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If I were a member of the alienated army that shared Guy Fawkes night with the French on November 5th, as part of their general celebration and indulgence, wouldn’t cars present an opportunity to joyride? How clear that these hotheads, raised in a political culture of entitlement and spectacle, now turn against their patron and paymaster. Schools, buses, hospitals and cars are destroyed to preserve their imprisonment and immobility. As masters of their estates, the rioters cock their legs and piss molotovs to provide the reek of burnt plastic that serves as their territorial marker.

The puzzled onlooker will wonder why it took a damp November rather than a hot July or August. Everyone gets more attention during the busy autumn when some of the French population deigns to work for a living. Now the lighthouses of punditry highlight hubris expunged from the once proud Gallic rooster and the smart riots of the European intifada. Some may fly the flag of Eurabia as their singular explanation for this tinderbox.

Yet the answers lie in crappy suburbs where the height of social mobility is raking money as a drugs and dole prole. The state is an absent employer, white, French and a danger to profits. Where economics provides motive to keep out the state as a threat to the monopoly of drugs and Islam, politics and terror will probably follow.

I have visited Paris many times and have always loved that city, warts and all. I proposed to my future wife there earlier this year. I have noticed, however, over the years of my going there that the place does not have that relaxed atmosphere that I recall when I first went there in my early teens. I could not always put my finger on it.

Well, people are definitely noticing that Paris is not “all right” now. U.S. blogger Roger L. Simon (who writes excellent crime fiction) has some thoughts about the wave of riots breaking out in the outer suburbs of the city. There is also plenty of food for thought via the wonderfully entitled Merde in France blog for some observations close to what is going on.

(UPDATE: link to this instead of the Merde in France site. The url has changed, as spotted by a commenter. Thanks. Mea culpa).

I watched the British Channel 4 news programme tonight, which devoted about five minutes to the mayhem, now in its seventh consecutive night. The report stated that at least 177 vehicles have been damaged, in some cases set on fire. Security services have been fired upon with guns. A primary school has been burned to the ground. This is the sort of thing one expects to read about in Iraq, or, perhaps the Watts area of LA back in the late 1960s. The Channel 4 programme skated over the possible reasons for the mayhem, also ignoring a number of salient facts about life in the area, such as the massive concentration of immigrants of mostly north African descent, the huge drug trade, the lack of assimilation into broader French society and the chronic and relentlessly high levels of youth unemployment.

This vast housing estates are totally in contrast with the elegant, touristy bits of Paris that you see in the travel brochures. I was chatting with fellow contributor Michael Jennings about this over lunch today and he actually makes a point of going to the less salubrious bits of cities like Paris to see what life is really like. I have often noticed, either during car journeys or while taking the Eurostar train, just how grimy and cheerless the environ developments are. These are not places a sane person should spend a lot of time in, given the choice.

Theodore Dalrymple wrote a fine piece about the outskirts of Paris a while back here. Definitely worth checking out.

I heartily hope that order can be restored before that great city starts resembling one of the more violent parts of a Victor Hugo novel.

Last month I was in France, and as always I thoroughly enjoyed it. What a beautiful country it is. And if only because I like France so much I am saddened at how badly us Anglo-Saxons and the French seem to get along with each other. But now, after my recent visit, I think I have a partial explanation for some of this hostility to offer.

On one of the days I was in France, I wandered around the village where my hosts lived, on my own, and I was struck by how almost everyone I met or even merely passed said “Bonjour!” to me. Everyone said it. Even quite young girls, on their own, girls who in England (or the USA?) would never say a word to a middle aged man whom they did not know.

Everyone said “Bonjour!”, I said to my hosts when I got back home. It was rather nice, I said. Very communal. Well, they said, do not read too much into it. “Bonjour!” is all that they say, and in a year’s time, “Bonjour!” may still be all that they say. They are not making friends, just being polite.

Quite so. Just being polite. But it is a politeness that we Anglos tend not to bother with. When we go into a shop, for example, we tend to get straight down to business, with only the most cursory of hellos. Only after we have done our business do we unbend and become human, and say “Thank you!” rather effusively, and perhaps shake hands. Ever since I started thinking about this posting I have noticed myself and the people I have dealings with here in London doing this same one-two pattern, of business, followed at the end of our brief relationship by politeness. First we do the business, impersonally and correctly, and only then, when the business is done, do we unbend, make eye contact, smile, and generally behave like nice friendly people.

So my hypothesis is this. The French have no deep hatred for us Anglo-Saxons on account of our Anglo-Saxon-ness, our foreign policies, our Hollywood movies or our lousy state medicine. It is simply that they do not like rudeness, or rude people, and to them, we come across as extremely rude. Instead of saying “Bonjour Madame” to the lady selling patisserie, we pitch right in and tell her which patisserie we want, without any preliminary courtesies. Which, in France, is very rude. That is why madame is always, to us, so grumpy.

I once had an extremely unpleasant acquaintance, whom I now avoid, who was and remains notorious for saying unpleasant things to everyone he ever meets, perhaps because he has a permanent pain in the top part of his back and wants to spread the pain around. I remember him saying to me once: “Everyone’s in a terrible mood these nowadays.” I knew why. Everyone he met had just had the misfortune to meet him. They were fine until he showed up. They were in a bad mood because he put them in a bad mood.

Well, I surmise that maybe we Anglos tend to do that to the French. They are not snooty and unpleasant all the time. They are just snooty and unpleasant to us, because we immediately come across to them as very rude, and they do not like it.

Could it really be that something as superficial as our different styles of greeting one another is a big reason for the Anglos and the French not getting along? I really think it might be. I would welcome suggestions for further reading along these lines, but am not able to offer much linkage myself, as I have never heard anything similar suggested.

The nearest related thinking I can suggest is the work of Deborah Tannen, who has written books about contrasting conversational styles among us English speakers – Southerners and Northerners in the USA, slow speechmakers and fast interrupters, and most famously, women and men. Maybe she could do another book about us and the French.

Final thought: Australians are famous over here for saying “G’day” all the time. I wonder if they get along better with the French than other Anglos. Maybe not, because it is not just what you say, as Tannen has spent half a lifetime explaining, it is the way you say it.