Professor R. John Matthies of the French and Italian Department recently discussed and analyzed the American media’s treatment of the October–November 2005 riots in the Paris suburbs. In his examination of several American newspapers, Matthies identified two perceived causes of the violence (economic dissatisfaction and/or failure to promote multi-culturalism) while asserting, however, that such discussion failed to understand the unique French context of the riots. Matthies instead asserted that for the French these riots were only moderately out of the ordinary and will fade quickly into the cultural background.
Although the French economy does suffer from relatively high unemployment, at no point during the period of violence did any group of rioters articulate an agenda or manifesto calling for increased benefits or industry reforms. In fact, Matthies explained, the French social welfare system is moderately successful in meeting the basic needs of its citizens.
Other news articles criticized the French government’s failure to encourage a multicultural society and pointed to that failure as the significant cause of the protests. According to Matthies, such critics have misunderstood the French republican model—in place essentially since the Revolution of 1789: liberty, equality, fraternity. The French government has worked to achieve equality for all through the de-emphasis of traditional distinctions (class, gender, origin, religion) in favor of common identity.
American society has traditionally encouraged multiculturalism; meanwhile, the French have sought to create and promote one all-inclusive identity and encouraged cultural assimilation. While American media has criticized the French for failing to create a multicultural state, the French would retort that it was never their intention to create such a state and that they have, instead, successfully pursued a policy of an inclusive national identity.
The proof of such success is no more evident than in the recent riots. The French have a tradition of massive demonstrations and popular uprisings that stretches back hundreds of years but was seen most recently in the 1968 student protests that led to the eventual resignation of President Charles de Gaulle. Perhaps more unusual to Americans, though, is that an average of eighty cars are burned every day across France. The rioters demonstrated their assimilation into French culture by their method of protest, taking a distinct French-cultural phenomenon amplified to illustrate their dissatisfaction.
So what were the rioters protesting if not their economic status or their societal marginalization? While Matthies admitted that both issues played some role in the violence, he observed that at the heart of the matter are the authoritarian and abusive policing methods in the suburbs. The discussion by French observers rarely and briefly dwelt on economics and assimilation but, instead, explored what Matthies called a type of "perceived neo-colonialism" by groups who claimed to represent the suburban populations, or a mentality of "We lost Algeria, but we won’t lose Clichy-sous-Bois." It is true, though, that the government hopes that vocational incentives (and dissolving the suburban populations into greater France) will serve to improve the conditions of the protestors.
Ultimately, Matthies concluded, French citizens would not have recognized their country in the American media accounts. It is unlikely that this incident will be remembered in the same way as other traumatic events, such as the subway bombings of 1995. Though the riots were an important event, their effect within France should not be exaggerated regardless of how extraordinary they may seem from an American perspective.
—Jay Stirling
1 "A Very French Message From the Disaffected," New York Times, 13 November 2005.
No other country in Europe immolates cars with the gusto and single-minded efficiency of France. Even during tranquil periods, an average of 80 vehicles per day are set alight somewhere in the country.
"Burning cars is rather typically French," said Michel Wieviorka, a French sociologist who has studied the phenomenon. "The last two weeks have been unusual, but it is more common than people realize."
Last Sunday night, youths used blazing cars to form a barrier against the police. Several of them said they only singled out vehicles that belonged to people who they believed had connections to the police. Besides, said a 26-year-old man of Senegalese descent who gave his name as Djibri, "What else are you going to burn?" It is less harmful than attacking people, he noted.
2 Pascal Bruckner; "How French: The Riots Could Only Have Happened in France," The New Republic, 10 November 2005.
France, they say, only reforms under the cover of revolution. Here, rebellion precedes dialogue, strikes precede negotiations, and recourse to violence is systematic. This is a country where authority has always assumed the face of the Jacobin state—of a paternal figure who reacts only to threat or attack. In this way, the young rioters in the French suburbs are far more French than many commentators presume. The troubled suburbs are not foreign lands within the Republic, but rather are increasingly a mirror of all French passions, the best as well as the worst—a reserve of talent and energy, but also a melting pot of racism, homophobia, machismo, and anti-Semitism. That is the enigma: These towns behave as if they are under siege by France, which herself behaves like she is under siege by the world.
Unhappy, unemployed, wanting everything right away like the rest of us in this society of individualists, these teenage rioters have nothing to lose but their lives, nothing to cling to, no great cause to support. Yet, as disenfranchised as these young people are, they are first and foremost children of television and supermarkets—they understand perfectly the mechanisms of the media. So they seek to recreate the disorder and vandalism of Baghdad or Gaza (so familiar to them from television) in their own streets, to rival other neighborhoods in destruction. They find validation in the images of their exploits broadcast on television and shared on their cell phones. Their rebellion is a form of negative integration, an initiation ritual where fighting with the French riot police takes the place of adolescent revolt rendered impossible because the father is absent or nonexistent and the mother is overwhelmed. It is their rite of passage into French society.
Confronted with such brutality, too many members of the press and the intelligentsia have chosen to play an ambiguous role. They engage in reflexive "Third Worldism," justify the riots as a reaction against French colonialism, and display a pernicious fascination with the violence of the lumpenproletariat and contempt for an open society. It is ironic, because the principal victims of the rioters are the little people, workers of all origins who live in the same apartment buildings and have watched as their cars and other belongings go up in smoke. Where is the indignation of the majority of the French against these insurgents who terrorize the weakest members of our society? Why have groups of citizens not banded together to peacefully protect public and private property? In contrast, the measured response of the police has been admirable--a fact too rarely acknowledged. One senses that the beginning of the state of emergency here this week marked an uneasy reminder of the beginnings of the war in Algeria--there was again the disarray of a government faced with an insurrection and a society that had never resolved its deeper ambivalence about the use of force.
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