Some People Push Sideways

by Liberty and Power

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

David Beito (see here and here) identifies the French welfare state as a cause of the current Paris riots.

I think the French police state also bears some of the blame; see the articles by Laurent Lévy and Antoine Germa here, and commentary by Brad Spangler here, here, and here.

As in the United States, so likewise in France, class oppression employs not only the carrot of welfare but the stick of police brutality: dependence is rewarded and independence punished.

Paris is a sparkling jewel ringed by squalid slave pens; the inmates of the suburbs are quite right to be furiously angry, but unfortunately they have no idea how their anger might be constructively expressed – so they express it destructively instead, by beating and looting the innocent. (Which from the French government’s standpoint is probably just as well. While it can’t welcome the prospect of mass violence, it would surely find the prospect of mass nonviolence still less appealing.)

Well, clueless and futile political violence has a long history in the City of Light.

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More Comments:

William J. Stepp - 11/9/2005

According to a report yesterday, the French police are fairly dysfunctional, don't cooperate well with the locals, and have a storm surge mentality suitable more for war than for policing.
German police cooperate well with the locals, play games with them, etc., and are better received.
I guess it beats whiling away the time in donut shops.

Roderick T. Long - 11/9/2005

I'm talking about what the police did before the riots, not what they did during them; again, see the links. (And in putting blame on the police I don't mean to be removing blame from the rioters. Attacking the innocent because you're mad at the guilty isn't justified. whether it's done by the rioters, or by the police, or by anyone. But the same holds vice versa -- the responsibility of the rioters doesn't remove the responsibility of the government whose oppression has made the riots more likely.)

Aeon J. Skoble - 11/9/2005

They're torching and looting because they're unemployed? That makes sense. I also fail to see how the French police are responsible. They let the rioting go on for what, 12 days before instituting curfews etc. You guys care to elaborate?

William J. Stepp - 11/8/2005

The best article I've seen on the French riots is by Joel Kotkin in today's Wall St. Journal, "Our Immigrants, Their Immigrants."
He wrote a book on the global history of the city.
He contrasts the sorry history of immigrants in Paris with that of newcomers in New York and other American cities and counties. The latter have had far more economic opportunities thanks to less regulation and central planning.
In Parisian immigrant suburbs, average unemployment is as high as 40% and higher among the young.
It's a wonder it took so long for these riots to happen.