Could there be some truth in "Theodore Dalrymple's" suggestion that the striking students motives were not as selfless as they may at first have appeared?
It is often pointed out that French unemployment under the age of 26 is the highest in Europe, running at about 25 per cent. Moreover, in the banlieues it is 50 per cent. These banlieues are homes to millions of people, disproportionately young. It follows - does it not? - that there must be a considerable section of the young population in which unemployment is less than a quarter, actually much less. One would hardly have to be de Tocqueville to guess in which section of the young population the unemployment was less: the section from which the demonstrators, or at least their leaders and agents provocateurs, are drawn. In an increasingly desperate situation, the demonstrators are so afraid of the future that they want to hang on to their privileges and job security by hook or by crook, even if it means that the youth of the banlieues will eventually have to be kept in order by the Compagnies Republicaines de Securite, the much-feared riot police, the CRS. There is nothing idealistic or generous about the demonstrators, just as there wasn't in 1968.
Could wily old Chirac and co simply be remembering their natural constituency?
...plus c'est la meme chose.
1 comment:
Yes of course they are in one sense (the sense that this constituency is one they at least recognise and hear) BUT Mr Dalrymple's typically ultra-free market and disengenuous pseudo-analysis that a more flexible labour market would offer jobs to the dispossessed of the banlieu is frankly cloud cuckoo land.
Of course when this doesn't happen and the same jobs are shared in smaller segments between the same people Mr Dalrymple will revert to his usual tune and blame the poor for not having the correct social skills and moral values to allow them to take up the jobs so generously offered by France' poor benighted capitalists; bowed down as they are under the weight of their responsibilities to the benighted underclass he would secretly - as he has often implied if not ststed - prefer to sterilise.
Theodore as usual is one step away from the mustard gas yellow brick road to the extermination camps.
The de Tocqville reference may be intended as in-joke for illuminati of right wing critiques of La Revoltion Francais and a typically off-colour snook cocked at la gauche. However all things considered as snooks go it is a blunderbus and leaves the pompous Mr Dalrymple with ironic powder burns all over his face.
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