July 7, 2023 - 7:30am
The recent rioting in France reveals a new and disturbing reality. Across the country, riots moved from the banlieues to town centres and fancy shopping areas, leaving behind a trail of destruction that included over 200 looted shops, 300 bank branches and 250 tobacconists.
Where past disorders, such as in 2005, were once largely confined to the suburbs, increasingly they have spilled into gentrified areas too. In addition, protestors are showing little respect for their supposed social betters: the pension protests, for example, made a show of targeting the offices of Wall Street firm BlackRock and torching President Emmanuel Macron’s favourite restaurant. Welcome to the class struggle, 21st-century style, where no area is fully safe.
Who are these rioters? A profile this week from Le Monde reveals that the looters tend to be active on social media and well-informed about the coming direction of the protest. Their motivations, as Macron has suggested, may not be purely political but also inspired by video games and social media. Yet there is no question that a lack of economic opportunity, crowded living conditions and frustration at repeated conflicts with police are all contributing factors.
This follows the American pattern. In the past, urban riots tended to be primarily restricted to poorer neighbourhoods. In the Los Angeles riots of 1992, which I covered first hand, little damage was inflicted upon elite areas like Beverly Hills or middle-class enclaves like the San Fernando Valley. Once I escaped the inner city, I could drink coffee from my house in the Hollywood Hills and watch South LA, Koreatown, and Pico-Union areas burn in the distance.
Today’s rioters embrace a different script, as evidenced in the 2020 George Floyd riots which also inspired French counterparts. Rather than burn down and loot their own neighbourhoods, the perpetrators moved into the elite, gentrified precincts of major cities such as Portland’s Pearl District — once a model of urban improvement — and Seattle’s Capitol Hill. In New York rioters assaulted major Manhattan shopping areas, while in Los Angeles they invaded the posh Grove shopping centre as well as the primarily Jewish, heavily hipster-oriented Fairfax district. In Chicago, they ransacked the Magnificent Mile shopping district, historically a safe zone in an otherwise hazardous city.
These developments reflect in many ways the growing class divides within cities. For years, developers and investors have looked at tough inner-city areas as ideal gentrification spots. Many of these regions are close to downtown and have an old housing stock with traditional facades, large windows and high ceilings.
Yet these developments brought conflict with people already living in poor, usually non-white areas desired by the hipsters — whether in East Los Angeles, South Dallas or the South Side of Chicago. For years gentrification efforts have been decried, sometimes to the point of vandalism, as “high-tech ethnic cleansing” threatening to expel the poor from their long-time neighbourhoods.
This is not good for either the wealthy or impoverished residents of cities. Rising crime tends to push affluent people and companies out to the furthest out suburbs and exurbs, taking with them their enterprises and their tax revenues. It also tends to empower anti-immigrant political movements, such as America’s MAGA, France’s National Rally or Germany’s AfD.
The track record of what happens to lawless cities is not a promising one; after riots across the US in the sixties, and then in Los Angeles after 1992, bold promises were made by the government and by corporations, but the net result was to leave these areas even poorer and more marginalised. Riots leave an imprint, but rarely bring about progress. Rather than cry foul over racism, cities need to focus on the core issues, like lack of good jobs, poor housing, and terrible education, before even more “bored” kids hit the streets again.
Joel Kotkin is the Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and author, most recently, of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class (Encounter)
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Subscribe“Rather than cry foul over racism, cities need to focus on the core issues, like lack of good jobs, poor housing, and terrible education, before even more “bored” kids hit the streets again.”
Wrong! They need to focus on quick and severe punishment on anyone caught in person or on video rioting or looting. And they need to follow that up with a Zero Tolerance approach to policing and school discipline.
France and the USA are fine countries whose citizens have every opportunity to succeed. All boys will revert to rioting if they are not kept in line. Keep them in line and ignore their preposterous whinging.
The primary function of the state is to keep order and ensure that any benefits of citizenship flow to those citizens not to others. In France that has clearly failed. It is not their job to provide good jobs and good housing in a capitalist system although providing decent education would indeed be worth doing if the state wishes to do so – unfortunately good education is hard to achieve when so many teachers have a basically Marxist mindset like Kotkin.
Some immigrants value education and integration, others only value their religious exclusivity.
“It is not their job to provide good jobs and good housing in a capitalist system”
Then, when government ceases to provide for the needs of its citizens, the time comes to replace that government with one that does provide for the needs of the citizens.
Good jobs are provided by people and firms producing goods and services that other people are willing to buy at a price that pays for the good jobs and provides a profit for the capital employed. Good housing is similarly the result of house builders building houses people are willing to buy. For the most part both these are achieved by the government interfering as little as possible in both processes.
You would be better off suggesting that if the state fails to keep order the government should be replaced – providing you can find a government that will in fact do the job that it is uniquely suited to do.
It’s not the government role to create jobs, or all housing. It’s the governments role to create the background for it. but most economic development is organic. As in France it’s difficult to create jobs to thousands of immigrants with low qualifications. We know that too in Scandinavia. Immigrants and fugitives has no right to live in the great cities.
Good jobs are provided by people and firms producing goods and services that other people are willing to buy at a price that pays for the good jobs and provides a profit for the capital employed. Good housing is similarly the result of house builders building houses people are willing to buy. For the most part both these are achieved by the government interfering as little as possible in both processes.
You would be better off suggesting that if the state fails to keep order the government should be replaced – providing you can find a government that will in fact do the job that it is uniquely suited to do.
It’s not the government role to create jobs, or all housing. It’s the governments role to create the background for it. but most economic development is organic. As in France it’s difficult to create jobs to thousands of immigrants with low qualifications. We know that too in Scandinavia. Immigrants and fugitives has no right to live in the great cities.
Some immigrants value education and integration, others only value their religious exclusivity.
“It is not their job to provide good jobs and good housing in a capitalist system”
Then, when government ceases to provide for the needs of its citizens, the time comes to replace that government with one that does provide for the needs of the citizens.
Please read my comment which I just posted. It isn’t yet approved.
The primary function of the state is to keep order and ensure that any benefits of citizenship flow to those citizens not to others. In France that has clearly failed. It is not their job to provide good jobs and good housing in a capitalist system although providing decent education would indeed be worth doing if the state wishes to do so – unfortunately good education is hard to achieve when so many teachers have a basically Marxist mindset like Kotkin.
Please read my comment which I just posted. It isn’t yet approved.
“Rather than cry foul over racism, cities need to focus on the core issues, like lack of good jobs, poor housing, and terrible education, before even more “bored” kids hit the streets again.”
Wrong! They need to focus on quick and severe punishment on anyone caught in person or on video rioting or looting. And they need to follow that up with a Zero Tolerance approach to policing and school discipline.
France and the USA are fine countries whose citizens have every opportunity to succeed. All boys will revert to rioting if they are not kept in line. Keep them in line and ignore their preposterous whinging.
““Rather than cry foul over racism, cities need to focus on the core issues”. There is but one core issue: immigration.
Without any control over the magnitude of the influx, there is no hope of tackling any of the other issues.
““Rather than cry foul over racism, cities need to focus on the core issues”. There is but one core issue: immigration.
Without any control over the magnitude of the influx, there is no hope of tackling any of the other issues.
“in Los Angeles they invaded the posh Grove shopping centre as well as the primarily Jewish, heavily hipster-oriented Fairfax district.”
BLM’s attack on Fairfax was an actual pogrom.
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/daniel-greenfield/the-la-black-lives-matter-rally-that-became-a-pogrom/2020/06/22/
Thanks. Excellent link. The jew-hatred of BLM and other black acivists is seriously underreported. Note Greenfield’s contempt for the Modern Orthodox synagogues who tried to appease BLM and its army of rioters.
You’re most welcome.
You’re most welcome.
Thanks for that. I always thought it ridiculous that rich footballers and politicians were so keen to take the knee to an anti-capitalist and and kleptocratic organisation but I had not previously read about the racist (anti-Semitic) roots of the BLM in addition to their racist anti-white roots. It has certainty not received suitable exposure in the MSM.
The lack of MSM exposure of BLM’s antisemitism is deeply unsurprising, isn’t it.
The lack of MSM exposure of BLM’s antisemitism is deeply unsurprising, isn’t it.
Nothing new in that, if you are a Tom Wolfe fan, you will know a little about the issue. It’s complex. The more you know about the relationship between blacks and Jews, the more names people call you
It’s a very long time indeed since I read The Bonfire of the Vanities, so I don’t recall this element of his writing, but thanks for reminding me of him.
I think D Walsh may be referring to Wolfe’s “Radical Chic”, about Leonard Bernstein’s cocktail party for the Black Panthers.
Yes it’s was mainly “Radical Chic” but Wolfe dose also include it in a small way in Bonfire, most will not notice it
Yes it’s was mainly “Radical Chic” but Wolfe dose also include it in a small way in Bonfire, most will not notice it
I think D Walsh may be referring to Wolfe’s “Radical Chic”, about Leonard Bernstein’s cocktail party for the Black Panthers.
It’s a very long time indeed since I read The Bonfire of the Vanities, so I don’t recall this element of his writing, but thanks for reminding me of him.
An addendum. I taught night school in South-Central LA just south of the Coliseum. I got out as the fires started. They consumed among many properties an enormous Korean-owned swap meet across the street.
As the “civil unrest” of the “justice rising” (I read the latter term as used by academics; never heard it in real life as a native Angeleno), the firefighters came under attack and had to retreat, as did the police, outnumbered and overwhelmed. But other cities, such as BH, practically drew a line at their border, barricading as the “activists” came north. By my wife’s work in E. Hollywood, while the Circuit City was ransacked and ignited, Crown Books’ franchise next door survived unscathed. A moral there? My students (in a totally Black-Latino enrollment)were unanimous in admitting their neighbors were in it for the thrill. Reminding me of Macron’s media-gamers. It’s provocative that memes, soundbites, and snaps may be the motivator for the “oppressed classes” now.
This was a great link, thank you, helps put quite a few things in context – nothing like a down to earth report from people on the ground.
Thanks. Excellent link. The jew-hatred of BLM and other black acivists is seriously underreported. Note Greenfield’s contempt for the Modern Orthodox synagogues who tried to appease BLM and its army of rioters.
Thanks for that. I always thought it ridiculous that rich footballers and politicians were so keen to take the knee to an anti-capitalist and and kleptocratic organisation but I had not previously read about the racist (anti-Semitic) roots of the BLM in addition to their racist anti-white roots. It has certainty not received suitable exposure in the MSM.
Nothing new in that, if you are a Tom Wolfe fan, you will know a little about the issue. It’s complex. The more you know about the relationship between blacks and Jews, the more names people call you
An addendum. I taught night school in South-Central LA just south of the Coliseum. I got out as the fires started. They consumed among many properties an enormous Korean-owned swap meet across the street.
As the “civil unrest” of the “justice rising” (I read the latter term as used by academics; never heard it in real life as a native Angeleno), the firefighters came under attack and had to retreat, as did the police, outnumbered and overwhelmed. But other cities, such as BH, practically drew a line at their border, barricading as the “activists” came north. By my wife’s work in E. Hollywood, while the Circuit City was ransacked and ignited, Crown Books’ franchise next door survived unscathed. A moral there? My students (in a totally Black-Latino enrollment)were unanimous in admitting their neighbors were in it for the thrill. Reminding me of Macron’s media-gamers. It’s provocative that memes, soundbites, and snaps may be the motivator for the “oppressed classes” now.
This was a great link, thank you, helps put quite a few things in context – nothing like a down to earth report from people on the ground.
“in Los Angeles they invaded the posh Grove shopping centre as well as the primarily Jewish, heavily hipster-oriented Fairfax district.”
BLM’s attack on Fairfax was an actual pogrom.
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/daniel-greenfield/the-la-black-lives-matter-rally-that-became-a-pogrom/2020/06/22/
Of course we are not actually allowed in this country to express the honest view as to why this is happening, as that would be a hate crime..
Of course we are not actually allowed in this country to express the honest view as to why this is happening, as that would be a hate crime..
Most rioting is opportunistic, acquisitive and/or recreational. All these comment pieces ascribe political motives to generally apolitical and poorly educated young men simply because it’s easier for middle class writers to understand them in political ways. It’s almost always wrong
Whilst agreeing with you in general, I reckon that riots here in Bristol are mainly upper-middle class affairs, perpetrated by the Stokes Croft failsons of the Clifton set.
That has changed recently with the emergence of “organized “rioting. As seen during the George Floyd riots, I mean protests, people are being paid to riot by political organizations. How else can we explain the great numbers of common folks traveling great distances to “protest”
Face it, breaking things and setting them on fire along with a charged-up group of like-minded young people is atavistically thrilling. It’s fun to watch the world burn; there’s a sick demonic thrill in destruction for its own sake.
Whilst agreeing with you in general, I reckon that riots here in Bristol are mainly upper-middle class affairs, perpetrated by the Stokes Croft failsons of the Clifton set.
That has changed recently with the emergence of “organized “rioting. As seen during the George Floyd riots, I mean protests, people are being paid to riot by political organizations. How else can we explain the great numbers of common folks traveling great distances to “protest”
Face it, breaking things and setting them on fire along with a charged-up group of like-minded young people is atavistically thrilling. It’s fun to watch the world burn; there’s a sick demonic thrill in destruction for its own sake.
Most rioting is opportunistic, acquisitive and/or recreational. All these comment pieces ascribe political motives to generally apolitical and poorly educated young men simply because it’s easier for middle class writers to understand them in political ways. It’s almost always wrong
Didn’t stop them from destroying public facilities in their own areas though. Just like BLM in the US, media attention was on the on the town centres but the mayhem and murder in the ‘hoods’ which was appalling was little mentioned.
Didn’t stop them from destroying public facilities in their own areas though. Just like BLM in the US, media attention was on the on the town centres but the mayhem and murder in the ‘hoods’ which was appalling was little mentioned.
‘and watch South LA, Koreatown, and Pico-Union areas burn in the distance.’
Yes those unfortunate Koreans who had their businesses burned down through no fault of their own. Did BLM apologise for that?
No I thought not.
‘and watch South LA, Koreatown, and Pico-Union areas burn in the distance.’
Yes those unfortunate Koreans who had their businesses burned down through no fault of their own. Did BLM apologise for that?
No I thought not.
The Democratic Party owns utterly the chaos and violence of America’s large urban centers. It is the most obvious thing about America that everyone can easily observe but none of the official organs will mention. There is, of course, a reason for that.
The Democratic Party owns utterly the chaos and violence of America’s large urban centers. It is the most obvious thing about America that everyone can easily observe but none of the official organs will mention. There is, of course, a reason for that.
The usual poor v rich explanation from Mr Kotkin.
For an alternative view, Gavin Mortimer at The Specatator has some observations on the underestimated, under-reported and yet very powerful French drug barons – who he credits with bringing a halt to the riots (bad for business).
The usual poor v rich explanation from Mr Kotkin.
For an alternative view, Gavin Mortimer at The Specatator has some observations on the underestimated, under-reported and yet very powerful French drug barons – who he credits with bringing a halt to the riots (bad for business).
The photo is a bit of a joke. The placard holder and the caption writer have a knowledge of French that is even worse than mine. The placard on the right says “separez vous du white privile” (missing acute accent on the first “e”, missing hyphen between “séparez” and “vous”, creeping Franglais with the use of the word “white” and the word “privile” does not exist (maybe he underestimated the number of letters in “privilégié” and ran out of placard).
The caption translates this as ““Get rid of white privilege”. If it means anything, it would be something like “distance yourself from white privilege”.
The placard holder has evidently made little effort to learn the language of the country in which he is presumably an immigrant. (That is, unless French education is even worse than British.) Instead, he focuses on casting himself in the role of victim.
The photo is a bit of a joke. The placard holder and the caption writer have a knowledge of French that is even worse than mine. The placard on the right says “separez vous du white privile” (missing acute accent on the first “e”, missing hyphen between “séparez” and “vous”, creeping Franglais with the use of the word “white” and the word “privile” does not exist (maybe he underestimated the number of letters in “privilégié” and ran out of placard).
The caption translates this as ““Get rid of white privilege”. If it means anything, it would be something like “distance yourself from white privilege”.
The placard holder has evidently made little effort to learn the language of the country in which he is presumably an immigrant. (That is, unless French education is even worse than British.) Instead, he focuses on casting himself in the role of victim.
Good news and bad news:
Good: George Soros is retiring
Bad: Alex Soros, his woker-than-woke son is taking control.
Good news and bad news:
Good: George Soros is retiring
Bad: Alex Soros, his woker-than-woke son is taking control.
One tiny correction: Chicago’s famed upscale shopping district along Michigan Avenue is called the Magnificent Mile, not the Miracle Mile.
One tiny correction: Chicago’s famed upscale shopping district along Michigan Avenue is called the Magnificent Mile, not the Miracle Mile.
Bring back Martial Law.
It worked quite well in Dublin in 1916 and Amritsar in 1919.
Shame on you for that Amritsar reference. ‘Unutterably monstrous’, as one of our more effective leaders described that vile massacre.
WSC perchance?
WSC perchance?
Though, by my soul, the English do prate.
Shame on you for that Amritsar reference. ‘Unutterably monstrous’, as one of our more effective leaders described that vile massacre.
Though, by my soul, the English do prate.
Bring back Martial Law.
It worked quite well in Dublin in 1916 and Amritsar in 1919.
The article is somewhat misleading in its claim that rioters are targeting ‘elite, gentrified areas’.
There is indeed a fringe of the rioters who are opportunistically looting Apple and Nike stores which can only be found in city centres or malls. These areas don’t seem to be coming under attack for political reasons though.
I can assure the author that the vast majority of residents of the leafy western suburbs of Paris have been enjoying aperatifs by their swimming pools unmolested over the last week.
It has, however, been observed that record numbers of public buildings have been hit: schools, tax offices, town halls. And most of these in the very neighbourhoods which are populated by the rioters themselves: ugly, marginalised, peripheral concrete jungles where poverty is high and hope for the future somewhat low.
The article is somewhat misleading in its claim that rioters are targeting ‘elite, gentrified areas’.
There is indeed a fringe of the rioters who are opportunistically looting Apple and Nike stores which can only be found in city centres or malls. These areas don’t seem to be coming under attack for political reasons though.
I can assure the author that the vast majority of residents of the leafy western suburbs of Paris have been enjoying aperatifs by their swimming pools unmolested over the last week.
It has, however, been observed that record numbers of public buildings have been hit: schools, tax offices, town halls. And most of these in the very neighbourhoods which are populated by the rioters themselves: ugly, marginalised, peripheral concrete jungles where poverty is high and hope for the future somewhat low.
I am turning into my mother… Sending the rioters for a stint in the Foreign Legion might make thrm realise they actually have it better than their parents!
I am turning into my mother… Sending the rioters for a stint in the Foreign Legion might make thrm realise they actually have it better than their parents!
Actually, in the U.S. many poor/working class neighborhoods and businesses were hit. E.G.: Ms. Flora Westbrooks Hairstyling salon in Minneapolis. Antifa/BLM took heed because their tactics turned countless people, Black and White, against them. The organizers operate internationally.
Actually, in the U.S. many poor/working class neighborhoods and businesses were hit. E.G.: Ms. Flora Westbrooks Hairstyling salon in Minneapolis. Antifa/BLM took heed because their tactics turned countless people, Black and White, against them. The organizers operate internationally.