and the rest of the population (most of this post talks about France, because that is where I live and have most experience but there is considerable evidence to support the idea that the same basic failures are occuring elsewhere too).
Mizaru
The Iraq war has conclusively showed that the elites are unable to see things that don't match up with their pre-conceptions, but the exact same thing has been on display in the cities of Europe for decades. The visible evidence that (certain groups of) immigrants are not integrating successfully into their host culture, or even making a good job at surviving on their own, has been obvious to anyone who visits the immigrant (ghetto) areas for years. Employment, education and numerous other signs of success are notably absent from areas where immigrants live and have been for years yet the policies that seem to have caused this are not changed. The BBC reports that:
France has countless bodies dedicated to helping immigrants - a High Council for Integration, a Directorate for Populations and Migrations, several regional commissions for the insertion of immigrants, and so on.
Despite this, France's integration policy has failed, the Court of Accounts, a government watchdog, concluded last year.
Or in other words when cracks start appearing you try papering them over rather than fixing the cause. And if one layer of paper doesn't work you add another, and another... and somehow while doing this you completely fail to see what is in front of your nose. The ghettos are crime-ridden no go areas where the laws of the land are unenforced and where the police dear to tread and because the ghettos have this reputation for criminality no one outside trusts those who live there, thus condemning all those who live there for the lawlessness of a few.
Kikazaru
When it comes to listening (or not listening) the same applies. There has recently been a spate of carjacking attempts in and around Nice which has been reported by word of mouth. I don't actually know if all the stories are true but it is clear that the general public has a fear of the immigrant ghettos and their inhabitants and does believe that they are indeed the source of much of the crime and insecurity. The problem is that because no one in authority pays attention these stories get passed around by word of mouth and thus they are probably exaggerated in the telling. This then means that the general public's distrust of the immigrants increases because they fear them and feel that their criminality is not being curtailed by the judicial system. This fear, of course, frequently appears to be racist but I don't think it is necessarily so, but without clear statistics no one knows for sure.
It is undoubtedly true that many French are racists, some of my neighbours say things that would be considered appropriate for the BNP or the KKK, but no one really complains. What is worse is that when such language is criticised (as it is when some more public figure like Le Pen says it), no one looks to see why such statements are taken as true by so many. Le Pen & co want to deport these immigrants in large part because they say that the immigrants don't consider themselves to be French. The ugly truth is that many of the immigrants do indeed say precisely that; I have (for example) related on this blog the story of an English friend of ours who teaches English to local schoolchildren here:
During one class she asked them where they came from and the replies were "Tunisia" or "Morocco". The (French) teacher apparently laughed at that and said "no no really they are all French even many of their parents were born in France".
That laughing off of a clear statement of alienation within second or third generation immigrants is precisely what I mean when I say that the elites won't listen to what they are being told. Oh and of course they don't listen when they are told that immigrants can't get jobs because of racist French people not hiring them either - a statement which is also undoubtedly mostly true. The French pass lots of laws banning discrimination but rarely seem to actually enforce them.
Iwazaru
Then there is the problem of trying so hard to not cause offense to immigrants that you don't dare point out what is unacceptable behaviour that might be the reason why some people discrimminate against you. Likewise no one tells native Frenchmen home truths about their attitudes either. The result is that there is no reasoned debate just the rhetoric of demagogues which goes unanswered. If the media and governing elites want to (re)gain the trust of the rest of us they have to clearly state what is and is not acceptable and then apply sanctions on those that breach the limits on acceptable behaviour.
Economic Monkeys
Finally the three monkey absolutely apply to the economic conditions. No one (other than Sarkozy) dares point out loudly that the trades unions are a major cause of unemployment. The 35 hour week, the huge hidden employment costs and the near inability to fire anyone mean that the incentive to start or grow a business in France is extremely limited. Moreover, and combined with the social security cushion, it means that risk-taking is effectively punished. If an employer has a choice between hiring an immigrant and a native then under such circumstances he is likely to go for what is preceived to be the less risky option and that is the native. Hence unemployment amongst immigrants is higher. Hence idleness and hence, IMO, criminality and religious/political radicalization. If there were a greater demand for jobs then I think a lot of the problems would go away. Since no one dares notice this correlation or say anything about it it doesn't get fixed and just gets worse.
Sarkozy - Monkey or Sacrificial Goat?
Until Sarkozy no major French politician dared state that the Banlieux were crime-ridden no go areas and that this was an unacceptable state of affairs. The fact that Sarko then followed up his rhetoric with action is even more shocking. Likewise no one else has dared point out that the current social security scheme is bust and utterly unsustainable. Of course he isn't perfect and he can't fix everything, but one suspects that l'Escroc, Vile Pin and co are deliberately not fully supporting him to score political points for the next presidential election. Unfortunately for them, I suspect the French electorate can see through their back-stabbing and damning with faint praise.
BTW Instapundit has a reader comment that I partially disagree with:
It's not an intefada. I'm an Australian SF author temporarily living in Paris; sadly I don't have my own blog (yet), but I'm writing a freelance article on liberte-cherie, the French libertarian organisation (www.liberte-cherie.com). I'm no expert, but I'm learning some things.
The problem in France is not the same as in the UK or the Netherlands. There, there's been an overdose of PC multi culturalism... but American critics are wrong to assign that to France. France HAS insisted on integration, as seen by the controversial ban on headscarves in French schools. And most French muslims do consider themselves French, to varying degrees, and Islamic extremism is pretty small thing here (there was far more protest against the headscarf ban outside of France than inside). So it's not an intefada.
There's just no damn jobs. White college grads can't get jobs, what hope do immigrants from regions with bad schools have? I think this is more like the LA Rodney King riots -- there's people there who want the French dream, just as in LA people wanted the American dream, but they just don't see it when they look around, and they resent the fact enormously. They can't change schools to get a better education because the government says you have to go to the school where you live, and they live where they do because of the zoning laws... which I'm no expert about, but I do know that the government owns 30 percent of all housing in France, and poor immigrants basically live where they're told. The government tries to give them everything and does it extremely badly, there's no upward mobility, and it doesn't breed a happy community. Religion exacerbates the feeling of exclusion, I'm sure, but the rioting seems mostly driven by economics and bad social policy.
So yeah, it's a stupid French government problem, but not the one some American critics are ascribing... however attractive it might be to do so.
France's governments have also done the PC thing. The headscarf ban was a Sarkozy idea and was a radical departure from the usual modus operandi. And the French government/media have absolutely ignored evidence that integration hasn't worked, such as the lack of intermarriage, such as the lack of self-identification amongst many (though many may not be most) and so on. The absolute worst thing that elites have done is build these social housing complexes, put people in them and then ignored the entirely predictable consequences of the fact that these become slums in short order and are places far removed from where jobs might be found.
Where I agrree is that it isn't an intefada and that lumping all immigrants together is bad, some see themselves as French some do not. I know a bunch of hard working Islamic North Africans who are cases in point: they are classic "semi devout" muslims, in that they mostly obey Ramadan, but will at other times of the year drink beer/wine and IIRC eat ham/bacon. The key difference is that they don't live in the ghetto and they do have jobs. I strongly suspect that there is a correlation between that and their identification with being "French".