One thing about the events in France is that it seems to be utterly confusing the classical American left/right divisions in a way which would have been more useful (for all concerned, including France) if it had occured before the Iraq war. While there are right-wingers who demonstrate puerile schadenfreude or frantic panic that France is going to become the next Islamic republic, there are left-wingers who show equal idiocy. I see no reason to link to idiots so you can find your own Rush Limbaugh links and NY Times or Washington Post editorials but suffice it to say that the production of banalities, clueless commentary and duck-billed platitudes seems to be an industry in which American journalists/columnists are market leaders and their mass production and inappropriate deployment reminds me strongly of the tasteless home decoration skills that snide Europeans mock America for.
However, fortunately, more thoughtful commenters exist on both sides and curiously they too see somewhat of a convergence as well. From Ralph Peters in the NY Post, to Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker, to bloggers such as the Pinko Feminist Hellcat (guess what she's not a rightwinger), New Sisyphus and Baldilocks (black female and REPUBLICAN) the identification of the appalling levels of discrimination in France and the inability of the French state to admit it is a common thread. Other common threads are the economic failure, the high levels of crime, and the abysmal levels of education that are all visible in the banlieues. For example guess who wrote:
If your skin is brown or black in la belle France, you haven't got a chance at a decent life. Now the wretched of the earth have exploded in rage.
...every American who believes in racial equality and human dignity should sympathize with the rioters, not with the effete bigots on the Seine.
and who wrote
Out of 16 candidates, the National Front was the second contender to Jacques Chirac in France's 2002 election. And while the second election saw Chirac win with over 82 percent of the vote, it said something pretty stark that Le Pen could even be considered a contender.
So many news stories make it sound like these are immigrants, and they aren't. They are French citizens who have been told repeatedly that they are the problem, that their culture is shameful and should be hidden, that they are unemployable, that they are only good for crumbling housing projects and crime-ridden neighborhoods. That they aren't really a part of France.
The longest piece - recommended by Gregory at the Belgravia Dispatch - is the New Yorker one and, like him, I recommend that it be read in full. It is older than the others, being originally published in August, and thus not talking directly about the riots but it delineates the problems of France excellently and its explanation of the Sarko phenomenon and the fact that Sarko is just the best of a bad lot, not necssarily good by global standards, is very good. However it is I think wrong in one critical area, the economic one:
People in London tell you about the bureaucratic absurdities attendant on their buying and refurbishing houses in the South of France—but they are buying, and the French are benefitting. Enormous sums flow into a black market—most of those refurbishments, as with contractors generally, are cash deals—and the French savings rate is incomparably higher than America’s. There is a lot of money at large in this country.
The occupation of southern France by English expats (i.e. people like me) is not in anyway a good thing for the rest of France.The people who benefit from the expat wave are typically the families of aged peasants who sell their fields and decrepit houses to retiring expats who have read "A year in Provence" and dreamed of replicating the experience. The money invested in property purchase drives up average house prices and makes it harder for France's poor to make that critical first jump onto the property ladder. Property on the Riviera is unaffordable even to classical middle-class DINKYs (Double Income No Kids Yet), let alone anyone who is not possessed of a regular salary and the spread of these higher prices means that affordable property is frequently only available in the most rural parts of the country - parts which are lacking in jobs and many urban conveniences.
Similarly the money spent in the black economy, while it may help some of the "immigrants", is unlikely to help the ones that really need it. The builders, electricians, gardeners etc. who work on the black are indeed frequently of North African origin but they are the ones who are on the way up anyway not the ones left behind. Furthermore such work does not help any immigrant get the sort of salaried job that allows them to borrow money at reasonable rates or otherwise invest in the future.
Finally, as should be blindingly obvious, the size and pervasiveness of the black economy should be a clue that, despite the claims of Le Monde's Alain Minc, business is unhappy but working around obstacles in the French economy. The fact that it is worthwhile taking the risk of working on the black shows that the official economy is blocking legitimate demand and thus stifling economic growth. Minc is quoted as saying:
Businessmen have no loss of confidence, and no sense of crisis. For the average worker, France remains Cockaigne—five weeks’ vacation and job security. The problem of unemployment is real, but also exaggerated—only about four per cent of the ten per cent you always hear about represents real unemployment, people who want a job and can’t find one. Yes, of course, we need adjustments and modulations, but the Bourse is booming: where people have to bet money, they are immensely confident. The economic picture isn’t grim—it’s extraordinary.
This is to put it bluntly a crock of crap. If businessmen were truly confident we would see more start ups, more entrepreneurs and more investment into France from outside. Then there is the average Fench worker - if job security etc. were so good why does the article later quote someone else as saying that 70% of people want to be civil servants? Finally there is the unemployment problem; if you look closely at his statement it says that apparently 6% of the working population is happy subsisting on the dole and that this is not a problem. If 6% of the population is happy on the dole that indicates strongly that benefits are too high and hence that the taxes to pay for them are too high. Furthermore it indicates an astonishing amount of slack and inefficiency within the economy. The economic picture is indeed extraordinary - extraordinarlily grim - and the fact that the chairman of Le Monde can't see it that way is an indicatation that it is unlikely to get fixed anytime soon.
What these riots should be is a wake up call to the French establishment that France need radical reform - a Thatcherite broom if you like - but one searches in vain for any sign that Vile Pin, l'Escroc and the rest of the elite are willing to do anything other than paper over the cracks.