[Peace-discuss] What's going on in France?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From the writer who predicted and analyzed the rejection of
the European constitution, the best thing I've seen on the
situation in France (along with Matt Reichel's article). --CGE]

   November 9, 2005
   Paris is Burning
   Rage in the Banlieue
   By DIANA JOHNSTONE
   Montmartre, Paris.

The furious youth in the French suburban housing blocks known
as the banlieue are expressing themselves by setting cars on
fire. And not only cars: schools, creches, sports centers. So
far, they are not using words, at least not audibly. So
everyone else is free to speak for them, or against them, and
offer his or her verbal interpretation of what these actions
mean, or should mean. Since these interpretations differ
sharply, there is a polarizing debate going on as to what this
is really about and what should be done about it.

I live on the northern edge of Paris, on the non-tourist
backside of Montmartre. It is probably the most mixed
neighborhood in Paris. It includes Barbès, the setting for
Emile Zola's working class novel "L'Assommoir", which later
became the main pole of North African immigration. More
recently, there is a large and growing population of
sub-Saharan African immigrants, as well as a considerable
Tamoul community.The streets are full of life, lots of young
children, African grocers, all sorts of shops and people, and
despite a certain amount of drug dealing, I feel perfectly
safe, even late at night.

This neighborhood is not far from the northeastern banlieue
where the riots began. But the banlieue is something else. Its
specific nature is one of the factors behind the current
outburst of violence. But it is only one of the factors.

It's easy to pontificate on this subject, and the clichés all
come easily to mind. But I would like to try to analyse the
situation by examining one by one the factors and arguments
relating to this crisis.

1. The rioters themselves.

Only the right, or more precisely the far right, would reduce
the problem to the rioters themselves. The National Front is,
predictably, describing the situation as "civil war" and
calling for the government to send in the Army. This is a very
minority position. So far as I am aware, its strongest
expression has come from the United States, in an article by
Daniel Pipes in the Jewish World Review charactizing the riots
as an Islamic "intifada" as a "turning point" in a new
religious war in Europe.

Who exactly are the rioters? So far, this is not very clear,
since the hit-and-run arson attacks appear to be imitative but
unorganized. The rioters are young males, mostly, it seems, in
their mid-teens, who identify with the two teen-agers who were
accidentally electrocuted last October 27 when, running from
police, they scaled a wall and took refuge in an industrial
generator. Ironically, in this crucial case the deaths were
the result of fear rather than of direct police brutality.
This widespread fear of police reflects gratuitous and heavy
handed police harassment, but there is also the undisputed
fact that in areas with 40% unemployment and large numbers of
school dropouts, there has been a proliferation of drug
dealing and various forms of petty crime, often in the form of
forcing school kids to surrender such items as cell phones.
Police toughness has had no visible success in stemming such
activities.

The rioting youths seem to be predominantly, but not
exclusively, of African or North African origin. They are
certainly not all Muslims, and there is no indication that
most of them are particularly attached to any religion. Muslim
religious authorities condemn the riots, and one has gone so
far as to issue a fatwa against the violence, but this seems
to serve more to distance the Muslim authorities from the
rioters than to influence them.

They are a minority in their communities, and their
destructive action is overwhelmingly condemned within those
communities, whose members are the ones whose cars or schools
or buses are being burned. Nevertheless, there is considerable
sympathy in these communities for the anger and hopelessness
underlying this explosion of violence. After several nights of
such troubles, parents and other citizens are organizing in
various neighborhoods to dissuade kids from violence. This is
likely to be more effective than the curfews on unaccompanied
kids under 16 favored by the right.

2. Housing.

The apartment blocks of the banlieue of French cities are
similar to those surrounding cities in most of Europe. They
were part of the rapid urbanization that occurred during the
economic prosperity of the 1960s. They were not built to be
"ghettos" but to provide decent housing to the waves of
immigrants, both from the countryside and from abroad, drawn
by industrial employment. They replaced shanty towns and
relieved the pressure on inner city neighborhoods, where
working class families were crowded into unhealthy flats with
no private toilet. For working people, the banlieue apartments
are much more spacious and well equipped than those in
affordable neighborhoods of Paris.

There are two things wrong with them. One is aesthetic: they
lack the charm of the city, they are monotonous, and they are
far away from the pleasures of urban life. But what has turned
them into "ghettoes" is the deindustrialization of the past
decades. The nearby factories have shut down, and the sons and
grandsons of factory workers are jobless. It is easier for
those with French names and French complexions to move up into
the service sector, and out to other neighborhoods.

3. Racism.

Why this difficulty? Because, while racist attitudes are
widely and vigorously condemned, and in social terms racial
discrimination is probably less practiced in France than in
other Western countries (as indicated, among other things, by
an exceptionally high percentage of racially mixed marriages),
those individuals who are in a position to hire employees, or
to rent housing, are less likely to choose someone with an
exotic name, or an exotic look, than someone who appears
"normal". This is bitterly resented, and the fact that many
second and third generation French youth of African origin
have made successful careers is no consolation to those who
are left behind.

4. The economy.

By any reasonable standard, this is the central factor. If
jobs were not so scarce, qualified youth would not be
unemployed because of their origin. If public funding for
social activities in the banlieue had not been cut back by the
current government in favor of a single-minded emphasis on
"security", things might be slightly better. But essentially,
it is the current worldwide economic model that is at the root
of these troubles. Back to that later.

5. The Sarkozy factor.

As the whole world must know by now, Nicolas Sarkozy, former
mayor of the opulent Western Paris suburb of Neuilly (nothing
to do with the banlieue!), wants to be President of the French
Republic. Not a day goes by without seeing him, as Interior
Minister, rushing here and there in front of television
cameras, busy, busy, busy. His naked ambition borders the
pathological. His strategy, however, has been calculated, and
until recently has looked ominously successful, as he managed
to take over the UMP (Union de la Majorité Présidentielle),
supposed to be the party of President Jacques Chirac, and
turned it against him.

This strategy has included a move to win over the electorate
of the National Front, which hates Gaullists in general and
Chirac in particular. The key to this is, of course,
emphasizing "security". But cleverly enough, Sarkozy has
combined this with a bid to woo French Muslims, and other
religions, by taking his distance from French secularism to
call for dialogue with religious leaders. This fits with his
pro-American neoliberal economic preferences -- full throttle
privatization and deregulation -- inasmuch as the shelter of
identity communities is the necessary substitute for the
abandoned welfare state.

Enforcing the law is the job of an Interior Minister. But
after withdrawal of the "proximity police", put in by the
previous Socialist government in order to develop contact with
the community (for too short a time to be tested), Sarkozy has
favored spectacular raids by heavily decked out police squads
that act as provocations. To grab maximum media attention, he
has strutted through troubled banlieues announcing his
determination to clean up the "rabble" (racaille).

This performance is surely a significant factor in the riots.
It also provides a unifying theme for the left: Sarkozy must
resign! The conservative government is virtually obliged for
the moment to give a show of unity, but whenever it is
convenient, one can be sure that both Chirac and his protégé,
prime minister Dominique de Villepin, would be simply
delighted to throw Sarkozy to the wolves.

6. The Middle East.

Sarkozy, by his choice of trips abroad, has underlined his
desire for closest possible relations with the United States
and Israel. This provides a second reason for him to be hated
by youth in the banlieue, where identification with the
Palestinians is widespread and daily images of violence in the
Middle East and the war in Iraq have a considerable impact.
Perhaps one can guess that had Chirac not refused to follow
the United States into Iraq, the banlieue would have exploded
earlier and more violently than today. The feeling of
exclusion among youth of Arab origin is enormously exacerbated
by the spectacle of Western aggression against the Arab world.


* * *

I come back to the economic factor. Dominique de Villepin, in
competition with Sarkozy, has taken a more humanist line:
restoration of social aids to the banlieue previously
instituted by the Socialist government, plus yet another
program for job-creation. But since such measures have been
taken before without notable effect, one can doubt their
efficacy now.

I would conclude by acknowledging that for ruling politicians,
the situation is without immediate solution. Order may be
restored, subsidies may be granted to neighborhood
associations, but no short-term measure can solve the basic
problem: the deep rupture between the "winners" and the
"losers" in a cutthroat game of capitalist competition. In
some ways, these alienated youth in the banlieue, however much
they feel left out of French society, are very French in this
respect: like angry farmers or workers, they go into the
streets with their discontent. This is a gesture that the
French tolerate and try to understand to a degree perhaps
unequaled in other societies.

But then what? Soviet bloc communism collapsed because it
failed to meet the demands for more freedom of the most
privileged sectors of the population. American-style
capitalism has triumphed worldwide, but it in turn is
threatened with eventual collapse because it fails to meet the
needs of the less privileged sectors. They are showing that
they can retaliate by creating mayhem. The banlieue is not
really an isolated world, European countries are more tightly
packed than the United States, and there is not enough room
for riots to go on without bothering society as a whole. The
only real long-term solution must provide integration for all
the population.

This fact is largely recognized. The question that is yet to
be honestly faced, is: how? Alternating governments try to
introduce incentives for private enterprise to provide jobs,
but this is clearly not working. Meanwhile, privatization
continues, and with it disappears the government's capacity to
effectively provide social services and jobs.

The only answer is to call a halt to the privatization process
and return to the mixed economy that was the basis for the
European social model, currently being destroyed by so-called
"reforms". France is selling off its utilities, from
Electricité de France to the autoroute network. Such measures
are likely to deepen the social disaster. Advanced industrial
economies require governments capable of taking measures to
provide a minimum of socio-economic equality, in response to
democratic demand, and this is possible only if they possess
the necessary economic resources to subsidize indispensible
social programs and to stimulate job creation, including the
growth of small private enterprise. One can only hope that the
current crisis in France, which so far lacks a coherent
political dimension, will hasten the political revolt against
the neoliberal economic dogma which is plunging the whole
world into chaos.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia,
Nato, and Western Delusions published by Monthly Review Press.
She can be reached at: dianajohnstone at compuserve.com