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What are your thoughts on the French riots?

  • I am just so, so heartbroken. France have a history of riots and unrest, including an ongoing one this year, which especially is one of the biggest after the murder of a 17 y.o
  • Systemic racism is not new there, and what also isn't new is the tolerance of the people towards the system.
  • https://crimethinc.com/2023/07/02/justice-for-nahel-the-roots-of-the-uprising-in-france
  • I hope the above link is accurate and concise enough to briefly explain everything. Let me know if there is any misinformation
  • I don't think anyone should form an opinion on one particular incident, and then forming an opinion based on that alone. It doesn't work that way. This has to be viewed from a historical context, something that builds up slowly.
  • I've seen groups talk about this from an anti-immigration point of view. This isn't something "recent". Post-colonialist does not mean colonialist nations have been restored and granted independence. You have to look at migration during the colonial period, which influences the systemic racism in the country to this date.
  • I cannot find if Nahel HAS any criminal record or not. But the closest accurate source, which is the person at the situation, who recorded a video described something HIGHLY diverging from the fast and furious ultra 15 minute car chase misinformation sources.

The criminal records that people describe even, are not even close to something that should result in multiple buttstrikings?

  • People talk about the protests in an anarchist nature, saying that there are a group of people looting and taking advantage of the actual protests. I'm still researching on this and I would like your opinions on this especially. I don't want to see immediate anti-anarchist takes, let's stop with the infighting
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  • This tweet from Arnaud Bertrand is good:

    [...] First of all, like it or not these "immigrants" are French, in their immense majority. Most often for the 2nd or 3rd generation 🔽 since the bulk of the immigrants from North Africa came in the 60s and 70s. And they came to France because we colonized their country, which was a historical mistake of profound significance, which France committed...

    Other mistake: we then parked these populations together in suburban ghettos, meaning that France created this divide that we today live with between these populations and the rest of the French population.

    Third mistake: France always had this totally unrealistic ideal of "assimilation", instead of understanding that you can't erase someone's culture, even after multiple generations, and that the only realistic thing to do is therefore to accommodate different cultures. What happens when you have a large population of a given culture and that you don't accommodate or respect it, instead trying to unrealistically convert them to another culture? You create resentment, defiance and, again, divide.

    These are the root causes of the issue. Like it or not, France does have a very large Muslim population of North African origin. They will have a different culture than the "traditional" French culture, probably for ever or at least for many, many generations. You can either put your head in the sand (the solution of the left) or go for an apartheid-like regime (the solution of the right) but neither of these are actual solutions. The only actual solution is to change France as a country that accommodates and respects different cultures in its midst.

    There are actually excellent examples of this in Asia. Singapore - where approx 15% of the population is Muslim - is an excellent example of how Islam can flourish in the context of a secular state. Muslim holidays in Singapore are public holidays for the whole country. They also have a "Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act" which bans "causing feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different religious groups". This is a wise policy that allows for mutual respect and harmony between communities.

    Sadly I don't see France adopting a similar path anytime soon. And this is why these problems will keep worsening.

    That's my 2-cent.

    Post-Colonialism is colonial apologia. Neo-Colonialism, as in colonizers owning private property within a colonized nation, has always been the dominant form of expropriation in the 19th and 20th century colonizations.

    These protests and riots are in response to the colonial/fascist (police and far right) oppression that the "French" society directs towards their Colonial diaspora. They are spontaneous and will likely die down because of that. They do represent a massive portion of the proletariat in France and can be lead by a Communist party that recognizes the colonial contradiction within France and its colonies to be turned into a socialist movement. Considering the police are threatening to act para-legally to stomp out the "vermin" and the far-right is taking violence against people as a means to protect private and (bourgeois) public property, it is damning for the Communist Party to be criticizing property damage during the protests for these Africans when they didn't put out such statements regarding pension reform. It seems the shared "French" interests supersede that of class solidarity and internationalism at the moment. The PCF in its current form is unfit for the role of vanguard.

    And despite all that effort by Colonizers to set Arab and Black people against each other with colonial apologia, the Africans and Western Asian diaspora in France have spontaneously united against the shared experience of the colonial violence they are subjected to by the "French" society.

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