Hi Col-

Well, I agree with you that French economic policies contribute to disconnectedness and hopelessness but around 10% of non-Muslim Frenchmen are in a similar economic jam and they have not taken to the streets lately to burn automobiles.

Secondly, there's a remarkably non-random aspect to the violence targeting certain types of state and private property and not people. A purely spontaneous riot event on this scale ( you mentioned 1960's America, a very good example. LA 1990's would be another) tends to pile up dead bodies and lots of injured people in significant numbers. Riot violence is, by definition, uncontrolled and it tends toward being escalatory until it naturally peaks and subsides or meets with a massive show of force by the State.

These riots are flatlining along a certain level of disorder which is not the normal course of such events. It's good that more people are not getting killed but that also means a level of calculated restraint is present.

I don't think Salafism or Islamism is rife among French Muslims though discontent and anger seems to be; on the contrary I would expect that Islamist radicalism is quite a small minority viewpoint. The arson would appear, at least to me from MSM and European media, to be conducted by a very small and well disciplined group with some help from opportunistic copycats as media reports make torching cars the symbolic thing to do.

Let me take this.....

"Well, I agree with you that French economic policies contribute to disconnectedness and hopelessness but around 10% of non-Muslim Frenchmen are in a similar economic jam and they have not taken to the streets lately to burn automobiles."

Is there a point there? Maybe rioting Muslim and African communities have a different sense of alienation and community and that affects their reaction to social and political and economic policies that leave them behind. That's a given.

Yes, matthew there is a point that economic desperation ( or bad policy) isn't the simple unicausal explanation ( though Col's correct that they have generally provided the powder for a match to be set to). Nor is social discrimination. There's 6 million + French Muslims, they aren't all rioting after all.

Take a look at how the L.A. Riots peaked compared to these and tell me there isn't a dynamic at work beyond poverty and discrimination.

Actually, Mark, they bloody well have. The riots are not "Muslim" - they're African and North African, of which a good percentage are, of course, Muslim by religion. But not all, by any stretch of the imagination.

I suppose you might know that if you knew the situation. Having just read your blog post, I add that I find it risibly ill informed, ludicrous in its ill-informed extrapolations and beneath you.

Now as to your comments on "tends to" - well different cultures, different habits. Burning cars and having such fun but without US style massacres and blood letting have long been features of modern French "street action" - from 68 to now.

it seems that whatever is going on and whatever the root cause, it's spreading all across france. what do you think the possibilties are for this thing to spread throughout the EU? i can think of a few other countries that have some problems similar to france.

Well, I agree with you that French economic policies contribute to disconnectedness and hopelessness but around 10% of non-Muslim Frenchmen are in a similar economic jam and they have not taken to the streets lately to burn automobiles.

Speaking as someone who spent her 1994 Paris vacation being tear-gassed while going to investigate a demonstration over reductions in the youth minimum wage, I tend to disagree with you. I saw overturned cars burning, shop windows smashed, and had my camera ripped off my neck by a very white teenage person, presumably French. In fact, I don't recall a significant visibly non-ethnic French presence, and I spent a couple of hours at the demo talking to people before it turned violent. So I guess it depends on what you call "recently."

Well Col, admittedly I have been wrong before and I don't have your intimate familiarity with either France or MENA but things seem to be seriously askew here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1107/p01s01-woeu.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4412316.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1635941,00.html

Perhaps you think I'm bashing France or Muslims, I'm not doing either; aside from waiting ten days to make any comment at all, I have taken pains to state that any coordinated acts of violence are the workings of a very small group, not Muslims in general. The U.S. media outlets are not covering the news here in much detail,so I'm certain you are seeing reports I have not, but ten straight days of rioting is not normal. Even in '68, which was a case of much more widespread societal unrest, the days when rioting and street battles with police occurred were spread out over a period of months

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Also thanks for the link to the Figaro article.

Mark:

Actually I don't think you personally are bashing. What I do think is you have been suckered into an analysis that has little relationship with reality but is plugged into a "meme" (to use that ugly word) among the American right at present with respect to these incidents.

The artys you link to, by the way, are irrelevant to your analysis per se. Note, e.g. the "black African youths" in the Guardian arty. Black African youths in France does not mean [Muslim] Black African youths, it means Black African [descended] youths, perhaps Muslim, perhaps not. In the suburbs things fall out rather more by 'race' than religion in terms of housing patterns; West Africans with West Africans, Central Africans with Central Africans, Maghrebines with Maghrebines....., although all the "non-original French" tend to live in similar if not the same areas.

Further your analysis of the timing is simply wrong - there have been a long running series of riots along these lines in France over the past several years. There is, to be short, nothing novel about this except the Anglo press has taken notice and that it is more widespread and severe than usual (although the spread of internet and mobiles may explain this).

None of this is "normal" of course, but neither is it novel nor is there any reason to give credence to the wild talk in American circles and elsewhere of an Islamist intefada in France.

As for Doug's question, the chance I give is zero.

This is what I read this blog for - what an absolutely perfect take down to what has largely been an extremely ignorant American response to something 99% of them know absolutely nothing about.

I've been a lurker for some time but just wanted to congratulate you on a tight, cogent statement illuminating what is a very complex and difficult situation - one that has been gaining steam for decades, and one, sadly, that has its origin in policies dictated in earlier times.

I also agree with you that those with any kind of French literacy are often getting more of the "true" story, rather than the watered down mind numbing crap that passes for American news outlets these days.