Youthist violence again troubles France

Wayne Lutton sends an AP article, “Riot engulfs troubled French district in north, with the comment: “It is a mystery to the AP reporter: can’t identify who is rioting? And who were pulled from their cars? And who lives in the ‘troubled’ district?”

The article shows how the grip of PC is getting conspicuously worse. A few years ago such an article would have said, “Muslim youth,” “Arab youth,” or “immigrant youth.” Now it just says “youth,” “young people,” “conflicts between police and youth,” etc., with no reference to who the youth are. If today’s mainstream media had been in existence hundreds of years ago, they would have had stories like: “Youth Conquer Constantinople,” “Youth Raids Seize Europeans as Slaves,” “Young People Invade Rome, Sack Vatican,” “Young People’s Army Turned Back at the Gates of Vienna—Europe Saved!”

Below I’ve prepared an abridged version of the AP article containing all the passages concerning the mysteriously undescribed rioting “youth” and “young people,” which are highlighted in red, and of course with my bolded interspersed comments.

Riot engulfs troubled French district in north
By LORI HINNANT, Associated Press
August 14, 2012

Months of tension between police and young people in a troubled district of northern France exploded on Tuesday, with dozens of youths facing off against riot officers in a night of violence.

The eruption of violence shows how little relations have changed between police and youths in France’s housing projects since nationwide riots in 2005 …

The sister of the young man who died in the accident said it was impossible for people in her community [LA replies: Um, what community is that?] to even speak with the police.

“As soon as they see young people, it’s to handcuff them or harass them,” said Sabrina Hadji, 22. “The dialogue is completely broken.” [LA replies: So there seems to be a total nationwide standoff between police and young people. My gosh, it’s a “youth rebellion” bigger even than the Sixties!]

At the height of the confrontation, 150 officers—both local and federal riot police—faced off against young men who fired buckshot and fireworks at them

“The confrontations were very, very violent,” Amiens Mayor Gilles Dumailly told the French television network BFM. Dumailly said tensions had been building for months between police and the impoverished residents, whom he described as “people who are in some difficulty.” [LA replies: So now the problem is not youths, but poor people.]

Anger was still running high when Interior Minister Manuel Valls arrived in the neighborhood Tuesday afternoon. A small group of people [LA replies: What—they weren’t young people? Or “people who are in some difficulty”? Then what kind of people were they?] tried to push through Valls’ security detail as he walked through the area, alternately booing him, cursing him and trying to speak to him….

Relations between police and youth in housing projects have been troubled for years, perhaps decades. Riots occasionally erupt, often in the hot nights of August, when France’s rich and middle classes head off for long vacations but poor and immigrant families in the projects stay home. [LA replies: So that’s the cause of the violence—vacational inequality! What France’s youth need is vocational training so they can have better vacations. They’re depraved on account they’re deprived … of vacations.]

“These are small events that stand apart unless they take on greater importance,” he said. “It will take an in-depth reaction (from the government), responding to both criminal and social problems.” [LA replies: Of course, no one can ever say that the problem was bringing these backward unassimilable unemployable aliens into the country in the first place.]

The riots usually follow a pattern: Police target a kid speeding on a motorbike or doing something suspicious; the kid speeds or runs away to escape and dies or gets seriously injured in flight. The neighborhood rises up in anger and that night or the next, young people head out to burn cars, police stations or any building representing authority. Police often respond by coming in force with tear gas, further angering the local population. [LA replies: Got that? The police “target” a “kid.” Meaning, in reality, that the police in the course of performing their duties seek to arrest a Muslim youth who is breaking the law; instead of surrendering, he flees and dies or gets injured in flight. Then the community rises up in riot. So you have a community with many criminals, and this community as a whole sides with the criminals against the police. And all this is society’s fault. Well, yes, it is society’s fault, for bringing these unassimilable aliens into France in the first place. Also, it’s a basic requirement of survival that when police are seeking to arrest you or question you, you do not run, you do not resist, you comply with the officers’ instructions. This is a test of Darwinian fitness that Muslim and black youth consistently fail, but their failure is blamed on the oppressive white society.]

Hadji, whose 20-year-old brother Nadir died in the motorcycle accident, said the violence was a bubbling up from long-simmering anger. She accused local police of provoking the riots by acting too aggressively when they asked for ID from people gathering at a memorial for her brother.

“The police in Amiens really, really, really hate the people in the northern part of Amiens,” she said. “They consider us to be animals.” [LA replies: But based on the AP’s description in a previous paragraph of how these riots start, the people there (and WHAT people are they again?) are animals. (A note to Christianist Pharisees who may be watching this site, to see whether I will say that some people are not human, that they might accuse me: Of course I don’t mean that these people are literally animals; I mean that in their character and conduct they behave like animals.)]

The local government said the riot involved about a hundred young men and began around 9 p.m. Monday, ending around 4 a.m. after federal reinforcements arrived….

Until Monday night, the violence in Amiens had been on a smaller scale. By the time the latest confrontation was over, two school buildings had been burned, along with a dozen cars and trash cans used as flaming barricades. At least three bystanders were hurt when rioters yanked them from their cars, the local officials said….

In recent days, there has also been unrest in the southern city of Toulouse, where rival groups in two housing projects have been battling for a number of days. The violence marked the first major unrest under Hollande, who took office in May. [LA replies: Who are these rival groups, and why are they battling each other? Could they, perhaps, be rival factions of a certain religious demographic?]

Unemployment stands at 12 percent in the Somme, the area in northern France of which Amiens is the governmental seat, compared with 10 percent nationwide. Among French ages 15-24, unemployment stands at 23.3 percent, according to the national statistics agency.

- end of initial entry -


Patrick H. writes:

Here is an article from the NYT about recent rioting in northern France by “youths.” That’s it—“youths.” As I was reading the article, I was reminded of an analogy you once used that modern media is like reading Pravda in the ’70s. Reading the article is maddening. I can’t figure out why there is rioting. Of course I don’t know who is rioting, other than “youths.” But why would young Frenchmen be rioting? Did something happen? The reporting has become so burdened by ideology that it really is rendering routine reporting unintelligible.

Okay, I know, as do you, that the “youths” were Arab youth, not French youth. They were rioting because they are unhappy with their lot in an alien society, which they despise. But imagine if you did not know this underlying reality—the article is really difficult to understand in the absence of this context.

LA replies:

The Times article is not as bad as the AP article. It does at least imply that the present riots are immigrant riots: :

The rioting in Amiens, if it continues or spreads, could represent a challenge to Mr. Hollande in a period of record joblessness and flat economic growth. Weeks of rioting in 2005, in the largely immigrant suburbs around Paris, brought about a state of emergency and much soul-searching in France about integration, assimilation and the ghettolike housing projects that ring the city.

August 15

James P. writes:

The AP article states:

The riots usually follow a pattern: Police target a kid speeding on a motorbike or doing something suspicious; the kid speeds or runs away to escape and dies or gets seriously injured in flight. The neighborhood rises up in anger and that night or the next, young people head out to burn cars, police stations or any building representing authority. Police often respond by coming in force with tear gas, further angering the local population.

This is the exact same logic the media apply to counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency: whatever the government does to stop terrorists or insurgents only angers the local population and “creates more terrorists.”

The New York Times article states:

Weeks of rioting in 2005, in the largely immigrant suburbs around Paris, brought about a state of emergency and much soul-searching in France about integration, assimilation and the ghettolike housing projects that ring the city.

Evidently at no time in the past seven years has all that “soul-searching” enabled the French to reach the massively self-evident conclusion that Muslim immigrants are, as you say, backward, unassimilable, and unemployable, and therefore the French should cease to tolerate this violent and unassimilable alien presence.

LA replies:

That’s a funny point about how all that soul-searching—seven years of national soul-searching—has lead to zero new thoughts, let alone to the most obvious thought.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 14, 2012 05:36 PM | Send
    

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