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“All my life,” Charles de Gaulle famously said, “I have had a certain idea of France.”
This, though, was presumably not what he had in mind.
France has been wracked by riots targeting public buildings and symbols of the nation, as well as ordinary commercial concerns.
Of course, France has a long tradition of unrest on the streets. If someone isn’t setting a car alight somewhere in the country in protest, you almost wonder what’s gone wrong.
In 1968, President de Gaulle himself briefly fled Paris for fear that student protesters were going to topple the government, before finding his nerve.
So, it’s not unusual that things are getting wrecked and burned, but the disorder is portentous all the same.
It started as demonstrations against underfunded schools and have morphed into a red-green campaign of mayhem ranging much more widely.
Palestinian flags and the slogan “Free Palestine” are ubiquitous.
It’s not clear what either of these things should have to do with burning down the elegant, 19th century town hall building in Limoges or looting a Louis Vuitton store.
But the Palestinian banner has become the equivalent of the North Vietnamese flag in the 1970s — a symbol of resistance to the West, and in this case, fierce opposition to Zionism and so-called settler-colonialism.
The flag also speaks to the immigrant component of the riots.
France has done a poor job of assimilating immigrants and their children, a large portion of whom are Muslims from North Africa, thanks to France’s colonial history and, in particular, its incorporation of Algeria into France for a period of time (an insanely unrealistic project).
The problems that France has been creating for itself were foreseeable, and indeed, foreseen.
As long ago as March 1959, de Gaulle is reported to have warned, “The Arabs are Arabs, the French are French. Do you think that the French can absorb 10 million Muslims who will tomorrow be 20 million and after tomorrow 40?”
One way to look at these riots is as Frantz Fanon’s revenge.
What the great mid-20th century theorist of anti-colonial resistance called “the wretched of the earth” are living in the downtrodden suburbs of Paris and, in effect, seeking to colonize the colonizers.
Make no mistake, though — white radicals, too, have taken a large hand in the disorder.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of an ascendant left-wing party, has participated in the protests and condemned police for their supposedly brutish tactics.
He celebrates the “creolization” of France and views immigrants and their children as part of a potential “bloc de rupture” that can revolutionize French politics and shift it radically to the left.
What’s ultimately in play is French identity. The country has traditionally had a universalizing mission (whether advancing Christianity, or evangelizing for enlightenment values, depending on the regime) joined to an abiding love for the French nation.
The rioters, who are illiberal and unpatriotic, aren’t much interested in either.
The unrest also serves as a warning that should the French public reject this vision and turn to the outré right winger, Marine le Pen, in next year’s national election, the country will be made ungovernable.
An element of de Gaulle’s “certain idea of France” was its inherent greatness.
His France, though, is already a second-rank power.
Its debt is 120% of GDP, while much of the public apparently believes it is living under intolerable austerity, and there is no political will to pull back on spending.
An overmatched President Emmanuel Macron, presiding over a restive and violent country, represents an exhausted center that has done much to bring the nation to this point.
Whatever the future of France, greatness is not likely to be part of it.
@RichLowry