Comuna din Paris 2005
France, they say, only reforms under the cover of revolution. Here, rebellion precedes dialogue, strikes precede negotiations, and recourse to violence is systematic. This is a country where authority has always assumed the face of the Jacobin state–of a paternal figure who reacts only to threat or attack. In this way, the young rioters in the French suburbs are far more French than many commentators presume. The troubled suburbs are not foreign lands within the Republic, but rather are increasingly a mirror of all French passions, the best as well as the worst–a reserve of talent and energy, but also a melting pot of racism, homophobia, machismo, and anti-Semitism. That is the enigma: These towns behave as if they are under siege by France, which herself behaves like she is under siege by the world.
Peter Beinart, mai 2002 (link funcţional):
Last month in France, a dog barked at the top of its lungs: Jean-Marie Le Pen placed second in the first round of voting for the French presidency. But while Le Pen’s second-place showing was a surprise, his growing popularity wasn’t. After all, far-right parties have been gaining steam in Europe for several years now.[...]
In the European Union, excessive regulation and high taxation have contributed to an unemployment rate that today exceeds 8 percent. Such widespread joblessness has not only made native-born Europeans fearful that immigrants will take their jobs; it has also contributed to epidemic levels of unemployment among immigrants themselves (unemployment estimates reach as high as 20 percent among Turkish immigrants in Germany and 35 percent to 40 percent among Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands). And that has fueled racist stereotypes of newcomers as lazy and parasitic.
The same dynamic was starting to play out in the United States. In the four years preceding Proposition 187, California lost 600,000 jobs–many in industries devastated by the cold war’s end. California’s unemployment
rate topped 8 percent, and among Hispanics it topped 11 percent. Had Clinton not broken with left-liberal orthodoxy and cut government spending to reduce the deficit, the United States might never have experienced the ’90s boom that banished those economic anxieties–and the resulting racial resentments–in California and across the country.
But Clinton didn’t only undermine xenophobia by ensuring that would-be nativists had secure jobs; he undermined it by signing welfare reform, which destroyed the racist belief that immigrants were receiving handouts for doing nothing. Europe’s growing anti-immigrant backlash is stoked by the perception that left-liberal political elites are allowing immigrants to play hard-working native Europeans for suckers. But the welfare bill–whatever its moral flaws– demolished that perception in the United States.