Washington Post's Daily Dose of Marxism: Rage of French Youth Is a Fight for Recognition

If we don't name it, it won't be so. Right? Shhhhh. Don't say "Muslim" or "Islam." Say something like "disaffected youth." Got it?

Hey, and if we dust off all that stuff from liberal arts courses when we last thought, we can explain anything. Right?

Take France and all that civil unrest. What else could it be but "alienation"? It surely is solely caused by anomie, by lack of importance in the eyes of the indigenous populace, and most assuredly by those French "haves" not redistributing enough to the "have-nots." Didn't every professor we had tell us this? It had to be true, or they couldn't have said it. Besides, we felt it to be true, and, because so many of us felt the same thing, we just knew that we had to be right. Right?

If you think this is exaggeration, read this article: Rage of French Youth Is a Fight for Recognition: Spreading Rampage in Country's Slums Is Rooted in Alienation and Abiding Government, By Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service, Sunday, November 6, 2005.

Says "Ms Feelie," from the Washington Post, "Le Blanc-Mesnil is not a community where youths aspire to spend their lives. There is none of the glamour that most of the world associates with Paris, just a 25-minute drive or train ride away. It is an industrial city of boxy apartment complexes and strip malls. In a nation where unemployment has hovered at 10 percent this year, the rates are here four to five times as high among people under 25. The youths rampaging through France's poorest neighborhoods are the French-born children of African and Arab immigrants, the most neglected of the country's citizens. A large percentage are members of the Muslim community that accounts for about 10 percent of France's 60 million people." (Emphasis mine)


She adds from interviewing: "We feel rejected, compared to the kids who live in better neighborhoods," said Nasim, a chunky 16-year-old with braces and acne. "Everything here is broken down and abandoned. There's no place for the little kids to go."

And: "We don't have the American dream here," said Rezzoug [Mohammed Rezzoug, caretaker of the municipal gymnasium and soccer field, and a somewhat sensible adult], as he surveyed the clusters of young men. "We don't even have the French dream here." It's got to be the fault of the haves, right? The Post reporter continues: "As on most Saturday afternoons, there was little for Nasim or his friends to do." And: "Several of the older youths fingered pockets bulging with plastic packets of hashish for sale or trade. As they read local newspaper accounts of their previous night's exploits, they began discussing Saturday night's plans with more of an air of boredom than a commitment to a cause." Nobody has come to provide for them. Do it for themselves? Oh, how gauche!

At this point, throw in some white-wash: "This has nothing to do with religion," [Rezzoug] said. "But non-Muslims are afraid of people like me with a beard. I look suspicious to them. Discrimination is all around us. We live it every day. It's become a habit. It's in the air."

And what do they do about their circumstances, these mostly second generation children of immigrants? "We want to change the government," [one] said, a black baseball cap pulled low over large, chocolate-brown eyes and an ebony face..." Tellingly, this child of Islam and French postmodernism says, "We don't plan anything. We just hit whatever we find at the moment...There's no way of getting their attention. The only way to communicate is by burning."

What does it take to solve problems? It takes thought, then the coupling this thought with planning and lots of hard work. Wave after wave of American immigrants learned this until our own government in the latter 20th century converted American policy into French-lite policy. Now immigrants show up in the parasite (French) mode.

Marx would be proud to see how his ideas live among American journalists who haven't thought in years, since some time in college--if then. Marx would also be delighted to see how his ideas thrive among the French. He would be pleased to see how the French through philosophers like Michel Foucault "improved" his ideas and the worst of European philosophy into postmodernism, which the rioters have adopted as their guiding light.

No wonder they don't solve problems. "They" means the French government, the French intellectuals, the French, and these first and second generation immigrant Muslims in France. "They" have poked out their eyes and lobotomized themselves with worn-out, irrational sloganeering which keeps them blind.

Yet, even the Washington Post journalist let slip a little truth in that article:

"It's not a political revolution or a Muslim revolution," said Rezzoug. "There's a lot of rage. Through this burning, they're saying, 'I exist, I'm here." Islam fuels these rioting Muslims, so let's correct that right away; a Muslim revolution is indeed part of the mix. The rest, however, is pure narcissism from dependent personalities having no concept of or desire to utilize self-responsibility and personal productivity. These are like baby birds in a nest, with mouths open, waiting for the adult to poke sustenance into their mouths.

Islam fits right into dominant French cultural thinking: All human upkeep is the responsibility of someone other than oneself. In France, it is the government, with its mandated six week paid vacations, 35 hour work week, free medical care, free this and free that, with vast taxes and scandalous unemployment. Underlying this socialistic approach to life is the notion that you are not an autonomous human being. You are the property of others, most particularly the state, and your upkeep is their burder. Islam dumps autonomy anywhere but on the Muslim. Arab-Islamic thinking teaches Muslims not to be responsible for themselves; if things are not going right, as you want, then it is not your fault. Work is still a four-letter, dirty word in Islamia.

Such thinking fails wherever it is tried. In 1960s America, callow youth at mostly public universities tried to act out similar thinking to these French Muslims, with the same degree of thoughtlessness. Soiling their nests meant far less to them than just acting out the soiling, while trying to leave the consequences, including the cleanup, to others whom they demanded must take responsibility for them.

Prior to 1965 when America adopted its self-immolating immigration policy change, waves of immigrants came to America for the opportunity to better themselves. They were called "maggots," and much, much worse. Wave after wave of immigrants seized their opportunity and made something of themselves, by their own self-responsibility and diligence. Some became giants of industry, capital, science, and essentially in all fields. They did not wait for someone to do it for them. Productivity and self-responsibility are essentials required by the nature of humans as rational beings. Mother Nature sets the terms. Our only choice is to obey or take the consequences.

That approach seems unknown to the French and their immigrants.

It seems that one of two things might work out in France to quell this rioting. The government might get the fortitude to exert the appropriate force against the criminal activities and rioters who have made themselves criminals. The other is that the Muslims might stop this themselves because the time is not right for the takeover. For this latter, the French government needs to be weakened further, for example, by replacing Chirac with de Villepin and his ilk, and strengthening the physical means for Muslims to be able to take France by force at some future time.

France may be too far gone to save itself by doing the right, and obvious, things.