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Fitzgerald: The nonsensical coverage of the riots in France

Nov 7, 2005 9:52 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald assesses coverage of the Muslim riots in France:

So much nonsense is appearing — see any number of NPR stations, or the New Duranty Times, where Craig Smith is outdoing himself day by day and leaving a nice record for someone to dissect. Smith, who last year wrote an article about Bat Ye’or, apparently never read, or never took in, Eurabia — don’t bother him, his mind is made up.

Everything has been done to deny completely any Muslim connection. According to NPR, “young men” rioted in France. These “young men” were also “disaffected youth.” They were “angry and frustrated” because they, these “young men,” were “jobless.” These “jobless” young men and their families lived in “bleak” housing projects and though all medical care and education was free for them (all of it, period) these “young men” were “angry and frustrated” because apparently the state subsidies are not enough to overcome that “anger” and “frustration” and those “demands” which must be met. This despite the fact that those subsidies amount to round about $1,200 a month, which quite a few French non-Muslims are delighted to receive, and which comes along with all that free (and where there is no disruption from Muslim students, often excellent) education and free (first-world, not Muslim world) health care.

No one notices that all other immigrant groups, similarly situated when they arrive, and many of them consisting of people who have no knowledge of French to begin with (unlike many maghrebins), receiving nothing different. Yet they manage to survive, to thrive, or if not to rise high, at least to be glad, even grateful, that they have reached the refuge of France.

The sentimental ne-touche-pas-a-mon-pote times are over. The glorification of primitives, with their verlan and “beur culture” (which is not “culture” in the traditional, pre-sociological sense, at all) should stop. The vaporings of Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel, the twin idiots (the “experts” whom Craig Smith tells us insist that “Islam” had nothing to do with this) should be disregarded by anyone in France who has any influence at all.

If Islam had nothing to do with it, why is “Allahu Akbar” shouted? Why are all of the rioters Muslims except possibly for a nearly invisible handful of neighbor boys who, fearful of showing that they won’t join their “pals,” then join in — not out of conviction, but out of fear of what the others will think of them, or do to them? Isn’t it worth investigating — why black Africans who are non-Muslim, or black Antillais, are taking no part in these riots? Shouldn’t the sparing of Muslim stores, and the attacks themselves, reveal what they are about? After all, they are merely a concentration of the year-round attacks, the vandalism of stores, the attacks on French people here and there and everywhere. Why do people vote for the likes of Le Pen or Megret, after all? They do so because they are trying to express, in most cases, their anguish and fury — and the Respectable Parties will not allow themselves to do it, leaving only Le Pen and company to receive the votes, to be the very worst kind of hate-filled and self-defeating megaphone of such anguish.

Will Chirac and D. de V. be shown up? Will Sarkozy not merely triumph, but not undo that triumph by calling for government-supported mosques and more “integration”? Will he start making non-negotiable demands and clamping down on all mosques, radio and television channels, CD and DVD manufactures, those who trade in false-papers, those who refuse to work because they are, as Muslims, unused to real work, and the Infidels in any case owe them a living? A complete change in immigration policy, and in naturalization, so that it becomes nearly impossible for people who cannot swear, and mean it, their sole allegiance to the French (infidel) state, and to the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of the Rights of Man — well, if that can’t be done, then out you go.

And if you swear such allegiance, but are perjuring yourself, your citizenship should be revocable, and revoked.

There are many ways to change the atmosphere, to harden things so that a new understanding becomes clear among French and Muslims alike. Not a single barrel of oil will be made unavailable to the French because of this. And if there were to be a thorough cleansing of the correspondents at Le Monde, at Liberation, and on RF1, so that those who had been following the Eric-Rouleauvian pro-“Palestinian” pro-Muslim line all these years and softening up the minds of the great spongiform-brained public were sent permanently packing, that would also help.

Meanwhile, those in the outside world who claim to be interested in France and French culture, which is to say the French literary inheritance, could also help by ceasing to elevate, and treat with solemn respect, the worst in France. Even the current strivers’ row of careerists and endowed-chair-sitters in Departments of Romance Literature (and not only in those departments) at American universities, must at some point, admit that literature is one thing, sociology and self-esteem studies quite another, and literary merit should be the only criterion of relevance in departments of literature. There is only so much that can be done, and the students, so unlettered themselves, need whatever they can get to undo the damage, or fill the gaps, in the pre-college period of their existence. Certain fashions are now definitely out of season; the redress of high culture, that never goes out of fashion, remains: this year’s, last year’s, next year’s ever-fresh model. While many of the so-called “leading” universities now fail to offer a single course devoted entirely to Montaigne, to La Fontaine, to Chateaubriand, to Victor Hugo, even to Proust (who usually does get something), the same French or Romance departments may have two or three or four courses on “Francophonie” and of course on what is called, optimistically, “beur” culture, which is to say, Caliban’s Revenge.

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Filed Under: Hugh Fitzgerald


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