French Police vs. Yellow Vests

This is interesting.

The Yellow Vests are, ostensibly, protesting Macron’s imposition of higher fuel taxes in the name of CO2 reductions and the Paris Accord. However, while there is a strand of the protest which is really just people who like throwing rocks and lighting fires – apparently from both sides of the political aisle with more than a few of France’s increasing immigrant population taking advantage of the chaos – the bulk of the protestors seem to be the French version of deplorables. Working and lower middle class people from the provinces and the outer suburbs who have been steadily falling behind economically.

Historically, the French have been very good at organizing strikes and protests and the French police have become very good at breaking up such demonstrations.

But what this video shows is the French police “standing down”. Taking off their helmets. The crowd applauds and breaks into La Marseillaise.

Will the Yellow Vests bring down Macron? While I devoutly hope they do they will not do it on their own. However, if the police down tools that would be a different situation altogether. Of course, there would still be the Army; but how reliable the Army would be is an open question.

The one thing which the Yellow Vests need to keep their effort going is continued large numbers of non-violent protestors. This weekend there were fewer than last weekend. Christmas is coming. The point about street protests is they succeed when they are massive, they fail when people stay at home.

Not the Right

It appears that political cipher Emmanuel Macron is on his way to beating Marine Le Pen. While a Le Pen victory would have been a useful poke in the eye to assorted French and Euro elites, that poke would have come at a price. Namely Le Pen’s 50’s style dirigiste economic policies and, frankly, the wrong sort of nationalism.

France faces the necessity of untangling fifty years of statist economics. It also faces having to deal with 5 to 10 million unassimilated Muslims who are largely outside French society. And it faces waves of “refugees” pushing in from the Middle East and Africa. M. Le Pen’s economic positions would have simply re-enforced the anti-competitive labour, tax and pension laws which have hollowed out the French economy. And, while she was willing to talk a tough game on terrorism, her brand was so toxic that actually dealing with the combined Muslim and refugee crisis would likely be stillborn in a bureaucracy terrified of being associated with that brand.

I don’t hold out much hope for Macron. He seems stuck in the rut of claiming that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam and the happy fantasy that people who have little to do with French society will, somehow, soak up enough terrior to leave North Africa behind and become “French”. While, at the same time, saying “French culture doesn’t exist in and of itself; there is no such thing as a single French culture. There is culture in France and it is diverse.” (link) (I use the full quote lest I be accused of taking Macron out of context.) This is multi-kulti at its best and is essentially meaningless as a defence of France as a European nation.

Unfortunately, that is about the best that can be expected at this stage of re-alignment in French politics. Macron, without a political party behind him, is likely to preside over a do nothing, status quo ante government. The French economy, France’s role in Europe, its position in the Euro, its “community” relations and its refugee problem are all likely to get worse. Systematic corruption, the extension of the “no-go zones” and “youth” riots will likely increase. Which, realistically, is pretty much the outcome I would have predicted if Le Pen had won.

People have a natural inclination towards the status quo until, somehow, that inclination collapses. That collapse can be triggered by a crisis or by the promise of something better. This French election occurred in the midst of a slow moving economic and social disaster but, realistically, there was no sharp “crisis”. And M. Le Pen offered nothing “better”; just something different. That was not enough.

France’s mainline parties were knocked out of the race as was the hard left: in a battle between the status quo and a ideologically incoherent, semi-charismatic, leader with the press and the elites strongly on the side of the status quo, it is not surprising that the French chose a President with very little ideological baggage.

Macron might surprise and turn out to be the right combination of flexible and tough. He might create a government of all talents and begin the task of rebuilding France. I certainly hope he turns out to be a good choice for France. But I am not optimistic.

For a nation to abruptly change course things sometimes have to get worse, much worse, before they get better. The status quo, (as Trump is finding out), is deeply resilient. Real change, change which actually looks to solve problems rather than manage them, comes when the status quo actually begins to collapse and real change is the only alternative. However, as Adam Smith observed, “Be assured young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”

Marine Le Pen wrapped herself in a populist mantle and suggested a return to pre-1968 France; that was not change, that was nostalgia. Le Pen was not of the Right, rather she seemed to want to substitute one status quo for another.

When and if France’s crisis comes nostalgia will not be a winning idea. Facing the future and deciding what that future means to France will require a radical, likely libertarian, re-allignment of French politics. Something which cannot be forced but will rather rise in answer to the challenge faced.

Do We Get Serious?

To repeat what I said a few days ago, I’m Islamed out. I’m tired of Islam 24/7, at Colorado colleges, Marseilles synagogues, Sydney coffee shops, day after day after day. The west cannot win this thing with a schizophrenic strategy of targeting things and people but not targeting the ideology, of intervening ineffectually overseas and not intervening at all when it comes to the remorseless Islamization and self-segregation of large segments of their own countries.

So I say again: What’s the happy ending here? Because if M Hollande isn’t prepared to end mass Muslim immigration to France and Europe, then his “pitiless war” isn’t serious. And, if they’re still willing to tolerate Mutti Merkel’s mad plan to reverse Germany’s demographic death spiral through fast-track Islamization, then Europeans aren’t serious. In the end, the decadence of Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the rest of the fin de civilisation western leadership will cost you your world and everything you love.

So screw the candlelight vigil. mark steyn

I think the events in Paris bring us a bit closer to being serious. A bit closer to the recognition of the fundamental incompatibility of Islam with Western liberal democracy. We’ll see in the morning.

The way we will see is by paying close attention to our leader’s words and their actions. To allow a million Muslims to arrive in Europe in the guise of refugees is an obvious mistake and one which, with political will, can be corrected. (And, in the Canadian case, to invite 25,000 so called refugees in on a timetable which precludes serious vetting is an excellent test of Trudeau’s seriousness as a leader.) But will it be?

Will Hollande’s “pitiless” crusade against terror actually deploy troops to the “no-go zomes” of Paris for the house to house searches to find the weapons, the illegals and the intelligence? Will the rest of Europe cheer the French on or retreat behind the tut, tuts of multikulti delusion?

We are about to find out if this night in Paris has been enough. I would have thought Charlie Hebdo would have been enough. But I was wrong then. Everybody had a nice march and went home.

Will this be enough? I am afraid I doubt it. Mark is right in that the West simply will not confront the reality of political, imperial, Islam. We’re lazy and we’re nice and we simply can’t imagine the sorts of action which might stop the flow of illegal migrants or the terror in the streets of Paris. Because to imagine that is to treat people who are deeply different from us as alien, as “other”. We are too polite to recognize and treat the cancer which is Islam.

This is a war. It is a war which has been going on since the 7th Century. The other side has always, right from the time of the prophet, understood that this is a war. The West, most of the time, pretends it isn’t. Will Paris convince us to take the war seriously? I hope so but I doubt it.

I really think it will take a mass atrocity: biological, chemical or nuclear with 100,000 or a million deaths, to put a bit of fight in us. And, sad to say, when that happens the terrified left and muddled center will probably try to figure out how to negotiate.

No, really.

When asked Thursday by CBC about confronting ISIS, Sajjan said:

“We need to get better as an international coalition … better at looking at the threats early on, to making sure that we identify them early so they don’t balloon into these big threats,”

“They were smaller at one time, we need to get better at identifying the subtle indicators so we might be able to have dealt with it diplomatically.” the rebel

(Sad to see a Sikh warrior say something so craven about the traditional enemy of the Sikhs.)

Paris Attack

Possible suicide bombs. Gunfire. Hostages.

Networks are cautioning against concluding that this has anything to do with Islam.

35 dead, 100 hostages…

Update: It looks like 3 attacks. And it looks like they were co-ordinated.

Update #2: Daily Mail has it at 60 dead, potentially a 4th attack and, shockingly, cries of “‘Allah Akbar’ and ‘this is for Syria'” DM

Update #3: Twenty years too late, Hollande is closing the French borders. I expect there will be a lot of that.

Update #4: Now France 24 is saying attacks at 7 sites.

Update #5: There is some question as to whether France is actually capable of closing its borders. Over at Breitbart London the suggestion is that it can’t close it’s green borders and that a full modilization would be required to “secure” Paris.

Update #6: “I am shocked and saddened that so many people have been killed and injured today in a number of terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and that many others are being held hostage.” Justin Trudeau

A good start using the word terrorist to describe terrorists.

Update #7: Looks like massive casualties amongst the hostages. 100+

Update #8: Justin Trudeau is going to address the Paris atrocity shortly. It is a statement which could make or break his Prime Ministership. One word of “excuse” or “root cause” and we’ll know he is not fit for the job. However, before he speaks the Tory partisans should dial back the commentary. Trudeau is not the enemy. ISIS and political Islam is the enemy. If Trudeau can make that clear as well as extending Canadians’ deepest sympathies to France he will grow in the office. Here’s hoping.

Update #9: JT gets it “terrorist attacks” in both languages. And taking questions…good. Of course there is not much he can say at this point. Ok…one question.

Sort of like his victory speech. It was adequate. On Twitter Chris Selley said JT “was almost alarmingly subdued there”. I think it has occurred to Trudeau that he is actually the Prime Minister and, if he blows it, he could be in the position M. Hollande was in tonight having to order the storming of a hostage situation. A thought which would tend to sober anyone up. I suspect we’ll hear less about “Happy Ways” for a while.

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On Twitter John Ibbitson opines <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>These attacks will have ugly consequences everywhere incl here. They must not change our refugee policy.</p>&mdash; John Ibbitson (@JohnIbbitson) <a href=”https://twitter.com/JohnIbbitson/status/665310036525121536″>November 13, 2015</a></blockquote>
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I suspect we are going to hear a lot of this sort of nonsense in the next few days. Of course it must change our refugee policy; we have to screen very hard indeed and if that takes until spring, so be it. We also have to think very clearly about whether we want to allow more Muslim immigrants into Canada. The situation in France – with a vast, unassimilated, Muslim community – is profoundly unhealthy. Today’s terror may or may not have its roots in that unhealthiness; but the French trouble with unassimilated Muslims is a warning.

So, yes, we do have to rethink our refugee policy. And we need to rethink our immigration policy as well.