Are the French finally opening their eyes? Could be. Too late? Could be:
theaugeanstables.com
Paris Notes, Spring 2006
I have posted this essay in installments at the blog. For those who would like to comment on any part, the link to the post is in the subtitles.
When the Ostrich Lifts up Its Head
“Nous sommes tétanisés,” said my French friend. [We are paralyzed.]
The French are beginning to wake up, beginning to lift up their Ostrich head from the sand. As opposed to the frequent dismissals I ran across in the past – when it wasn’t accusations of racism – I now met an increasing number of people willing to say, “we don’t disagree” (the French really don’t like to say “you’re right”). But, as my friend put it, we don’t know what to do. “We’re paralyzed.”
I have been visiting France fairly regularly all my life, but particularly since 2000, the nature of those visits has changed, and I’ve watched a radical split occur between the Jewish community in France (which has grown increasingly alarmed at the violence against them) and your typical Frenchman and woman, who consider Jewish alarm – if they even notice it – as, well, alarmist. (For earlier posts on what I noticed, see here.)
I haven’t been in France since last Spring, so a number of factors played in the mixture. Obviously the Fall (Ramadan) 2005 riots that started in the Parisian suburbs and spread through France sobered people considerably, despite the official position of the media, political, and academic elites that this was not a religious or cultural issue, but one of socio-economic inequities that could be solved by addressing those inequities. But more recently, there had occurred two things that sobered them considerably.
First, the Danish cartoons. Most every Frenchman I spoke with (especially the non-Jews, who are in most denial about the religious dimension) mentioned them. Even the French, who do not have much of a sense of humor about other people making fun of them, understood that the Muslim reaction revealed a level of immaturity beyond anything they had, in their cognitively egocentric slumber, ever imagined. It was for them a sobering look at a religious mafia, intimidating anyone who dare criticize it. The cultural gap between the French and an Islam which, they had begun to acknowledge, played an increasingly powerful role among its immigrant population, lay bare before their eyes.
Second, the slow torture of Ilan Halimi, a Jewish youth, kidnapped and tortured to death over a three-week period in one of the “territoires perdus” of the Republic, awoke the French to the depth of barbarity that had grown up under their noses. That Islamic hatred played a role came across unmistakably with the calls to the Jewish parents and the reading of Quranic verses over the sound of their son tortured in the background. But the gang was really more a mostly Muslim collection of immigrant sons from the hood, from the “territoires perdus.”
Indeed the most terrifying part of the tale came when the leader of the gang got arrested in the Ivory Coast (whence his parents had emigrated before his birth). His picture smiling and making the V sign with his fingers shocked people with its utter lack of any sign of conscience, and his subsequent interview confirmed the impression. Indeed the photo was so shocking, that after consulting with three lawyers, AFP took the photo down because it was “a blow at the private life” of the suspect, but “above all, there was no imperious necessity to diffuse this highly provocative photo.”
Ah, if only they had felt that way about Muhammad al Durah, they might have spared themselves much pain. But that would have meant sparing the Jews and the Israelis.
But those with eyes, like Nidra Poller, could see. Youssouf Fofana was not a religious fanatic poisoned by paranoid underground hatreds. Here was Nietzsche’s blond beast in blackface, without conscience, a predator who feels no need to apologize to his prey. Robust sadism. The barbarians at the gates… in the suburbs. And their neighbors, who remained silent for weeks as they heard the cries of the tortured youth – not even an anonymous call – illustrated how powerful the dominion of the killers in these territoires perdus.
Americanophilia or Americanophobia?
So this time, when I got to France, I found that many of my old friends, people who had disagreed with me and disapproved of my morbid imagination for the future, more readily agreed with me. “Nous ne sommes pas en désaccord!” [we don’t disagree] – which is about the best one can hope for – insisted one with passion. The people I spoke to, even the most indifferent earlier, even the ostriches, seemed sobered. And the Jews reported more success trying to tell their non-Jewish neighbors about their fears. The French have even come up with a new term – les Gaulois – to designate culturally French (as in “nos ancêtres les Gaulois…” like Asterix)), as opposed to native-born French, which necessarily includes the growing population of un-assimilated, maybe anti-assimilationist children of Arab and African immigrants.
One might even say, some of the Gaulois were finding some clarity on who were the good guys. At the first café we went to, late Saturday night, the waiters, who began the evening making snide remarks about us behind our backs (including the way I wore by beret), upon realizing that were Americans who spoke French, grew quite warm. It turned out that at least two of them wanted to move to America.
“What about anti-Americanism?” I ask the waiter who was marrying an American girl and hoping to go to the States to start a restaurant.
“Oh, that was bad back at the time of the Iraq war, but no longer,” he said, with a reassuring confidence.
A wave of anti-Americanism that poisoned the Western alliance and has contributed so much to making Sadaam Hussein’s removal a nightmare in the winter of 2003, was in his eyes a passing squall. Not a problem.
It reminded me of the remark that an FBI guy said to some scholars about the Waco catastrophe: “We didn’t do anything wrong, and we won’t do it again.” Except that this Gaulois who wanted to jump ship to America wasn’t even saying “We won’t do it again.” There was not even the admission that the wave of pro-Chirac anti-Americanism was a stupidity that hurt France. Just a promise that, right now, we don’t feel any anti-Americanism.
There’s plenty of unconscious evidence that even Chirac regretted pissing the USA off, that your average Gaulois was beginning to realize that they were not in as good shape as America. No sign of an awareness that this spasm of anti-Americanism that they presented to me as a thing of the past, was actually embedded in certain profoundly self-destructive French traits, and that France needs to prepare to resist it on the next occasion of its appeal. Indeed an AOL poll of the French (i.e., those most attuned to the international community), finds 69% think that Chirac’s confrontation with the US was his single greatest accomplishment in his 10 years in power. (Interesting that it never occurred to those setting up the poll to include the same item among the options for Chirac’s failures.)
The next day, in an internet place crowded to the gills, I sit down on a cushion near a single man at a table for two. He eyes me suspiciously. “Vous permettez?” I say, eyeing the chair on the other side of the table.
“Puisque vous avez demandé, bien sûr,” [since you asked, of course], he tells me kindly. The French are interesting. If you are polite and show them respect, they can be very generous. If not, they can be extremely difficult.
We talk. He begins to carry on about “Baboush” [W] and how, if he could, he would wring his neck. This man was the opposite of the waiters we talked to the night before. Here was the anti-Americanism of March 2003, preserved, distilled, well over 80 proof. As I tried to suggest that maybe the French attitude, however right or wrong it might be, was self-destructive, he consistently cut me off, telling me how he was ex-military and knew the inside track, and passionately repeating his violent hatred of Baboush.
I moved away from him as quickly as possible, and later heard him on the phone to a friend talking about a woman: “Il faut lui flaquer une gifle, la salope. C’est une pute… je lui torderai le cou.” [You have to slap the bitch around… she’s a whore… I’ll wring her neck.]
I don’t remember this kind of verbal violence in public. Is it me? Or the new atmosphere of wireless Starbucks look-alikes? Or has Paris taken on a greater coarseness in public.
We go to Normandy. At the hotel, the woman confides to us: “My two sons are planning on leaving. While I pay for their education they’ll stay, but as soon as they’re done, they’re planning to leave and they want to go to America.”
“Why?”
Because the country’s going to hell. Because the bureaucracy favors the Arabs.
She tells the tale of her son-in-law getting refused family aid, but, since he’s dark-skinned, when he wears a keffiya, he gets it right away. Urban legend? Symbolic? Of what?
Because even though the riots didn’t strike their neighborhood [Bayeux centre ville], they weren’t far away. And because they believe that the riots were only a dress rehearsal.
We visit old friends from way back (the wife is a childhood friend). They are from the upper classes – educated, Catholic, intellectually lively, international in outlook, with smart kids who travel the globe studying and doing internships. In the past, the husband has taken the principled position of the ostrich in response to my warnings.
Not this time. This time he’s eager to talk, and quite open in his concerns. A description of what I have been trying to say for three years now.
“So what do you think the French will do?”
“Mais nous sommes tétanisés,” he says. [We’re paralyzed.]
What can you do when you pick your head up and see you’re between the tracks and the train is bearing down on you?
Jews Leaving; Muslims Rising
For the earlier segments of this essay, see Paris Notes, Spring 2006.
The Jews I meet with show heavy signs of wear. One of the sweetest and smartest of the French Jewish intellectuals I know, a woman of Tunisian origin, one of the single-generation acculturaters, comes towards me without knowing I see her. Her face is so drawn with care that I have difficulty identifying her. I go by her haircut, until, upon seeing me, her smile comes back and wipes away the lines of worry.
The Halimi Affair, whose Jewish and Muslim dimension the French Jews know about in much greater detail than their Christian and post-Christian fellow-citizens, has that community in a panic.
People are affolés, like the thirties. People are leaving. Especially the Jews. But if you try and make the parallel to the thirties, you get cut off. Your colleagues won’t talk to you, stop having you speak at colloquia.
In 2002, the cry was “Synagogue brulé, République en danger.” In 2006, it was “Ilan Halimi brulé, République en danger.”
It’s gotten worse. Before we had hope. We told ourselves, they’re unaware. If we can get them to look at this clearly, we can persuade them. Now we’ve persuaded them, and they do nothing.
The level of appeasement is depressing: every time the Muslims get angry, the French trip over themselves to calm their passions. It’s far worse now. I am losing hope for France.
Even the French communities in good neighborhoods, with fancy Kosher restaurants nearby, are feeling the cold wind blow.
Now, in market places, in schools, even when it doesn’t involve immigrants, Jew is used as an epithet. You can even call a Chinese “dirty Jew” if you want to insult him.
In other words, in the world of honor-shame in French culture today, the Jews are the dhimmis, the ones publicly singled out for humiliation.
“But what about the huge demonstrations? Didn’t they represent a serious change of public opinion?”
“Maybe. Aside from the politicians, it was mostly Jews…. and all along the way, reports Alex Feigenbaum hostile Arabs who refuse to condemn the march , feeling fully justified given the crimes of the Jews/Israelis.
“In Morocco, the Jews were preserved, and you know what? They harmed us. yes, yes, they harmed us a lot. They can do whatever they want, they control the media. They have money. The Arabs have nothing.”
“And petrodollars? Oil at $70 a barrel?”
“It’s still cheap for the Americans. And the Arabs are left with nothing. Here they’re demonstrating for a Jew. In Israel, if a Jew is killed, Sharon kills a million Palestinians…. It’s a genocide.”
“There were 500,000 Palestinians in 1948. Today there are 2 million. You call that a genocide? When my family was exterminated, the numbers dropped dramatically.”
“That’s ancient history,” he grumbles. And adds, to clinch the argument, “Ilan ran after girls.“
The voice of a man who’s been listening to his own community of grievance and watching French TV news, a man who will not be persuaded by evidence.
“Since 9-11, there’s been a notable change in the Muslim community. Before you rarely heard Arabic spoken. Now they speak it loudly, the mothers aggressively take over areas in parks and gardens. They started to pick up their heads and feel pride.”
“Over 9-11?”
“Yes, it gave them a sense of power.”
At the fac, the political tensions are high, the attitude towards Jews violent. Zionists are the enemy. A few Jewish students went to a meeting on Palestine at one of the more radical campuses in Paris, Jussieu. The feral hatred, the wild enthusiasm for Hamas, the overwhelming consensus that Israel should not exist… one has a sense that the revolting behavior that Oriana Fallaci denounced in September 2001 is alive and well. Indeed, some of the students attending were spotted and denounced as Jews, and beaten on the spot by the supporters of Palestinian freedom.
At the end of the conference, although they had remained discreet and quiet, my friends were spotted by the service d’ordre, “as a Jew” and are literally physically attacked and knocked down. My friends, girls as well as boys, getting punched, insulted, will leave injured and bloody from the building. Busted lips, punches, kicks. Lynching of Jews in the heart of my own university. And no intervened.
I ask a Jewish colleague, brilliant man with profound articles on questions like ressentiment, the emotional dimensions of thinking, and conspiracism, whether he plans to stay. “I have a one year old daughter named Yaël; I don’t know if I want her going through the French public school system with a name like that. And his calculation, now just based on the prevailing attitude, is prophetic. Within a decade over a third of the school cohort will be Muslim in France.
As another Jewish family confirmed to me, the youth are planning to leave. French Jews are in Israel, Montreal, the US, raising the housing market by buying not pied-à-terre, but escape hatches, places to go to… in case. The FBIs [French-born Israelis], noting the one-foot-in-Israel-one-in-France style of the new arrivals, call it the “Aliyah du Boeing.”
In the meantime, the statistics about the Muslims should be alarming, if only people knew about them. 20% of the Gaulois are over 65(!), 20% of the youth are born into immigrant families with increasingly tenuous ties to the culture of the republic. In a decade or so, the schools will have cohorts in which a majority of Muslims will not be unusual, even outside the “lost territories” (or rather, in the ever-larger lost territories). When one considers the tenor of the classrooms in the lost territories that comes from a contempt for learning, one has to wonder what kind of learning will go on in such schools.
But the French have imposed a silence on official figures — it’s inappropriate for a lay nation to count its citizens by religion — and so estimates swing wildly. The answer to the question, “How many Muslims in France?” tells you a great deal about a person. Estimates — all confidently given — range from 4-8 million (6.6%-13.3%) of the total population. How can you lose track of 4 million people?
The more I hear, the more I begin to have a sense that the French have skidded imperceptibly into a set of policies in which they encourage the one percent of their population which produces approximately 20% of its elite [figure taken from the Saint-Cyr estimate] to leave, while the same policies empower the 10% of their population which actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously, works to destroy the République.
And most Frenchmen have no idea. They don’t listen on their own, and when they’re told about it, they deny. The French seem to believe they forged their civil society entirely on their own merit, and that this home-forged product can handle any challenge, including absorbing millions of Muslim immigrants. That seems like a pretty self-destructive procedure to me. But what do I know. I’m an outsider looking in. |
