[Peace-discuss] France troubles: A (different) view from Russia.

[Morton K. Brussel]

ZNet | Race

Riots in France

by Boris Kagarlitsky; November 11, 2005

For two weeks now, France has been rocked by street violence and  
arson. And for two weeks, Russian commentators have held forth about  
the "Muslim factor" and "ethnic conflicts."
It's easier to spout cliches than to figure out what's really  
happening, of course. But if our talking heads had taken the time to  
watch the television news more attentively, they would have realized  
that at least a third of the rampaging youths in France are not Arabs  
but the children of black African immigrants. And if a few of these  
wise men and women had bothered to stray from the usual tourist spots  
or to talk with the locals on their trips to Paris, they would have  
discovered that the Arab teenagers living in the working-class  
suburbs not only speak no language other than French, but they also  
have no clue about Islam. This is doubly true of young French blacks.
It goes without saying that there are plenty of orthodox Muslims in  
France who observe Ramadan, never let alcohol pass their lips and  
forbid their daughters from appearing in public with their heads  
uncovered. But these people have absolutely nothing to do with the  
current unrest. Conservative French Muslims keep their distance from  
the rest of society. They do not allow their children to adopt  
depraved local mores and attempt to shield them from contact with  
Christians. Such orthodox Muslims present no problem for the  
authorities. Like any other conservative community, they seek to  
avoid contact with the outside world. By attempting to bar Muslim  
girls from attending school in headscarves, the authorities did much  
to provoke a conflict, but this is another matter. There is a big  
difference between the complaints of religious conservatives and  
teenagers rioting in the streets.
Russian analysts love a good conspiracy theory. It is generally  
assumed that someone has instigated, ordered and/or bankrolled every  
major crisis that comes along. Strangely enough, however, they didn't  
take this line with regard to the events in France, although The  
International Herald Tribune noted on Nov. 3 that "like everything  
else that happens in France these days, the rioting has become  
embroiled in the political succession war between the prime minister,  
Dominique de Villepin, and the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy,  
both of whom canceled foreign trips to deal with the crisis." The  
riots have proven disastrous for the prime minister, while they have  
given Sarkozy grounds for demanding additional powers. This may  
explain the strange ineffectiveness of the police during the early  
days of the uprising.
In fact, the causes of the crisis must be sought not in the areas of  
religion, culture or backroom political maneuvering. Around 150 years  
ago Europe was shaken by riots very similar to those we're seeing  
today. In France the unrest occurred in the very same suburbs, the  
same streets. No cars were torched back then because they didn't yet  
exist, of course. And police, not yet constrained by any concern for  
humane conduct, opened fire on the unruly crowds without much warning.
Fashionable sociologists have long been discussing the "disappearance  
of the proletariat" in Western countries. What they seem not to have  
noticed is that the proletariat has returned to these countries in  
its original form and has inhabited the same depressed suburbs in  
which the current middle class began its rise up the social ladder.  
Just like the proletariat of the mid-19th century, today's working  
poor have few rights, no native country and nothing to lose but their  
chains. This huge group of people doomed to labor in low-paying jobs  
when they can find work at all are naturally not distinguished by any  
particular loyalty to the state or respect for the law.
Benjamin Disraeli described the rich and the poor as two separate  
nations. Today, this is quite literally true, since the proletariat  
and the bourgeoisie generally belong to different ethnic groups. As a  
result, liberal society can close its eyes to social conflict by  
attributing all of the problems that arise to religious and cultural  
differences and the difficulties of assimilation. No one wants to see  
that the teenagers in the streets of France today are fully  
assimilated. They have broken with their cultural and religious roots  
and become part of European society, but they have not gained equal  
rights, and this is why they are rioting.
A shift in social policy to the left or the right will change nothing  
at this point. The only way to solve the problems of the proletariat  
is to change society, a point made more than a century ago by an  
immigrant living in London: Karl Marx.
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