Fears for France

Last week a liberal French friend of mine was bemoaning the state of her country. How could it be, she asked, that the majority of French voters were so stupid as to deliver what was largely seen as an overwhelming victory for Nicolas Sarkozy and the centre-Right?

Only, she doesn't really see Sarkozy as representing the centre or moderate Right. To her, he is a semi-mythical fascistic figure, and will never live down the infamy he achieved in her mind when he called the 'youths' tearing France apart back in 2005, after the deaths of two teenage criminal suspects in Clichy-sous-Bois, 'scum'.

Well, as real Right-wingers, patriots and nationalists know, that was all bravado. Whatever my friend says about the way he treats the 'poor, poor immigrants', far more immigrants still come than is necessary or useful. Far more than leave, certainly.

The idea that Nicolas Sarkozy is Right-wing, or even a French patriot, is so ludicrous as to be laughable.

Yet still, the press included Sarkozy and his UMP when lamenting the apparently stunning victory of the Right across Europe in this month's European Parliament elections.

Sarkozy is, in my opinion, a very dangerous man. Like most Western politicians, he cares far more about saying the right things to the right people than actually acting in a way which benefits the French people. Despite this, many French voters seem to feel that they have no alternative to the right of Sarkozy and the UMP (note the relatively disappointing performance of a real patriot like Phillippe de Villiers).

Why is he dangerous? Recently, Sarkozy called the Islamisation of France inevitable. He says that it is natural that churches will be converted into mosques, and that the country will start to align itself more closely with the Muslim world in matters of foreign policy.

As if to prove this, earlier this week French websites were buzzing with news of secret clauses in an agreement which has seen a French military base open in the United Arab Emirates:

According to Le Figaro, June 15, the secret clauses of an agreement concluded at the end of May between Paris and Abu Dhabi commit France to defend the seven Emirates "by all the military means at her disposal". This would include nuclear weapons as well.

Putting rich Arab sheikdoms under the French nuclear umbrella abroad, and domestically:

We knew what Sarkozy's vision of the future was: an "Islam of France", "métissage" between races and ethnic groups, dissolution of nationalist, regional, and ethnic identities, subjugation to Brussels, openness to socialism, and a Turkey as closely aligned with Europe as possible, etc...

The latter point is most interesting, because when Sarkozy was elected his platform included denying Turkish accession to the European Union. As soon as the votes were counted he declared that his vision for Turkey was 'if not membership, then as close a relationship as possible.'

His real agenda then started becoming slowly clear; he insisted that if France was to emerge from the ethnic and religious tensions which now plague increasingly large parts it, then the French people and nation must be the ones who change. On that basis, an affirmative action process was created, overseen by a successful Algerian businessman called Yazid Sabeg. Also, interracial, ethnic and religious relationships are seen as 'vital for the future of France'. When one looks at the demographic situation and the continuing flow of immigrants, one must ask who is absorbing whom - but to Sarkozy such matters are unimportant.

They should be important, however. Mass immigration from the Third World, particularly the Muslim segment of it, has changed the face of French society in a variety of ways.

We are not simply talking about the bus queue being more colourful or different scripts on shop signs; we are talking about the importing of backward attitudes, behaviour and values into France.

Nothing summed this up more aptly than the shocking murder of Ilan Halimi, a French Jew of Moroccan parentage.

The following is a passage from The Frozen North's description of the murder of Halimi, and frighteningly similar cases:

In January 2006, a young man named Ilan Halimi arranged a date with a woman he’d met in the shop where he worked. She was a member of “The Barbarians,” a gang who lay in wait for Halimi that night and kidnapped him.

Over the next three weeks, Halimi was held in a basement and tortured to death. Beaten, stabbed and burned over four fifths of his body, Halimi was eventually found handcuffed and abandoned in a field. Halimi died on the way to hospital.

Now, over three years later, Youssouf Fofana, the leader of “The Barbarians,” is being tried in Paris for the role he played in those crimes. Fofana “swaggered into court” and shouted out the takbir (Allahu Akbar). He has also stated that he has “friends” in court who can take photographs and identify jurors. Fofana had previously tried to escape justice by fleeing to the Ivory Coast, but he was quickly tracked down and extradited back to France.

Twenty six other members of Fofana’s “Barbarians” are facing charges as well; one of the most disturbing aspects of this crime is the way so many people participated in it. Several of the accused have admitted that Halimi was targeted because he was Jewish, and they believed that their victim’s family would be able to meet their ransom demands.

In 2008, in the same Parisian suburb of Bagneux where Ilan Halimi was held captive, six youths abducted Mathieu Roumi. They handcuffed and beat him, wrote “dirty jew” on his forehead, and told him that he would die the same way Ilan Halimi did before finally releasing him. The American writer Nidra Poller has also compared Halimi’s murder with the killing of Sebastien Selam, a twenty three year old who worked as a DJ in a Parisian nightclub, by one of his Muslim neighbours. Selam’s murderer not only “smote his victim above the neck,” he mutilated his face and eyes. The murderer then returned to his family home, where he told his mother that he would go to paradise because he had killed a Jew.

Many tried to downplay the role of Islam and anti-Semitism in this murder. It was clear, however that Halimi and later Roumi were specifically targetted because they were Jewish.

Although they ostensibly gave their reasoning as 'Jews have money and can pay,' Fofana rang Halimi's parents demanding a ransom whilst quoting passages of the Koran to them. Now on trial, it has been noted that he likes to shout out 'Allahuakbar!' in the courtroom, whilst telling the judge he has no authority over him.

He also knows no fear at all. He has shouted out to jurors that he will kill them, he remembers their faces, he has men on the outside etc.

Now, under these circumstances, what is the major concern of the French authorities? The growing Muslim underclass in their midst? Anti-Semitism and other forms of Islamic violence against infidels on the rise?

No - simply suppressing as much of this information as possible at all costs. Here is a picture of Halimi in captivity which they tried to ban:

The fact is that French society is becoming far more violent. To deny that or try to hide it is ostensibly to prevent people from taking sensible precautions to defend themselves - and some will undoubtedly pay the ultimate price.

Another growing phenomenon in modern France is racist violence against white French people. The following video shows an unprovoked racist assault on a Frenchman which took place on a Paris night bus:


The violence involved is shocking in the fact that is seems completely random. What struck the French authorities wasn't the brutal racist attack, however - it was that a French policeman had dared to leak the video and make public not only his typical working conditions, but the fact that the authorities did not treat such crimes very seriously.

He was immediately suspended from duty - for harming the image of the bus company. Meanwhile, the victim came forward to denounce the idea that the assault was in any way racially motivated - when of course, if it had been the other way around, it would simply have been taken for granted that it was, by authorities and victim alike.

The undeniable trend of immigrant violence continues unabated, however. In late April, a young couple were killed in Douchy-les-Mines when they had the misfortune to get a puncture outside the house of a known violent criminal.

They were in the town to show their ten week old baby to relatives - and instead they were gunned down with an old rifle by Ahmed Assous, 62, a man with 'a reputation for violence' who did not like anyone to park outside his house.

Another very disturbing case concerns a beheading in Lyons:

A victim atrociously mutilated on the 12th floor. A suspect who lived on the 5th floor. The entire affair is concentrated on #5 of a large complex of residences, 65, rue de Saint-Cyr in Lyons. On Saturday afternoon (April 25), Raymond Arveuf, 62, was found decapitated (note: the head was missing) in his apartment on the top floor of the building by his brother who was concerned that he had not been present at the usual family dinner on Saturday. The night before he had been watching a soccer match with friends in a bar in Valse.

The police inquiry was quickly oriented to a lower floor. Traces of blood were followed, leading police to feel that the victim's head had been thrown into the trash and carried off the next day by waste removal services. Moreover, the inter-regional judicial police ran into Youcef Djellouli, 29, a neighbor on the 5th floor, whose speech was confused. Taken into custody, this oldest member of a family of four children did not delay in admitting to the murder. The young man spoke, in substance, of a sudden desire to kill. According to his initial statements, it was indeed he who had been heard at 2:30 a.m., he who struck, slit the throat of and decapitated the bachelor who apparently had lived a quiet life. The presumed weapon, a kitchen knife, was found in his home. The reason for his actions were still not understood.

Apparently, such cases are the tip of an iceberg. These are the acts of violent individuals - but the pattern of immigrant-on-French violence cannot be overlooked in them.

Increasingly, not even the police are safe from violent immigrant youths. Theodore Dalrymple recounts a recent article in Le Figaro:

THE POLICE ARE MORE AND MORE THE TARGET OF AMBUSHES AND GUNSHOTS recounted how the police and other emergency services had been ambushed in the banlieues of Paris the night before, and ten policemen were injured by shots from hunting weapons.

A pattern seems to be emerging. The services get called out to a banlieue—in the latest case, to attend to a power outage, deliberately caused by youthful residents—and then groups of these youths, often no older than 15, confident that they remain virtually untouchable by the law, confront them with a hail of stones. A gun is then discharged on the police from somewhere or other. In the latest incident, 24 policemen were fired at, though “only” ten were injured.

Incidents like this are now so common that they hardly make the headlines. They are more like confrontations in a grumbling, low-intensity civil war than “normal” criminal activity with an acquisitive aim. The secretary-general of the police union said that the police were “very worried by the rise of organized and armed violence.”

As he says, this is now so frequent in many places it is not news-worthy. Many will complain that these youths are not well treated, they are marginalised, discriminated against underprivileged, etc.

Well, here is an account of what happened when a group of these youths from the banlieues were given a paid holiday in Zandvoort, the Netherlands:

The Paris youth came to Zandvoort with one guide, where they had reservations at Sunparks houses. The group caused problems immediately after arrival, including maladjusted behavior in the swimming pool.

After an inspector noted that the youth were causing destruction, the park alerted the police and lodged a complaint on destruction. The group got wind of that and fled, apparently in an effort to prevent an insurance claim. But during their flight out of the village the police pulled the bus over and arrested the passengers.

According to the official account, the vandals destroyed a children's bed, made holes in the ceiling, pulled clothing hangers from the wall, destroyed a few lamps and broke a glass sliding door.

The French youth were in the Netherlands on a sponsored trip by a social organization which helps underprivileged youth from the Paris suburbs, according to the Kennemerland police department.

The 19 youth of presumably Algerian origin have been in jail since their arrest. The police aren't letting the arrested go, because eleven of them are refusing to give their details, according to police spokesperson Jeroen Groot. "It's not an easy group, that also in Paris already has a bad record."

All of this is part of a change which has swept French society, mirroring what has happened throughout Europe and the West but in many ways worse because of the sheer numbers involved.

In an attempt to be tolerant and inclusive, the French have allowed many new prejudices to spring up, but also resurrected the old ones.

The most disturbing thing of all is that the leaders of France don't see it as their duty to help the people they govern or restore order to their nation - but to help the forces which are suffocating their country in any way they can, whilst dismissing any concerns outside their interest as completely trivial.

Hat tip: The Frozen North & GalliaWatch.