The Paris football riots – which according to the press definitely weren’t race riots – saw hundreds arrested and two left dead. And all because Paris Saint Germain WON a football match. Yes, PSG thrashed Inter Milan 5-0 in the Champions League Final and that triggered some of the worst rioting Paris has seen in recent years.
I scanned through pages of news reports on Google and some claimed that over 500 were arrested, with the largest total I saw coming in at 559. But considering the numbers arrested and the fact two people were actually killed, the press – which did actually use the term “riots” – used pretty tame language to describe those involved in the rioting.
With the exception of the Daily Mail – which used the terms “savages” and “barbarians”, most mainstream outlets did not choose to use derogatory terms to describe those involved in the violence. And when you see that kind of response from the media, it’s a clear indicator of the race of those involved in the disorder – in short; you know that most involved were not white.
This is a far cry from what I remember in relation to historical reporting of disorder and violence associated with football.
England fans would travel abroad for an international match, spend the day drinking in a town square, and by late afternoon or early evening things would often turn nasty. And by turn nasty, I mean that overweight and heavily intoxicated white men who at some point earlier in the day had made the questionable choice to remove their shirts, would begin getting raucous. This would usually involve chairs and beer cans being hurled at other fans and often there would be scuffles which would more often than not result in a stand-off with local police.
These scenes of English men – worse for wear and engaging in violence – were eagerly published by every news outlet in the UK and were usually accompanied by headlines such as “England’s SHAME”, which would soon be followed by calls to “name the thugs”. When this football violence occurred there would also be calls for the England team itself to be banned from tournaments and eventually the government’s response was to bring in draconian laws that forced England fans convicted of “hooliganism” to hand over their passports before international tournaments to prevent them from travelling.
That’s how seriously these comparatively minor incidents were treated in England. But it gets worse – when England fans who were suspected of being involved in violence abroad returned home, the press would be waiting at airports and would photograph fans coming through customs in order to publicly name and shame them. Newspapers would publish a rogues’ gallery and sometimes issue calls for the public to identify men thought to be involved.
But now, in the wake of some of the worst rioting in recent memory, the press seems pretty restrained. And even when reading the Daily Mail, the implied cause of the Paris riots would leave most readers scratching their heads. Apparently, the riots weren’t the fault of those doing the rioting – which is weird, as it was always the fault of the England fans when they were involved in trouble.
Instead, the Daily Mail centred an article around whether the policing of the event was sufficient – with the Paris Chief of Police, Laurent Nunez, reassuring everyone that the 5400 officers deployed was definitely enough. Clearly it wasn’t. But this interesting angle suggests that maybe it wasn’t the fault of those rioting, that maybe the riot was caused by a lack of policing, and really the fault lies with the police for not being on the ground in large enough numbers to deter such violent actions. This is obviously a subtle attempt to shift the blame away from those involved.
But so far – other than stating that 2 people died, we haven’t really discussed the horrors of the Paris riots, which went far beyond a few inebriated men hurling plastic chairs and beer cans.
In the same Daily Mail article that attempted to shift the focus onto the police response, pictures were published of what looked like two white girls sat in a car that had been attacked, the windows of the vehicle were smashed and the car was surrounded by a multi-racial gang of youths. I don’t ever remember seeing England fans doing something like that! And one can only imagine the horrors that would have befallen those girls had police not been on hand to protect them.
However, the Daily Mail was eager to quote the Paris Chief of Police, who attempted to reassure the press and the public by stating the following:
“It’s a societal problem and all stakeholders must address it. To say it’s a failure ignores the fact that we arrested a huge number of people and that it will have a deterrent effect in the future. The government’s response is firm.”
You can immediately ascertain the ethnicity of the majority of those involved when a police chief talks about the riots being a ‘societal problem’ and the solution being that all the “stakeholders” in society need to sit down and address underlying problems.
I don’t ever remember the police going to English community leaders for a sit down after England fans had a bit of back-and-forth at an away match – but double standards are what can be expected in a multicultural society.
The Daily Mail then went on to describe how the rioters set up barricades across roads using barriers and rental bikes – making this sound more like a military operation than a few intoxicated football fans getting a little over excited and carried away in the moment.
The article goes further, detailing cars being set on fire, motorbikes being hurled off bridges and fireworks being shot at police. At this point you would expect the press to be speaking of the rioters in the most derogatory manner possible – instead, the article pauses to note that the police handled two of the rioters in a “rough manner”. It is noted that elsewhere, as looting took place, mattresses were dragged into the street and set on fire, filling the air with thick black smoke.
In total, 264 cars were torched, 194 people were treated for injuries and two lay dead – one due to a stab wound to the chest and the other after being hit by a car. The full scale of the damage still hasn’t been revealed, but the financial cost will no doubt be staggering.
This doesn’t sound like the football violence I used to read about as a young man; it sounds more like the beginning of an insurrection!
And that leads us on to the blame – the police chief was clearly doing his best to dodge accusations of not putting enough officers on the street, but in his defence, 5,400 officers does seem like quite a lot.
A few days later, the Daily Mail followed up their coverage of the riots with an article titled the following:
“France is on the brink of full-scale civil war. I’ve lived here for 25 years and the locals have had enough of the violence caused by hordes of destructive youths. The state has lost control – and I fear what’s coming next”
At first, the author, Jonathan Miller, goes to extreme lengths to NOT mention the real problem. He talks of a two-tier country, a divided nation, the difference between old and young and the stark contrast between urban and rural life.
But the truth is impossible to conceal; the vast majority of older people in France are white, and the majority of “youths” are from a migrant background. Those living in the countryside are white, those urban youths – well, you already know their racial characteristics. But by the end of the article Miller’s tone has hardened and he states the following, and I quote
“The social profile of those responsible for the violence is consistent, a reporter for upmarket daily Le Figaro observed on Monday as the first perpetrators appeared in court. He didn’t specify it but, then, he didn’t have to. Everyone knows the rioters are predominantly young males of North African origin.
But they are not the migrants in transit to the Channel coast on their way to Britain. They are the grandchildren of immigrants from Algeria and Morocco who arrived in France more than 60 years ago.”
Of course we know this, it’s not white youths, it’s overwhelmingly those from a migrant background, and it’s not even the ones who are fresh off the boats. It’s second and third generation migrants, the ones we were told were going to grow up and be just like us. We were reassured that it was just the first generation of migrants that would be different to us, they would bring with them their own culture, but their children and their grandchildren, they would become more and more Westernised, becoming French, English or German.
Well, that never happened – and it isn’t going to happen. That is the fallacy of integration. And these riots were not just the result of a failure to integrate; they were not just a grim manifestation of the problems endemic in multicultural societies; they were a window into the future. Violence like this will become more and more common all-over Western nations as the indigenous European populations of those nations get ever closer to becoming a minority.
At one time a few overweight men full of beer, throwing deck chairs and beer bottles was written up by the press as if it was the end of the world. Now, come the end of a major football match, ethnic minority gangs can turn the streets of one Europe’s greatest capital cities into what looks like a warzone, and do so in an organised, militant fashion. And afterwards, the police meekly state that it’s just a “societal problem” to be solved with a conversation between “stakeholders”.
The truth is; the only way to solve this problem is mass deportations and a complete unpicking of the multicultural project.
This article originally appeared on Patriotic Alternative and is republished by The Noticer with permission.
