ANGRY YOUNG MEN: LA RACAILLE
The 2005 riots were just another dramatic show of a social ill that has been simmering for years—the problem of angry, unemployed minority youth, most of them second-generation offspring of Algerians and Moroccans who arrived in the 1960s. (See “Algerian War of Independence,” page 28.) They typically don’t speak Arabic and are not practicing Muslims, but they come from les banlieues—seedy suburbs filled with low-income housing, which were the center of most of the 2005 riots. It’s a tricky issue—one that twists together historical misdeeds, the inequality of the lauded French lifestyle, cultural clashes, violent tempers, and a fascination with fire. La Racaille (the rascals or riffraff), as they are derogatorily known, began making news about five years ago for violent rumbles in parking lots, where they torched cars for fun, and for street mugging, pickpocketing, and robbing tourists. In 2002, their violence again grabbed headlines: seventeen-year-old Sohane Benziane died when a banlieue thug made her drink lighter fluid, then doused her with it and set her on fire. Reports of violent attacks on banlieue women skyrocketed: one thirteen-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by eighty-eight boys.5 Gang rape is a rite of membership, and hard-hitting books and movies documenting the common phenomenon (reports of which are said to increase 20 percent a year6) have rattled the country. Certainly not all young men in the banlieues are of their ilk, but La Racaille pose a problem that nobody is quite sure how to solve.
Strained relations with French Africans have roots in the brutal Algerian War of Independence that ended in 1962, but recent events have escalated fear levels. In 1994, Algerian Islamists hijacked an Air France flight, intending to plow it into the Eiffel Tower; in 1995, French Algerian radicals bombed the Paris Métro, killing eight and injuring hundreds. In 2004, the French government passed a law banning obvious shows of religion in school—Muslim headscarves, skullcaps, and large crosses among them; Muslim radicals retaliated with threats of attack. The fact that Zacarias “The Twentieth Hijacker” Moussaoui is a French Moroccan national, and that failed “shoe bomber” Richard Reid boarded his flight in Paris haven’t helped matters. However, some French Arabs have soared to hero status, including French Algerian soccer star Zinedine Zidane, who scored France’s two winning goals in the 1998 World Cup Final, making him the country’s most popular man. And banlieue hip-hop music, including that of girl rapper Diam’s and MC Solaar, is making French minority youth famous worldwide. Talented filmmakers, writers, and comedians are also rising out of the banlieue, helping to link that long-obscured culture to the mainstream.
In April 2006, France was rocked again: this time a million French students flooded the streets, closing down subways, trains, and entire cities as they protested proposed changes in labor laws. La Racaille showed up for that event too, turning what were largely peaceful demonstrations turbulent by attacking protesters and police.
TAKING IT TO THE STREETS
Here in the republic born of mass rebellion, protests are an often-exercised national right. Rising fuel prices, pension cuts, and duties on cheese are a few issues that prompt fishermen to block ports, truck drivers to jam highways, and farmers to let bulls charge through government buildings, leaving steaming “calling cards” in front of photocopy machines. In June 2004, protests amped up: when the government announced plans to partially privatize state-owned electricity utilities, factory workers—worried about job loss—cut off power to the Eiffel Tower, government buildings, train lines, and the homes of the president and prime minister to show how bright an idea they thought any utility sell-off was. Almost every time the government attempts to tweak the system, the French head to the streets as though ready to storm the Bastille. The French may “over-protest,” but they make their points—few contested changes in France actually get through.
The recent fireworks are taking their toll: France is gripped by uneasiness that the media calls l’insécurité. The pervasive feeling that French society is curdling catapulted two dissimilar characters to the forefront. Popular interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a second-generation immigrant himself, was shoved in front of the cameras as the Chirac administration’s tough guy. Sarkozy unveiled a crime bill that increased police forces, broadened search rights, banned youth loitering, and cracked down on prostitution—and he formed an official government board to discuss issues with Muslims. To appeal to the right, he’s also pushing “selective immigration,” which would make it easier for skilled foreign workers to move to France, and more difficult for the poor to gain citizenship. He was also blamed by some for triggering the 2005 riot by promising to clean up the banlieue even if it took a sandblaster to do it.
The turbulent times also brought radical right-winger Jean-Marie Le Pen (of the National Front Party) into the action. In the first round of voting in the 2002 parliamentary elections, Le Pen grabbed 17 percent of the vote, pitting him against Chirac in the final runoff—the first time since World War II that a hardcore nationalist made it so close to the Élysée Palace. France’s problem, said Le Pen (as he has said for three decades), was simple: Africans and other immigrants had overrun the place. He pledged “an immediate end to all immigration and to send three million immigrants home!”7 (See “Hotshots,” page 35.)
But if France is faltering on the home front, on the global stage she’s flexing muscle not seen from Europe in decades. First she pushed (with Germany) to enlarge the EU to make it a major economic force and rising superpower. Along with Germany, Britain, and Spain, she launched Airbus, whose commercial planes are so cutting into Boeing’s biz that the U.S. filed a WTO complaint. And France squarely stood up to the U.S., which nobody’s had the nerve to so loudly defy since the Vietnam War.
Slick Sarko: Eye on the presidency
* * *
The Bush government was stunned in 2003 when Chirac (and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder) questioned the need for stomping into Iraq, clearly annoyed that the European duo challenged the pyramidal power structure that casts the United States as world dominator. The Bush administration was also unhappy when the pair linked arms with Belgium and Luxembourg to form an independent military alliance that the U.S. fears might challenge NATO. It would be nothing but an army of “chocolate makers,” the U.S. State Department snorted in response.8
TRANSATLANTIC HOSTILITIES
Never mind that President Chirac was entirely justified in not backing President Bush’s attack on Iraq, or that his actions may have been motivated as much by France’s oil investments as by his prescient knowledge of the political instability and violence that the invasion would unleash. When he condemned the U.S.-led Iraq war in 2003, Chirac’s disapproval let loose a fierce anti-France movement in the United States that still reverberates on both sides. Retirees felt particularly betrayed by Chirac’s chastisement: half a million American troops had died when the U.S. fought for France in the world’s two biggest wars—how dare France not help take down the twenty-first-century face of evil who (President Bush falsely warned) was probably about to attack them with biological and nuclear weapons? Millions of bottles of champagne and French wine were poured out; Americans boycotted French restaurants, French water, French cheese; one senator even proposed that U.S. troops who had died during the world wars be freed from French cemeteries and sent home. The furious Americans renamed French fries and French toast—calling them “freedom fries” and “freedom toast”—while the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page hurled insults, calling Chirac “a rat”9, and pundits chastised the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” an epithet tellingly taken from The Simpsons. In the following year, U.S. imports of French wines dropped 20 percent, American tourists to France declined by nearly 2 million, and Americans continually growled about crippling the French economy. Meanwhile, anti-American sentiment swelled up again in France (and across Europe), where boycotts of American products were launched and conspiracy theories flourished, helped along by a bestselling French book that stated the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon was a ho
ax.
Despite moves toward rapprochement—the frosty smile for the camera and the lukewarm words about the long Franco-American mutual friendship—the Bush administration is still ticked off at France. The bigger issue, however, is that France is leading Europe in restructuring the global power dynamic. The world’s only superpower doesn’t like it a bit.
Warming up: French nuclear group Areva is moving into the U.S. big-time, snagging billions’ worth of nuclear projects.
History Review
In the beginning was France. No country shaped the current state of modern Europe more than France, where prevailing thoughts sweep through as forcefully as the remorseless mistral wind. Clovis, king of the Franks, first lassoed the northwestern land together as a kingdom in AD 486, but another Frankish king, Charlemagne, took it much further. In the year 800, with the pope’s blessing, he roped together most of western Europe, forcibly creating the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted in one form or another for the next thousand years.
HISTORICAL HOTSHOTS: THE CATHARS
The French aren’t the fervent Catholics they once were. Historically, their beliefs fueled battles and massacres, among them the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion that drove Protestant Huguenots out of France. Catholicism also spelled doomsday to Cathars, a liberal Christian sect that lived in southwest France (Languedoc), where chestnut forests, limestone caves, and cliff-top castles hold clues to their past. Arriving in seventh-century France from eastern Europe, the vegetarian Cathars worshipped outdoors, and believed in reincarnation, equality between the sexes, and vegetarianism, while shunning serfdom and taxes. Sex was a devilish temptation, but marriage was worse, giving the illusion of God-approved copulation; thus Cathars had liberal attitudes about the romping of singles, and some say the concept of romantic love grew out of here. Regarding the church’s riches as evil and the pope as corrupt, they refused to tithe to the Catholic Church; they also preached that Jesus didn’t die on the cross, but had been hanging out with their ancestors, to whom he passed such mementos as the holy grail—notions that didn’t play well in Rome. In 1209, Pope Innocent III sent out armed mercenaries to permanently silence the heretical sect. Nobles in Languedoc honored Cathars, opening castles to them, and knights battled in their name. Most of the area’s castles were destroyed in the anti-Cathar crusade and nearly all 20,000 Cathars were burned at the stake or driven off cliffs within the first year. Cathar relics—coins, pliers, and jewelry—are still found today, and pilgrims now travel to Albi and Carcassonne to search out treasures that some say still lie hidden there.
Since then there’s rarely been a dull moment, although plenty have been violent. From the earliest years, the French and English didn’t hit it off, and their mutual dislike heated up in 1066 after French William the Conqueror sailed over and lived up to his moniker on English soil. French-Anglo battling and sniping continued for eight centuries, including during the Hundred Years War, which, stretching from 1337 to 1453, actually lasted 116.
The defining moments of the French monarchy took place during the era of the three Louis. Simply put, Louis “I am the State” XIV (1638–1715), aka the “Sun King,” built up France as Europe’s most powerful and most cultured country, expanded the French Empire, built glittering Versailles, and made French the Western world’s most important language. His grandson, flirtatious philanderer Louis XV (b. 1710, ruled 1715–1774) lost the French Empire to Brits, and his grandson Louis XVI (lived 1754–1793, ruled 1774–1791), aka “Louis the Last,” lost the rest of the country’s riches and ultimately his head.
Arriving in Paris in 1776 as ambassador from the colonies, Benjamin Franklin lobbied Louis XVI, who ultimately heavily contributed to the American Revolutionary War effort, donating arms, fighters, and millions of dollars—and loaning millions more—without which the rebels would probably have lost the War of Independence. Crucial to the victory: Marquis de Lafayette and Count Rochambeau, who led decisive battles. Also helpful to the American Revolution: powerful Parisian aristocrat Jacques-Donatien Le Ray, who befriended Franklin, pressured the king to help out, and gave vast amounts of money to the cause. The American, who had explained the nature of electricity and invented the lightning rod, library, and Franklin stove, was so popular in Parisian society that paintings and sculptures of Franklin often adorned aristocratic homes.10
While the Renaissance was Italy’s apex and Brits dominated the Scientific Revolution, the French were stars (along with British) of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, when such concepts as original sin were questioned, the pursuit of the rational was idealized, and corrupt clergy were loudly condemned. As critical encyclopedias rumbled off the printing presses, along with essays calling for liberty for one and all, they fell into the hands of the growing middle class, and these ideas charged the air. Inspired by the idea that all humans are created equal, and quoting Jean-Jacques Rousseau—“Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains”—commoners rose up and demanded change.
A FEW INFLUENTIAL FRENCH IDEA PEDDLERS
René Descartes (1596–1650): The mathematician launched modern philosophy with three words: Cogito, ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784): His twenty-eight-volume encyclopedia raised blood pressures of the church (which condemned it) and the state (which burned it). The critical encyclopedia hinted at the ascent of man from ape and questioned slavery, church corruption, and absolute monarchies.
Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755): Abolitionist and advocate of prying church from state, Montesquieu wrote The Persian Letters mocking France’s religious obsession; his 1748 Spirit of Laws drew the blueprint for separation of government’s powers.
Voltaire (1694–1778): Adored for satirical novel Candide about the hazards of naive optimism, playwright, essayist, and political activist Voltaire decried corrupt clerics and championed human rights, outrageously asserting that Protestants had some.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778): Believing that mankind was inherently good, the Swiss-born dreamer presented a radical idea in his “social contract”: government should serve the people, and not vice versa.
Poverty, hunger, unfair taxes, lack of representation, and the novel idea that every human had rights all led to Europe’s most memorable, far-reaching, and monumental revolution. King Louis XVI, strapped for cash and losing power in 1789, opened the door by calling for a revival of the Estates General, a pseudo-parliament that hadn’t met since 1614, because he needed help raising taxes. Representing three classes—the clergy (First Estate), who were tax exempt; nobility (Second Estate), who were also tax exempt; and the bourgeoisie, peasants, and all the rest (Third Estate), most of whom weren’t tax exempt—the meeting was hijacked by the Third Estate, representing 98 percent of the population (about 25 million people). The bourgeoisie-led Third Estate wanted more voting clout and formed the Assemblée Nationale, inviting the other two estates to join; Louis tried to block their meeting. Instead they gathered in an indoor tennis court and issued the Tennis Court Oath, vowing to write a constitution that would address such issues as liberty, equality, and freedom for all. Louis was livid, and rumors swirled that his army would steamroll the Assemblée Nationale. Angry mobs stormed the Bastille, the prison that stood as a symbol of monarchical oppression. From there, chaos broke loose as “the people” battled over who should rule. The Assemblée Nationale passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man—guaranteeing liberty, freedom of expression, and equality—on August 17, 1789, but it apparently didn’t apply to royals or the rich, who were soon marched to the guillotine. Finally penned in 1791, the constitution initially allowed a limited monarchy, but a later version declared France a republic. Louis XVI, caught trying to sneak out, was ultimately shoved under the National Razor too. In 1792, France formed her first republic; instead of a king, chaos reigned for the next decade.
A republic is the opposite of a monarchy—it’s a government that is headed by an elected ruler, not a royal. Like Fran
ce, the United States is a republic.
Political clubs and zealous leaders, including the Jacobins headed by maniacal Robespierre, wrestled over power, and the newly liberated streets were thick with blood. France declared war on much of Europe (and vice versa) in the continuing power struggle, during which 450,000 died in uprisings, counterrevolutions, massacres, and meetings with the executioner. Anarchy continued until 1799, when General Napoleon Bonaparte galloped back into Paris to seize the reins and clean up the revolutionary mess. Appointing himself leader to slap the country back into shape, the former commander in chief took the title First Consul, and in 1804 declared himself emperor.
NAPOLEON (1769–1821)
Short, balding, and suffering from hemorrhoids—a factor, some say, in his final battlefield performance—Napoleon Bonaparte, a young general from Corsica who’d skillfully maneuvered battles in Italy and Egypt, ravaged Europe. Nearly 6 million died during his military campaigns, and most who dared oppose him were imprisoned or snuffed out by secret police.11 However, he exerted a benevolent touch in many areas. Extending the French Empire across almost all of Europe save the British Isles, he established governments (usually led by his kin) that showed his more humane side: he abolished serfdom, cleaved church from state, and guaranteed freedom of religion and equality for all—offering Jews, among others, rights never before known in Europe. Just as important: his policy of universal education that extended to women and the poor. His legacies are varied: He made it legally possible for commoners to own land, he popularized central banking, formalized the draft, and widely introduced city sewer systems. He provided the key to decipher hieroglyphics in 1799, when his troops in Egypt uncovered the Rosetta Stone, and he inadvertently triggered independence in Latin America by invading Spain (which called her military home). (See “Spain,” page 132.) He physically shaped the United States when, in 1803, he sold a vast territory of North America stretching from Louisiana to Wyoming (nearly one-quarter of the United States) to President Thomas Jefferson for $15 million. And he made male birth control difficult even into the twenty-first century; his legal code is still used in France, where his law on mutilation is read as a ban on vasectomies. Thanks to Napoleon, French men wanting “Le Snip” have to head out of the country.
What Every American Should Know About Europe Page 3