Over the last couple of days as I read the news and the blog comments on the rioting in France (and Denmark ...) I am finding myself moved to defend the French/Europeans from their accusers, which I find somewhat unexpected since I normally find much to criticise about France/Europe myself. I find it particularly odd when the critics that I'm defending the French against are normally people with whom I agree, but I shall continue because I think it is important.
The person who inspired this defense is Dafydd ab Hugh who claims that
France isn't France anymore; it's a cog in the United States of EuropeEuropean Economic Community European Union. The entire continent is sans frontières, and humans need frontiers -- boundaries, walls, fences, divisions between this nation and the other.
For the immigrants who fled Algeria for France, and even more so for their children who grew up in atomized "Eurabia," the only meaning they can access is the one they or their parents left behind; around them they find only a moral, religious, and nationalistic vacuum. As we Republicans have said many times about the Democrats, you can't fight Something with Nothing; that is even truer for faith-based immigrants in the faithless wasteland of today's Europe, where the only acceptable belief is nihilism.
...
We understand the concept of Americanism, even if we argue about what it encompasses; but I don't believe the French even have the word, let alone the concept of, Francism. How would it differ from Netherlandism, Belgism, or Italianism? America had the advantage of always being defined by a philosophy, an ideology, a creed, rather than the blind chance of people living near each other who happened to speak the same tongue. We have weathered the changes brought by the technology-shrunken world much better than has Western Europe.
I'm sorry to say that Dafydd appears to have fallen for the EU elitists propaganda. While the governing elite may like to think there is no border and that we are all Europeans today I don't think the majority of the citizens of Europe, even amongst the young and most brainwashed, would agree. Whether you call it Francism or something else France most certainly has a national identity and French people consider themselves to be French not European. Indeed in some ways the problem with the EU is that the population is still nationalist and considers (for example) that a British company buying a French one as an insult to Gallic pride rather than an internal transaction in the European state (and let me state clearly that the same applies to practically every country in the EU).
So what is Francism?
One thing that I hadn't really appreciated for a long time is that the French do still take their revolution seriously and the secular republicanism that goes with it. Take the "headscarf ban" as an example. The French really do believe that overt religious expression in public life is bad and I am tempted to suggest that one reason why the French can be anti-semitic is that they find the insistence of devout Jews on the public expression of their religion to be a sign of unreliability. Secondly the French see themselves defined by their land and particularly the rural life. This rural idyl is of course a complete fiction but it is absolutely true that compared with most of their neighbours (Spain being the only exception) France is extremely sparsely populated and this is exacerbated by the density of urban areas. This love of rural life applies of course to the French devotion to French wine, cheese and all the other gourmet delights produced by French farmers, but it also applies to the numerous groups of hunters who shoot down anything that moves at certain times of the year and to the way that every weekend sees scores of cyclists peddling down every country lane.
I have jokingly said that the two things you need to know about the French are that the French believe that
Rules are to be obeyed by everyone but me
Lunch must be at least 1 hour
There is a good deal of truth in that, particularly in the first. Sometimes this attitude is annoying but the "rules are for other people" attitude and the way that French gendarmes and others in authority selectively apply rules does make the otherwise over regulated French state bearable. Of course the problem is that selective application of the rules means that people that the gendarmes don't like (e.g. unemployed immigrant louts) tend to feel picked on because they don't get the free passes that the rest of us get. Where Francism goes wrong is that it also instills a belief in l'état as the ultimate resource to be called upon at need and for a central control that is remarkably stalinist even though it predates Stalin by at least a century. I would say that the root cause of the riots is fundamentally that l'état has not delivered what it promised in terms of economic growth and that as a result it has been unable to live up to its promise of jobs, decent government provided housing etc. for those that need it.
Eurabian Dhimmitude?
The multi-culti tolerance of Islam by the media and government elites has certainly helped inspire the unemployed youths from immigrant backgrounds to believe that they can create their own Islamic enclaves and somehow get the rest of us to pay for it. But contrary to Melanie Phillips, La Shawn etc. I do not in any way believe that Europe or France will in fact put up with anything of the sort. Indeed the direct cause of the riots in France and the riots in Denmark has been the backlash against these attempts. The population is hindered in its attempts to express its displeasure by the media, which brands practically any attack on an "immigrant" as racist and turns the rioters into victims - see my passive tense post yesterday - but the worms are turning and the message is getting out via blogs and the like. Sarkozy, as I said before, is in fact the poster child for this reformist element. I don't think he is right all the time by any means (he still believes in rule by central government fiat and decree), but he does express precisely the feelings of a large number of people in France who see that the current situation is broken and want action to fix it rather than the usual duck-billed platitude.
The non radical immigrants
Finally, it is well worth pointing out that contrary to the more hysterical rhetoric, by no means all immigrants are muslim and by no means all muslim immigrants are radicals. Peaktalk makes a good point about how Turkish immigrants in Holland are far less radical than the North Africans, and for that matter I would say that in my experience in France the Tunisian immigrants are far less radical than their neighbours from Algeria and Morocco (and yes all this is painting with a broad brush). From what one reads, even at the BBC which is covering this fairly well, let alone the more alarmist blogs in North America, it is easy to come to the impression that all immigrants are crammed into these dead end banlieux and that they are all unemployed due to discrimination and that they have all become radical muslims. This is flat out wrong. There are many North African immigrants in France who do not live in the banlieux and they are all generally speaking employed and not at all radical. Even within the banlieux, the BBC notes that by no means everyone supports the rioters (that linked BBC article is actually very good - the BBC deserves credit for it). If a method is found by Sarko or someone else to separate the goats from the sheep and remove the real bad apples (to mix my metaphors) and to provide some sort of hope for the future for the rest I believe that the scourge of radical Islam will swiftly dissipate. To put it bluntly if you have a job and some control over your life you are far less inclined to the sorts of nihilism and criminality that allows radical Islamism to flourish. If, more to the point, it becomes clear that radical Islam is the major hinderance towards a decent future then I think it is highly likely that radical Islam will fade away and that its influence on the immigrant populations will dimminish. These riots are a wake up call and I see no reason to expect that it will be ignored by the citizens of France or Europe, despite the best efforts of the political and media elites.