Why is France rioting?
Apostate Windbag attempts to answer this question:
It is true that this abandonment of the field allows fundamentalists to fill the void, just as a similar attitude by social democrats to their traditional (white) working class constituency opens the door to the far right, but it is not true, as not a few have been reporting, that the riots are a product of Islamist agents provocateurs. First of all, it should be noted that the rioters are not just ‘beurs’ – French verlan for Arabs – but also black youth. Secondly, to be sure, the riots are anger uncorked, but there is also an explicit political aspect to their actions: “We’ll stop when Sarkozy steps down,” said a Strasbourg rioter, according to the Guardian. Liberation’s interviews with the youth published today show how ‘encore et toujours’ the anger reduces to Sarkozy. ‘C’est nous qui allons passer Sarkozy au K?rcher, c’est l’erreur de sa carri?re. [It is us who will Karcherise Sarkozy. He’s made the error of his career.]’ says one thirteen-year-old. Another pair declare quite perceptively that Sarko’s provocation was simply to put ‘l’ins?curit?’, or crime, back on the agenda ahead of the 2007 presidential elections.
There is a line that runs through the recent strikes – economic, political and general – of France, Belgium and Italy, the movement against Agenda 2010 and vote for the Linkspartei in Germany, and the vote against the neo-liberal European Constitution in the Netherlands and France, and, yes, even the election of the socially conservative but fiscally semi-Keynesian PiS in Poland – and the French riots. This reaction to neo-liberalism is uneven. It cannot in all regions and at all times be called progressive – no one is celebrating these riots – and in parts (particularly in Poland) is incoherent, and can just as easily swing over to the far right or Islamists if the left does not take a lead, but it is nonetheless the inescapable product of years of rightist economic retrenchment combined with, in the case of the French riots, festering racism and exclusion.
All those who believe in a ‘social Europe’ must address this unrest. To turn Thatcher’s commandment on its head – We have no alternative: we must not merely protect but expand Europe’s social provision, or else the fires of Paris’ suburbs will spread right across the continent, one day or another.