This is the result of the mass and usually illegal immigration allowed and encouraged by the globalist, self-styled "elites" with the specific intent of destabilizing Western democratic nations and their beautiful and rich cultures. Whether in the US or Europe, borders are opened and societies are destabilized by masses of uneducated, unassimilated aliens bringing poverty, crime and aberrant culture. And for whom do the elites reserve their greatest obloquy and attacks? The few politicians who dare oppose this national suicide - Trump, Orban, Meloni, Farage, LePen et. al. If you have no borders, you have no nation. If you have no national culture and identity, you have no country. And that's just the way our new feudal overlords want it. Wake up.
Massive immigration is clearly destructive but I think the purpose for business elites was to import cheap labor. Now businesses are afraid of being targeted. And, of course, leftists think massive immigration is humane and beneficial. Neither is deliberately destroying western civilization
Precisely. And their useful idiots in places such as Nantucket, Newton and tony burbs outside the teeming madness of the DNC ruled cities sporting lawn signs proclaiming "No Human is Illegal."
I would like to tell the people with those signs that when the rioters come through the sign will be of no help. They will burn their house down along with everyone else's.
You don't understand. The people that put those signs up deport anyone that might riot within minutes after their arrival at the enclave/island/whatever. It is all a giant fraud. The fact that it is not reported like that is unforgivable.
Actually though, if they become part of the mob, they are more likely to be spared. That's what happened in the summer of 2020. But at what cost to their souls?
It's so sad - more than angering - to see these signs and realize that some of the folks with these signs are just virtue signaling and doing nothing to confront racism and truly work to make ourselves into the people that we dream of being.
After writing my daily contribution to snark this morning, I was worried that people would just write me off as a smug racist jackass - I want to assure folks that I am not, in fact, a racist...
Calling out a stunning grift the size of the Black Lives Matter movement (signs and all) is the furthest thing from (anti-black) racism. You're good, my man. The fact that you have to be concerned about having your head bashed in by some accusatory harpy is the truly serious take-away.
There is, in fact, actual significant racism - but it is nothing like the simplistic tropes pushed by the chattering scolds. The racism that is literally tearing society apart is a much broader sort of racism - it is the "progressive" vision of society, segregated hard into (pseudo) races, so they can be divided and categorized as GOOD (victims, oppressed, dependent on the savior-of-the-day, and BAD (white supremacists, spending every waking moment of their day thinking about how best to colonize their neighbors.)
The division (intentionally) caused by this horrifyingly backwards effort is, absolutely, "racism", but it is not a racism that lives bitterly in the hearts of ordinary people - it's a constructed mechanism, ramrodded into society with the express purpose of giving would-be-saviors all the money and power they can imagine.
Come on Bruce, you just don’t appreciate how hard it is being a white, overeducated, undersexed, progressive female resident of those communities. Do you know how hard it is to find an oppressed minority to install all those virtue-signaling lawn signs when they’re out rioting and looting? Obviously, we don’t have enough of them to go around.
And for those of you shaming Martha's Vineyard for not welcoming illegal aliens be advised that they have indeed accepted four - count 'em four - apparently from the same family.
None as far as I am concerned. Nor should San Antonio, El Paso, Houston, . . .. But when you talk the talk, as MV did until faced with a single busload, you should walk the walk. The hypocrisy is stunning.
"Except for Trump..." and RFK, and Matt Taibi, and Michael Shellenberger, and anyone else with the utter temerity to ask a question, read Substack, refrain from parroting the slogan of the day, etc etc etc.... In fact, hate is at the very core of everything they say and do.
And, of course, my favorite at the NYC gym I pass by daily....."In this gym we believe (along with "science" lol) that all bodies are beautiful." Really? Then why are you a gym? And if you profess to believe in science you cannot be unaware of the great body of learning to the effect that obesity is a killer. Mon Dieu but these progressives are hopeless!
Devils Advocate: Those signs are meant to encourage people who are less the traditional "gym bods" to feel accepted in a gym with various body shapes working at their own abilities and goals to not feel like they will be shamed from walking in the door from doing what they want to do because they don't fit "the look" of someone who has made that a lifestyle.
Basically, it's a way to get more people into the gym by removing a barrier of shame for not being "gym ready" to join the first place. Which is how "gyms" should work? By getting more people in who need the gym in the first place without making them feel ashamed about using it?
Not everything is some "progressive pogrom" to destroy everything you know is right and true lol. Touch grass once in a while : )
There are a couple Ukrainian flags flying in my community, along with tons of blm signs, hate has no home here signs, pride flags year round. And my community is about 99% white, of course!! I just opt for my American flag and my college team flag during the school year,
It's mind boggling how anyone can still display BLM signs without embarrassment or irony in 2023. It's like telling people your favorite band is Milli Vanilli (for anyone old enough to remember that, LOL!)
"Old Bigotries Melded With New Conspiracies Burgeon White Christian Nationalism"
"Antisemitism Animates the Hard Right"
"The Sheriffs Working to Subvert Democracy"
"Hate on Main Street"
"Alt-tech Sites Continue to Provide Safe Haven for Hard-Right Extremists"
While I too mock woke cancel culture and the pushing and allowing of gender confusion and change on already confused adolescents, I am capable of listening to what the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center has to say, and acknowledge that their arguments hold greater weight than the opposition published by mockers, with comments by the mocking readership. Yes, we don't want govt censorship and we don't like the foolish finger pointing of the self-righteous woke white liberals. But while you are all feeling so superior and we are busy pointing the finger, violence and hatred is burning absolutely like wildfires in the West and the global North. Calling this out as a step forward in evolution is no different than saying that evil is good.
"I am capable of listening to what the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center has to say...."
Now THAT's funny. The "esteemed SPLC?" Esteemed by whom? They call half of America white supremacist extremists. Even many liberals recognize that the SPLC is more akin to a hate group than the "hate groups" if professes to oppose. It pushes lies, censorship and racism. You should hang your head in shame for being easily fooled.
And as if extolling the SPLC was the least of Karen's errors. What violence and hatred is she vilifying? The rioting of Islamic criminals or the ferocious and warranted anger of French citizens seeing their country ruined by the idiotic immigration policies of their elites?
Many on the left think that Western Civilization is inherently racist and misogynist and deserves to be destroyed. An analysis well explored in Douglas Murray's The War on the West.
Justin Trudeau has increased Canada’s immigration level to one million per year, from the traditional 1% to 2.5% per annum. That will increase Canada’s population from 40 million to 48 million by 2030. Think of that in terms of fitting about 3 million more people into Toronto within the next 8 years.
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Justin grew-up frequently hearing his mother referred to in very unflattering terms. It doesn’t require a great deal of thought to determine why he may not like Old Stock Canadians.
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Here is Toronto’s MOST WANTED LIST for July 2023 …
Testing by the US Army since 1917 has shown that people tend to either have all 3 of the following attributes, or none of them.
• Higher IQ scores,
• The ability to work well in teams,
• Less violent.
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Humanity originated in Africa and began migrating from there 100-150,000 years ago, first through the Middle East and then westward into Europe, northward into Russia and Mongolia, and eastward to India, Australia, China, and the Pacific. Google ‘average IQ by country’ and note where on those long migration routes, the countries with the highest IQ scores are located. Did you find the pattern?
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Is it possible that you will soon be one of Toronto’s Least Wanted ???
I remember flaky Maggie Trudeau in the late 70s splashed all over the magazines partying with the Rolling Stones and at Studio 54. His dad was pretty colorful too. But at least he was a fairly competent prime minister, at least from this American's perspective.
I think you mean Margaret Trudeau. Maggie Thatcher was not Canadian, among other differences. Best to review before taking "Maggies from the '70s' for $1000 on Jeopardy. Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember Milli Vanilli, so I know whereof I speak...maybe.
You are correct. I can't believe I wrote that, and I fixed it. Trudeau is what I meant to write. The late venerated prime minister should NEVER be confused with Margaret Trudeau. There are jokes that go something like, Justin Trudeau wants to revolutionize Canada like his own dad revolutionized Cuba.
Everything government touches is about money and power. illegal immigration isn't the why, it's a how. Sure, immigration and lack of assimilation may be driving part of this, and certainly a lack of cultural homogeny is partly responsible (no shared values), but all of those things are downstream of economic incentives. So what are the economic incentives?
The goal of government is to create more government. And it works. Every single time. The minute you start manipulating the free-market the only solution is more free-market manipulation to "correct for" the previous free-market manipulation. Immigration is one of those tools. Immigrants aren't producers or consumers, as both are irrelevant in a country with central banking. They're inputs to a system of monetary distribution. They're an excuse to print more dollars and put it into the hands of politicians and donors under the guise of "social welfare." This is the outcome of ALL social welfare programs. We say, in the US, that we can't touch social programs though we HAVE to curb spending. I'd argue an easy 90% of social welfare programs, including medicare and medicaid, simply drive up the cost of medicine by 90%. No one is better off because we have these programs. It's impossible they could be because there is no competition for that money so there's no innovation. There's "create product, buy product, consume product," all done with fake money.
Wealthy countries want more people not as labor and not as consumers, but as a representative of a consumer that can be leveraged to print more money. It's really that simple. They're inputs in a ponzi-scheme and them burning stuff down (that then creates opportunity to print more money) is actually a great outcome in the economic cycle...
"The minute you start manipulating the free-market the only solution is more free-market manipulation"
Except that there is no such thing as The Free Market. Every functioning market needs rules which are enforced by some authority. TFM is a fantasy, the closest one can get to it is a pirate's bazaar or post-collapse Somalia. No functioning country has ever had TFM, tho it is claimed that Iceland in the dark ages came close.
I agree with you... which is why every economy follows exactly the same cycle and every "empire" follows exactly the same cycle. You can slow it down or speed it up, but the outcome feels pre-ordained. Small regulation, limited taxes, then more regulation and more taxes, then massive regulation and massive taxes which beget borrowing which beget inflation, which beget class divide, which beget the downfall of the society.
You stay small you have a chance, you don't, you don't... the story of world history told in one paragraph
True of course. But is it inevitable? History would indicated that indeed it is, but can we not do better? Rome managed to 'correct' itself several times. The West does seem to be terminally ill, but at the very least surely we go down fighting?
I'm a pathetic optimist so I never believe anything is actually inevitable, but we, as a nation, have been dumbed down to an almost embarrassing level and mostly on purpose for the benefit of government, so it certainly feels likely.
That said, we definitely get to go down fighting, and I'm praying some form of balkanization is the next step as I believe that's what saved Rome, and the Netherlands, during their runs. Seeing someone do it right over long periods of time has a way of ultimately influencing the other participants. It's why the EU is SOOOOO adamant that no country be allowed to keep its nose. You HAVE to spite your face or you have no place in the EU for fear someone realizes it doesn't have to be this way. We have holdouts in the US, tiny states that have managed to stay mostly out of the combine harvester's way, but whether college football in the south can save the US is yet to be known...
The rule of law - predictable, clear and enforced laws - are essential for any functioning market. That's why ours has worked so well. But the more liberals tinker with it, the more distorted it gets.
That's why in my overview of the situation the thing that's lacking is not the Right Doctrine -- if only we had [my doctrine], everything would be roses. Nope, the right doctrine is a prudent balance between just-so stories, all of which have merrit. And scoundrels will succeed in destroying a country irrespective of political doctrine, likewise, competent men will run a competent government irrespective of doctrine. Denmark is like Denmark not because they have the right political system, but because the Danes are like the Danes. Sure, the system matters, but it is secondary to having good men (of both sexes). As Dr. P says, if you want to change the world, first learn how to clean up your room.
Is that run for office? If they DON'T want to, then they DEFINITELY should. Someone should have someone they can vote for they can rely on not to turn out to be a steaming turd. Twenty years ago none of those shouting "Me! Pick me!" atm would likely get anyones' vote for dog-catcher.
Of course there are several sets of motives but surely the woke Marxists *are* deliberately destroying Western Civ -- is it not implicitly and incurably racist and sexist and homophobic and all the rest of the isms and phobias? It can't be reformed, it is whiteness incarnate -- burn it down. As for the Globalists, their doctrine is divide and rule -- a united proletariat has some chance of fighting back, so fracture them into Identities. Is it a coincidence that wokeness comes from the very citadels of the globalist elite, the Ivies? Yes folks, it's the globalist plutocrats who have created wokeness for us -- they've co-opted the Marxists to do their work for them. Clever! The commies now do the work of fracturing the proletariat on behalf of the plutocrats.
That's my best take on the situation: Marxist "woke" is the lipstick on a pig named totalitarian finance. We live inside a hyperreality created by the MSM/surveillance state in service to political/criminal financial grifter's. Last week THE GRAYZONE pointed out that Macron is a former "central banker" there to loot what is left of the French economy. The Clinton/Obama whoredom served the same purpose when it allowed Wall Street to butcher Glass-Steagell so it could loot and destroy the American economy and, the lives of millions of American's in the process.
You hafta give them credit tho, it's a brilliant plan -- get the left to do your dirty work for you. Turn the enemy on himself. Get the Blacks to demand a return to slavery, get the feminists to cancel womanhood, get labor worried about gender inclusive bathrooms and never mind wages and job security and affordable housing -- so passé. I'm no Marxist but they have made a few acute observations and one of them is that the capitalists will sell you the ropes you hang them with -- and offer you a discount if you buy more.
Oh, and get them to sterilize their own children, all the more need then to import peons from Guatemala and jihadis from Afghanistan -- yes, they burn down cities, but they work for cheap.
That is debatable. A few academics have written about the sentiment of the people who come to the West from the countries named in this article, as well as several other countries. I remember one of these academics giving a talk about it: “They wash up on the shore, get some food and blankets, ask what country they are in, and say ‘Down with the government!’” Cheap labor has a price.
I agree that unbridled immigration is a disaster but I think your statement "the purpose for business elites was to import cheap labor" is incomplete. Low cost is preferred by consumers and businesses do what they do to survive. Consumers are very much a part of this equation.
It’s not about the cost but about the margins and extreme wealth of CEOs. They will sell a t shirt that costs $3 to make for $60. Then they find a way to make it for $1. They still sell it for $60. Cost to consumer is the same. Wages for employees are the same. Profits for CEOs increase. Of course they always always LIE to consumers and say “we are such nice CEOs. We just want to make it cheaper for the consumer.” But this is actually a bold faced lie. Don’t fall for it.
Very expensive things (Nike, Bombas socks) are often made cheap and garbagy overseas. I personally only buy high quality items made in USA or Europe, never China. I buy from small companies that make high quality items. (And they have lower margins and lower profits). Consumer pays more for Chinese made items, but the CEOs increase their own Billions of $$$. You pay more, you get worse.
All the while screwing their workers and demanding their "loyalty."
" In 2021, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 399-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 366-to-1 in 2020 and a big increase from 20-to-1 in 1965 and 59-to-1 in 1989. CEOs are even making a lot more than other very high earners (wage earners in the top 0.1%)—almost seven times as much. From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,460%, far outstripping S&P stock market growth (1,063%) and top 0.1% earnings growth (which was 385% between 1978 and 2020, according to the latest data available). In contrast, compensation of the typical worker grew by just 18.1% from 1978 to 2021."
You may quibble with their methodology and precise numbers but directionally there is no debate. This needs to be reversed. Otherwise it's back to feudalism.
It isn't just about money, though. The wealthy are separating themselves from everyone else. Growing up, we had some very wealthy people around, and various groups of middle class (upper, middle, lower). The wealthy kids still played with the middle class kids. The wealthy people bought the Little League uniforms and sponsored contests and scholarships and were very involved in the community.
When I was young the people in the wealthy towns drove Cadillacs not Ferraris and Porsches. The gap just wasn't that wide for the most part. Now it's becoming feudal. And, because the serfs are now educated and armed, I'm betting there will be a political realignment very soon, where a populist Republican party ditches the plutocrats and dedicates itself to the working women and men and making life easier for those who work hard and play by the rules.
which is why I cringe when I hear CEOs lie to the public "We make things in China so they are cheaper for the consumer" or "we pass savings onto the consumer" or "if we make things cheaper we can hire more people and pay better"-----when these are just lies.
I like the show Shark Tank. From watching the show, I've learned a lot about margins. (small) Companies will talk about how they are doing great things for consumers and their employees. Then the billionaire hosts will respond with "how to cut margins and increase profit" ie: make things overseas where its cheaper and pay people less. Of course the cost to consumer remains the same. So profit margins can increase. That's the problem with companies growing too big and getting investors/going public on stock market/Board of Directors. All these investor folks want increased profits for themselves. So pay employees less, make things overseas, make the product more expensive for the consumer. So the investors make more money.
Better to buy local & from small businesses with no investors.
We do not need to produce here anyway. You can get all the cheap stuff your little heart desires from China. Not that everything from China is cheap, but if that is what you want it is readily available.
Exactly this. Bill Gates isn't saying "I want to destabilize the west" he's saying "I want people who will work for lower wages AND have to keep working for me because if they quit they have to leave the country." Cargill isn't saying "we want to destabilize the U.S." they're saying "we can get illegal immigrants to work in poultry factories for dirt cheap and they won't complain if they a finger or two gets chopped off" Edit: superrich people of any political stripe don't care about countries at all. They can always just move if things get too bad (or hire private guards).
Yes, Terence, excellent point--never forget the role of the corporaation's desire for access to cheap labor in all of this. What we think of as "race" issues are usually labor issues with a racial overlay.
massive immigration in this case was caused by Algerians / Moroccan wanting to flee their poor country of birth for a presumed better future in France. Not because French business was importing cheap labor. The unemployment in these areas today (and always) is extremely high. Unemployment in all of France is high because of labor regulation, etc.
The vast majority of these immigrants have no skills offer, be it for cheap labor or any labor. They exist on government subsidies with no clear absorption or assimilation mechanism, and many simply have no foundational family culture to rely on.
Terence, yes cheap labor is a factor, but greed only explains partially what we are witnessing. The World Economic Forum members are the most powerful individuals and entities in the Western world. They have no concern for the issues which concern us at thefp. If they had a concern for the destruction of the Western world they likely would have the power to put a stop to it. They approve of the masses of illegal aliens because they approve of the consequences. These elites are generally immune to these consequences. No one can explain their evil intent, but the pattern of their behavior is clear.
You are correct, of course. Why is it that we cannot speak of any western culture having the right to retain its national identity? All western nations must have open arms to any and all nations who in the “world’s view” have been underserved and discriminated against. For decades we, in the US especially, have sent many billions of our hard earned tax dollars to countries in Africa, the Middle East and South America in order to help alleviate poverty and despair. (Or was it to appease warlords and drug cartels?) Now we are expected to allow those same countries to send an unlimited amount of citizenry to our countries. None of these countries has the infrastructure to accommodate the influx of so many needy. We simply cannot keep up. And those immigrants who are now feeling underserved by the system are wreaking havoc on the counties that allowed them in. It is a system doomed from the start.
There are two paths by which to go, one being allow the destruction of each culture. There will be no more France, Sweden, Switzerland etc. Forget about ever wanting travel to experience any of these cultures as they have been established…the other path is getting back to common sense and stopping the pretense of thinking that assimilation will ever happen in any peaceful or sensible time frame, and returning migrants back to their countries, establishing real borders, and not allowing these countries to take advantage of the citizens of the west. All the politicians are to blame for hurting our societies. It’s time to wake up and fix it.
Many insightful comments. Most ring true. Globalists despise borders and actively tell you there should be none as they try to move us to global govt through credit score passports like the Chinese who they admire. Immigrants move away from poverty to a new country but refuse to assimilate demanding to bring there country with them. Claims of cultural protection are derided as racist. There is one overriding theme. The wealthy seek to make the world more amenable to their preferences and, in doing so, destroy what makes it livable for the many.
Are you sure about that? The British and French problems aren't with any "new wave". As far as I can tell NO wave of Muslim immigrants has assimilated in either Britain or France, and the children and grandchildren of Windrush checked out of the game though born here.
No, because you were destabilizing them before and after WWI and WWII as well:
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." from "War is a Racket"; Smedley D. Butler (Major General (Ret.), USMC); 1935.
Having migrants streaming in from destabilized regimes is no picnic, to be sure, but assuming all other factors are present, Which is better - destabilized and scattered semi-socialist regimes or installed and directed USSR backed Soviet regimes? It’s all well and good to say we should have left well enough alone, and maybe it WOULD have been better. I have my doubts.
Chaos is the point of the exercise. Continual crisis no solutions forthcoming. Or, at least distraction, distortion and the prevention of the healthy American/World dialogue we need. I believe a new truth/fact based dialogue is beginning to happen.
The first thing that came to mind as I was reading was an immigration problem with a sub title of lack of assimilation! Plain and simple France did not control its borders, the influx was too great to assimilate and voila...this is what you get!
Algeria, the source of the problem, was part of metropolitan France before independence. You can immigrate from SoCal to Texas but you'd still be American. The French situation is akin in many ways to if the South had won; you couldn't in all honesty bar anyone or their children immigrating to Maine from Louisiana 'til about 1940; they would still be US citizens and their children able to claim US citizenship. Britain had a simililar mess with Commonwealth immigration; up until about 1970 they could claim "Civis Brittanicus Sum" and we couldn't do anything about it, nor did we want to: it made 'Windrush' possible. I think it was the flood of South Asian refugees from Uganda that finally had us sort the law out. "Deny someone the right to be English? Are you off your chump?" Those things MEANT something. To some of us they still do, and I dare say many Citoyens Francais are similarly conflicted.
You are not wrong. But I think it is less about immigration and more about the failure--yea, even a REFUSAL--to meaningfully assimilate.
This is all the more apparent when you see how this is playing out differently the U.S. Here, the rioters are not primarily Latin America immigrants. Latin American cultures, while not identical to U.S. culture, have plenty of similarities, due to a deep shared foundation in Western Europe. The main bone of contention in Latin American assimilation is language, not culture.
In the U.S., the refusers are people--mostly NOT immigrants--who reject the foundation of Western thought. They--like their counterparts in Europe--want nothing to do with Western culture. They want to pillage the wealth that the West's system of free enterprise has created, without recognizing that they have no way of regenerating that wealth with once they have plundered it all.
I agree but the reality is that massive unregulated, unlawful immigration does not permit assimilation. That's why Congress created an immigration system. With restrictive numbers and requirements for permanent residency and citizenship. If a nation lets in too many immigrants - many of them illegal and unvetted - assimilation is virtually imossible.
The main problem that I see is that everyone keeps obfuscating the difference between otherwise-law-abiding illegal immigrants and the criminal element that has taken advantage of our lax border policies.
I would rather see us allowing a flood of the former than our current system that allows the latter without restraint.
The schools, hospitals, and streets are not broken because of immigrants. They are broken because our government at every level has placed graft and grift ahead of infrastructure. That is just as true in my small town far from the border as it is in places where immigrants are.
Pfft what's this nonsense about infrastructure ?! These institutions are broken because we can't AFFORD to feed, educate, medicate, transport and house these people! Stop being so silly.
Not all laws are of equal significance. Quietly shoplifting a loaf of bread is--and ought to be--a very different matter from robbing people at gunpoint, raping children, and murdering rival gang members.
I would like to see two systems implemented. One would permit larger numbers of legal immigrants under similar conditions to what I know used to apply: a sponsor who becomes financially and legally responsible for ensuring that the immigrant does not become a burden on society or a criminal threat, a clean bill of health, and a past free of ideological behavior at odds with respect for the U.S. Constitution.
The other would be an exchange system: an immigrant who can find a U.S. citizen who is effectually willing and able to trade places with them--renouncing their U.S. citizenship and moving to the immigrant's country on a legally permanent basis--gets to go to the head of the line.
I think we fundamentally agree. But I don't think we should countenance illegal immigration. Personally, I'd deport every illegal - prioritizing gang members, criminals and public assistance recipients. Those joining the military - and their families - would get preferential treatment.
I am largely with Bruce on this one. But like you the ones who really worry me are the ones who were involved in criminal acts in their country of origin and are here as well. The cartels are here and fully operational.
Speaking of Arizona, we are not alone, just more obvious in our cartel operations. The Sinaloa cartels selected AZ Triumvirate Hobbs/Fontes/Mayes continue to tell Cook County, "Hold My Beer" . . . bud light, of course
Arizona - Sinaloa" Cartel Ties Exposed
Arizona Forensic Investigator Accuses Statewide and County Officials of Racketeering and Election Fraud Connected to Sinaloa Cartel
Thank you Hope. I saw a graphic last month of which cartel was claiming which territory. I suspected the political tie but had not yet read anything confirming it. I think Arizona is a key state to take to turn this ship around.
Celia, I agree. All Western countries have a huge demographics problem- an aging population. We have not reproduced at levels to sustain the retirement benefits to an ever-increasing number of retirees.
As you point out, the Hispanic immigrants mostly adhere to traditional Western values. The US should consider itself fortunate that most of our young immigrants share our values. That is not true of the European immigrant pool. It’s also going to come as a shock to the Democrats who believe that anyone with brown skin automatically hates Western culture.
Is there a criminal element among the illegals? Of course, and they should be dealt with appropriately.
It's already coming as a shock to Democrats that Muslim immigrants are not willing to tolerate their children being sexually groomed at school. The latest "excuse" that I've heard from the Left is that these resistant Muslim parents are not at all "representative" of Muslims, but instead have been brainwashed by Christian conservatives.
EXACTLY. Well said. Bruce. They want to destroy everything for their global empire. The fact that its literally the president's job to protect our borders and he isn't speaks volumes about their agenda. Disgusting
And I'll keep posting this on every article on FP: WHERE IS THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BARI!? Now they've found cocaine in the White House, and it REALLY looks like Hunter snorted a bullet of cocaine on the balcony during the WH 4th festivities, in full view of the public and children. Google was doing their whole "the search results are changing too fast" BS, meaning they were making sure they posted only pro Dems stuff, just like they did with Malone on Joe Rogan a few years ago. Daily Mail is reporting the man in charge with negotiating Hunter's sweetheart deal was an old friend, for goodness sake. So, when DAILY MAIL is scooping FP, I'm worried. FP is showing to be very biased. Be better.
Nonsense was the first word that came into my head too. “What is the sudden surge of interest in virtual reality but an unapologetic declaration that we’ve grown bored with the world as it is?” …the author better run out and buy Meta stock before it’s too late!
I’m going to beg to differ. I posted this 350 comments after yours, so forgive my repetition.
An astute columnist here in CT wrote a 4th of July commemoration in which he celebrates Eleventh Century Anglo Saxons for doing something no other nation had ever done before: lay a foundation for this thing called the rule of law.
Over the next ten centuries as the concept took hold, more and more people could profit from their courage, pluck, ingenuity, and productivity. The government in theory and, often in practice, would protect them from thugs, experts in the art of the shakedown. Thus the immigrant coal miner saved his wages and saw his children become business owners. They, in turn, saw their children become professors, engineers, physicians, bankers, lawyers. Wealth grew in tandem with opportunity. So much to celebrate!
And, yet, their children’s children became lazy, spoiled, entitled, ungrateful dilettantes who have taken over government, industry and education. Instead of cherishing the unfathomable accomplishments of their forebears, they’re ashamed. Instead of looking in the mirror at their own sloth, they pat themselves on the back for their “empathy.” To assuage their misplaced guilt for something they had no hand in creating, they’ve destroyed the golden goose and the futures for immigrants who are not unlike their own ancestors. The rule of law is now nothing but a weapon in the hands of oppressors, at least in their eyes.
Weitzmann, unfortunately, is all-too-correct. Success has set Western Civilization on a course for destruction. Let’s hope we can find a way off the path.
The Romans had the rule of law, and the Hellenes before them. There was an Anglo-Danish revival of law (the very word is Norse) and invention of 'Common Law' in the Tenth-Eleventh Century; and Roman law in Europe below the Rhine and Danube never really went away but was eclipsed for some centuries. In the round we can and should learn from that: civilisation can come close to death; but it can also be revived. In those two cases Germanic "barbarians" saved Roman law and civilisation after it came close to killing itself and Viking "barbarians" came close to destroying English civilisation before they saw their behaviour was killing the very thing they wanted in on. I see the same thing occuring with your Latino settlers: the majority want in; they don't want to destroy. They'll be your salvation if you are wise about it.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.....”
21st Century America;
“So that we may endeavor to load thee on buses and lead thee away from our leafy waterfront communities. To transport you to urban cities of great opportunity and acceptance, where you shall be loaded on yet another bus to be driven to another state of our great union with whom we quarrel bitterly. There you shall thrive. There you shall seek freedom and justice, and we will be championing you, oh wretched refuse, from afar.”
A lot of bad happens because the perp's just do it. No one give's them permission. And, they do not live in the nightmare landscape's they create. The psychopath feels no remorse and suffers no consequences.
When the Staue of Liberty was installed there was much land, many natural resources, and a much smaller population so opportunities abounded for any one willing to work for them. And you could go straight to work, no paper necessary. I think the language you quote was appropriate then. Not so much now. I am not anti-immigrant but I am definitely anti all of you come, stay as long as you like, we'll take care of you.
The middle of your country is BLOODY EMPTY. Viewed from this tight packed isle you sound very silly. Lord knows what the Dutch, who clawed half their even tighter packed country from the feckin' ocean, damnit, would think. It is very difficult to like you lot sometimes. Crass isn't in it.
This protest is primarily caused by the French government and French corporations importing mass numbers of immigrants to form an underclass for cheap labor. That it destabilizes the country is a bonus.
But the larger point is still very well made and not rubbish at all.
The great migration of the late 19th and early 20th century to the USA involved ethnic groups, all of which in just one generation integrated and contributed to the growth of the country, its prosperity and all aspects of life, last, but not least, the wonderful cuisines brought from across our borders.
I work with a lot of second generation Mexican immigrants and Asian immigrants and they've assimilated just fine and contributed to growth and prosperity.
I live in an expat community in Mexico where people who have lived here 20 years can't speak Spanish. Turns out it is very diffiult to learn another language in your later years. .As a matter of fact, most of the expats who are fluent either did the junior year abroad in Spain or , grew up in Costa Rica or Panama and learned Spanish as a child I spent four hours a week in class and many hours studying at home and still can't do more than utter a few useless phrases. Those Mexican who work 24/7 and still can't speak English have my total understanding. I do question the 2nd generation not speaking English, however. The kids of Mexican families I knew not only spoke better English than some of their American peers but in more than a few cases ended up at the top of their class.
I hear you there. I can read Spanish fairly fluently, and even understand Spanish news when the newscasters speak clearly, but if I go into a bodega I can't understand a single word. And I've been studying it for 3+ years now at least six hours a week.
Let see Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colarado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah. All or in part once Mexico. You really ought to shut up when you've your tanks parked on other peoples lawns.
I find your some of examples curious, Bruce. National suicide you say? And you mention Nigel Farage? Who orchestrated along with Britain's gift to ineptitude, party man Boris Johnson, the 'hey, let's put a gun to our head' idea and withdraw from the EU and their tariff free market of 500 million people! That Farage? I don't think he understands economics.
And Orban - as in Victor? Hungary's finest nationalist as he closes his borders spouting anti immigration and Christian themes and is a great hit with the GOP here - but wait, here he is every year waiting on handouts from, you guessed it, the EU! Billions a year..
And I hear he's trying to 'reform' his policies to get even more!
What kind of nationalist does that? Orban spits at the assimilation of the EU but loves their money.
Each of the politicians I mentioned has his or her individual faults but what they all get right is the horror of open borders and a respect and love for their nation and its sovereignty. If you think one can have open borders and a functioning state, we are not on the same page. It's simply impossible. As far as the UK leaving the EU.....the EU is a joke. The bureaucrats in Belgium are worse than a malignancy.
You mention individual faults. I would think the abject hypocrisy of Orban would be a big one. But! But! What I do admire in him is his audacious opportunism. In that he despises the EU for all it represents, like you, but very happily takes their money. Now only if the UK had that same opportunism and come up with a solution to it's so called immigrant (aberrant culture, in your words, a bit harsh I might add..) crisis that was imposed on it by the EU, and still keep unfettered access to the largest and richest goddamn market in the entire world. It could have been done, but Cameron didn't have the smarts. He put it to a referendum and let blinkered blokes sloshed in beer in Liverpool and Manchester etc..decide for him. (Actually that's a good example of an 'elite' who totally fucked things up.)
The EU may be a joke - but now economically at least, the UK has become one as well. And all because of a form of populist nationalism that is short sighted, based on inchoate rage and anger and looks to the simplest solutions possible. Sort of like MAGA today..
Give me strength, our "Muslim Problem" pre-dates the idiots who foisted the "Common Mark-Up" on us. Our other immigrant problem pre-dates the European Coal and Steel Community; the EEC's predecessor. Lord save us from ignorant anti-English bigots.
I think you’re about half right here- two points raised align well with my personal experience
1. Life in the banlieus is dehumanizing. They are some of the grimmest places I have ever seen, lacking any joy or visual stimulation.
2. As life becomes ever more comfortable these compelling causes become ever more trivial. Social media obviously makes organizing disruption far easier.
There is no single cause at play, we can just weigh a multitude of factors as the evidence indicates.
True about the appearance of the banlieus. They have a rare, strange, dystopian ugliness which is quite striking. I guess architecture is more important than I realized because the effect is very negative and depressing.
I agree with Bruce Miller. I'd also like to point out that the young Arab who was killed was driving a Mercedes —so much for poverty and deprivation. It's instructive to compare these riots with the protests in Israel where absolutely no looting occurred despite the vast number of protesters. Could that difference be due to the cultural values of the protesters? Seems to me that the ideals motivating protesters become suspect when these "idealists" enthusiastically enrich themselves through robbery.
I'm sorry but the promise of e plurabis unum is turning out to be a failed experiment and it's happening everywhere. This hope that multi-culturism would succeed was centered around the idea that those coming into a new country would assimilate into that culture but what's playing out today is that those we hoped would assimilate into and respect western culture want to destroy it. It's akin to me inviting you into my house and you repaying me by telling me how evil I am and then setting my house on fire. The left has fomented this division with their hate mongering, their grievance industrial complex, and their manipulation of white guilt to silence all dissent.
Don't be "sorry" for telling the truth! That's exactly what's happening. And when it's so widespread and pernicious it can't just be the result of stupidity and carelessness. It has to be part of a plan. Let's did deeper.
In these places, Weitzmann points out, “the poverty rate reaches 43 percent, and the unemployment rate almost 19 percent. The annual income per household does not exceed 14,000 euros.” - What is the poverty rate or unemployment rate of the places they immigrated from? When they left their country of origin and immigrated to a new place were they guaranteed wealth, jobs or prosperity? How exactly do they feel cheated by the place they now call home? What are these "Western ideals" that have taken root in their life and behavior that make them unwelcome back in their countries of origin? It would appear from the article that the definition of "systemic racism" is the lack of a guaranteed income, guaranteed housing, and the ability break the laws of the country they now reside in without repercussions.
When my grandparents (on both sides) came to this country at the turn of the 20th century from Lebanon, they learned the language, worked so hard, bought their homes and most important wanted to assimilate and become American citizens in every way. I am sure there was discrimination along the way but they plowed through with hard work. Their children, my parents, went to college and never took anything for granted. Gratitude and faith (religion) got them through any hardships along the way.
Same here. My parents only spoke English to us. My Polish grandparents worked hard, did manual labor, raised seven children, eventually bought the apartment house they lived in and the one next to it. The only desire was to raise their children to be good Americans.
No. They swapped one culture for another, and better, one. That better one is enriched by the best of theirs' and othe immigrants former cultures being folded into it.
Lebanese Christians, I presume. Too many Muslim immigrants, in spite of their willingness and ability to work hard, spend their time seething with hate for our freedoms and way of life. It's why just a week before the riots in France, a Syrian immigrant stabbed four French toddlers in a park, for no reason other than seething hate.
At the turn of the 20th century Lebanon was still a part of the Ottoman Empire. That hate you are obsessing about wasn't a thing back then. It was the UN's non-resolution of the Palestinian intrusion that did for Lebanon. A whole lot of history had to happen to produce those circumstances.
Right! And my non English speaking grandfather refused to speak anything other than English at home, he didn’t want his kids learning anything other than English.
My grandparents were the same - Wish there had been Greek (grandfather) or German (grandmother) spoken so that I could learn it -but I never heard a word of either language because, to my grandparents, that was no longer their country. My grandfather even became a huge baseball fan - of the Tigers - even though he had never heard of the game before coming to the US in his middle-teens.
I had a friend whose parents were Polish so I said to my friend so you speak Polish. No, she said. When my parents arrived in the US, they said we are American now and we will only speak English.
That is not true with the undocumented Democrats from Latin America. The Democrats encourage that with bilingual education. They exit school not speaking English and then wonder why they can't get a job in an English speaking country.
And yet the Latin American immigrants are not the ones rioting, for the most part. They have been stubborn about language, but they still share in the foundation of Western culture.
The rioters are people who were born here in the U.S. and speak English but utterly reject Western civilization, although they are happy to pillage its fruits.
And in the newspaper today I read that the Biden Admin wants to make the citizenship requirements EASIER for those who have not learned English...after SEVEN YEARS!!!
I used to work with a Mexican man who would sit next to me at lunch and try speaking with me. His English wasn't that great, and my Spanish was only slightly better, but he understood that if he was going to live in this country then it would be advantageous for him to become as fluent in his Host's language as possible. Seven years later he passed the written and oral test and became an official American citizen. He raised his children speaking English even though his wife never assimilated, spending all of her time with other Spanish speakers. He bought a house in SoCal, paid it off, and then retired. An American success story, if there ever was one!
Unfortunately, our current government does not believe in this type of success. They would rather keep new immigrants in thrall to the "help" that government provides, never ONCE require them to even learn English.
Right-my grandparents still spoke Arabic and English at home and my parents only spoke Arabic to us (their 4 children) when they did not want us to understand what they were saying. We later learned.
While I agree that a "best practice" pattern for assimilation is as you describe, I think there are some key differences between France's post-colonial immigrant population and the early 1900 wave of Eastern and Southern and Irish immigrants to the US (which also differs from that of say, the African slaves "immigrants" as well). "Voluntary" immigration invites assimilation and incentivizes it, "immigration" that is by dint of past colonialism and (in the US slavery), creates a different sort of pattern. The French Northern African immigrants, as noted in the article and beyond, are not necessarily immigrants to France because they really wanted to be French, but out of economic necessities that were created by their national relationships to France as subservients, and were primarily brought in for filling labor needs (sounds familiar?), and yet denied a way to return home while also not exactly being welcomed into France either. Therefore, their assimilation patterns will differ - and also with a direct relationship to how the host country encounters those immigrants.
France, for all its progressivism, created a lot of barriers to assimilation for Muslim immigrants, that America *to its credit* has not, in terms of being able to be "Muslim in public" while still being "American". Hence, American Muslim immigrants and their descendants are much more assimilated, even while retaining aspects of Muslim faith and culture, but within "American" constraints, which produces a much more moderated version of Islamic faith and culture. France, without its freedom of religion clauses etc, restricted a lot of public Muslim expression, including restrictions on wearing head scarves and hijab in public. And it appears for the worse - creating "ghettos" of Muslim immigrants who are isolated and resentful (and perhaps rightfully so), and that inhibits a gradual assimilation that might otherwise occur as subsequent generations have *choices* as to how French vs. Muslim they want to be.
And there are also probably some key differences in the French Muslim demographics and the American Muslim demographics - the French Muslims, emigrating by necessity, are not seeking to leave behind the strict structures of their native homelands so much as American Muslim immigrants who are - so France has probably imported a lot more of the militant and fundamentalist sort than America has of more "moderate" Muslims willingly seeking the freedom from their home nations and cultures. Again, the key difference, IMO, is that American Muslims are not former colonial "vassals" but are voluntary immigrants. French Muslims from Northern Africa are though. And the dynamic is very different, and this is what it produces. And yes, of course, you'll find pockets of fundie Muslims in America too, who are here by necessity not necessarily choice, and who resist a more assimilationist approach, but I think broadly speaking, we have absorbed and assimilated a Muslim population better than France (and other Western European nations have).
Likely, France needs to better assimilate Muslim culture into a broader French context that doesn't restrict or isolate it, but also does not allow it to also overtake French culture (no one wants to see the French bikini replaced by mandatory burkas at the beach, after all!). A difficult balancing act for sure. And definitely the provision of improved services and environments is a necessity, with perhaps the goals of breaking up the "banlieus" and dispersing the population so that there aren't these heavily concentrated (and isolated) communities that fosters exactly this sort of "underclass" dynamic and the inevitable flare ups.
The writer also fails to mention that they have difficulty finding better-paying jobs because they cannot speak standard French--despite having grown up in France with access to public education. Money is not saved or invested, but spent on bling such as gold jewelry or expensive sneakers. Garbage is thrown in the streets...except in front of the mosque, which is kept clean and well-maintained.
I am reporting what I hear from people who live there.
I was struck by the sentence “there was a chronic lack of childcare, medicine and education.” Did they immigrate from countries there was an abundance of these services?
Leftists do not want to acknowledge that high immigration levels from poor countries drive inequity, social unrest and insolvent public services.
I told a man in Seattle that illegal immigration created a perpetual system of racial inequity because the darker immigrants will be poorer than established whites (like him) and there's a nonstop feed of them. Illegal immigration = systemic racism, inevitably.
His head exploded in front of my face. You are not allowed to oppose or even criticize illegal immigration in Seattle.
That is because they value the cheap wages paid to their gardeners, nannies and manual laborers. If THEY succeed, then the white guys have to pay them MORE.
I've seen this first-hand in SoCal! My wife was a well paid nanny for many years and for a few families, but the last time she lost her job during the Obama years she discovered that people were only willing to pay $7.00 an hour, for 50-60 hours a week! We ended up filing for bankruptcy and nearly lost our home but were able to pull out of it after four years of struggle.
How can you expect people to LIVE on the wages these people are willing to pay? The answer is: They CAN'T!
They can if they embrace the Central America quality of life, which means six roommates in a one bedroom apartment where they all struggle to afford food.
That's the inevitable model of open-border socialism, and when it happens the people responsible will say, "this is because capitalism has failed and we will fix it if you give us money and power."
Well how do we stop this from happening in America?( well I should say continuing) Keep voting democrat/ leftist? They have become so entrenched in our government is there anyway to avoid falling in the same way as France? I keep voting Republicans but we don’t win! Why? Watch this on YouTube - The Awakening -6/3/23
"poverty" is another word (much like "racism") that doesn't mean what it used to mean. The social safety nets (welfare) available in European countries is....I don't even know the right word to use....they get houses/apartments for free, child allowance and even money for leisure (god forbid being on the dole makes you stressed out) I have cousins in England and Ireland that haven't worked for years and live a life that anyone "poor" in America would be jealous of. This is a lack of poverty issue....maybe if they actually didn't know where their next meal came from they would work a real job and if the threat of being shipped back to the hell holes they came from was actually a real threat, they would behave themselves.
When you constantly show people the good life, barraging them with luxury, as social media does, without providing any hope of participating in it, you get bad behavior sooner or later
Not an invalid point. Even for "well to do" folks, the constant presentation of curated "perfect lives (and bodies)" as somehow the "norm" is creating a lot of emotional distress and weird behavior psychology...
This is why they all have iPhones and 60" tellies. Obviously. Down the road from me folk sleep under bridges and still manage to sniff or shoot-up £500-worth a week. They aren't short of the means; it's the chaotic lives they lead that squander both the means and opportunities that are available.
There is a hell of a lot of truth in that. Not to mention that there are so many more things to buy than 50 years ago which also helps show differences in the haves and have nots
There seems to be two things in play here. One, these countries have taken in many people whose culture is vastly different from theirs. They do not live by Western ideals or standards so they are not interested or very able to assimilate into the new society. Two, the countries that have taken in these people have done very little to try to get these people to assimilate into their culture. Those two things result in masses that are living in separate and poor areas who do not have anything in common with the country that they live in.
Weitzmann then goes on to say several pargraphs away from that: "Between 1990 to 2017 alone, the global poverty rate fell from 36 percent to 9 percent." I think the man is an idiot.
I was raised in a dirt poor Catholic family of 10. We couldn’t even afford a car. But we were rich in values. We were taught to work hard and follow the Golden Rule and 10 Commandments. 8 of us attended University. But I was lucky. I was raised in a peaceful and mainly law abiding country.
I would never take or damage someone else’s property or use violence outside the rules of a sports arena.
Muslim youth have been burning cars in French cities for 20 years. It is irrational to make excuses for criminal behaviour.
France is paying the price for decades of mass migration from a culture that seeks to conquer, not assimilate. Bataclan, Nice, Charlie Hebdo, 12-year-old Lola Daviet, were all sacrifices at the alter of open borders. The Netflix movie "Athena" portrayed the future of all European cities and its plot is eerily reminiscent of this wave of French riots: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-speak-french-part-2
You err in thinking that France's immigration problem has to do with open borders.
Algeria and Morocco were part of France's pre-war empire. Just as those in the British Empire colonies were entitled to British citizenship and passports, so too were Algerians and Moroccans entitled to be French.
The 1950s saw several million French Arabs relocate to European France for better lives. (Yes, France was under reconstruction through the Marshall Plan, by conditions in France for the immigrant were still far better than the conditions in the streets and alleys of Algiers or Casablanca.)
And as is often the case with immigrant populations, the birthrates were higher than in the population of the host countries, leading to millions of additional souls joining what are euphemistically called "The Projects". Paris, Marseilles, and Brussels have huge enclaves of people of Arab descent, many of whom are seeking ways of moving illegally into the United Kingdom
Open borders was more of a German thing foisted on the EU by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
That is the Poverty Paradox -- whereby those occupying the lower (and especially the lowest) rungs of the socio-economic ladder and rely on at least some degree of public assistance choose to increase that burden on society through unconstrained procreation rather than seek to improve their conditions with a stable family size. If you can't self-sustain a family of four, what makes you think another 2 - 4 children are going to do?
I was trying with an abundance of circumspection not to suggest a similarity to rabbit warrens.
Something I would like to stress regarding these incidents, the quality of life that the rioters enjoy today is far better and far more sustainable than what was seen post WWII and all the way through to the late 1950s when Germany was again becoming a major player in the European economy, France and England were emerging from the war's hangover, and Washington was continuing the process of funneling trillions of dollars eastward to maintain US forces on European soil.
Douglas Murray in Strange Death of Europe points to a few factors explaining the unwillingness of European culture to defend itself. One is “exhaustion” from a century of failed political systems - socialism, Marxism, fascism and the EU. The other is “guilt”. The feeling among many who advocate for open borders is “after 500 years of colonialist exploitation what right do we have to prevent them from returning the favor”. We’re seeing the same in the US not just at the southern border but in the slow-motion dismantling of civilization in our cities. Hand-wringing leftists claim we owe respect to those who have no understanding or regard for the fundamental values that enabled progress and prosperity (no mention of God, family, rule-of-law in either assessment above). Pundits like these sidestep and avoid facing basic truths at our mutual peril.
Was watching an episode of 1883 where the lead character states something to the effect of “ cities have made us weaker.” This struck me as it has dawned on me over the last few years that general society keeps telling us certain things are undoubtedly true despite our eyes and common sense telling us they are not. The more urban we become, the less common sense we use, and society has increasingly used academic “experts” to continue pushing and expanding its lies…
They've skipped several generations of comms tech. Punt and Somaliland are doing quite well without international recognition and the UN/Blue Helmets queering the pitch.
“anti-world”—of the housing projects known as les cités, - Please let me come to your country for freedom and liberty, plus opportunities to live better. Wait, you mean that requires work and sacrifice, plus an education? Well I was thinking more like how about FREE! I live in public housing and on the dole because I am unwilling to assimilate and learn what is needed. So if that doesn't work then I must immediately blame all people who had nothing to do with it, but pay for my free shit. See you doing what is needed to get ahead must mean you are a racist and have prevented me from getting ahead, although, again, I am not really interested in learning your language, cultures, and social norms. See I prefer to bring the same crappy standards I came from but expect different results.
How about all of you stay home and fight the things you are running from. Stand up and take responsibility for the crappy country you fled. Show some courage and desire to change things.
You can spend every penny the government has (like America) and it will never be enough. Sorry, yes there is racism and lack of opportunities, but come on, you are also responsible for your own status. How do immigrants in America get ahead. Education, work long hours, sacrifice for the children's future.
Someone needs to explain how Western countries are to handle the ever increasing flood of immigrants and make people from maybe 5-6 different countries happy? I believe more likely it is the liberals of the world putting out false hope of just get to France, America, Great Britain and you will be happy and taken care of. Well you know, in case anyone forgets, the people of these countries are already struggling to live their lives and take care of their own. Now it's racism if the red carpet is not rolled out and perfect results. Someone explain to me how you handle the continuing flood of refugees who will not fight for their own country, yet expect a perfect result from the immigration? Unrealistic expectations!
I agree in part that there is a lack of ideals facing this generation born post- achievements. However, my children ages 30-17 have been directly educated by professors and teachers both in college and in high school over the last 10 years that they are surrounded by societal ills and they must revolt. It’s my personal belief that education and educators have Marxist leanings in the same way the German universities were in the 1800s and are creating soldiers of the students.
The very same teachers who made their students read tracts such as "Wretched of the Earth" and preached about the wickedness and excess of Western culture? It has been observed that "our Constitution is not a suicide pact." Americans need to wake up to the national suicide being fomented by the Leftist DNC.
The best thing any parent of school aged children can do is to get their kids out of public schools A.S.A.P. One of the unintentional consequences of the Plandemic was an increase in home schooling. We can only hope this continues. Public schooling is nothing more than Marxist indoctrination on an industrial scale. Grievance "studies" have replaced history (at least non-fictional history), civics, and much of the fundamental three R's. We are breeding generations of mindless culture warriors completely lacking in the basic skills of life and career -- especially so in the STEM fields which are almost exclusively now foreign students.
Who remembers the progressive social policy they used to call ‘multiculturalism?’
When essentially unlimited immigration was supported by the cheerful, but ridiculous, metaphor comparing multiculturalism to a lovely organic salad one might find in a café in the 5th arrondissement. A more apt metaphor is a head of iceberg lettuce, an onion, and a tomato shoved next to each other in a bowl, slathered with dressing. In this case, French dressing.
Functioning societies are built on a foundation of shared values, norms and customs. With each new ingredient, in measured amounts, contributing to a unified whole. Otherwise, we end up with a mouthful of onions.
Well, Christians were in that mode for much of what is known as the "Dark Ages" in Europe, and even early American settlements featured some pretty harsh fundie sets of Christianity (the "witch burnings", etc). Islam, comparatively, was generally, a much more open cultural religion and society prior to the mid-20th century "colonialism" that reshaped the oil producing Middle East and its inhabitants, it's political lines, etc, that created/incentivized a lot of this "fundie" version of Islam that has spread as a combo of a political, economic and cultural reaction and infected a lot of these regions as a result.
Some excellent points about our "overabundance" issue. However, in terms of the riots in France, one important factor has been overlooked. What is the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in these riots? I haven't heard a word in the media about the clash between Islam and modern France.
France also colonized Vietnam but the the French-Vietnamese don’t riot and cause mass destruction. Britain colonized the areas of India and now Pakistan, yet the Hindu and Sikh Indians to the Uk and their descendants don’t bomb buses and trains or organize “grooming gangs” to rape and pimp out young girls.
After 911 I read many books on Islam, most written by Muslims, trying to comprehend their minds. One thing stood out---resentment. They are never responsible for their circumstances. It is always the west’s fault. And they feel entitled to move in to other countries, reproduce, and gradually take over. No interest in assimilation. Can you blame French people for not being so happy with this crowd? Any wonder rioting happens?
So, in your personal life, you've never been resentful about something someone did to you?
Or has your resentfulness always been a result of being envious of what others have, etc.
Or perhaps you've never been resentful at all?
I am very fluent in Caucasian, so it seems your thesis is: "Certain people are so awesome, never f-ck with anyone and do such much cool, bomb-ass stuff that other certain people are mad because they're not us."
This comment was not specifically for “you”, just a generally response to your seeming believe that resentment is justified , presumably those mentioned in the article
I just don't make it a personal habit to lecture others on how THEY should feel sbout things based on MY life experiences....which seems to be a favorite activity here at the Free Press.
Yep. Made excellent profit so far. Brilliant decision Rent out to college travellers, vactioners, Americans coming for medical procedures, etc. Has been awesome, especially when combined with my Fundrise portfolio. Planning on retiring to Costa Rica. Wonderful place. But it is fun to throw around "Banana Republic" for any place that's not the U.S, isn't it?
I think resentment is a factor with social media only amplifying this. IMO what we do with this resentment can be a key factor in defining us and the path our lives take. We can use this resentment/anger as a driving factor (chip on the shoulder) to push us (e.g., take night classes after a full day of work, work extra shifts, tutor or help others in our local communities, etc.). This resentment can also be used negatively as we see in the article.
The “see above” in my comment was in reference to the article (I can see how that can be confusing depending on the device used). In other words, resentment can be used negatively in the form of rioting/destruction of property, etc.
Compost loves the money but hates America. He'll be out there rioting because, despite his wealth, Western civilization is evil and deserves to be destroyed. He's got his, so he doesn't care that the people he supports have no way of regenerating wealth once they've plundered it all.
1. French people love a good protest/riot. Anytime, anywhere, over pretty much anything.
2. The Algerian experience in France is somewhat analogous to the African-American experience in America, but there are some substantial differences, namely the structured, legal codification that existed in America until 1965 and the more intricate ties between France and its former colonies.
3. While the French were dicks w/colonization and have an issue with racism in their country, they don't try and justify it, make excuses for it, deny it or blame "the Negre" or "coloreds"....they just segregate them in their communities and pretend they don't exist. Therefore, they tend to not address/notice issues until they blow up. Brazil, with the favelas, is very similar in that regard, although in Brazil it is more of a color/skin tone thing (i.e. "colorism") as everyone is pretty much a mix of African, Portugeues and Indigenous. So the "paper bag" test is still very much alive and well there.
4. The French, generally, don't espouse an ethos of assimilation as much as we do in America, although for American right wingers "assimilation" is often used as a cudgle. The French, in general, don't even really offer the chance. Yeah, you can live there, but you'll never "REALLY" be a French citizen/national. No matter what your passport says.
5. No one really likes police in general and police, around the world are way too trigger happy, including France. Although not as much as U.S. cops, who are supremely militarized and undergo "Killology" training seminars which make them think their job, which is statistically not very dangerous, is being surrounded daily by people who could murder them in an instant. So, shootings of this type are actually pretty rare in France. But France also doesn't have a major component of its citizenry who cop bootlickers either, who justify/defend even the most egregious examples of police violence/misconduct. I've been to France on three occasions for business and according to the people I spoke with, they tend to view cops as kind of a necessary nuisance and they don't have the strong, emotional "pro" / "con" view, mainly because (1) they don't view cops as the only thing keeping them from getting murdered and (2) French police, unlike American ones, don't engage in a lot of Thin Blue Line "copaganda."
6. People think France is all Paris, the Eiffel Tower, etc. But if you've been there, there are a LOT of rough areas, with a lot of young men, of all ethnic backgrounds, who have very few economic prospects and a LOT of free time. Recipe for problems.
Overall, this is "sort of equivalent," in the sense that it involved a "white" officer and a "nonwhite" citizen, but there is a much broader diversity in the protesters/rioters in France, across a broader socio-economic spectrum than what you'll find in America. I'm sure there a quite a few in there who are probably really upset about the retirement age being raised, even though they're not close to retirement -just the principle of the thing.
So, I am very hesitant to simplify it to a simple "black and white framing" ;) because, IMO, it is a bit more complicated. Of course, that won't stop the majority on here attributing it all to immutable, genetic characteristics or being...you know....being "resentful" or "ungrateful."
Long winded answer, but you questioned caused me to go in the memory bank and remeber a lot if interesting things I've read and heard from "the locals" when I've been there.
Excellent, just really excellent and very well informed summation of the situation in France and its differences (and similarities) to American racial/ethnic/class frictions.
I would add that the French Northern African/Muslim "immigrant" population comes primarily from former French colonial states, imported primarily for labor needs in France (versus American Muslim immigrants), but as you mention, never really welcomed to be "fully French" (despite being adjuncts of France, raised to speak French in their homelands and otherwise), which produces a very different "immigrant" dynamic that so many here compare to the early 1900's "second wave" of Eastern/Southern/Irish European immigration to American of "voluntaries" who were not otherwise existing "colonized subordinates" to America - in that the immigrants from France's former colonies are not necessarily voluntarily leaving their homelands to become "French" but are out of economic necessity and from the colonialized patterns of importing "cheap labor" from those colonies, but without being offered either a way home *or* a path to being considered full French citizens with all the cultural aspects inherited - let alone having the already resentful history of being colonized and subjugated by the new "home" nation.
America *to its credit* has done a better job at assimilating immigrants, particularly wrt to Muslim immigrants. They can be "Muslim in public" within the constraints of American social and political constraints. This produces subsequent generations of more "moderate" and assimilated Muslim Americans, versus the French Muslims to where even wearing the head scarves is restricted in public, which produces a much more isolated and resentful Muslim immigrant population that will never fully feel it can be "French" and "Muslim" at the same time, but must choose either/or, and the "or Muslim" becomes an extreme reaction to the restriction of.
Again, excellent summation, your haters may hate anyway ;P
Yes, exactly right re: Muslims in France, who are better included in the "colored" group as oppossed to the Sub-Saharan "Negre" (at least that's how it was explained to me)
The advantage for the second wave immigration of Eastem/Southern/Irish is the lack of visual markers, so, while those were initially distinct ethnic identities, if you stick around long enough in the U.S., your grandkids will be "white" and they can join any WASP country club they want :)
As you correctly note, the cheap labor dynamic is very real and causes a push-pull tension among that community and the general French populace.
This dynamic is also what caused Brexit, and we saw how that worked out, right? Turns out when you criminalize and expel people who are doing the "invisible jobs" that keep your society functioning, it usually backfires.
DeSantis is discovering that in FL. But, no worries, those jobs will surely be filled by willing white and black Americans who have been unfairly locked out of the rewarding and lucrative career of "Migrant Farm Laborer."
Yes, I sure the haters will continue, because no matter how many times what I predict comes to pass, no matter how accurate and historically documented, etc. Comprof is always wrong about everything! :)
The point I was referring to was the shame of Muslims from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t that they had gotten fat, lazy, and insulated. It was the fault of the infidel. They were nomadic goat herders until the British and Americans showed up and developed their oil for them, making them fabulously rich. A point they seem to have forgotten. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, yet maybe 6 Nobel prize winners. There are 250 million Jews, and around 260 Nobel prize winners. This is all so embarrassing. And the infidel is to blame. It’s not rational, resentment isn’t.
Yes. I believe resentments is the word. Even in African countries you will find a big difference between Muslim and Christian communities. And there is an element of supremacism and even entitlement in Islam as well.
Where I live I have many extremely hard-working, kind, humble Muslim immigrants from Africa all around me. They want a better life for their kids. They want them to be educated, hopefully professionals. They want good values. My family are Christians from the Middle East. But some ideologies are simply poisonous even among good people. And racism and prejudice hurts also.
Something tells me that there's a disconnect between the concerns of this essay and the concerns of the Muslim population in France. Anecdotally, while living in Paris in the 80s, I could not get down the narrow sidewalk without a Moroccan grabbing me; a "little Moroccan" denuded my purse in a bar, and about ten years ago in Marseilles, a French native spoke in glowing terms about going into the Middle Eastern (slum) to "see the Muslims selling their wares." A nice euphemism for cutting a drug deal.
There was less than zero evidence that these people have any inclination to assimilate into French or any Western culture. On a trip to Sweden last summer, in hushed tones those areas were pointed out as the places where the violent come from, private conversations on how much trouble came with them, and how no one voted to bring these parasites in. Add to this that most are young men, who aren't finding wives, so -- like rogue elephants -- trample the villages and cause mayhem.
What IS the rationale behind bringing people from an antithetical culture into the Western world? And why do so many people believe that this is a good thing to do? For whom is it beneficial? Why isn't the argument that their strong young men should stay home and build their own country and marry their own women and perpetuate their own culture, as opposed to moving to a Western country and setting up a slum?
Those who believe this is a common good are useful idiots and moral narcissists. Even if France did colonize those countries (one can infer that this immigration policy is some form of apology) there's very little rationale behind bringing in a population that will leach off the system, create its own underworld, and go around spitting at the natives. In Sweden, they have tortured Swedish children. They OTHER the natives. They practice all of the forms of racism to which the natives are forbidden.
The Westerners are not racist. The immigrants are. This is evident in their burning things down. That 17-year-old was resisting arrest. That's the common denominator in all of these cases. They live outside the law, and are upbraided when the law comes after them, because the rules do not apply to them. Period. It's the same in the US. No one has the right to resist arrest. That kid (as I've read) was a serial offender, too young to drive, and up to no good. He didn't deserve to die, of course, but nor did he deserve to live in France as he demographically, historically, was about to make little to no contribution to French society.
The one thing so many fail to realize is the fact that this is all planned and managed by the global technocratic elites who have no allegiance to any one country. The “New World Order” can only come about if the morals and tenacity of the middle classes of the West are crushed. Agenda 2030, the Climate Hoax, mass migration, plandemics are all part of plan to bring us to our knees. Once the CBDC is unleashed and social credit scores determine if you will eat or starve, people will fall in line. They need total chaos in order to save us from ourselves. The riots in France are just a small scene in this long running tragic play. More to follow....stay tuned.
"Everything means everything so nothing means anything." Anomie and chaos serve the perp's and cover the grift. It's criminal pathology not politic's. Label's no longer apply. The clear engine for survival is the Constitution and the Bill of Right's it contains. Everything is exactly what it appears to be. It's not something else.
Spot on. And you can add Austria, Netherlands, UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and to some still lesser extent even Switzerland to the list. And in all of these countries, it is only the Muslim population that never even tries to assimilate and causes problems every single day. By comparison, generally no or very few problems with immigrants from Asia or from Eastern Europe.
The author is correct in that we are a wealthier world now. And undoubtedly, every rioter is better off in France than they would be in their country of family origin. But the politics of envy is a relative disease and the rioters compare themselves to their more successful local peers rather than their less successful distant relatives. Mass media and social media amplify that comparative distance, sometimes fictionally, fanning the flames. For those old enough to remember, there was a time when half the world thought the average American lived like the TV shows Dallas and Dynasty. It’s much much worse now of course. Envy is a large driver in violence, which is why the left uses it to fan grievances.
There is also another thing the author, and many media commentators, miss. Rioting is, well, fun. It’s not just profitable to rob a store. It is exhilarating. Freedom from restraint. Group action. Adrenaline pumping. It’s a sport that you can’t lose. In a society with no boundaries rioting will become merely a sport for the masses.
☝️This!!☝️ Rioting, or mostly peaceful demos depending on your perspective, is *fun* for young people. Whether it's the "teen takeovers" in Chicago or toppling statues in Portland or throwing bottles in Paris. Social media provides logistical help as well as a uniting rationale and rallying cries, but the urge to gather and scream and have sex and pillage is as old as man. Bored and disaffected youth just need a match. I read post by a young BLM marcher in Portland in 2020 that summed it up, "Can't stop thinking about the boy in the red and white keffiyeh who kissed me behind the barricades before we were hit with tear gas." Oh the drama, Romeo and Julliet! The cause for these riots is as much hormonal as political, if not more so.
Civilization is about controlling humanity’s natural violence. The discussion is about where to draw the line not about whether there should be a line.
Civilization is many things, and channeling natural impulses is generally more effective than suppressing them, e.g. sports as sublimated war. My comment was intended to discuss an element of the problem, not as boys will be boys. Of course there should be a line, and it's been pretty clearly drawn around public safety and private property in most places. Your points about envy and resentment, fanned by extremists, as the proximate cause are well taken. There are many factors at play, I would also add legitimate climate anxiety, which is why it's so (literally) explosive. I've known enough young people around the world as a teacher to be very aware of the importance of lines. Yes I see these young people as human, but I also would say very tough measures are appropriate and necessary. You don't want Paris looking like Portland does these days.
I agree but look at what the media is doing. Everything is fear mongering! Climate change, asteroids, volcanos, homelessness, inflation, the list goes on and on. We receive a constant barrage of doom everyday from every media outlet be it social, news or government. Nobody but a few promote common sense.
Civilization as it has unfolded is arguably the root cause of violence. Humans aren’t violent until they become constructs of unnatural proportions and then they become confused which leads to terrible sex and the death of pleasure.
I must say I don't agree with that. If anything, humans get less violent as their society gets more civilized. I don't think it is possible for anyone today to comprehend the level of daily violence that existed centuries or millennia ago. The only thing correct about the concept of the noble savage is the savage from what I can tell. That's why these riots are so shocking. Person to person violence has become rare.
Maybe violence is innate or maybe it’s seeded by civilization as constructed by male ego. There’s a reason why countries with women at the top and at all levels of government and business are more successful and less violent. The more we come together, the happier we will be.
Definitely agree that women are a civilizing influence on men and society. Generally speaking the woman/man balance has worked out well for humanity. Strengths, weaknesses in each balance out very well.
we have no repercussions or punishment for rioters. It is incredibly fun. It’s a party. They play music, dance, sing, march, loot stores. There are large groups of black youths who do this regularly in big cities like Chicago. They aren’t even protesting anything. They are having a ball---looting Louis Vioutton.
No punishment. Just fun.
On the contrary, in countries where protests and change are actually needed (N Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi, Syria, Africa etc).... they do not happen because people will get shot if they protest or loot. There are consequences. In Iran they had reasons to Protest but they were being killed for doing so.
Brilliant. “The West has made such extraordinary—indeed, historically unique—progress in reducing suffering on a large scale that we’re now left grasping for new ideals and new aspirations to fulfill. This is not to say that everything is perfect. But the current penchant for protests and riots is profoundly out of proportion with the relatively small-scale challenges we still face.”
Our lives are so good that nothing is left to get bent out of shape over except being “misgendered.” Can you imagine people in any other time period being obsessed with pronouns? All of this nonsense is, ironically, a mark of privilege. I like the insight that this is linked to our search for meaning. Interesting.
This essay reminds me of Hans Rosling’s book, “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things are Better Than We Think.” We have a tendency to think racism has never been worse—or poverty or anything else. But in fact the opposite is true. Of course, to realize that, we do have to consider the actual FACTS, not our bored, aimless feelings.
I am a French faithful reader of The Free Press, as I was one of Common Sense, hence I abstain to read Le Monde, except when I suffer an acute attack of masochism…
Le Monde is a copy-paste of the NYT in its wokiest extremism.
I am not surprised to read that the “explanation” of the riots and lootings given by one of its reporters is all about poverty alienation and unemployment.
In these places, Weitzmann points out, “the poverty rate reaches 43 percent, and the unemployment rate almost 19 percent. The annual income per household does not exceed 14,000 euros.”
Let’s just look at the originating cause of the mayhem: a 17-year old Muslim kid has been killed by a policeman when he refused to stop at a checkpoint. A) In France, you are not allowed to sit for your driving license before being of age (that’s 18 years old). B) He was driving a Mercedes deluxe car worth more than €70,000. C) Since 2017, law enforcement officers are allowed to shoot at a vehicle that fails to obey a stop order and whose occupants "are likely to perpetrate, in their flight, harm to their life or physical integrity or that of others". In 2021, there were 27,609 of them, that is one refusal to stop every 30 minutes. (The numbers for 2022 are not yet available). D) A number of police people have been killed or maimed by drivers refusing to stop in recent months, one of them in La Rochelle in May 2023 .
What about facts and figures?
Weitzmann quotes the average official salary in these areas, which hardly represents reality, since A) The unemployment figures represent the number of its beneficiaries. But B) many of these beneficiaries work on the side and are paid in cash, since unemployment benefit is not correlated with an effective job search. C) People who never worked a day in their lives are not left to starve homeless. They can receive the RSA stipend: (€607.75 per month) and live for next to nothing in government housings. The RSA is supposedly aimed at helping French nationals over the age of 25 to survive without working but “special conditions” are apparently met by many foreigners which allow them to benefit too.
When the French President, Macron, visited the police on the night of July 3 to 4, he wondered who he could ask for help: parents? Teachers? The police?
“Only drug dealers, Mr. President”, a police officer answered. “Actually, they're the ones who started asking them to calm down a couple of days ago, because all this mess is bad for their business. It's been a week since the drug trade has been running at a standstill”.
Weitzmann forgot to mention the daily €1,000 cash a 8-years old gets for watching for drugs gangs (they are called “chouffeurs” from “chouff”, to watch in Arabic). More generally, he doesn’t take at all into account the parallel drug economy that plagues these areas, and that the officer explained to Emmanuel Macron.
Another excuse for the rioter given by Le Monde and his journalist is “post-colonialism”, which is the woke translation of “racism against Michels”.
What is a Michel? It was the most common French male given name in the 1990’s. Today it would rather be Mohammed. If you are called a Michel, you’d better run! Unless you are a drugs customer.
The rioters today are the 3rd or 4th generation of economic immigrants. Their grand-parents were happy to find a better situation in France than what they had at home in Algeria or in Morocco. So were their parents.
But the contagion of post-colonial themes from the United States convinced the third and fourth generations that they were victims of racism and discrimination, and that France owed them everything, whereas they owed it nothing.
Combine that with a literal reading of the Koran: “you are the best community that has been raised up for mankind, you command what is decent, forbid what is blamable, and believe in Allah” (Sura 3 verse 10 ), and the result is people who have no incentive to learn, work or behave in the French way of life, that is equality between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims.
One thing Weitzmann says is true : In fact, it was understood in Paris, that “absorbing Algerians and Moroccans into France would be viewed as a casus belli by the nationalist regimes in Algiers and Rabat.”
So they were left in the care of imams coming from their original countries, who taught Koran to their children and others coming from Saudi Arabia and Qatar who taught them anti-French feelings, terror and who accentuated the anti-Semitism inherent in the upbringing they would have received in their countries of origin, by adding to it a flavor of Nazism.
But the “cités” were not left to poverty and segregation. The drug dealers reigned and the local authorities paid for “social peace” in money and also with sports and cultural facilities that non-immigrant suburbs never enjoyed.
Abe Greenwald is much closer to reality than a Le Monde journalist will ever be.
Although when he writes that “Many Muslims who reside in housing projects live in a country far removed from the France of the American imagination. Their lives in the banlieues are marked by a chronic lack of social services, from childcare to medicine to education”, one has to remind him that each time a library is built in these areas, it is burnt to the ground at the first dissatisfaction of the local “youth”. And that in recent years, the police, firemen and doctors were ambushed by locals who called them for help only to attack them when they arrived.
If these “banlieues” have become no-go zones, it is not because the French governments have abandoned them but because they discouraged any non-Muslim to come.
Another thing I agree with is that “The West has made such extraordinary—indeed, historically unique—progress in reducing suffering on a large scale that we’re now left grasping for new ideals and new aspirations to fulfill.”
I would add Tocqueville’s paradox to this explanation: the more social conditions and opportunities improve, and the more the little distance between the achievement and the ideal situation appears as unbearable. The Tocqueville paradox contradicts Karl Marx’s theory, because it states that a revolution is more likely to happen, after an improvement in social conditions, than as a result of deterioration of conditions of the proletariat.
As a matter of fact, in forty years of national “suburban plans”, nearly 100 billion euros have been poured into these irreparable, factious areas - to no avail.
Meanwhile, rural France is dying, but no-one cares, because the Michels never riot or loot!
Michels never riot or loot is far more correct than the leap of connecting the yellow vest protest to this riot. The purpose of the yellow vest was a public display of disapproval and not to destroy or loot property. The number of yellow vested protesters were massive and the violence that occurred was on a much smaller scale than the destruction that happened during the Nahel riots. The yellow vests protest was made up of many people who have contributed to the economy of France, but many of the Nahel rioters are people who have contributed little to France and taken much.
Clearly, the answer to follow French foreign policy in the Middle East. Convene a UN conference. Coordinate aid from the EU to the rioter. Condemn the police response. Arrive at a two state solution, where the immigrants can impose their views in contradiction to the secular French constitution. Then give the rioters 50% of Paris in exchange for acknowledging that France has a right to exist. Also the French should be forced to give Corsica and Brittany independence, as well as returning Nice and the South of France to their rightful owner, Italy...
Quite frankly, those cities such as San Francisco and New York, which no longer respect property rights and civil order, are likely to face outmigration and tax base collapse.
Interesting take. I would agree that lack of meaning is probably a factor, in general, in riots over the past 10-15 years in the West. However, I wonder about these particular riots. This author as much as admits that the rioters are chiefly Muslim when he describes the demographics: North African, Middle Eastern. If you import masses of people who despise you and your culture and respect only one law, and it isn’t the law of their host country, at some point they will revolt. It seems likely that this could be an early manifestation of that inevitable conflict. The funny, or tragic, part of that would be that while the West is soul-searching about who or what abstract and mysterious factors could possibly be responsible for ALL riots in the past 15 years, a question of limited utility in its broadness, Islam is actively challenging the authority of the jurisdictions it has infiltrated. Perhaps we Westerners are so lost in the search for meaning, we miss the glaringly obvious: we have allowed our countries to be invaded and looting and violence always ensues when you are invaded.
I think that's an accurate insight. Very many of these people belong to a religious culture that encourages the belief that Allah is in the process of handing them the West. Why submit in that case to Frenchness, Germanness, Swedishness, or Britishness? Maybe their confinement to the banlieus is part of a desperate French attempt to stop them acquiring wealth, power, influence, and control -- i.e. France, for Allah. Which country will be their next target after that?
Absolute, arrant nonsense.
This is the result of the mass and usually illegal immigration allowed and encouraged by the globalist, self-styled "elites" with the specific intent of destabilizing Western democratic nations and their beautiful and rich cultures. Whether in the US or Europe, borders are opened and societies are destabilized by masses of uneducated, unassimilated aliens bringing poverty, crime and aberrant culture. And for whom do the elites reserve their greatest obloquy and attacks? The few politicians who dare oppose this national suicide - Trump, Orban, Meloni, Farage, LePen et. al. If you have no borders, you have no nation. If you have no national culture and identity, you have no country. And that's just the way our new feudal overlords want it. Wake up.
Bruce Miller
Massive immigration is clearly destructive but I think the purpose for business elites was to import cheap labor. Now businesses are afraid of being targeted. And, of course, leftists think massive immigration is humane and beneficial. Neither is deliberately destroying western civilization
Precisely. And their useful idiots in places such as Nantucket, Newton and tony burbs outside the teeming madness of the DNC ruled cities sporting lawn signs proclaiming "No Human is Illegal."
Those lawn signs in the ‘burbs are stuck too far into the ground. They actually say,
BLACK
LIVES
MATTER
JUST LOOK AT HOW NICE
MY LAWN AND SHRUBS LOOK!
I would like to tell the people with those signs that when the rioters come through the sign will be of no help. They will burn their house down along with everyone else's.
You don't understand. The people that put those signs up deport anyone that might riot within minutes after their arrival at the enclave/island/whatever. It is all a giant fraud. The fact that it is not reported like that is unforgivable.
They'll deport any illegal arriving in their enclave except those that provide them with their domestic services.
Actually though, if they become part of the mob, they are more likely to be spared. That's what happened in the summer of 2020. But at what cost to their souls?
Great, made me laugh but what you say is true.
It's so sad - more than angering - to see these signs and realize that some of the folks with these signs are just virtue signaling and doing nothing to confront racism and truly work to make ourselves into the people that we dream of being.
After writing my daily contribution to snark this morning, I was worried that people would just write me off as a smug racist jackass - I want to assure folks that I am not, in fact, a racist...
Calling out a stunning grift the size of the Black Lives Matter movement (signs and all) is the furthest thing from (anti-black) racism. You're good, my man. The fact that you have to be concerned about having your head bashed in by some accusatory harpy is the truly serious take-away.
There is, in fact, actual significant racism - but it is nothing like the simplistic tropes pushed by the chattering scolds. The racism that is literally tearing society apart is a much broader sort of racism - it is the "progressive" vision of society, segregated hard into (pseudo) races, so they can be divided and categorized as GOOD (victims, oppressed, dependent on the savior-of-the-day, and BAD (white supremacists, spending every waking moment of their day thinking about how best to colonize their neighbors.)
The division (intentionally) caused by this horrifyingly backwards effort is, absolutely, "racism", but it is not a racism that lives bitterly in the hearts of ordinary people - it's a constructed mechanism, ramrodded into society with the express purpose of giving would-be-saviors all the money and power they can imagine.
Thanks - exactly - those folks represent the Mew Feudalism (wish I could take credit for that). All of the Noblesse without the Oblige.
What about the latter? Jackass?
So, THERE! 😏
Actually, if you entered the United States without a proper set of papers, the law specifically calls you out as an "illegal alien."
Put that in your Audi A6 Quatro and smoke 'em.
Come on Bruce, you just don’t appreciate how hard it is being a white, overeducated, undersexed, progressive female resident of those communities. Do you know how hard it is to find an oppressed minority to install all those virtue-signaling lawn signs when they’re out rioting and looting? Obviously, we don’t have enough of them to go around.
And for those of you shaming Martha's Vineyard for not welcoming illegal aliens be advised that they have indeed accepted four - count 'em four - apparently from the same family.
Fair question, but how many should a small, seasonal town have "accepted"?
None as far as I am concerned. Nor should San Antonio, El Paso, Houston, . . .. But when you talk the talk, as MV did until faced with a single busload, you should walk the walk. The hypocrisy is stunning.
Ask Harvard, they have it down to a science.
"Hate Has No Home Here" is another one. What they mean to say is, Except for Trump."
"Except for Trump..." and RFK, and Matt Taibi, and Michael Shellenberger, and anyone else with the utter temerity to ask a question, read Substack, refrain from parroting the slogan of the day, etc etc etc.... In fact, hate is at the very core of everything they say and do.
Your forgot “love is love” and “science is science.”
I did.
And, of course, my favorite at the NYC gym I pass by daily....."In this gym we believe (along with "science" lol) that all bodies are beautiful." Really? Then why are you a gym? And if you profess to believe in science you cannot be unaware of the great body of learning to the effect that obesity is a killer. Mon Dieu but these progressives are hopeless!
Science no longer includes biology. Biology is a white male supremacist construct designed to oppress black, brown and non-man bodies.
Shut up racist! It oppresses animals and the climate too.
Devils Advocate: Those signs are meant to encourage people who are less the traditional "gym bods" to feel accepted in a gym with various body shapes working at their own abilities and goals to not feel like they will be shamed from walking in the door from doing what they want to do because they don't fit "the look" of someone who has made that a lifestyle.
Basically, it's a way to get more people into the gym by removing a barrier of shame for not being "gym ready" to join the first place. Which is how "gyms" should work? By getting more people in who need the gym in the first place without making them feel ashamed about using it?
Not everything is some "progressive pogrom" to destroy everything you know is right and true lol. Touch grass once in a while : )
Where did all the Ukraine flags go?
They were everywhere amidst the "I'm a better person than you are" lawn signs.
Now, gone.
There are a couple Ukrainian flags flying in my community, along with tons of blm signs, hate has no home here signs, pride flags year round. And my community is about 99% white, of course!! I just opt for my American flag and my college team flag during the school year,
It's mind boggling how anyone can still display BLM signs without embarrassment or irony in 2023. It's like telling people your favorite band is Milli Vanilli (for anyone old enough to remember that, LOL!)
Yeah and someone uprooted the Honk for Fauci signs in my neighborhood too.
BS
Mocking others makes you feel self-righteous.
Consider some of the subtitles to the Southern Poverty Law Center's publication
"2022 The Year in Hate & Extremism" :
"Understanding Youth and Radicalizing Firearms Narratives To Build A Safer Future"
"As Militia Numbers Decline, Anti-government Threat Persists"
"Old Bigotries Melded With New Conspiracies Burgeon White Christian Nationalism"
"Antisemitism Animates the Hard Right"
"The Sheriffs Working to Subvert Democracy"
"Hate on Main Street"
"Alt-tech Sites Continue to Provide Safe Haven for Hard-Right Extremists"
While I too mock woke cancel culture and the pushing and allowing of gender confusion and change on already confused adolescents, I am capable of listening to what the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center has to say, and acknowledge that their arguments hold greater weight than the opposition published by mockers, with comments by the mocking readership. Yes, we don't want govt censorship and we don't like the foolish finger pointing of the self-righteous woke white liberals. But while you are all feeling so superior and we are busy pointing the finger, violence and hatred is burning absolutely like wildfires in the West and the global North. Calling this out as a step forward in evolution is no different than saying that evil is good.
"I am capable of listening to what the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center has to say...."
Now THAT's funny. The "esteemed SPLC?" Esteemed by whom? They call half of America white supremacist extremists. Even many liberals recognize that the SPLC is more akin to a hate group than the "hate groups" if professes to oppose. It pushes lies, censorship and racism. You should hang your head in shame for being easily fooled.
Thanks. I was getting ready to reply. Maybe the SPLC was a magnificent ideal at one time but it is way down the road from.that now.
And as if extolling the SPLC was the least of Karen's errors. What violence and hatred is she vilifying? The rioting of Islamic criminals or the ferocious and warranted anger of French citizens seeing their country ruined by the idiotic immigration policies of their elites?
Come on. What else are they going to say? They are in the business of finding fault.
Keep looking.
Sorry chuck, that mess on your pillow? It is where what brains you had dribbled out. Stuff your Stalinist Peoples Loony Commune.
Many on the left think that Western Civilization is inherently racist and misogynist and deserves to be destroyed. An analysis well explored in Douglas Murray's The War on the West.
Excellent read!
Justin Trudeau has increased Canada’s immigration level to one million per year, from the traditional 1% to 2.5% per annum. That will increase Canada’s population from 40 million to 48 million by 2030. Think of that in terms of fitting about 3 million more people into Toronto within the next 8 years.
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Justin grew-up frequently hearing his mother referred to in very unflattering terms. It doesn’t require a great deal of thought to determine why he may not like Old Stock Canadians.
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Here is Toronto’s MOST WANTED LIST for July 2023 …
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https://www.tps.ca/organizational-chart/specialized-operations-command/detective-operations/investigative-services/homicide/most-wanted/
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And a few recent videos from France …
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https://t.me/GalliaDaily/4930
https://t.me/GalliaDaily/4931
https://t.me/GalliaDaily/4933
https://t.me/GalliaDaily/4934
https://t.me/GalliaDaily/4936
https://rmx.news/crime/migration-is-the-key-factor-behind-widespread-rioting-in-france-says-hungarian-expert/
https://rmx.news/france/immigration-crisis-74-of-french-believe-there-are-too-many-migrants-in-france-72-want-referendum-on-immigration/
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Testing by the US Army since 1917 has shown that people tend to either have all 3 of the following attributes, or none of them.
• Higher IQ scores,
• The ability to work well in teams,
• Less violent.
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Humanity originated in Africa and began migrating from there 100-150,000 years ago, first through the Middle East and then westward into Europe, northward into Russia and Mongolia, and eastward to India, Australia, China, and the Pacific. Google ‘average IQ by country’ and note where on those long migration routes, the countries with the highest IQ scores are located. Did you find the pattern?
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Is it possible that you will soon be one of Toronto’s Least Wanted ???
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02
They say a picture says 1000 words, that most wanted from Toronto tells a story that many on the left just don't want to acknowledge.
Well thank God, there are two whites on that list, it would have been embarrassing if it was 100% POC
I see some white spaces but no white folk. A fiver says they are ALL POS(sic).
Wow--Canada's Most Wanted List is an eye-opener! I'm going to include this link as a separate post in the hope that more readers see it--thank you!
I remember flaky Maggie Trudeau in the late 70s splashed all over the magazines partying with the Rolling Stones and at Studio 54. His dad was pretty colorful too. But at least he was a fairly competent prime minister, at least from this American's perspective.
I think you mean Margaret Trudeau. Maggie Thatcher was not Canadian, among other differences. Best to review before taking "Maggies from the '70s' for $1000 on Jeopardy. Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember Milli Vanilli, so I know whereof I speak...maybe.
You are correct. I can't believe I wrote that, and I fixed it. Trudeau is what I meant to write. The late venerated prime minister should NEVER be confused with Margaret Trudeau. There are jokes that go something like, Justin Trudeau wants to revolutionize Canada like his own dad revolutionized Cuba.
Did anybody else notice that the one woman on the list has been there for 36 years?
Seems to be trending darker.
Everything government touches is about money and power. illegal immigration isn't the why, it's a how. Sure, immigration and lack of assimilation may be driving part of this, and certainly a lack of cultural homogeny is partly responsible (no shared values), but all of those things are downstream of economic incentives. So what are the economic incentives?
The goal of government is to create more government. And it works. Every single time. The minute you start manipulating the free-market the only solution is more free-market manipulation to "correct for" the previous free-market manipulation. Immigration is one of those tools. Immigrants aren't producers or consumers, as both are irrelevant in a country with central banking. They're inputs to a system of monetary distribution. They're an excuse to print more dollars and put it into the hands of politicians and donors under the guise of "social welfare." This is the outcome of ALL social welfare programs. We say, in the US, that we can't touch social programs though we HAVE to curb spending. I'd argue an easy 90% of social welfare programs, including medicare and medicaid, simply drive up the cost of medicine by 90%. No one is better off because we have these programs. It's impossible they could be because there is no competition for that money so there's no innovation. There's "create product, buy product, consume product," all done with fake money.
Wealthy countries want more people not as labor and not as consumers, but as a representative of a consumer that can be leveraged to print more money. It's really that simple. They're inputs in a ponzi-scheme and them burning stuff down (that then creates opportunity to print more money) is actually a great outcome in the economic cycle...
"The minute you start manipulating the free-market the only solution is more free-market manipulation"
Except that there is no such thing as The Free Market. Every functioning market needs rules which are enforced by some authority. TFM is a fantasy, the closest one can get to it is a pirate's bazaar or post-collapse Somalia. No functioning country has ever had TFM, tho it is claimed that Iceland in the dark ages came close.
I agree with you... which is why every economy follows exactly the same cycle and every "empire" follows exactly the same cycle. You can slow it down or speed it up, but the outcome feels pre-ordained. Small regulation, limited taxes, then more regulation and more taxes, then massive regulation and massive taxes which beget borrowing which beget inflation, which beget class divide, which beget the downfall of the society.
You stay small you have a chance, you don't, you don't... the story of world history told in one paragraph
True of course. But is it inevitable? History would indicated that indeed it is, but can we not do better? Rome managed to 'correct' itself several times. The West does seem to be terminally ill, but at the very least surely we go down fighting?
I'm a pathetic optimist so I never believe anything is actually inevitable, but we, as a nation, have been dumbed down to an almost embarrassing level and mostly on purpose for the benefit of government, so it certainly feels likely.
That said, we definitely get to go down fighting, and I'm praying some form of balkanization is the next step as I believe that's what saved Rome, and the Netherlands, during their runs. Seeing someone do it right over long periods of time has a way of ultimately influencing the other participants. It's why the EU is SOOOOO adamant that no country be allowed to keep its nose. You HAVE to spite your face or you have no place in the EU for fear someone realizes it doesn't have to be this way. We have holdouts in the US, tiny states that have managed to stay mostly out of the combine harvester's way, but whether college football in the south can save the US is yet to be known...
The rule of law - predictable, clear and enforced laws - are essential for any functioning market. That's why ours has worked so well. But the more liberals tinker with it, the more distorted it gets.
That's why in my overview of the situation the thing that's lacking is not the Right Doctrine -- if only we had [my doctrine], everything would be roses. Nope, the right doctrine is a prudent balance between just-so stories, all of which have merrit. And scoundrels will succeed in destroying a country irrespective of political doctrine, likewise, competent men will run a competent government irrespective of doctrine. Denmark is like Denmark not because they have the right political system, but because the Danes are like the Danes. Sure, the system matters, but it is secondary to having good men (of both sexes). As Dr. P says, if you want to change the world, first learn how to clean up your room.
You have identified specifically the challenges America faces in an eloquent way that is valuable to me. Thank you for sharing. Right on the money.
I am saying it again. You should run.
Is that run for office? If they DON'T want to, then they DEFINITELY should. Someone should have someone they can vote for they can rely on not to turn out to be a steaming turd. Twenty years ago none of those shouting "Me! Pick me!" atm would likely get anyones' vote for dog-catcher.
Of course there are several sets of motives but surely the woke Marxists *are* deliberately destroying Western Civ -- is it not implicitly and incurably racist and sexist and homophobic and all the rest of the isms and phobias? It can't be reformed, it is whiteness incarnate -- burn it down. As for the Globalists, their doctrine is divide and rule -- a united proletariat has some chance of fighting back, so fracture them into Identities. Is it a coincidence that wokeness comes from the very citadels of the globalist elite, the Ivies? Yes folks, it's the globalist plutocrats who have created wokeness for us -- they've co-opted the Marxists to do their work for them. Clever! The commies now do the work of fracturing the proletariat on behalf of the plutocrats.
That's my best take on the situation: Marxist "woke" is the lipstick on a pig named totalitarian finance. We live inside a hyperreality created by the MSM/surveillance state in service to political/criminal financial grifter's. Last week THE GRAYZONE pointed out that Macron is a former "central banker" there to loot what is left of the French economy. The Clinton/Obama whoredom served the same purpose when it allowed Wall Street to butcher Glass-Steagell so it could loot and destroy the American economy and, the lives of millions of American's in the process.
You hafta give them credit tho, it's a brilliant plan -- get the left to do your dirty work for you. Turn the enemy on himself. Get the Blacks to demand a return to slavery, get the feminists to cancel womanhood, get labor worried about gender inclusive bathrooms and never mind wages and job security and affordable housing -- so passé. I'm no Marxist but they have made a few acute observations and one of them is that the capitalists will sell you the ropes you hang them with -- and offer you a discount if you buy more.
Oh, and get them to sterilize their own children, all the more need then to import peons from Guatemala and jihadis from Afghanistan -- yes, they burn down cities, but they work for cheap.
That is debatable. A few academics have written about the sentiment of the people who come to the West from the countries named in this article, as well as several other countries. I remember one of these academics giving a talk about it: “They wash up on the shore, get some food and blankets, ask what country they are in, and say ‘Down with the government!’” Cheap labor has a price.
I agree that unbridled immigration is a disaster but I think your statement "the purpose for business elites was to import cheap labor" is incomplete. Low cost is preferred by consumers and businesses do what they do to survive. Consumers are very much a part of this equation.
It’s not about the cost but about the margins and extreme wealth of CEOs. They will sell a t shirt that costs $3 to make for $60. Then they find a way to make it for $1. They still sell it for $60. Cost to consumer is the same. Wages for employees are the same. Profits for CEOs increase. Of course they always always LIE to consumers and say “we are such nice CEOs. We just want to make it cheaper for the consumer.” But this is actually a bold faced lie. Don’t fall for it.
Very expensive things (Nike, Bombas socks) are often made cheap and garbagy overseas. I personally only buy high quality items made in USA or Europe, never China. I buy from small companies that make high quality items. (And they have lower margins and lower profits). Consumer pays more for Chinese made items, but the CEOs increase their own Billions of $$$. You pay more, you get worse.
All the while screwing their workers and demanding their "loyalty."
" In 2021, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 399-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 366-to-1 in 2020 and a big increase from 20-to-1 in 1965 and 59-to-1 in 1989. CEOs are even making a lot more than other very high earners (wage earners in the top 0.1%)—almost seven times as much. From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,460%, far outstripping S&P stock market growth (1,063%) and top 0.1% earnings growth (which was 385% between 1978 and 2020, according to the latest data available). In contrast, compensation of the typical worker grew by just 18.1% from 1978 to 2021."
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2021/
You may quibble with their methodology and precise numbers but directionally there is no debate. This needs to be reversed. Otherwise it's back to feudalism.
It isn't just about money, though. The wealthy are separating themselves from everyone else. Growing up, we had some very wealthy people around, and various groups of middle class (upper, middle, lower). The wealthy kids still played with the middle class kids. The wealthy people bought the Little League uniforms and sponsored contests and scholarships and were very involved in the community.
When I was young the people in the wealthy towns drove Cadillacs not Ferraris and Porsches. The gap just wasn't that wide for the most part. Now it's becoming feudal. And, because the serfs are now educated and armed, I'm betting there will be a political realignment very soon, where a populist Republican party ditches the plutocrats and dedicates itself to the working women and men and making life easier for those who work hard and play by the rules.
exactly
which is why I cringe when I hear CEOs lie to the public "We make things in China so they are cheaper for the consumer" or "we pass savings onto the consumer" or "if we make things cheaper we can hire more people and pay better"-----when these are just lies.
I like the show Shark Tank. From watching the show, I've learned a lot about margins. (small) Companies will talk about how they are doing great things for consumers and their employees. Then the billionaire hosts will respond with "how to cut margins and increase profit" ie: make things overseas where its cheaper and pay people less. Of course the cost to consumer remains the same. So profit margins can increase. That's the problem with companies growing too big and getting investors/going public on stock market/Board of Directors. All these investor folks want increased profits for themselves. So pay employees less, make things overseas, make the product more expensive for the consumer. So the investors make more money.
Better to buy local & from small businesses with no investors.
It’s the leftist democratic way!
We do not need to produce here anyway. You can get all the cheap stuff your little heart desires from China. Not that everything from China is cheap, but if that is what you want it is readily available.
If you aren't producing anything; what do you trade for the bunce to buy even the cheap knock-offs?
We are a service based economy. Health aervices, retail services, hospitality services . . . . Work to serve, collect your pittance, and buy crap.
Exactly this. Bill Gates isn't saying "I want to destabilize the west" he's saying "I want people who will work for lower wages AND have to keep working for me because if they quit they have to leave the country." Cargill isn't saying "we want to destabilize the U.S." they're saying "we can get illegal immigrants to work in poultry factories for dirt cheap and they won't complain if they a finger or two gets chopped off" Edit: superrich people of any political stripe don't care about countries at all. They can always just move if things get too bad (or hire private guards).
I think the purpose is to create new Democrat voters. The old ones are wising up.
Yes, Terence, excellent point--never forget the role of the corporaation's desire for access to cheap labor in all of this. What we think of as "race" issues are usually labor issues with a racial overlay.
I couldn't agree more. The US is the result of hundreds of years of mass immigration and look what a shithole it is.
massive immigration in this case was caused by Algerians / Moroccan wanting to flee their poor country of birth for a presumed better future in France. Not because French business was importing cheap labor. The unemployment in these areas today (and always) is extremely high. Unemployment in all of France is high because of labor regulation, etc.
The vast majority of these immigrants have no skills offer, be it for cheap labor or any labor. They exist on government subsidies with no clear absorption or assimilation mechanism, and many simply have no foundational family culture to rely on.
Terence, yes cheap labor is a factor, but greed only explains partially what we are witnessing. The World Economic Forum members are the most powerful individuals and entities in the Western world. They have no concern for the issues which concern us at thefp. If they had a concern for the destruction of the Western world they likely would have the power to put a stop to it. They approve of the masses of illegal aliens because they approve of the consequences. These elites are generally immune to these consequences. No one can explain their evil intent, but the pattern of their behavior is clear.
Whether it's purposeful or not, it's happening.
You are correct, of course. Why is it that we cannot speak of any western culture having the right to retain its national identity? All western nations must have open arms to any and all nations who in the “world’s view” have been underserved and discriminated against. For decades we, in the US especially, have sent many billions of our hard earned tax dollars to countries in Africa, the Middle East and South America in order to help alleviate poverty and despair. (Or was it to appease warlords and drug cartels?) Now we are expected to allow those same countries to send an unlimited amount of citizenry to our countries. None of these countries has the infrastructure to accommodate the influx of so many needy. We simply cannot keep up. And those immigrants who are now feeling underserved by the system are wreaking havoc on the counties that allowed them in. It is a system doomed from the start.
There are two paths by which to go, one being allow the destruction of each culture. There will be no more France, Sweden, Switzerland etc. Forget about ever wanting travel to experience any of these cultures as they have been established…the other path is getting back to common sense and stopping the pretense of thinking that assimilation will ever happen in any peaceful or sensible time frame, and returning migrants back to their countries, establishing real borders, and not allowing these countries to take advantage of the citizens of the west. All the politicians are to blame for hurting our societies. It’s time to wake up and fix it.
We cannot speak of retaining our western culture because the forces behind the scenes have made it taboo.
Many insightful comments. Most ring true. Globalists despise borders and actively tell you there should be none as they try to move us to global govt through credit score passports like the Chinese who they admire. Immigrants move away from poverty to a new country but refuse to assimilate demanding to bring there country with them. Claims of cultural protection are derided as racist. There is one overriding theme. The wealthy seek to make the world more amenable to their preferences and, in doing so, destroy what makes it livable for the many.
The problem is the failure of the new wave of immigrants to assimilate into the host country culture. Period.
Are you sure about that? The British and French problems aren't with any "new wave". As far as I can tell NO wave of Muslim immigrants has assimilated in either Britain or France, and the children and grandchildren of Windrush checked out of the game though born here.
To be fair, we destabilized most of the governments in Central America in the 1980s and now those chickens are coming home to roost.
Wait - they were stable BEFORE?
No, because you were destabilizing them before and after WWI and WWII as well:
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." from "War is a Racket"; Smedley D. Butler (Major General (Ret.), USMC); 1935.
Having migrants streaming in from destabilized regimes is no picnic, to be sure, but assuming all other factors are present, Which is better - destabilized and scattered semi-socialist regimes or installed and directed USSR backed Soviet regimes? It’s all well and good to say we should have left well enough alone, and maybe it WOULD have been better. I have my doubts.
Chaos is the point of the exercise. Continual crisis no solutions forthcoming. Or, at least distraction, distortion and the prevention of the healthy American/World dialogue we need. I believe a new truth/fact based dialogue is beginning to happen.
The first thing that came to mind as I was reading was an immigration problem with a sub title of lack of assimilation! Plain and simple France did not control its borders, the influx was too great to assimilate and voila...this is what you get!
Algeria, the source of the problem, was part of metropolitan France before independence. You can immigrate from SoCal to Texas but you'd still be American. The French situation is akin in many ways to if the South had won; you couldn't in all honesty bar anyone or their children immigrating to Maine from Louisiana 'til about 1940; they would still be US citizens and their children able to claim US citizenship. Britain had a simililar mess with Commonwealth immigration; up until about 1970 they could claim "Civis Brittanicus Sum" and we couldn't do anything about it, nor did we want to: it made 'Windrush' possible. I think it was the flood of South Asian refugees from Uganda that finally had us sort the law out. "Deny someone the right to be English? Are you off your chump?" Those things MEANT something. To some of us they still do, and I dare say many Citoyens Francais are similarly conflicted.
You are not wrong. But I think it is less about immigration and more about the failure--yea, even a REFUSAL--to meaningfully assimilate.
This is all the more apparent when you see how this is playing out differently the U.S. Here, the rioters are not primarily Latin America immigrants. Latin American cultures, while not identical to U.S. culture, have plenty of similarities, due to a deep shared foundation in Western Europe. The main bone of contention in Latin American assimilation is language, not culture.
In the U.S., the refusers are people--mostly NOT immigrants--who reject the foundation of Western thought. They--like their counterparts in Europe--want nothing to do with Western culture. They want to pillage the wealth that the West's system of free enterprise has created, without recognizing that they have no way of regenerating that wealth with once they have plundered it all.
I agree but the reality is that massive unregulated, unlawful immigration does not permit assimilation. That's why Congress created an immigration system. With restrictive numbers and requirements for permanent residency and citizenship. If a nation lets in too many immigrants - many of them illegal and unvetted - assimilation is virtually imossible.
The main problem that I see is that everyone keeps obfuscating the difference between otherwise-law-abiding illegal immigrants and the criminal element that has taken advantage of our lax border policies.
I would rather see us allowing a flood of the former than our current system that allows the latter without restraint.
Celia, the flood is already breaking the schools and hospitals and streets.
The schools, hospitals, and streets are not broken because of immigrants. They are broken because our government at every level has placed graft and grift ahead of infrastructure. That is just as true in my small town far from the border as it is in places where immigrants are.
Pfft what's this nonsense about infrastructure ?! These institutions are broken because we can't AFFORD to feed, educate, medicate, transport and house these people! Stop being so silly.
With all due respect, if one's first act is breaking the law, that's an awful start. Plus without borders and border control no nation can survive.
Not all laws are of equal significance. Quietly shoplifting a loaf of bread is--and ought to be--a very different matter from robbing people at gunpoint, raping children, and murdering rival gang members.
I would like to see two systems implemented. One would permit larger numbers of legal immigrants under similar conditions to what I know used to apply: a sponsor who becomes financially and legally responsible for ensuring that the immigrant does not become a burden on society or a criminal threat, a clean bill of health, and a past free of ideological behavior at odds with respect for the U.S. Constitution.
The other would be an exchange system: an immigrant who can find a U.S. citizen who is effectually willing and able to trade places with them--renouncing their U.S. citizenship and moving to the immigrant's country on a legally permanent basis--gets to go to the head of the line.
I think we fundamentally agree. But I don't think we should countenance illegal immigration. Personally, I'd deport every illegal - prioritizing gang members, criminals and public assistance recipients. Those joining the military - and their families - would get preferential treatment.
I am largely with Bruce on this one. But like you the ones who really worry me are the ones who were involved in criminal acts in their country of origin and are here as well. The cartels are here and fully operational.
The Left uses "racism" as a handy excuse to allow criminals to roam free, destroying our society.
The they should then honor our "racism" to run free and see the response from society as we promote positive objectives to re build society.
"The cartels are here and fully operational"
Speaking of Arizona, we are not alone, just more obvious in our cartel operations. The Sinaloa cartels selected AZ Triumvirate Hobbs/Fontes/Mayes continue to tell Cook County, "Hold My Beer" . . . bud light, of course
Arizona - Sinaloa" Cartel Ties Exposed
Arizona Forensic Investigator Accuses Statewide and County Officials of Racketeering and Election Fraud Connected to Sinaloa Cartel
https://maxmcadams.substack.com/p/arizona-sinaloa-cartel-ties-exposed
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes Faces Allegations of Cartel Ties and Election Fraud
"Allegations of Corruption, Racketeering, and Cartel Ties Surround Former Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes
https://maxmcadams.substack.com/p/arizona-secretary-of-state-adrian
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes tells U.S. Supreme Court to shove it
https://news.yahoo.com/arizona-attorney-general-kris-mayes-140030478.html
Interesting DEA map showing where cartels have influence in US cities included in this article from 2021.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9326877/How-NINE-Mexican-cartels-responsible-flooding-streets-United-States-drugs.html
Thank you Hope. I saw a graphic last month of which cartel was claiming which territory. I suspected the political tie but had not yet read anything confirming it. I think Arizona is a key state to take to turn this ship around.
Celia, I agree. All Western countries have a huge demographics problem- an aging population. We have not reproduced at levels to sustain the retirement benefits to an ever-increasing number of retirees.
As you point out, the Hispanic immigrants mostly adhere to traditional Western values. The US should consider itself fortunate that most of our young immigrants share our values. That is not true of the European immigrant pool. It’s also going to come as a shock to the Democrats who believe that anyone with brown skin automatically hates Western culture.
Is there a criminal element among the illegals? Of course, and they should be dealt with appropriately.
It's already coming as a shock to Democrats that Muslim immigrants are not willing to tolerate their children being sexually groomed at school. The latest "excuse" that I've heard from the Left is that these resistant Muslim parents are not at all "representative" of Muslims, but instead have been brainwashed by Christian conservatives.
EXACTLY. Well said. Bruce. They want to destroy everything for their global empire. The fact that its literally the president's job to protect our borders and he isn't speaks volumes about their agenda. Disgusting
And I'll keep posting this on every article on FP: WHERE IS THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BARI!? Now they've found cocaine in the White House, and it REALLY looks like Hunter snorted a bullet of cocaine on the balcony during the WH 4th festivities, in full view of the public and children. Google was doing their whole "the search results are changing too fast" BS, meaning they were making sure they posted only pro Dems stuff, just like they did with Malone on Joe Rogan a few years ago. Daily Mail is reporting the man in charge with negotiating Hunter's sweetheart deal was an old friend, for goodness sake. So, when DAILY MAIL is scooping FP, I'm worried. FP is showing to be very biased. Be better.
Nonsense was the first word that came into my head too. “What is the sudden surge of interest in virtual reality but an unapologetic declaration that we’ve grown bored with the world as it is?” …the author better run out and buy Meta stock before it’s too late!
Bruce,
I’m going to beg to differ. I posted this 350 comments after yours, so forgive my repetition.
An astute columnist here in CT wrote a 4th of July commemoration in which he celebrates Eleventh Century Anglo Saxons for doing something no other nation had ever done before: lay a foundation for this thing called the rule of law.
Over the next ten centuries as the concept took hold, more and more people could profit from their courage, pluck, ingenuity, and productivity. The government in theory and, often in practice, would protect them from thugs, experts in the art of the shakedown. Thus the immigrant coal miner saved his wages and saw his children become business owners. They, in turn, saw their children become professors, engineers, physicians, bankers, lawyers. Wealth grew in tandem with opportunity. So much to celebrate!
And, yet, their children’s children became lazy, spoiled, entitled, ungrateful dilettantes who have taken over government, industry and education. Instead of cherishing the unfathomable accomplishments of their forebears, they’re ashamed. Instead of looking in the mirror at their own sloth, they pat themselves on the back for their “empathy.” To assuage their misplaced guilt for something they had no hand in creating, they’ve destroyed the golden goose and the futures for immigrants who are not unlike their own ancestors. The rule of law is now nothing but a weapon in the hands of oppressors, at least in their eyes.
Weitzmann, unfortunately, is all-too-correct. Success has set Western Civilization on a course for destruction. Let’s hope we can find a way off the path.
Yes, thank you for this, Faith. Exactly how I feel distilled down wonderfully.
The Romans had the rule of law, and the Hellenes before them. There was an Anglo-Danish revival of law (the very word is Norse) and invention of 'Common Law' in the Tenth-Eleventh Century; and Roman law in Europe below the Rhine and Danube never really went away but was eclipsed for some centuries. In the round we can and should learn from that: civilisation can come close to death; but it can also be revived. In those two cases Germanic "barbarians" saved Roman law and civilisation after it came close to killing itself and Viking "barbarians" came close to destroying English civilisation before they saw their behaviour was killing the very thing they wanted in on. I see the same thing occuring with your Latino settlers: the majority want in; they don't want to destroy. They'll be your salvation if you are wise about it.
19th Century America;
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.....”
21st Century America;
“So that we may endeavor to load thee on buses and lead thee away from our leafy waterfront communities. To transport you to urban cities of great opportunity and acceptance, where you shall be loaded on yet another bus to be driven to another state of our great union with whom we quarrel bitterly. There you shall thrive. There you shall seek freedom and justice, and we will be championing you, oh wretched refuse, from afar.”
--Martha’s Vineyard
Society for Humane Immigrant Treatment
A lot of bad happens because the perp's just do it. No one give's them permission. And, they do not live in the nightmare landscape's they create. The psychopath feels no remorse and suffers no consequences.
When the Staue of Liberty was installed there was much land, many natural resources, and a much smaller population so opportunities abounded for any one willing to work for them. And you could go straight to work, no paper necessary. I think the language you quote was appropriate then. Not so much now. I am not anti-immigrant but I am definitely anti all of you come, stay as long as you like, we'll take care of you.
The middle of your country is BLOODY EMPTY. Viewed from this tight packed isle you sound very silly. Lord knows what the Dutch, who clawed half their even tighter packed country from the feckin' ocean, damnit, would think. It is very difficult to like you lot sometimes. Crass isn't in it.
I don't care whether you like us or not. Everybody does not aspire to live packed together like sardines in a can.
This protest is primarily caused by the French government and French corporations importing mass numbers of immigrants to form an underclass for cheap labor. That it destabilizes the country is a bonus.
But the larger point is still very well made and not rubbish at all.
Assimilation is key to the successful immigrant experience. Why don’t they assimilate? It’s not all about racism. We have a clash of cultures.
The great migration of the late 19th and early 20th century to the USA involved ethnic groups, all of which in just one generation integrated and contributed to the growth of the country, its prosperity and all aspects of life, last, but not least, the wonderful cuisines brought from across our borders.
I work with a lot of second generation Mexican immigrants and Asian immigrants and they've assimilated just fine and contributed to growth and prosperity.
I have met and worked with many 2nd generation Mexicans who still can't speak English!
I live in an expat community in Mexico where people who have lived here 20 years can't speak Spanish. Turns out it is very diffiult to learn another language in your later years. .As a matter of fact, most of the expats who are fluent either did the junior year abroad in Spain or , grew up in Costa Rica or Panama and learned Spanish as a child I spent four hours a week in class and many hours studying at home and still can't do more than utter a few useless phrases. Those Mexican who work 24/7 and still can't speak English have my total understanding. I do question the 2nd generation not speaking English, however. The kids of Mexican families I knew not only spoke better English than some of their American peers but in more than a few cases ended up at the top of their class.
I hear you there. I can read Spanish fairly fluently, and even understand Spanish news when the newscasters speak clearly, but if I go into a bodega I can't understand a single word. And I've been studying it for 3+ years now at least six hours a week.
Let see Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colarado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah. All or in part once Mexico. You really ought to shut up when you've your tanks parked on other peoples lawns.
So have I. But that does not mean they are not contributing positively to our society.
I find your some of examples curious, Bruce. National suicide you say? And you mention Nigel Farage? Who orchestrated along with Britain's gift to ineptitude, party man Boris Johnson, the 'hey, let's put a gun to our head' idea and withdraw from the EU and their tariff free market of 500 million people! That Farage? I don't think he understands economics.
And Orban - as in Victor? Hungary's finest nationalist as he closes his borders spouting anti immigration and Christian themes and is a great hit with the GOP here - but wait, here he is every year waiting on handouts from, you guessed it, the EU! Billions a year..
And I hear he's trying to 'reform' his policies to get even more!
What kind of nationalist does that? Orban spits at the assimilation of the EU but loves their money.
Each of the politicians I mentioned has his or her individual faults but what they all get right is the horror of open borders and a respect and love for their nation and its sovereignty. If you think one can have open borders and a functioning state, we are not on the same page. It's simply impossible. As far as the UK leaving the EU.....the EU is a joke. The bureaucrats in Belgium are worse than a malignancy.
You mention individual faults. I would think the abject hypocrisy of Orban would be a big one. But! But! What I do admire in him is his audacious opportunism. In that he despises the EU for all it represents, like you, but very happily takes their money. Now only if the UK had that same opportunism and come up with a solution to it's so called immigrant (aberrant culture, in your words, a bit harsh I might add..) crisis that was imposed on it by the EU, and still keep unfettered access to the largest and richest goddamn market in the entire world. It could have been done, but Cameron didn't have the smarts. He put it to a referendum and let blinkered blokes sloshed in beer in Liverpool and Manchester etc..decide for him. (Actually that's a good example of an 'elite' who totally fucked things up.)
The EU may be a joke - but now economically at least, the UK has become one as well. And all because of a form of populist nationalism that is short sighted, based on inchoate rage and anger and looks to the simplest solutions possible. Sort of like MAGA today..
Give me strength, our "Muslim Problem" pre-dates the idiots who foisted the "Common Mark-Up" on us. Our other immigrant problem pre-dates the European Coal and Steel Community; the EEC's predecessor. Lord save us from ignorant anti-English bigots.
I agree and thanks for the word - obloquy. Great word.
I think you’re about half right here- two points raised align well with my personal experience
1. Life in the banlieus is dehumanizing. They are some of the grimmest places I have ever seen, lacking any joy or visual stimulation.
2. As life becomes ever more comfortable these compelling causes become ever more trivial. Social media obviously makes organizing disruption far easier.
There is no single cause at play, we can just weigh a multitude of factors as the evidence indicates.
Social media is also showing them a false picture of how everyone else lives, which is probably helping to fuel their anger.
True about the appearance of the banlieus. They have a rare, strange, dystopian ugliness which is quite striking. I guess architecture is more important than I realized because the effect is very negative and depressing.
Perfect response. Thanks.
I agree with Bruce Miller. I'd also like to point out that the young Arab who was killed was driving a Mercedes —so much for poverty and deprivation. It's instructive to compare these riots with the protests in Israel where absolutely no looting occurred despite the vast number of protesters. Could that difference be due to the cultural values of the protesters? Seems to me that the ideals motivating protesters become suspect when these "idealists" enthusiastically enrich themselves through robbery.
I'm sorry but the promise of e plurabis unum is turning out to be a failed experiment and it's happening everywhere. This hope that multi-culturism would succeed was centered around the idea that those coming into a new country would assimilate into that culture but what's playing out today is that those we hoped would assimilate into and respect western culture want to destroy it. It's akin to me inviting you into my house and you repaying me by telling me how evil I am and then setting my house on fire. The left has fomented this division with their hate mongering, their grievance industrial complex, and their manipulation of white guilt to silence all dissent.
Don't be "sorry" for telling the truth! That's exactly what's happening. And when it's so widespread and pernicious it can't just be the result of stupidity and carelessness. It has to be part of a plan. Let's did deeper.
In these places, Weitzmann points out, “the poverty rate reaches 43 percent, and the unemployment rate almost 19 percent. The annual income per household does not exceed 14,000 euros.” - What is the poverty rate or unemployment rate of the places they immigrated from? When they left their country of origin and immigrated to a new place were they guaranteed wealth, jobs or prosperity? How exactly do they feel cheated by the place they now call home? What are these "Western ideals" that have taken root in their life and behavior that make them unwelcome back in their countries of origin? It would appear from the article that the definition of "systemic racism" is the lack of a guaranteed income, guaranteed housing, and the ability break the laws of the country they now reside in without repercussions.
When my grandparents (on both sides) came to this country at the turn of the 20th century from Lebanon, they learned the language, worked so hard, bought their homes and most important wanted to assimilate and become American citizens in every way. I am sure there was discrimination along the way but they plowed through with hard work. Their children, my parents, went to college and never took anything for granted. Gratitude and faith (religion) got them through any hardships along the way.
I don't know a word of Polish nor did my parents because all four of my Polish grandparents had one goal: To. Be. Americans.
Same here. My parents only spoke English to us. My Polish grandparents worked hard, did manual labor, raised seven children, eventually bought the apartment house they lived in and the one next to it. The only desire was to raise their children to be good Americans.
That very same ideal today is referred to as "cultural genocide".
No. They swapped one culture for another, and better, one. That better one is enriched by the best of theirs' and othe immigrants former cultures being folded into it.
💯 likes.
Lebanese Christians, I presume. Too many Muslim immigrants, in spite of their willingness and ability to work hard, spend their time seething with hate for our freedoms and way of life. It's why just a week before the riots in France, a Syrian immigrant stabbed four French toddlers in a park, for no reason other than seething hate.
I wish there were something other than a “like” response for that.
If there were and they included our thoughts about remedies for these riots and homicides, mine would be unprintable.
Yep! And like Casey Jones, Arabic was not passed down. Assimilation in the land of opportunity was the goal.
At the turn of the 20th century Lebanon was still a part of the Ottoman Empire. That hate you are obsessing about wasn't a thing back then. It was the UN's non-resolution of the Palestinian intrusion that did for Lebanon. A whole lot of history had to happen to produce those circumstances.
Right! And my non English speaking grandfather refused to speak anything other than English at home, he didn’t want his kids learning anything other than English.
My grandparents were the same - Wish there had been Greek (grandfather) or German (grandmother) spoken so that I could learn it -but I never heard a word of either language because, to my grandparents, that was no longer their country. My grandfather even became a huge baseball fan - of the Tigers - even though he had never heard of the game before coming to the US in his middle-teens.
I had a friend whose parents were Polish so I said to my friend so you speak Polish. No, she said. When my parents arrived in the US, they said we are American now and we will only speak English.
That is not true with the undocumented Democrats from Latin America. The Democrats encourage that with bilingual education. They exit school not speaking English and then wonder why they can't get a job in an English speaking country.
And yet the Latin American immigrants are not the ones rioting, for the most part. They have been stubborn about language, but they still share in the foundation of Western culture.
The rioters are people who were born here in the U.S. and speak English but utterly reject Western civilization, although they are happy to pillage its fruits.
And in the newspaper today I read that the Biden Admin wants to make the citizenship requirements EASIER for those who have not learned English...after SEVEN YEARS!!!
I used to work with a Mexican man who would sit next to me at lunch and try speaking with me. His English wasn't that great, and my Spanish was only slightly better, but he understood that if he was going to live in this country then it would be advantageous for him to become as fluent in his Host's language as possible. Seven years later he passed the written and oral test and became an official American citizen. He raised his children speaking English even though his wife never assimilated, spending all of her time with other Spanish speakers. He bought a house in SoCal, paid it off, and then retired. An American success story, if there ever was one!
Unfortunately, our current government does not believe in this type of success. They would rather keep new immigrants in thrall to the "help" that government provides, never ONCE require them to even learn English.
Right-my grandparents still spoke Arabic and English at home and my parents only spoke Arabic to us (their 4 children) when they did not want us to understand what they were saying. We later learned.
Yup. The only Hungarian my friend knows is the blue stuff...
While I agree that a "best practice" pattern for assimilation is as you describe, I think there are some key differences between France's post-colonial immigrant population and the early 1900 wave of Eastern and Southern and Irish immigrants to the US (which also differs from that of say, the African slaves "immigrants" as well). "Voluntary" immigration invites assimilation and incentivizes it, "immigration" that is by dint of past colonialism and (in the US slavery), creates a different sort of pattern. The French Northern African immigrants, as noted in the article and beyond, are not necessarily immigrants to France because they really wanted to be French, but out of economic necessities that were created by their national relationships to France as subservients, and were primarily brought in for filling labor needs (sounds familiar?), and yet denied a way to return home while also not exactly being welcomed into France either. Therefore, their assimilation patterns will differ - and also with a direct relationship to how the host country encounters those immigrants.
France, for all its progressivism, created a lot of barriers to assimilation for Muslim immigrants, that America *to its credit* has not, in terms of being able to be "Muslim in public" while still being "American". Hence, American Muslim immigrants and their descendants are much more assimilated, even while retaining aspects of Muslim faith and culture, but within "American" constraints, which produces a much more moderated version of Islamic faith and culture. France, without its freedom of religion clauses etc, restricted a lot of public Muslim expression, including restrictions on wearing head scarves and hijab in public. And it appears for the worse - creating "ghettos" of Muslim immigrants who are isolated and resentful (and perhaps rightfully so), and that inhibits a gradual assimilation that might otherwise occur as subsequent generations have *choices* as to how French vs. Muslim they want to be.
And there are also probably some key differences in the French Muslim demographics and the American Muslim demographics - the French Muslims, emigrating by necessity, are not seeking to leave behind the strict structures of their native homelands so much as American Muslim immigrants who are - so France has probably imported a lot more of the militant and fundamentalist sort than America has of more "moderate" Muslims willingly seeking the freedom from their home nations and cultures. Again, the key difference, IMO, is that American Muslims are not former colonial "vassals" but are voluntary immigrants. French Muslims from Northern Africa are though. And the dynamic is very different, and this is what it produces. And yes, of course, you'll find pockets of fundie Muslims in America too, who are here by necessity not necessarily choice, and who resist a more assimilationist approach, but I think broadly speaking, we have absorbed and assimilated a Muslim population better than France (and other Western European nations have).
Likely, France needs to better assimilate Muslim culture into a broader French context that doesn't restrict or isolate it, but also does not allow it to also overtake French culture (no one wants to see the French bikini replaced by mandatory burkas at the beach, after all!). A difficult balancing act for sure. And definitely the provision of improved services and environments is a necessity, with perhaps the goals of breaking up the "banlieus" and dispersing the population so that there aren't these heavily concentrated (and isolated) communities that fosters exactly this sort of "underclass" dynamic and the inevitable flare ups.
Amen!
The writer also fails to mention that they have difficulty finding better-paying jobs because they cannot speak standard French--despite having grown up in France with access to public education. Money is not saved or invested, but spent on bling such as gold jewelry or expensive sneakers. Garbage is thrown in the streets...except in front of the mosque, which is kept clean and well-maintained.
I am reporting what I hear from people who live there.
I hear similar things from friends in Austria, Germany, Denmark and Netherlands. I saw it in London.
I was struck by the sentence “there was a chronic lack of childcare, medicine and education.” Did they immigrate from countries there was an abundance of these services?
Leftists do not want to acknowledge that high immigration levels from poor countries drive inequity, social unrest and insolvent public services.
I told a man in Seattle that illegal immigration created a perpetual system of racial inequity because the darker immigrants will be poorer than established whites (like him) and there's a nonstop feed of them. Illegal immigration = systemic racism, inevitably.
His head exploded in front of my face. You are not allowed to oppose or even criticize illegal immigration in Seattle.
Yep. It's all fun and games until the rioting starts.
That is because they value the cheap wages paid to their gardeners, nannies and manual laborers. If THEY succeed, then the white guys have to pay them MORE.
I've seen this first-hand in SoCal! My wife was a well paid nanny for many years and for a few families, but the last time she lost her job during the Obama years she discovered that people were only willing to pay $7.00 an hour, for 50-60 hours a week! We ended up filing for bankruptcy and nearly lost our home but were able to pull out of it after four years of struggle.
How can you expect people to LIVE on the wages these people are willing to pay? The answer is: They CAN'T!
They can if they embrace the Central America quality of life, which means six roommates in a one bedroom apartment where they all struggle to afford food.
That's the inevitable model of open-border socialism, and when it happens the people responsible will say, "this is because capitalism has failed and we will fix it if you give us money and power."
Well how do we stop this from happening in America?( well I should say continuing) Keep voting democrat/ leftist? They have become so entrenched in our government is there anyway to avoid falling in the same way as France? I keep voting Republicans but we don’t win! Why? Watch this on YouTube - The Awakening -6/3/23
"poverty" is another word (much like "racism") that doesn't mean what it used to mean. The social safety nets (welfare) available in European countries is....I don't even know the right word to use....they get houses/apartments for free, child allowance and even money for leisure (god forbid being on the dole makes you stressed out) I have cousins in England and Ireland that haven't worked for years and live a life that anyone "poor" in America would be jealous of. This is a lack of poverty issue....maybe if they actually didn't know where their next meal came from they would work a real job and if the threat of being shipped back to the hell holes they came from was actually a real threat, they would behave themselves.
“What is the poverty rate or unemployment rate of the places they immigrated from?”
Relative wealth is what drives human satisfaction/dissatisfaction. It’s why many elders in the Eastern Bloc miss communism.
Does that apply anywhere that isn't Belarus or Russia? I can't think of anywhere other than those two myself.
When you constantly show people the good life, barraging them with luxury, as social media does, without providing any hope of participating in it, you get bad behavior sooner or later
Not an invalid point. Even for "well to do" folks, the constant presentation of curated "perfect lives (and bodies)" as somehow the "norm" is creating a lot of emotional distress and weird behavior psychology...
This is why they all have iPhones and 60" tellies. Obviously. Down the road from me folk sleep under bridges and still manage to sniff or shoot-up £500-worth a week. They aren't short of the means; it's the chaotic lives they lead that squander both the means and opportunities that are available.
There is a hell of a lot of truth in that. Not to mention that there are so many more things to buy than 50 years ago which also helps show differences in the haves and have nots
There seems to be two things in play here. One, these countries have taken in many people whose culture is vastly different from theirs. They do not live by Western ideals or standards so they are not interested or very able to assimilate into the new society. Two, the countries that have taken in these people have done very little to try to get these people to assimilate into their culture. Those two things result in masses that are living in separate and poor areas who do not have anything in common with the country that they live in.
Weitzmann then goes on to say several pargraphs away from that: "Between 1990 to 2017 alone, the global poverty rate fell from 36 percent to 9 percent." I think the man is an idiot.
I was raised in a dirt poor Catholic family of 10. We couldn’t even afford a car. But we were rich in values. We were taught to work hard and follow the Golden Rule and 10 Commandments. 8 of us attended University. But I was lucky. I was raised in a peaceful and mainly law abiding country.
I would never take or damage someone else’s property or use violence outside the rules of a sports arena.
Muslim youth have been burning cars in French cities for 20 years. It is irrational to make excuses for criminal behaviour.
Our blue cities make plenty of excuses for criminal behaviour by not arresting or failing to arrest and prosecute those breaking the law.
So, the immigrants are unemployed and live in poverty, but they can organize destruction on their iphones.
France is paying the price for decades of mass migration from a culture that seeks to conquer, not assimilate. Bataclan, Nice, Charlie Hebdo, 12-year-old Lola Daviet, were all sacrifices at the alter of open borders. The Netflix movie "Athena" portrayed the future of all European cities and its plot is eerily reminiscent of this wave of French riots: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-speak-french-part-2
France, Germany, Sweden, Belgium.... Mark Stein’s prediction. Europistan by 2050.
If anyone has a hard time imagining how the great Roman empire fell, we are watching it happen before our eyes.
You err in thinking that France's immigration problem has to do with open borders.
Algeria and Morocco were part of France's pre-war empire. Just as those in the British Empire colonies were entitled to British citizenship and passports, so too were Algerians and Moroccans entitled to be French.
The 1950s saw several million French Arabs relocate to European France for better lives. (Yes, France was under reconstruction through the Marshall Plan, by conditions in France for the immigrant were still far better than the conditions in the streets and alleys of Algiers or Casablanca.)
And as is often the case with immigrant populations, the birthrates were higher than in the population of the host countries, leading to millions of additional souls joining what are euphemistically called "The Projects". Paris, Marseilles, and Brussels have huge enclaves of people of Arab descent, many of whom are seeking ways of moving illegally into the United Kingdom
Open borders was more of a German thing foisted on the EU by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
That is the Poverty Paradox -- whereby those occupying the lower (and especially the lowest) rungs of the socio-economic ladder and rely on at least some degree of public assistance choose to increase that burden on society through unconstrained procreation rather than seek to improve their conditions with a stable family size. If you can't self-sustain a family of four, what makes you think another 2 - 4 children are going to do?
I was trying with an abundance of circumspection not to suggest a similarity to rabbit warrens.
Something I would like to stress regarding these incidents, the quality of life that the rioters enjoy today is far better and far more sustainable than what was seen post WWII and all the way through to the late 1950s when Germany was again becoming a major player in the European economy, France and England were emerging from the war's hangover, and Washington was continuing the process of funneling trillions of dollars eastward to maintain US forces on European soil.
It took me awhile reading through these comments to get to one that resonates with reason, and reality. Well done, L.K.
Awesome comment; brevity...
A side note: there are 8B people on the planet and I imagine 3B have cell phones - why do we know nothing of the 'war in Ukraine'?
Douglas Murray in Strange Death of Europe points to a few factors explaining the unwillingness of European culture to defend itself. One is “exhaustion” from a century of failed political systems - socialism, Marxism, fascism and the EU. The other is “guilt”. The feeling among many who advocate for open borders is “after 500 years of colonialist exploitation what right do we have to prevent them from returning the favor”. We’re seeing the same in the US not just at the southern border but in the slow-motion dismantling of civilization in our cities. Hand-wringing leftists claim we owe respect to those who have no understanding or regard for the fundamental values that enabled progress and prosperity (no mention of God, family, rule-of-law in either assessment above). Pundits like these sidestep and avoid facing basic truths at our mutual peril.
Was watching an episode of 1883 where the lead character states something to the effect of “ cities have made us weaker.” This struck me as it has dawned on me over the last few years that general society keeps telling us certain things are undoubtedly true despite our eyes and common sense telling us they are not. The more urban we become, the less common sense we use, and society has increasingly used academic “experts” to continue pushing and expanding its lies…
Indeed. All the more reasons the elites want to corral us all into "15 minute cities" where we're easier to control.
Well said.
It is a bit odd that real, concrete information on what is going on in Ukraine is so hard to find, considering how many cell phones are out there.
Even Somalian kids have iphones. I guess they call it globalization..
They've skipped several generations of comms tech. Punt and Somaliland are doing quite well without international recognition and the UN/Blue Helmets queering the pitch.
Yes, where is the money coming from?
Hint: it's got a pretty red flower; or grows on Copperhead Road.
“anti-world”—of the housing projects known as les cités, - Please let me come to your country for freedom and liberty, plus opportunities to live better. Wait, you mean that requires work and sacrifice, plus an education? Well I was thinking more like how about FREE! I live in public housing and on the dole because I am unwilling to assimilate and learn what is needed. So if that doesn't work then I must immediately blame all people who had nothing to do with it, but pay for my free shit. See you doing what is needed to get ahead must mean you are a racist and have prevented me from getting ahead, although, again, I am not really interested in learning your language, cultures, and social norms. See I prefer to bring the same crappy standards I came from but expect different results.
How about all of you stay home and fight the things you are running from. Stand up and take responsibility for the crappy country you fled. Show some courage and desire to change things.
You can spend every penny the government has (like America) and it will never be enough. Sorry, yes there is racism and lack of opportunities, but come on, you are also responsible for your own status. How do immigrants in America get ahead. Education, work long hours, sacrifice for the children's future.
Someone needs to explain how Western countries are to handle the ever increasing flood of immigrants and make people from maybe 5-6 different countries happy? I believe more likely it is the liberals of the world putting out false hope of just get to France, America, Great Britain and you will be happy and taken care of. Well you know, in case anyone forgets, the people of these countries are already struggling to live their lives and take care of their own. Now it's racism if the red carpet is not rolled out and perfect results. Someone explain to me how you handle the continuing flood of refugees who will not fight for their own country, yet expect a perfect result from the immigration? Unrealistic expectations!
I have the same sentiment regarding the people from the NE states flooding my state.
They flee the disasters they’ve created and complain that my state doesn’t have X or do Y like “back home.”
I saw these sorts of people destroy my home state. Not interested in watching the sequel.
No one will be happy until we are a communist country and then do as you are told or be dead!
I agree in part that there is a lack of ideals facing this generation born post- achievements. However, my children ages 30-17 have been directly educated by professors and teachers both in college and in high school over the last 10 years that they are surrounded by societal ills and they must revolt. It’s my personal belief that education and educators have Marxist leanings in the same way the German universities were in the 1800s and are creating soldiers of the students.
The very same teachers who made their students read tracts such as "Wretched of the Earth" and preached about the wickedness and excess of Western culture? It has been observed that "our Constitution is not a suicide pact." Americans need to wake up to the national suicide being fomented by the Leftist DNC.
☝️THIS☝️
Marxists *leanings*? Try Marxist commitments.
The best thing any parent of school aged children can do is to get their kids out of public schools A.S.A.P. One of the unintentional consequences of the Plandemic was an increase in home schooling. We can only hope this continues. Public schooling is nothing more than Marxist indoctrination on an industrial scale. Grievance "studies" have replaced history (at least non-fictional history), civics, and much of the fundamental three R's. We are breeding generations of mindless culture warriors completely lacking in the basic skills of life and career -- especially so in the STEM fields which are almost exclusively now foreign students.
Who remembers the progressive social policy they used to call ‘multiculturalism?’
When essentially unlimited immigration was supported by the cheerful, but ridiculous, metaphor comparing multiculturalism to a lovely organic salad one might find in a café in the 5th arrondissement. A more apt metaphor is a head of iceberg lettuce, an onion, and a tomato shoved next to each other in a bowl, slathered with dressing. In this case, French dressing.
Functioning societies are built on a foundation of shared values, norms and customs. With each new ingredient, in measured amounts, contributing to a unified whole. Otherwise, we end up with a mouthful of onions.
A glaring omission in the article is the fact that Christianity is very different from Islam.
Except that it isn’t. Both have been corrupted by the men that filtered their teachings and made religion government to oppress and control.
Only difference is that Islamist people will cut your head off if you don’t follow their way!
Well, Christians were in that mode for much of what is known as the "Dark Ages" in Europe, and even early American settlements featured some pretty harsh fundie sets of Christianity (the "witch burnings", etc). Islam, comparatively, was generally, a much more open cultural religion and society prior to the mid-20th century "colonialism" that reshaped the oil producing Middle East and its inhabitants, it's political lines, etc, that created/incentivized a lot of this "fundie" version of Islam that has spread as a combo of a political, economic and cultural reaction and infected a lot of these regions as a result.
Past tense vs present tense. Big difference.
Some excellent points about our "overabundance" issue. However, in terms of the riots in France, one important factor has been overlooked. What is the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in these riots? I haven't heard a word in the media about the clash between Islam and modern France.
Exactly right. Surprise that no one is mentioning that it is a Muslim uprising
From what the news reports it looks like Muslims are the culprit. Anyone forgot Charlie Hebdo? If you say anything bad, they kill you.
Unless a new Charles Martel arises to galvanize the French, all will be lost.
France also colonized Vietnam but the the French-Vietnamese don’t riot and cause mass destruction. Britain colonized the areas of India and now Pakistan, yet the Hindu and Sikh Indians to the Uk and their descendants don’t bomb buses and trains or organize “grooming gangs” to rape and pimp out young girls.
This. 100% spot on.
Agreed. Exactly.
We spend way more time trying to rationalize the resentments of others than they spend on introspection of their own resentments.
After 911 I read many books on Islam, most written by Muslims, trying to comprehend their minds. One thing stood out---resentment. They are never responsible for their circumstances. It is always the west’s fault. And they feel entitled to move in to other countries, reproduce, and gradually take over. No interest in assimilation. Can you blame French people for not being so happy with this crowd? Any wonder rioting happens?
Ah....it's always the "resentment," isn't it?
And that resentment is rightfully earned.
If you are unhappy with your lot in life, you should direct your anger first at your parents and / or God. Somehow neither make it high on the list.
Out of the womb I am owed nothing by others and they owe nothing to me. Resentment is ignorance
Resentment is an expression of envy.
Interesting philosophical take.
So, in your personal life, you've never been resentful about something someone did to you?
Or has your resentfulness always been a result of being envious of what others have, etc.
Or perhaps you've never been resentful at all?
I am very fluent in Caucasian, so it seems your thesis is: "Certain people are so awesome, never f-ck with anyone and do such much cool, bomb-ass stuff that other certain people are mad because they're not us."
Lol.
Own my own home, as well as property in Costa Rica and Panama. Scheduled to retire at 58. Made $235,000 last year.
This comment was not specifically for “you”, just a generally response to your seeming believe that resentment is justified , presumably those mentioned in the article
Sometimes it's justified, sometimes it's not.
I just don't make it a personal habit to lecture others on how THEY should feel sbout things based on MY life experiences....which seems to be a favorite activity here at the Free Press.
So you made a few bucks and invested it in buying land in two countries that literally are the definition of banana republics?? 😂
Lol. Yeah... "a few bucks."
Yep. Made excellent profit so far. Brilliant decision Rent out to college travellers, vactioners, Americans coming for medical procedures, etc. Has been awesome, especially when combined with my Fundrise portfolio. Planning on retiring to Costa Rica. Wonderful place. But it is fun to throw around "Banana Republic" for any place that's not the U.S, isn't it?
Nope.
I think resentment is a factor with social media only amplifying this. IMO what we do with this resentment can be a key factor in defining us and the path our lives take. We can use this resentment/anger as a driving factor (chip on the shoulder) to push us (e.g., take night classes after a full day of work, work extra shifts, tutor or help others in our local communities, etc.). This resentment can also be used negatively as we see in the article.
"See above?" Lol.
Own my own home, as well as property in Costa Rica and Panama. On track to rerire at 58. Made $235,000 last year.
I'm good ;)
"They hate us for our freedoms!"
The “see above” in my comment was in reference to the article (I can see how that can be confusing depending on the device used). In other words, resentment can be used negatively in the form of rioting/destruction of property, etc.
Compost loves the money but hates America. He'll be out there rioting because, despite his wealth, Western civilization is evil and deserves to be destroyed. He's got his, so he doesn't care that the people he supports have no way of regenerating wealth once they've plundered it all.
Is this the French equivalent of the George Floyd/BLM unrest? Or is it more complicated than that as BW suggested?
Well...
1. French people love a good protest/riot. Anytime, anywhere, over pretty much anything.
2. The Algerian experience in France is somewhat analogous to the African-American experience in America, but there are some substantial differences, namely the structured, legal codification that existed in America until 1965 and the more intricate ties between France and its former colonies.
3. While the French were dicks w/colonization and have an issue with racism in their country, they don't try and justify it, make excuses for it, deny it or blame "the Negre" or "coloreds"....they just segregate them in their communities and pretend they don't exist. Therefore, they tend to not address/notice issues until they blow up. Brazil, with the favelas, is very similar in that regard, although in Brazil it is more of a color/skin tone thing (i.e. "colorism") as everyone is pretty much a mix of African, Portugeues and Indigenous. So the "paper bag" test is still very much alive and well there.
4. The French, generally, don't espouse an ethos of assimilation as much as we do in America, although for American right wingers "assimilation" is often used as a cudgle. The French, in general, don't even really offer the chance. Yeah, you can live there, but you'll never "REALLY" be a French citizen/national. No matter what your passport says.
5. No one really likes police in general and police, around the world are way too trigger happy, including France. Although not as much as U.S. cops, who are supremely militarized and undergo "Killology" training seminars which make them think their job, which is statistically not very dangerous, is being surrounded daily by people who could murder them in an instant. So, shootings of this type are actually pretty rare in France. But France also doesn't have a major component of its citizenry who cop bootlickers either, who justify/defend even the most egregious examples of police violence/misconduct. I've been to France on three occasions for business and according to the people I spoke with, they tend to view cops as kind of a necessary nuisance and they don't have the strong, emotional "pro" / "con" view, mainly because (1) they don't view cops as the only thing keeping them from getting murdered and (2) French police, unlike American ones, don't engage in a lot of Thin Blue Line "copaganda."
6. People think France is all Paris, the Eiffel Tower, etc. But if you've been there, there are a LOT of rough areas, with a lot of young men, of all ethnic backgrounds, who have very few economic prospects and a LOT of free time. Recipe for problems.
Overall, this is "sort of equivalent," in the sense that it involved a "white" officer and a "nonwhite" citizen, but there is a much broader diversity in the protesters/rioters in France, across a broader socio-economic spectrum than what you'll find in America. I'm sure there a quite a few in there who are probably really upset about the retirement age being raised, even though they're not close to retirement -just the principle of the thing.
So, I am very hesitant to simplify it to a simple "black and white framing" ;) because, IMO, it is a bit more complicated. Of course, that won't stop the majority on here attributing it all to immutable, genetic characteristics or being...you know....being "resentful" or "ungrateful."
Long winded answer, but you questioned caused me to go in the memory bank and remeber a lot if interesting things I've read and heard from "the locals" when I've been there.
Excellent, just really excellent and very well informed summation of the situation in France and its differences (and similarities) to American racial/ethnic/class frictions.
I would add that the French Northern African/Muslim "immigrant" population comes primarily from former French colonial states, imported primarily for labor needs in France (versus American Muslim immigrants), but as you mention, never really welcomed to be "fully French" (despite being adjuncts of France, raised to speak French in their homelands and otherwise), which produces a very different "immigrant" dynamic that so many here compare to the early 1900's "second wave" of Eastern/Southern/Irish European immigration to American of "voluntaries" who were not otherwise existing "colonized subordinates" to America - in that the immigrants from France's former colonies are not necessarily voluntarily leaving their homelands to become "French" but are out of economic necessity and from the colonialized patterns of importing "cheap labor" from those colonies, but without being offered either a way home *or* a path to being considered full French citizens with all the cultural aspects inherited - let alone having the already resentful history of being colonized and subjugated by the new "home" nation.
America *to its credit* has done a better job at assimilating immigrants, particularly wrt to Muslim immigrants. They can be "Muslim in public" within the constraints of American social and political constraints. This produces subsequent generations of more "moderate" and assimilated Muslim Americans, versus the French Muslims to where even wearing the head scarves is restricted in public, which produces a much more isolated and resentful Muslim immigrant population that will never fully feel it can be "French" and "Muslim" at the same time, but must choose either/or, and the "or Muslim" becomes an extreme reaction to the restriction of.
Again, excellent summation, your haters may hate anyway ;P
Yes, exactly right re: Muslims in France, who are better included in the "colored" group as oppossed to the Sub-Saharan "Negre" (at least that's how it was explained to me)
The advantage for the second wave immigration of Eastem/Southern/Irish is the lack of visual markers, so, while those were initially distinct ethnic identities, if you stick around long enough in the U.S., your grandkids will be "white" and they can join any WASP country club they want :)
As you correctly note, the cheap labor dynamic is very real and causes a push-pull tension among that community and the general French populace.
This dynamic is also what caused Brexit, and we saw how that worked out, right? Turns out when you criminalize and expel people who are doing the "invisible jobs" that keep your society functioning, it usually backfires.
DeSantis is discovering that in FL. But, no worries, those jobs will surely be filled by willing white and black Americans who have been unfairly locked out of the rewarding and lucrative career of "Migrant Farm Laborer."
Yes, I sure the haters will continue, because no matter how many times what I predict comes to pass, no matter how accurate and historically documented, etc. Comprof is always wrong about everything! :)
What Islam did you study? Catholicism and Islam were hijacked by men who made religion government to hoard wealth. Remember the Crusades.
The point I was referring to was the shame of Muslims from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t that they had gotten fat, lazy, and insulated. It was the fault of the infidel. They were nomadic goat herders until the British and Americans showed up and developed their oil for them, making them fabulously rich. A point they seem to have forgotten. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, yet maybe 6 Nobel prize winners. There are 250 million Jews, and around 260 Nobel prize winners. This is all so embarrassing. And the infidel is to blame. It’s not rational, resentment isn’t.
There are 15 million Jews in the world!
Oh, my bad, I really remembered that wrong. But it makes my point even more so.
Here's an idea: We can call it the 1099 Project.
Yes. I believe resentments is the word. Even in African countries you will find a big difference between Muslim and Christian communities. And there is an element of supremacism and even entitlement in Islam as well.
Where I live I have many extremely hard-working, kind, humble Muslim immigrants from Africa all around me. They want a better life for their kids. They want them to be educated, hopefully professionals. They want good values. My family are Christians from the Middle East. But some ideologies are simply poisonous even among good people. And racism and prejudice hurts also.
💯 agreed.
Something tells me that there's a disconnect between the concerns of this essay and the concerns of the Muslim population in France. Anecdotally, while living in Paris in the 80s, I could not get down the narrow sidewalk without a Moroccan grabbing me; a "little Moroccan" denuded my purse in a bar, and about ten years ago in Marseilles, a French native spoke in glowing terms about going into the Middle Eastern (slum) to "see the Muslims selling their wares." A nice euphemism for cutting a drug deal.
There was less than zero evidence that these people have any inclination to assimilate into French or any Western culture. On a trip to Sweden last summer, in hushed tones those areas were pointed out as the places where the violent come from, private conversations on how much trouble came with them, and how no one voted to bring these parasites in. Add to this that most are young men, who aren't finding wives, so -- like rogue elephants -- trample the villages and cause mayhem.
What IS the rationale behind bringing people from an antithetical culture into the Western world? And why do so many people believe that this is a good thing to do? For whom is it beneficial? Why isn't the argument that their strong young men should stay home and build their own country and marry their own women and perpetuate their own culture, as opposed to moving to a Western country and setting up a slum?
Those who believe this is a common good are useful idiots and moral narcissists. Even if France did colonize those countries (one can infer that this immigration policy is some form of apology) there's very little rationale behind bringing in a population that will leach off the system, create its own underworld, and go around spitting at the natives. In Sweden, they have tortured Swedish children. They OTHER the natives. They practice all of the forms of racism to which the natives are forbidden.
The Westerners are not racist. The immigrants are. This is evident in their burning things down. That 17-year-old was resisting arrest. That's the common denominator in all of these cases. They live outside the law, and are upbraided when the law comes after them, because the rules do not apply to them. Period. It's the same in the US. No one has the right to resist arrest. That kid (as I've read) was a serial offender, too young to drive, and up to no good. He didn't deserve to die, of course, but nor did he deserve to live in France as he demographically, historically, was about to make little to no contribution to French society.
The one thing so many fail to realize is the fact that this is all planned and managed by the global technocratic elites who have no allegiance to any one country. The “New World Order” can only come about if the morals and tenacity of the middle classes of the West are crushed. Agenda 2030, the Climate Hoax, mass migration, plandemics are all part of plan to bring us to our knees. Once the CBDC is unleashed and social credit scores determine if you will eat or starve, people will fall in line. They need total chaos in order to save us from ourselves. The riots in France are just a small scene in this long running tragic play. More to follow....stay tuned.
"Everything means everything so nothing means anything." Anomie and chaos serve the perp's and cover the grift. It's criminal pathology not politic's. Label's no longer apply. The clear engine for survival is the Constitution and the Bill of Right's it contains. Everything is exactly what it appears to be. It's not something else.
Dead on! My suspicion exactly!
Spot on. And you can add Austria, Netherlands, UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and to some still lesser extent even Switzerland to the list. And in all of these countries, it is only the Muslim population that never even tries to assimilate and causes problems every single day. By comparison, generally no or very few problems with immigrants from Asia or from Eastern Europe.
The author is correct in that we are a wealthier world now. And undoubtedly, every rioter is better off in France than they would be in their country of family origin. But the politics of envy is a relative disease and the rioters compare themselves to their more successful local peers rather than their less successful distant relatives. Mass media and social media amplify that comparative distance, sometimes fictionally, fanning the flames. For those old enough to remember, there was a time when half the world thought the average American lived like the TV shows Dallas and Dynasty. It’s much much worse now of course. Envy is a large driver in violence, which is why the left uses it to fan grievances.
There is also another thing the author, and many media commentators, miss. Rioting is, well, fun. It’s not just profitable to rob a store. It is exhilarating. Freedom from restraint. Group action. Adrenaline pumping. It’s a sport that you can’t lose. In a society with no boundaries rioting will become merely a sport for the masses.
☝️This!!☝️ Rioting, or mostly peaceful demos depending on your perspective, is *fun* for young people. Whether it's the "teen takeovers" in Chicago or toppling statues in Portland or throwing bottles in Paris. Social media provides logistical help as well as a uniting rationale and rallying cries, but the urge to gather and scream and have sex and pillage is as old as man. Bored and disaffected youth just need a match. I read post by a young BLM marcher in Portland in 2020 that summed it up, "Can't stop thinking about the boy in the red and white keffiyeh who kissed me behind the barricades before we were hit with tear gas." Oh the drama, Romeo and Julliet! The cause for these riots is as much hormonal as political, if not more so.
Civilization is about controlling humanity’s natural violence. The discussion is about where to draw the line not about whether there should be a line.
Civilization is many things, and channeling natural impulses is generally more effective than suppressing them, e.g. sports as sublimated war. My comment was intended to discuss an element of the problem, not as boys will be boys. Of course there should be a line, and it's been pretty clearly drawn around public safety and private property in most places. Your points about envy and resentment, fanned by extremists, as the proximate cause are well taken. There are many factors at play, I would also add legitimate climate anxiety, which is why it's so (literally) explosive. I've known enough young people around the world as a teacher to be very aware of the importance of lines. Yes I see these young people as human, but I also would say very tough measures are appropriate and necessary. You don't want Paris looking like Portland does these days.
I agree but look at what the media is doing. Everything is fear mongering! Climate change, asteroids, volcanos, homelessness, inflation, the list goes on and on. We receive a constant barrage of doom everyday from every media outlet be it social, news or government. Nobody but a few promote common sense.
Civilization as it has unfolded is arguably the root cause of violence. Humans aren’t violent until they become constructs of unnatural proportions and then they become confused which leads to terrible sex and the death of pleasure.
I must say I don't agree with that. If anything, humans get less violent as their society gets more civilized. I don't think it is possible for anyone today to comprehend the level of daily violence that existed centuries or millennia ago. The only thing correct about the concept of the noble savage is the savage from what I can tell. That's why these riots are so shocking. Person to person violence has become rare.
Maybe violence is innate or maybe it’s seeded by civilization as constructed by male ego. There’s a reason why countries with women at the top and at all levels of government and business are more successful and less violent. The more we come together, the happier we will be.
Definitely agree that women are a civilizing influence on men and society. Generally speaking the woman/man balance has worked out well for humanity. Strengths, weaknesses in each balance out very well.
Absolutely 👍
we have no repercussions or punishment for rioters. It is incredibly fun. It’s a party. They play music, dance, sing, march, loot stores. There are large groups of black youths who do this regularly in big cities like Chicago. They aren’t even protesting anything. They are having a ball---looting Louis Vioutton.
No punishment. Just fun.
On the contrary, in countries where protests and change are actually needed (N Korea, China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi, Syria, Africa etc).... they do not happen because people will get shot if they protest or loot. There are consequences. In Iran they had reasons to Protest but they were being killed for doing so.
If government is weak, these things happen.
💯 they’d never do it in their home countries. They would be punished severely. In Europe it’s perfectly ok. Jihad 2.0.
Yup - welcome to Minneapolis, Minnesota
https://notthebee.com/article/watch-somali-teens-fire-july-4th-rockets-at-minneapolis-police-like-something-out-of-black-hawk-down
Brilliant. “The West has made such extraordinary—indeed, historically unique—progress in reducing suffering on a large scale that we’re now left grasping for new ideals and new aspirations to fulfill. This is not to say that everything is perfect. But the current penchant for protests and riots is profoundly out of proportion with the relatively small-scale challenges we still face.”
Our lives are so good that nothing is left to get bent out of shape over except being “misgendered.” Can you imagine people in any other time period being obsessed with pronouns? All of this nonsense is, ironically, a mark of privilege. I like the insight that this is linked to our search for meaning. Interesting.
This essay reminds me of Hans Rosling’s book, “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things are Better Than We Think.” We have a tendency to think racism has never been worse—or poverty or anything else. But in fact the opposite is true. Of course, to realize that, we do have to consider the actual FACTS, not our bored, aimless feelings.
Yes Adrienne! I agree and am going to check out that book. Thanks for mentioning it.
Yeah...well....people can only live in the time they are.
Answer to Free Press about Paris revolts
Liliane Messika - lili.messika@gmail.com
I am a French faithful reader of The Free Press, as I was one of Common Sense, hence I abstain to read Le Monde, except when I suffer an acute attack of masochism…
Le Monde is a copy-paste of the NYT in its wokiest extremism.
I am not surprised to read that the “explanation” of the riots and lootings given by one of its reporters is all about poverty alienation and unemployment.
In these places, Weitzmann points out, “the poverty rate reaches 43 percent, and the unemployment rate almost 19 percent. The annual income per household does not exceed 14,000 euros.”
Let’s just look at the originating cause of the mayhem: a 17-year old Muslim kid has been killed by a policeman when he refused to stop at a checkpoint. A) In France, you are not allowed to sit for your driving license before being of age (that’s 18 years old). B) He was driving a Mercedes deluxe car worth more than €70,000. C) Since 2017, law enforcement officers are allowed to shoot at a vehicle that fails to obey a stop order and whose occupants "are likely to perpetrate, in their flight, harm to their life or physical integrity or that of others". In 2021, there were 27,609 of them, that is one refusal to stop every 30 minutes. (The numbers for 2022 are not yet available). D) A number of police people have been killed or maimed by drivers refusing to stop in recent months, one of them in La Rochelle in May 2023 .
What about facts and figures?
Weitzmann quotes the average official salary in these areas, which hardly represents reality, since A) The unemployment figures represent the number of its beneficiaries. But B) many of these beneficiaries work on the side and are paid in cash, since unemployment benefit is not correlated with an effective job search. C) People who never worked a day in their lives are not left to starve homeless. They can receive the RSA stipend: (€607.75 per month) and live for next to nothing in government housings. The RSA is supposedly aimed at helping French nationals over the age of 25 to survive without working but “special conditions” are apparently met by many foreigners which allow them to benefit too.
When the French President, Macron, visited the police on the night of July 3 to 4, he wondered who he could ask for help: parents? Teachers? The police?
“Only drug dealers, Mr. President”, a police officer answered. “Actually, they're the ones who started asking them to calm down a couple of days ago, because all this mess is bad for their business. It's been a week since the drug trade has been running at a standstill”.
Weitzmann forgot to mention the daily €1,000 cash a 8-years old gets for watching for drugs gangs (they are called “chouffeurs” from “chouff”, to watch in Arabic). More generally, he doesn’t take at all into account the parallel drug economy that plagues these areas, and that the officer explained to Emmanuel Macron.
Another excuse for the rioter given by Le Monde and his journalist is “post-colonialism”, which is the woke translation of “racism against Michels”.
What is a Michel? It was the most common French male given name in the 1990’s. Today it would rather be Mohammed. If you are called a Michel, you’d better run! Unless you are a drugs customer.
The rioters today are the 3rd or 4th generation of economic immigrants. Their grand-parents were happy to find a better situation in France than what they had at home in Algeria or in Morocco. So were their parents.
But the contagion of post-colonial themes from the United States convinced the third and fourth generations that they were victims of racism and discrimination, and that France owed them everything, whereas they owed it nothing.
Combine that with a literal reading of the Koran: “you are the best community that has been raised up for mankind, you command what is decent, forbid what is blamable, and believe in Allah” (Sura 3 verse 10 ), and the result is people who have no incentive to learn, work or behave in the French way of life, that is equality between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims.
One thing Weitzmann says is true : In fact, it was understood in Paris, that “absorbing Algerians and Moroccans into France would be viewed as a casus belli by the nationalist regimes in Algiers and Rabat.”
So they were left in the care of imams coming from their original countries, who taught Koran to their children and others coming from Saudi Arabia and Qatar who taught them anti-French feelings, terror and who accentuated the anti-Semitism inherent in the upbringing they would have received in their countries of origin, by adding to it a flavor of Nazism.
But the “cités” were not left to poverty and segregation. The drug dealers reigned and the local authorities paid for “social peace” in money and also with sports and cultural facilities that non-immigrant suburbs never enjoyed.
Abe Greenwald is much closer to reality than a Le Monde journalist will ever be.
Although when he writes that “Many Muslims who reside in housing projects live in a country far removed from the France of the American imagination. Their lives in the banlieues are marked by a chronic lack of social services, from childcare to medicine to education”, one has to remind him that each time a library is built in these areas, it is burnt to the ground at the first dissatisfaction of the local “youth”. And that in recent years, the police, firemen and doctors were ambushed by locals who called them for help only to attack them when they arrived.
If these “banlieues” have become no-go zones, it is not because the French governments have abandoned them but because they discouraged any non-Muslim to come.
Another thing I agree with is that “The West has made such extraordinary—indeed, historically unique—progress in reducing suffering on a large scale that we’re now left grasping for new ideals and new aspirations to fulfill.”
I would add Tocqueville’s paradox to this explanation: the more social conditions and opportunities improve, and the more the little distance between the achievement and the ideal situation appears as unbearable. The Tocqueville paradox contradicts Karl Marx’s theory, because it states that a revolution is more likely to happen, after an improvement in social conditions, than as a result of deterioration of conditions of the proletariat.
As a matter of fact, in forty years of national “suburban plans”, nearly 100 billion euros have been poured into these irreparable, factious areas - to no avail.
Meanwhile, rural France is dying, but no-one cares, because the Michels never riot or loot!
I found this information very valuable .... Thank you for providing context to the article!
Thank you for your highly relevant perspective!
Michels never riot or loot is far more correct than the leap of connecting the yellow vest protest to this riot. The purpose of the yellow vest was a public display of disapproval and not to destroy or loot property. The number of yellow vested protesters were massive and the violence that occurred was on a much smaller scale than the destruction that happened during the Nahel riots. The yellow vests protest was made up of many people who have contributed to the economy of France, but many of the Nahel rioters are people who have contributed little to France and taken much.
Excellent enlightening comment. Thank you for the information.
Outstanding comment, more informative and logical than the FP article itself.
Most useful comment here. Merci
Thank you so much for sharing your well-considered thoughts from inside France!
Super informative - thank you!
Clearly, the answer to follow French foreign policy in the Middle East. Convene a UN conference. Coordinate aid from the EU to the rioter. Condemn the police response. Arrive at a two state solution, where the immigrants can impose their views in contradiction to the secular French constitution. Then give the rioters 50% of Paris in exchange for acknowledging that France has a right to exist. Also the French should be forced to give Corsica and Brittany independence, as well as returning Nice and the South of France to their rightful owner, Italy...
Quite frankly, those cities such as San Francisco and New York, which no longer respect property rights and civil order, are likely to face outmigration and tax base collapse.
Interesting take. I would agree that lack of meaning is probably a factor, in general, in riots over the past 10-15 years in the West. However, I wonder about these particular riots. This author as much as admits that the rioters are chiefly Muslim when he describes the demographics: North African, Middle Eastern. If you import masses of people who despise you and your culture and respect only one law, and it isn’t the law of their host country, at some point they will revolt. It seems likely that this could be an early manifestation of that inevitable conflict. The funny, or tragic, part of that would be that while the West is soul-searching about who or what abstract and mysterious factors could possibly be responsible for ALL riots in the past 15 years, a question of limited utility in its broadness, Islam is actively challenging the authority of the jurisdictions it has infiltrated. Perhaps we Westerners are so lost in the search for meaning, we miss the glaringly obvious: we have allowed our countries to be invaded and looting and violence always ensues when you are invaded.
I think that's an accurate insight. Very many of these people belong to a religious culture that encourages the belief that Allah is in the process of handing them the West. Why submit in that case to Frenchness, Germanness, Swedishness, or Britishness? Maybe their confinement to the banlieus is part of a desperate French attempt to stop them acquiring wealth, power, influence, and control -- i.e. France, for Allah. Which country will be their next target after that?
It's hard not to see it that way.