France’s turbulent history with North Africa, and its refusal to recognise immigrants as French, have resulted in widespread alienation and violence. From colonialism’s scars to modern-day terrorism, says Ed West in the Spectator, the ‘French Intifada’ grapples with integration, identity, and a nation at odds with itself. Here’s an excerpt:
Seven years ago on Friday, a 31 year-old man got behind the wheel of a 19-tonne lorry and purposefully drove it down Nice’s Promenade des Anglais at speed as crowds celebrated France’s Bastille Day. Eighty-six people were killed, including 14 children, the image of an infant’s corpse wrapped in foil beside a toy shocking a country that had grown wearily used to violence.
The previous November, 130 people had been murdered across Paris in a series of attacks which reached their most intense savagery at the Bataclan. This followed earlier atrocities that year at the Charlie Hebdo office and a Jewish supermarket in the French capital. In all cases the attackers were of North African origin, although often born and raised in France.
Visiting the country that summer felt quite strange, with soldiers stationed at every conceivable public place amid a sense of acute tension. Even in a small village fête in Provence, four soldiers and four armed police walked around guarding all entrances. It brought back childhood memories of Northern Ireland, and of visiting Israel during the Second Intifada. Indeed, this was the phrase that had started to be used to describe the state of emergency: the French Intifada.
France’s refusal to recognise immigrants as anything but French has often been blamed for the widespread sense of alienation
The recent violence in Paris and elsewhere, which saw attempts to ram the home of a mayor, once again highlighted the trouble the country has with integration. But the French police union describing themselves as being ‘at war with vermin’ illustrated a different mindset to the English-speaking world, and a far more belligerent approach to the problems of diversity.
Like Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, France has had difficulties assimilating the children of immigrants from beyond Europe, yet its recent history has proved especially violent and troubled. Britain has jihadi terrorism – 2017 was especially grim – but it has never reached such intensity. Last week, as over 130,000 police officers stood guard to protect the Republic on the day of its celebration, it is worth considering the journey that brought it to such a state.
Analysts have often compared Britain’s state multiculturalism with France’s system of laïcité, which tends to downplay the existence of ‘communities’ even to the point of not taking demographic statistics. Although neither country’s approach has entirely been a success, France’s refusal to recognise immigrants as anything but French has often been blamed for the widespread sense of alienation. Others point to the housing system, which tends towards concentrations of North and West Africans in suburban banlieues, or the less laissez-faire economic policy which results in higher unemployment (in exchange for better social security).
While they no doubt play a part, the biggest single difference is history, as Andrew Hussey recounted back in 2014 in The French Intifada, in particular France’s history with North Africa. To put it in British terms, imagine that Britain’s rule in Pakistan had involved not a small number of administrators and soldiers but instead hundreds of thousands of British settlers arriving in the country, many with the intention of making it a ‘new America’ (i.e., driving the natives out).
That Britain had declared Pakistan an integral part of the country, and that, rather than scarpering in indecent haste when the empire began to disintegrate, Britain had dug in to preserve its rule in a sadistic war of independence, one in which natives and white settlers committed countless atrocities against each other. And that this violence had spilled into Britain with assassination attempts and terrorism, by both sides, destabilising the country to the point where there was talk of a coup. And that this was happening just as large-scale immigration to the colonial power was taking place.
Britain experienced nothing like as much violence in the dying days of empire, and indeed the only real comparison with our history was the moment when there was almost all-out conflict between Britain’s Protestant and Irish Catholic populations before the First World War.
If French politicians so casually talk of ‘civil war’ between its right wing and the Algerian-descended population, it is because it has already played out this conflict before – one that was never healed, and so invites a sequel.
Worth reading in full.
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“Like Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, France has had difficulties assimilating the children of immigrants from beyond Europe”
Well, where should the primary responsibility lie? With the nation or with the immigrant? I would argue the latter. The failure IMO is that the nation should have recognised before it allowed this to happen that “assimilation” of such large numbers in such a short space of time was neither possible nor desirable.
When there are lots of Immigrants from the same country of origin, they tend to settle in colonies where they can bring their culture with them, ie, assimilation/ integration doesn’t happen. If this was otherwise, the outcome could hardly be a multi-cultural society or rather, loads of culturally different societies whose members don’t usually mingle with outsiders. Eg, there are Caribbean barbers in Reading who refuse to serve white people. I tried this once and got unceremoniously thrown out immediately. It’s possible to buy stuff in Indian supermarkets but this can occasionally get a little tight because the only other white people who go their belong firmly into the white trash category and buy nothing except cheap booze. Nobody who knows these kinds of shops would consider them English. Even Polish supermarkets remain decidedly Polish (they’re a great source of vegetables usually not consumed by English people like parsley roots, salsify or white aparagus) and people who obviously aren’t can expect some odd looks.
My experience with Polish supermarkets in the UK is the same as with Poles in the UK – they work hard to integrate themselves – and succeed. After all, their culture is very similar to UK culture – any differences are subtle.
After all, their culture is very similar to UK culture – any differences are subtle.
A pretty bizarre statement. English people are usually more-or-less agnostic or atheist protestants, Poles are mostly devout Catholics. There are also many whose English is poor to non-existant as they often don’t really need it. There are really many more fundamental differences. This goes to the point that Polish housewives go into Polish supermarkets whose customers are predominantly other Poles, where the most frequently spoken language is Polish, in order to buy imported Polish carrots and potatoes there (so do I, for that matter, as the two common English potato varieties – marbles and bowling balls – are not very suitable for the use I want to put them to). Many English people are also just as fond of Poles as they’re fond of travellers¸ ie, not at all.
Is it those of Polish or UK origin who you say can’t speak English. Gotta ask!
I have no idea. Probably Polish. I just noticed that some things are very difficult to get accross with some of the women working in the supermarket I’m thinking of.
The differences between Englishmen and Poles are clearly trivial compared to those between Englishmen and Roma, Englishmen and Somalis and Englishmen and Afghans.
After all, the Poles who remained in England after WW2 were very easily assimilated, and on several occasions I’ve heard Poles in Corby Asda speaking to their pre-school children in English.
They’re probably smaller. But this American notion that so-called white people are basically a homogenous mass is still completely wrong-headed. This may be true for the USA after a century of cross-breeding (although I doubt that). It’s certainly not true in Europe. I’ve met second-generation descendant of Polish jews in England who were certainly completely English[*] but that’s very much different for the more recent influx from the EU. These people are Polish and clearly intend to remain so.
[*] Minus the fact that the not-so-much-of-a-lady immediately started a minor quarrell — more a heated discussion – with me because I was German and she was an Jew with a Polish heritage.
duplicate
True – sheer volume per minute precludes assimilation in the best of circumstances; but there is another obstacle – the degree to which people are visibly and / or habitually alien to the natives, in ways which cannot be ironed out or ignored. I submit that the large scale immigration of groups who are visibly and physically different will inevitably – and in ANY society – produce ghettoes and division. The Chinese might assimilate Koreans; they could never assimilate – let us say – Nigerians, Moroccans or Aboriginals. Similarly, European societies can never assimilate the vast numbers of wildly different populations foisted upon us by the self-hating, Utopian left. The best it might have produced was a polyglot market place – a miserable environment in itself. But we aren’t getting even that. Lastly, and most heretically of all, different populations are more or less peaceful; more or less productive; more or less self-sufficient; more or less clannish; more or less disdainful or antagonistic to their hosts, because – surprise, surprise – they have histories and general characteristics too! Orientals have caused us no problems at all. North Africans are currently terrorising France, Belgium, Holland and western Europe; sub-Saharan Africans weigh heavily in the stats of petty crime, welfare dependency and occasional violence. And so on. The truth which is emerging – too late, as so damn frequently, is that the Powellites were spot on and that their opponents were a sordid blend of cowardice and malice. As the lament goes for the fall of England’s monasteries: “Walsingham, ah, farewell!” For Walsingham, read Europe – wantonly poisoned and over-run with the connivance of the vicious reds.
Spot on
I hardly think lack of integration or alienation are a satisfactory explanation ( although they are issues that need addressing in and of themselves ) for the atrocities described above. Getting behind the wheel of a truck with the intention of mowing down and killing as many civilians as possible is not something done on the spur of the moment. It’s premeditated and well planned. The act of somebody truly wicked. There are too many fanatics that are so far gone mentally that they will justify every heinous act they perform because their psychopathic, paedophile Prophet urges them to do so in the Koran, therefore it’s all good. The French government are the enemy of the people. They prioritize welcoming unlimited psychopaths ( obviously this doesn’t apply to all immigrants but how well are these people vetted? ) into the country over the citizens’ safety and welfare. Just another recent example. Would you like a radical Islamist, supposedly ”rehabilitated” by the courts, flying your plane?
”They are fanatics but are there legally: you can’t tell them anything!
They supposedly arrive to do “the jobs that the citizens don’t want to do.”
Then, their children who arrived with family reunification have other children who become citizens by right of the soil, in France, at the age of eighteen.
And then they start to become policemen, politicians… and airplane pilots.
And you can’t stop Mohammed, an Islamic fanatic, from becoming a pilot, because our insane anti-discrimination laws forbid it.
And then, we find them at the controls of Air France planes.”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/07/france-court-reinstates-muslim-migrant-commercial-airline-pilot-with-radical-beliefs-approaching-sharia
Listen to the lizard Spectre and watch her eyes.. she tells you out front what’s going to happen to Europe and who’s going to be responsible for carrying out the Kalergi plan. Everything else is a distraction..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G45WthPTo24
If rats invade your hen house and start breeding, the pups do not magically become chickens. And your eggs keep going missing and your chickens dying.
Good one gavin.. I’m avin that.. with your kind permission of course..
Too much islam is destined to end badly and bloodily – they are not civilised people.
The African Muslim immigrants refuse to become French.
France is a secular nation. Religion plays no part in its Governance or Laws. Religious symbols are prohibited in State-run functions, including schools.
There are no blasphemy laws; no faith is protected from criticism or ridicule.
Muslim immigrants do not accept this – in France – or elsewhere. They refuse to become French, just as many refuse to become British.
UK has had no “difficulty” assimilating children of immigrants. The very idea that it should be done was explicitly excluded by the Blair policy of multi cultural use which all other Westminster parties have endorsed and continued. There is no intention or wish to integrated (assimilate) and it has rarely happened.
We Brits are entitled to call out our elites who have condemned the public for having racist ways when it is the country they must admire that has the problem.
‘France’s refusal to recognise immigrants as anything but French…’
The author says this twice in the course of this article – but I think he means:
France’s refusal to recognise immigrants as French…
Right?