arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Since the AEL started being active in France 3 years ago, we were very aware of the hard context created by the “ French approach”. Assimilation was on the move, The Islamic veil debate was raging and the reality in the “citees” was socially a disaster and the whole context was violent, very violent. I remember that our choice then was to deal with France slowly, very slowly.

In these three years our activists there were confronted with riots on regular basis, In Paris, Lyon and in Lilles. Nothing special, the regular outburst of anger after the police shoots someone like a rabit in a chase for example, or similar events of French cowboyism that is by no means less intense than that of the Americans. They were also confronted with aggression by Zionist para-military groups that attack pro-Palestine demonstration with knives and Iron bars. The Betar and the Jewish defense League both are notorious in France for their preference of the muscled approach.

We were also regularly confronted with girls denied access to school for wearing a veil. With Police harassment, insults, racist remarks but above all 50 percent unemployment among the youth in the immigrant neighborhoods. Housing that is even under third world standards (you all remembers the fires killing dozens of immigrants recently ) a sense of total disintegration of what makes you a human being on economic, social, cultural and religious levels.

It is a context of absolute oppression, and the irony is that this oppression is done under the pretext of defending the republican values.
What republican values? Are we talking about the three values of liberty, equality, fraternity?

Or did the republic change its values since it has been a colonizer of other peoples? What was left of the republican values of France after its colonialism in Algeria and the rest of Africa? And even if France did survive its colonial period as a democracy at least at home, will it survive its immigration issue and stay a democracy?

I do believe in the three values of the French republic, and I do believe also in a certain chronological sequence linking them one to the other.

The first value is indeed Liberty, and that contains freedom from the basic needs of the body, and the needs of security but also freedom to chose, to think, to live according to your own ideals in respect of others and their ideals. Once liberty is guaranteed equality becomes possible, Equality in chances and if possible in outcome. Equality creates a context where discrimination is a total absurdity; exclusion is unheard of and racial hierarchy a crime.

Once living in such a context Fraternity will be a fact, self evidence. Cohesion in society will be the norm, mutual loyalty to the community of citizens will be enormous and all other problems will be dealt with through dialogue and empathy. Extreme ideas whether they are those of the far-right or those of Fundamentalists and religious fanatics will be marginalized and find no social unrest to feed upon.

But in France of today, you can find no Liberty, certainly no equality and anything but fraternity. France betrayed its republican values and embraced the values of oppression, social exclusion and internal war mongering.
The French example is nothing but an example of repression and heavy handed policing. This can keep things calm for a while, a little while, but eventually the pressured will explode.

In a country like France, the scale of anything is larger than let’s say Belgium or the Netherlands. Millions of immigrants and immigrant descendants live in the country and an important segment of them forms a new under-class. The riots of this week, regardless of the incidental frame of trigger and style, are a soft expression of the situation that I have just described. I say a soft expression, because it can be harder, and if nothing changes it will be harder.

It is not about criminals defending their influence zones and wanting to create no-go zones. It is not about Muslim fundamentalist networks creating a new kind of urban terrorism. These claims are both ridiculous and populist. The French aristocratic class during the pre-revolutionary period in France was also referring to the small riots here and there that preceded the revolution as acts of thugs and criminals. They did not realize that these riots were little storms preceding the hurricane that was looming.

This is about a no future generation crying for justice and demanding it in French revolutionary style, the French way.