Re: These riots grow more dangerous with each passing day. Why does Chirac not call out the military and ask for Sarkozy's resignation asap?
Actually, the riots seem to wear down in terms of violence while they keep spreading geographically.... At this time, however, there's no need for calling in the military. Remember, this is France, not the US: there's no Second Amendment, no gun culture. French ghettoes, unlike their American counterparts, are not teeming with gun-toting thugs. That's why the only serious shooting incidents that have been reported so far involved hunting guns or airguns.
As for Chirac chucking Sarkozy out, well, Sarkozy is not just France's Interior Minister --he's chairman of the French government's and Chirac's UMP party as well. And he's also running for President in the next 2007 election... As the undisputed leader of the Judeo-Gaullist faction, Sarkozy enjoys a comfortable support both among fellow politicians (Jean-François Coppé, Patrick Devedjian, Brice Hortefeux, Edouard Balladur,...) and the rightwing electorate. Should Sarkozy take the rap for the current commotion, the likely beneficiaries would be far-rightists Jean-Marie Le Pen (FN) and Philippe de Villiers (MPF).
Re: Spirit of revolution
Thanks to the Revolution, violence even has a kind of virtue which it simply does not possess in a country like Britain. When government becomes incapable of change, the crowds in the streets have to do the changing for themselves.
Well, I'm afraid not all the ingredients necessary to brew a successful revolution are present... Throughout history, the underclass alone has never proved capable of pulling off a genuine revolution on its own. At best, we can expect the current French riots to be a repeat of the Paris Commune of 1871(*) --remember Orwell:
Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.
The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim --for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives --is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice.
As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.
[...]
The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.
Subject 33609
(*) What is most important about the Paris Commune of 1871? Peter Kropotkin wrote in 1895:
Why is the idea represented by the Commune of Paris so attractive to the workers of every land, of every nationality? The answer is easy. The revolution of 1871 was above all a popular one. It was made by the people themselves, it sprang spontaneously from the midst of the mass, and it was among the great masses of the people that it found its defenders, its heroes, its martyrs. It is just because it was so thoroughly ``low'' that the middle class can never forgive it. And at the same time its moving spirit was the idea of a social revolution; vague certainly, perhaps unconscious, but still the effort to obtain at last, after the struggle of many centuries, true freedom, true equality for all men. It was the revolution of the lowest of the people marching forward to conquer their rights.
Peter Kropotkin, "The Commune of Paris: II How the Commune Failed to realize its true aim and yet set that aim before the world", Freedom Pamphlets, no. 2 London, W. Reeves, 1895.
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