Thoughts on the Paris Intifada

As always comes in the world of the blog we tend to form two camps of people on an issue. I have weighed in on what *in my mind* is the most important event of this year but other bloggers have weighed in. Dean has weighed in on the more skeptical side, and Jack Grant and John Cole have both weighed in. They all seem to repeat a thread “Look to the 1970s” as a comparison. I think much we see in this new century is outside the helpful old notions and chestnuts of the 20th (though some of those issues did linger into the 20th)

Now let me put some caveats;

-Some- hyperventilation on massive Islamic acts of anti-semitism have occurred. Some of these events have most certainly occurred. But not to the degree that was first reported.
-Some- of the events may right now simply be a fog of war
And
-Some- of the rhetoric from the “youths” may simply be their way to ape the Shadid who has been promoted in their culture.

But the picture I see does suggest a previous picture in history, a previous picture far more akin to France and Europe then the race riots of the 1970s. I see this akin to the revolutions which started in the 1790s in France and ended in the bloody mess of the Paris Commune.

The fact that these cultures of Islamic France and European France are alienated from each other is a fact but the alienation owes less to events in France and more events from their homelands. People from Mali, Tunisia, Algeria, and other former French colonies are the leaders of these bands of “youths”. The French culture and the culture of Europe have spoken ad-nauseam on the dominant society. An evil that is recounted also; in hushed stories from grand-fathers, or fathers recounting the stories of their father’s father. As the society of France becomes this evil other the society of Islam and traditionalism becomes pure.

As this revisionism is placed upon their society we enter the mosques funded and imam’s trained under the Salaif-Al Wahhab interpretation of Islam. The Mosques sell a vision of Islam in war with an impure land and an impure way of life where these young ears have lived their whole life. The fact more Muslims enter the country, and the fact that more Muslims are born in the nation of France sanctifies what they are doing. This evil impure culture is dying, and we are growing strong.

A nation which can no longer supply its factories with sons of the heroism of Charles Martel now needs people from the depths of the Slavic world to participate in their factories.  And combining now with extremist Islam and colonial rage is economic fallowness. But an economic fallowness on a class of people who have come to do work the native born French were once unable to do. In this they are like those men who first manned the barricades of Paris. On their backs any nation of France that exists in the future will most surely be born.

Due to the poverty and substance on the welfare state they find themselves embracing European leftist. The same leftists who have advocated for Palestinian self determination, the same political left which has in the United Kingdom devolved powers and now in Spain seeks to grant autonomy to the Basques surely such a left will grant them their own autonomy.

These trends are not unique to France so is it any wonder we see their like in Denmark, Germany, and Belgium now. While the acts in Germany and Belgium the riots in Denmark are akin to the riots in France though Danish authorities are certain those were planned. If a single “European Federation” is born will we not see balkanized Islamic islands as equals to a France or an Italy? Have they not already proposed such ideas for other European minorities like the Basques?

Just as in the 18th and 19th century we saw an ascension of a Europe born with workers and entrepreneurs that formed a democratic nation-state system. We now see a Europe which soon will be born as a nation of former colonial peoples and a small minority of those who hold the blood of Alfred the Great, Shakespeare, and Charlemagne. This new Europe that will cast out the baby of the –positives- of western civilization, with the bathwater of colonial ills and form a new civilization.

Are the streets of Europe doomed to see stoning? Will a Neo-Taliban regime come to power in the halls of Versailles? This fate can be avoided by Europe moving beyond ethnic identities and embracing a national identity of values. Embracing islands of immigrants who can embrace that national identity or make it grow greater, and rejecting those who hold values alien to that identity. This is the framework that has made immigration successful in the United States, and can save the failed European model.

I understand the drive to “nuance” these issues. Other immigrant groups in Europe are not rioting. Other groups have unemployment as bad as the “youths” so economics cannot be the justification. Their enclaves and ghetto’s became areas where the police and many of the organs of the state de-facto resigned control of those regions. So we cannot say this is a problem with a lack of integration. You ignore the colonial and cultural aspects of this problem at your peril, but more importantly you ignore how the socialism of Europe has lead to a calcification of these islands of radicalism.
We ignore the role of cultural relativism in this at our peril as well. It is wrong to allow the beating of women. The Koran speaks to how a husband should properly treat his wife, but because cultures have taken the Koran it is perceived ( falsely) as Islamic by those who practice these cultural trends much older then their embracing the words of the prophet and –fatally- by those who feel a guilt for the oppression of their fathers and grand fathers. Beating women is wrong, raping women is wrong, murdering one for committing crimes against your family is wrong, and if we cannot say what is wrong as a culture those who have no problem asserting that vision end up rising to govern the culture.

If we try to make this the 1960s and 1970s in the United States we fail the people of Europe and we fail ourselves in this important learning moment of these events