Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Paris Burns

I know I've dropped off on the political stuff in this blog, But my god. These riots are too interesting.

It's not quite what we've discussed in Europe and Islam, one of the subjects I've almost finished this semester, where it was suggested the French reaction to the immigrants from North Africa has hardly been inclusive. Multiculturalism is an idea Australians my age accept without trouble - everyone's got their own thing, and it's all Australian. Fair 'Nuff. France on the other hand, is staunchly proud of it's culture, which it feels to be under threat from Americanisation, the Anglophone nations, and of course Islam.

It can be thought of in the same terms as the anti-semetic sentiment before and during WWII - something that wasn't just limited to Germany, or the Continent. The St. Louis was a ship carrying 900 Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba, where they were rejected, and their attempts to get into Florida failed as well. They were forced to return to Europe, where over half died in the Holocaust.
The North African Immigrants are mainly separate from the rest of French society, and they are picked on by police. One of the articles i've read online (a couple of days ago now) had a quote from one of the rioting kids atelling about how the police would do identity checks on buses, and if they were from these particular suburbs, and looked different, the police would be questioning their reasons for going into the centre of Paris. The police use the word 'Tu' when talking to the youths, instead of the formal and respectful 'Vous'. Imagine Police here saying 'Oi, You', instead of 'Sir'.

The thing is, the Riots may not be as racially charged as I'd come to think they'd be from all this study. Youth Unemployment reaches around 40% (national average 10%), and I'd bet a fair amount of those employed are under-employed. Can't help but thinking about Macquarie Fields - the difference being that Mac kids were the only ones who shared an identity with the kids that died in the car chase. the two electrocuted french kids running from police were different, one North African and the other an Arab. the response was not limited to their suburb, but spread as the Interior Minister egged the rioters on - calling them 'scum', 'low-lifes', and 'dregs'.

Cars are burnt in France every night, it's become the act of vandalism of choice. half the kids might be just using the rioting as an excuse to set off a few more while the police are all about, and there's lots of other kids in baggy jeans and hoodies running about, so they can get away with it.

Destroying the world, just to see what happens. posted by Keegan at 6:47 pm

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