This article appears in the July 14, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this article]
France
Jacques Cheminade Calls for a State of Social Emergency
This report is translated and republished with permission from the European E.I.R. Strategic Alert of July 4, 2023.
On June 27, in Nanterre, a working-class suburb of Paris, a 17-year-old youth, Nahel, was shot and killed in his vehicle by a policeman during a traffic stop. This incident set off an explosion of violence in the poorer districts of France, with rioting five nights in a row causing 5,000 cars to be burned, 1,000 buildings damaged, 250 police stations attacked, and massive looting of stores and supermarkets.
The shooting occurred after the young Franco-Algerian, according to the police version, threatened to drive away. Yet a video of the encounter filmed by a passerby and confirmed by the other two passengers in the car, shows that the car had stopped, the two policemen were standing next to the driver’s window, and the one who shot clearly said, “I’m going to put a bullet into your head,” just before the car began to move again. An investigation will now have to determine the facts. The policeman was jailed and is under investigation.
The problem, however, goes much deeper. The explosion of violence follows the French Republic’s failure to address the social unrest that has been brewing for years, as evidenced in the Yellow Vest movement that swept across France, starting in 2018, or the more recent protests on an unprecedented scale against the pension reform, increasing the retirement age from 62 to 64. In the specific case of the lower-class suburbs, where many young people of African and Mahgreb immigrant parents live, they have not been given the means to develop and gain access to a better life. Mass delinquency is rampant in those areas, in particular drug trafficking.
Jacques Cheminade, President of Solidarité & Progrès, addressed this broader issue in a statement released July 1:
The outbreak of violence in our country comes as no surprise. The scandal is that, for so many years, nothing has been done to deal with the smoldering fire. The rioters not only looted stores, but also burned pharmacies and public buildings—town halls, courts, cultural centers, libraries, police stations and schools. The foundations of our society were targeted. In these circumstances, the challenge is not only to re-establish the right to public safety, but to rebuild a society that offers hope to all, without hypocrisy or naivety.
For if we continue to appear preoccupied with immediate violence and to communicate about it, but do not root it out, the institutions of the Republic will collapse.
The republican order, Cheminade wrote, must respond to the citizens’ just demands and be applied equally to all, whether rich or poor, with no social or geographical segregation.
To achieve this, we need to declare a state of social emergency, clearly identifying the target: a financial mafia on the top, which makes the law against the law and is increasingly linked—not only through drug use—to the mafia operating below. In the absence of political will, this mafia gangrene of a new criminal capitalism will destroy everything and lead to a war of all against all.
Cheminade then proposes concrete measures to be taken.
Republican order: Listen to the mayors first and organize around them institutions for dialogue and consultation with mediators, associations, judges and police officers. We urgently need to set up a real local police force that listens to citizens, and gives it the training and human and financial resources it needs to do its job properly….
Republican order: at the very least, the Preamble to our Constitution, with its social rights, should be known and applied. I have proposed that it be read out every July 14th by the mayors of France. The current situation offers us an opportunity to make a start.
Republican order: the social dimension of our domestic policy must be matched by an international policy based on a new architecture of peace through mutual development, and not on the senseless financial speculation that brings with it war, through riots at home and geopolitical warfare between blocs around the world. In concrete terms, we need to wage a real war against drug trafficking, which has so far never been waged against its financial and social roots. Instead of smashing up bank premises, public law must take control….
Faced with the riots that have spread like rumors on social networks, the only solution is to organize a policy of the common good and the public good. The police and army must serve this purpose. This includes investigating the nature and means of the provocateurs who revived the smoldering fire. It is by eliminating the causes of the flame that we will succeed in extinguishing it.
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