Today, July 14, is the time for parades, fireworks and popular balls. And yet, the French do not have the heart to celebrate. How could they when the country appears to be downgraded in many areas and has barely emerged from a week of riots of a violence never before reached since its liberation? In 2015, jihadists attacked the very symbols of French civility by murdering simple French people seated on cafe terraces. The tens of thousands of vandals who set fire to the suburbs just two weeks ago have also taken France to the heart by targeting the very symbols of the state and its social ideal: schools, libraries, child care…
Victor Hugo said that to open a school was to close a prison. What would he say today of those who burn down these same schools? Rarely, a July 14 will have taken place in such a tense atmosphere. In 2016, an Islamist ram-truck attack cost the lives of 86 Nice people gathered for the fireworks. If these threats have not disappeared, this time we fear a new conflagration of the suburbs and even demonstrations on the Champs-Élysées. For the first time, cities as important as Strasbourg, Nîmes and Montargis canceled the festivities, saying they were unable to ensure their safety. Never seen !
Heard by the Senate last week, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, tried to put the seriousness of the situation into perspective. According to him, there were only 10% foreigners among the rioters arrested. Big deal ! As if all the French had not seen firsthand that these riots were, for the most part, the work of populations of immigrant origin, regardless of whether they were first, second or third generation. . Last year, the minister attempted a similar move by blaming England supporters for the Champions League final incidents. All the testimonies, however, told how the spectators of the Stade de France had been robbed by gangs of thugs from Seine-Saint-Denis.
This shows the extent of the denial that still characterizes the French elites. Anything rather than admitting that “the riots are the consequence of failures in our immigration policy”, as 59% of French people believe in a recent poll published in THE Figaro.
If, during the riots of 2005, we could still show a certain naivety, this is no longer the case in 2023. As long as they live far from the beautiful districts, everyone has seen their environment transformed by immigration massive. In my only neighborhood, quite characteristic of the last working-class districts of Paris, I saw French caterers disappear one after the other to be replaced by halal butchers. In the neighborhood college, integration has become impossible. Today, we count on the fingers of one hand the so-called “native” French children. And it is not uncommon for them to take on the North African accent. In some places, on the evenings of breaking the fast, it’s like being in Algiers. All this in less than 20 years!
By the simple and unstoppable law of numbers, the French have seen another civilization settle at the gates of their large and medium-sized cities. A parallel world where young men have all the rights and where the strongest lay down the law, while the majority, which is nevertheless the first to suffer from these abuses, is reduced to silence by the weight of communitarianism. A world where mothers – and women in general – are relegated to the margins and have no authority over their sons, who most often grow up fatherless and with impunity.
The French are not mistaken and cite poverty and social inequality only in sixth position among the causes of riots, behind the lack of parental authority, the lack of severity of justice, drug trafficking, immigration and the failure of public policies.
Contrary to what the foreign press says, France is not a racist country. Suffice it to cite the major survey by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights carried out in 2022, which shows a slow and constant progression of tolerance. Even as immigration intensified as never before, its index rose 13 points since 1990.
As explained to Figaro the former director of the Directorate General for External Security, Pierre Brochand, “this explosion is the result of decades of blindness and propaganda against an immigration of settlement whose consequences have never been measured. ” Result ; the massive flows have wiped out any integration policy worthy of the name, despite the billions spent in these neighborhoods on urban renewal, corporate tax exemptions and schools, where the ratios of the lower classes have been reduced by half.
Pointed out by the Anglo-Saxon world, the French nation is today threatened from inside and outside by what the philosopher Catherine Kintzler calls a “feudal crumbling”. A disintegration moreover “encouraged by a Europe which does not shy away from prospering on the dissolution of nations”.
Definitely, this July 14 is like no other.