Audio By Carbonatix
Late in September, Pope Leo XIV made an apostolic trip to France. Shortly thereafter, the streets and squares of Paris, and soon other cities, were consumed by demonstrations and riots.
Crowds greeted the pope on the Champs-Élysées and accompanied him to the shrine of Lourdes. They were large, enthusiastic, orderly. So many Catholic believers showing themselves in an officially laicized nation was noteworthy, even astonishing. They may not be a high proportion of the French population, but they were ardent.
Equally ardent, though often disorderly and criminal, were the mobs that are still at it. These riots are ostensibly about conditions in French schools, but also include a mix of grievances from left-wing labor unions — always prêt–à–marcher — and unmeltable ethnics from France’s third world-ized banlieues. France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, the left-wing party headed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, gave its own winking go-ahead. Palestinian flags, Hamas having replaced climate change as a universal left-wing cause, were the new tricolor. Monuments were defaced, shops were looted, apartment buildings were broken into, the town hall of Limoges was incinerated.
Popular violence is an old French republican tradition. Today’s mobs are partying like it’s 1789 — or 1792, or 1830, or 1848, or 1871, or . . .
Why the violence? Rioting is fun. Islamists hope, not entirely unrealistically, to transform France. A stagnant economy gives the young especially little to do; François Mitterrand pulled France hard into statism in 1981. If memories of today’s disorder help propel Marine Le Pen to victory in next spring’s elections, choking immigration will be a reform that the established conservative parties hitherto failed to make. But to succeed, she will have to abandon the populist nostrums beloved of the new right in Europe, and here, and undo Mitterrand’s legacy.
Why does France matter? Because France, for all its narcissism and excesses, is still an intellectual and cultural leader, a setter of fashion and of revolts against fashion.
Political France is in for rough times, no matter who sits in the Élysée Palace. May the France of saints, scholars, and the ordinary devout bolster the nation.