The 27th of June 2023 a French policeman shot dead a 17 year old man named Nahel as he tried to avoid a police control in Nanterre, just outside Paris.
This tragic interaction between two individuals triggered nationwide riots, in which public buildings, including schools and libraries, have been targeted. Both policemen and protesters have been injured, and the government has been struggling to restore order under the rule of law. Clearly, the death of Nahel is just the spark that inflamed an already explosive situation, a structural problem that afflicts France.
This is a complex problem, with many ramifications of which I´ll touch just a few, but which needs to be examined carefully and addressed decisively.
Many French citizens, descendants from migrant parents or grandparents, feel disenfranchised in their own country, excluded from the common welfare and alienated from the national identity.
During the second part of the XX century, millions of migrants, mostly from the colonies of the French Empire, moved into French territory looking for a better life. They were formally accepted, accommodated in poor neighbourhoods where they developed communities with other equally excluded people, but no real efforts were made at a social, economic or cultural integration. While France has been more assertive than the UK in defining a set of national values, like laicism, it has fallen short of providing a consistent frame that all its citizens could fit into. Welfare aids have supported some of these alienated people in a state of dependency and disempowerment. This has reduced their suffering in the short term, but hasn´t solved the real problem. Thus, we have arrived at a situation in which a whole social class has no place in the French system, where it constitutes an element of instability.
We could see a similar dynamic when the Visigoths were allowed into the territory of the Roman Empire, but were not given a place in the system. They didn´t become Roman citizens nor had a land to live on, but floated in a legal limbo until they attacked the empire that had so ambivalently accepted them. The results of that process can be taken as a cautionary tale.
Beyond the problem of the migrant communities, the French national identity relies on the revolution as one of its foundational myths.
The myth of the Storming of the Bastille In 1789 works as a beacon for upheavals. For over two centuries, it has channelled discontents into rebellions, proclaiming as heroes the citizens who oppose the authority of a state which is perceived as oppressive. As with most myths, the story misrepresents the actual facts.
The people who were freed from the prison were common criminals and thugs, not the political prisoners that the Parisian mob looked for. It didn´t matter. The solidity of the state and the Ancien Régime collapsed, giving the people a feeling of liberation and empowerment that keeps feeding revolutionary fantasies all over the West, despite the time elapsed.
Instead of addressing the shortcomings of the political system and looking for effective solutions, the epic struggle of the disenfranchised against the powers that be has mesmerized the public discourse. This has led to one rebellion after another and France has suffered from political instability ever since, going through five republics, Bourbons and Bonapartes.
The current crisis is but the latest episode of the same story. A significant part of “the people” rebel against authority when there is trouble, storming whatever red cloth they see, instead of engaging in dialogue and looking for solutions.
I don´t think that the problem denounced by the president Emmanuel Macron, who blames the riots on videogames, is a red herring. The image culture reduces the capacity for symbolization and promotes irreflexive action. It´s probably not the biggest contributor to the rebellion, but it makes things even more complicated.
All the Western culture shares the values of the French Revolution. Beyond regional differences, there is a widespread rejection of the authority of the state (or that of academics, males, church, etc) and a glorification of the fight against it. Also, the capitalist economic system has excluded many people from the economy, while a poorly understood respect to the particular culture of communities has led to social fragmentation. The failure of the educational systems and the promotion of quick satisfactions promote action rather than thinking, and violent action at that.
The problem is more complex than this, with other elements feeding the destabilization of the foundations of our culture. The whole socio-political project that emerges with the toppling of the Ancien Régime needs to be thought through. As we are not doing it, the problems are getting worse. Crises like these provide an opportunity to address the issues and look for solutions. It appears we are going to lose yet another occasion. There will come the time when we won´t be able to look the other way. We´ll have to pay the price, and that time is getting closer.
Comentarios recientes