A French government decree has banned the sale of fireworks for private celebrations on Bastille Day, July 14. France is in the midst of its George Floyd moment. Fireworks were used in the rampant lawlessness after the June 27 shooting of Nabel M, a Muslim teen, by a suburban Paris police officer led to days of rioting. The fear is that Bastille Day will be the next flashpoint for agitators to reignite the smoldering fuse of property destruction, looting, and racial and sectarian violence.
Unlike the U.S., in France, cities are pristine and well cared for. The surrounding suburbs form the outer ring of a hellscape of poverty-stricken ghettos overflowing with migrants from northern Africa, central Africa, the Middle East, and the Caucuses. It is in these communities that much of the 8% of the population that are Muslims is found. Here, political agitators and rioters burned and looted as 3,700 were arrested. Nearly 1,160 of these were teenage minors.
In one instance, rioters attempted to burn down the home of Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun of the Paris suburb L’Haÿ-les-Roses, breaking the leg of his wife and firing fireworks rockets at her as she attempted to flee with their five and seven-year-old children. Jeanbrun called it “a murder attempt of unspeakable cowardice,” adding that “A line has been crossed.”
Flashback two years to April 2021 when 25 retired French Generals outraged President Emmanuel Macron and the ruling elite with a public letter warning of a coming “civil war” that would mean “the intervention of our comrades on active duty in a perilous mission of protection of our civilizational values.” The letter said, “The hour is grave. France is in peril” if it fails to respond to “suburban hordes” and those who “scorn our country.”
The French military is a serious institution whose culture transcends the rise and fall of governments. Some military thinking outside the country thought that this warning, while perhaps presenting the issue as a worst-case scenario, was worth taking seriously.
Needless to say, the government of Macron and other French leaders responded by trying to find ways to punish the authors and any active service officers who signed the letter anonymously. Then they tried to marginalize the importance of the named signees speaking out of school. The political rule, shoot the bearer of bad news, prevailed.
But six months after the letter, even Macron had to admit that American “Woke Ideology” could radicalize his country and should be rejected. Today that ideology mixed with unique racial, social, economic, cultural, and religious issues has provided the matches for the Molotov cocktails and fireworks being hurled in the streets in cities around the country. The traditional French culture, already in crisis, with almost a third of the country rejecting all religious affiliations, is undergoing a stress test.
In the June riots, Macron deployed 40,000 police officers to subdue the violence. After attending an Elton John concert on the first night of rioting, which led to widespread ridicule, Macron summoned his cabinet for an emergency meeting to plan a response. Thousands of rioters and hundreds of police were injured in the four days of rioting. In the past, violence was confined to the Paris suburbs. This time civil unrest erupted in cities nationwide.
So far, 72,000 people have donated to a fund for the police officer’s legal defense, raising about $1.5 million dollars, while about $400,000 has been raised for the family of the Muslim teen.
Perhaps it is not surprising that, as with the United States “war on terror,” the French parliament passed legislation giving police a six-month window to spy on suspects by tapping into their cameras, microphones, and GPS. Legislators would, of course, be exempt, as would judges, lawyers, journalists, and doctors.
Related: Never Mind Canada, France Is Burning
When a country loses control of its culture and the natural self-control that such cohesion brings, the surveillance state quickly fills the vacuum, often with terrifying consequences.
The French Republic began with the cry “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” It soon devolved into a war on religion, a civil war, and a Reign of Terror. This ideological model was later copied by the Russian Revolution and many others. Over 200 years later, Bastille Day celebrations must now be subdued to prevent class warfare and ideologically motivated violence with roots running back to that first Bastille Day and the terrors it unleashed on the world.
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