|
Ralph Peters is a regular columnist with the New
York Post.
Register here for access to the Post's Online Edition.
 France's
Intifada
Chiarc has an insurgency to call his very own...
[Ralph
Peters] 11/9/05
France has
cancer and insists it's just a rash. After two weeks of expanding
immigrant violence, the government's inept response has turned
a local riot into a nationwide insurrection.
French abuse
of Arab and African minorities — mostly Muslims — made
it only a matter of time before the country's prison-like ghettos
exploded. 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.
Given the
abysmal conditions in France's Muslim concentration-camps-without-walls,
the government had only one chance of suppressing the uproar:
An immediate, uncompromising crackdown on the Paris suburb
where the trouble began. That would have bought the state a
little time.
Contributors
Ralph Peters - Contributor
Ralph
Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books,
as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both
under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist
for the New York Post and other publications. [go to Peters Index] |
Instead, the Gallic cock behaved like a headless chicken, stunned
by the ingratitude of 5 million brown and black residents who
failed to appreciate discrimination, jobless rates of up to 50
percent, public humiliation, crime, bigotry and, of course, the
glorious French culture that excluded them through an informal
apartheid system.
Now the devil's been
conjured. The government's vacillation revealed the power of
the street. Teenage rioters control much
of France by night — a situation more akin to an insurgency
than to the strikes and demonstrations so beloved of French workers
and students.
France's oppressed
minorities have discovered their power, dominating the streets
and the media. The country will never be the same.
With thousands of cars torched, schools and shops burned, government
buildings attacked and French policemen shot by snipers, this
is an uprising — not some repeat of the white-kids' tantrum
of 1968, when spoiled brats rebelled against their parents.
Media apologists for
France's "more humane" system
attempt to play down the importance of what's happening by comparing
it to that romanticized tomfoolery in '68. But those theatrical
disorders were white-on-white, a family argument, and a perfect
fit for the French myth of themselves as born revolutionaries.
This time, it's different. And serious. Darker-skinned outsiders
are pounding on the door of Monsieur Hulot's maison.
Paralyzed French officials
complain of "unfair" media
attention (welcome to the reality club, Pierre). Yet, hardly
two months ago the French media celebrated the suffering in New
Orleans — ignoring the brave response of millions of Americans
to Hurricane Katrina to concentrate exclusively on the Crescent
City's lower 9th ward and one nutty, incompetent mayor.
Utterly devoid of self-awareness, the French cherish their image
of America as racist. But minorities in the United States have
opportunities for which their French counterparts would risk
their lives. Our problem is that demagogues convince the poorest
of our poor to give up on getting ahead. In France, the non-white
poor never have a chance of any kind.
France has no Colin
Powell or Condi Rice, no minority heading the equivalent of
a Fortune 500 company, no vibrant minority
political culture. When Americans who adore la vie en France
go to Paris (the intelligentsia's Orlando), they don't visit
the drug-and-crime-plagued slums. If tourists encounter a Moroccan
or a Senegalese "Frenchman," he's cleaning up the sidewalks
after the dogs of the bourgeoisie.
Willfully blind to reality, liberals continue to praise the
racist culture of France by citing the Parisian welcome for Josephine
Baker or the Harlem jazz musicians in the 1920s. But the French
regarded those few as exotic pets. The test is how they treat
the millions of immigrant families whose members don't play trumpets
in bars or sell their flesh in strip clubs.
There is no Western country more profoundly racist than France.
There's nothing resembling equal-opportunity programs or affirmative
action. Even if the government attempts some half-hearted reforms
in the wake of the current uproar, the average French employer
will have none of it (they don't even want to hire more white
citoyens). And French voters will turn hard right at the next
election.
Does anyone really believe that the country that enthusiastically
handed over more of its Jewish citizens to the Nazis than the
Nazis asked for is going to treat brown or black Muslims as equals?
Meanwhile, the Chirac government is stunned. Its members truly
believed that supporting Arab and African dictators and defying
America's efforts to liberate tens of millions of Muslims would
buy safety from the 5 million immigrants and their children who
have not the slightest hope of a decent future.
As I wrote in my
last book, this violence was inevitable. Continental Europe has
no model for integrating immigrants into the social
and economic mainstream. Instead of creating tomorrow's jobs,
Europe protects yesterday's. Talented young Europeans struggle
to come to the United States to work (but they'll settle for
Britain). And "Old Europe's" prejudices go deeper than
those in our Deep South of 50 years ago.
The current phase
of France's immigrant insurgency — with
riots in 300 cities and towns — will sputter out eventually.
But any return to peace will be a false peace. France has been
changed irrevocably. The internal enemy created by Gallic bigotry
has been mobilized.
Desperate apologists for France's apartheid system claim that
the present uproar is merely about youthful anger, that Muslim
fundamentalism isn't in play. Just wait. Islamist extremists
aren't stupid. Thrilled by this spontaneous uprising, they'll
move to exploit the fervor of the young to serve their own ends.
Expect terror. Whether the current violence ebbs tonight or
lasts for weeks to come, the uprising of the excluded and oppressed
in the streets of France has only begun.
Meanwhile, every American who believes in racial equality and
human dignity should sympathize with the rioters, not with the
effete bigots on the Seine.-one-
Ralph Peters'
latest book is New
Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy
This
piece first appeared in the New
York Post
copyright 2004 - NY Post
Rush
Limbaugh
§
|
q