Tell me I’m dreaming, did I read it right? Yes, I did read that correctly.
About the recent riots in France, David Morin has this staggering sentence: “ […] for some young French people, violence is a way to be heard, to exist and to claim full citizenship status […] “.
So, if you don’t feel like a full-fledged citizen, you can burn Restos du Coeur, demolish itinerant heart screening trailers, set fire to thousands of vehicles (12,000 according to The Obs), in addition to attempting to assassinate the wives and children of elected officials, to ravage volunteer centers, schools and libraries, and to vandalize 200 municipalities while looting businesses to match.
So what should we do in the face of this urban conflagration? Above all, no major police interventions, replies the author, that would feed the violence. In some cases, state intervention would have certain virtues, but the security reflex would fuel the vicious circle of violence! I who thought that since Hobbes, the main theoretician of the modern state, we considered security as the main purpose of the state.
Security is not a right among others, in fact, but the prerequisite for the exercise of all rights. So ask the citizens who see the buses set on fire, the schools attacked, if they feel safe!
In the very outlying suburbs where the mutineers live, you will hear the same lament, the same desolation. A citizen deplored this urban conflagration: “Desacralizing war memorials, I cannot see that as a form of homage to Nahel”. She added that violence reinforced the stigmata that mark cities.
Of course, we must fight against the scourge of discrimination, but if we really want to understand, we must stop denying and look at everything, including the cultural and family traits of the rioters. One element that caught the attention of observers of these riots was the young age of the enraged, even 13-year-olds.
Could their destructive rage be rooted in a violent family and clan environment?
Based on the work of North African psychologists and surrounded by a team from the Reinforced Educational Centers, the majority of whose members come from North Africa, the child psychiatrist Maurice Berger would answer yes, because he works precisely in the field with violent minors. of his region, the majority of whom are of immigrant origin.
His work goes beyond the classical psychotherapeutic framework, but seeks to compensate for the neglect and abuse within families often linked to an environment integrating male-female inequality.
Sixty-nine percent of the very violent adolescents encountered had in fact been exposed to scenes of conjugal violence during the first two years of their life. These children unfortunately take refuge in clans where virility rhymes with violence and lack of limits, where the law of the group takes precedence over the law of the State. The neighborhood becomes a tinsel of identity. The curative maintenance allows adolescents to live an experience of confrontation without destruction in Winnicott’s sense1.
This doctor, who also taught at the National School of the Judiciary, is not a populist of the identity right, Mr. Morin, he is an internationally recognized specialist in violence among adolescents. Let’s hear it.
The educational pathway and assistance to parents should be valued. In fact, the family transmission of the value of respect for others in all its dimensions is essential. Justice that does not abuse suspended sentences would also help. We would save ourselves the work of reconstruction, not only of the person, but also of the City.
1 See in particular M. Berger, On gratuitous violence in France: Hyper-violent adolescents, testimonies and analysisEd. The Artilleryman, 2019.