|
|
 |
The French Disease
// Are the Events in France the Result of a Creeping Intifada or an Ossifying European Bureaucracy?
They're torching cars again in France, throwing stones at policemen and getting tear-gassed in return. It all already sounds as pedestrian and harmless as "it's raining in Paris." In a repeat of the situation a year ago, we are about to be overtaken by a new wave of bombastic arguments about the conflict of civilizations that has rolled right up to the banks of the Seine, about the Islamic threat, and about the crisis of the liberal democratic model, which, as they say, preordained all of these outrages.
It's true that it is highly tempting to ascribe all of this to a Muslim fundamentalism that is challenging European values and declaring a creeping intifada in the heart of the democratic Old World. The events of last year that took place in Europe after the outbreak of violence in France just seemed to confirm the theory. Look at the scandal provoked by nothing more than a few cartoons! Who after that wouldn't agree that the spectre of Islamism is roaming at large in Europe?
It is indisputable that there are forces at work in the world that would like to present these and similar conflicts as the results of a clash of the Christian and Muslim worlds or as the consequences of Muslims' wounded pride. These forces seek to use the protest energy of hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied, resentful, marginalized people to their own ends. That is exactly how al-Qaeda and other "martyr's brigades" gather recruits for their ranks and keep ambulance crews and firefighters in business. However, it doesn't pay to come to hasty conclusions. The events in France are not a clash of civilizations. They have no religious undertones. They are also not a repeat of the student uprisings of the 1960s. But so then what are they?
In its origins, ideology, and methods, the French unrest is much closer to the antiglobalization movement, which has numerous supporters in Europe. One of the most prominent advocates for antiglobalization is a Frenchman by the name of Jose Bove. Despite all of the inherent differences between farmers bulldozing McDonald's, "Greens" lying on tracks used by trains carrying atomic waste, and teenagers from the poor Parisian suburbs attacking police cars, the walls between them are already porous. All of these are the innumerable springs and streams of the turbulent river of the worldwide antiglobalization movement. They are united first of all by their refusal to accept the deaf and callous attitude of the establishment, which they see as the root of all their troubles, and secondly by their readiness to go to the barricades, which stems from the awareness that they already have nothing to lose.
Thus the events in France are – if you will excuse the inadvertent pun – not the "French disease." They have uncovered at least one problem that cannot be reduced to a private conflict between the strongman Sarkozy and his minions and the youth who loath the "men in uniform." This problem affects all of Europe, which in its integrationist impulse has not found a way to integrate national minorities into the "wider European family" in a way that is acceptable to everyone. The European bureaucracy has become so disconnected from everyday life that it is now a force that can't be gotten through to without taking up stones, sticks, and Molotov cocktails.
Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 24, 2006
|
|
|
