QUESTION: Martin,
You said to watch France and an early warning indicator. Might Europe be on the precipice?
My family, friends, and I thank you for everything that you do.
Best wishes,
JC
ANSWER: What we are watching in France is far more than simply a police shooting of a 17-year-old youth. The New York Times reported that in subsequent years, several beatings by the police and deaths in custody led to minor protests. This appears to be cumulative, but economic stagnation is eating away at Europe. While the overall unemployment rate in France is about 7%, the youth unemployment rate of ages 15 to 24 remains over 20%. This is a direct source of the unrest. All civil unrest is ALWAYS rooted in economics. A simple correlation between the global economy and economics reveals the source.
The danger is that as the economic conditions of Europe get worse with all the insane regulation for Climate Change that is reducing food production to eliminating jobs, all for a theory pushed by the WEF to create a new world of totalitarian order, we see hostility rising not just internationally, but also domestically and this can spread as a contagion throughout the EU. You cannot destroy the livelihood of so many people without dire consequences. This is partly why they also want the international war to divert attention from their failed climate change agenda.
The recent events in France are an uncanny repeat of the youth/racial riots of the autumn of 2005. That is when two youngsters of Arab origin were electrocuted while trying to escape arrest by the French police. This time, two police officers shot a juvenile of Algerian origin as he tried to escape in a stolen car. The evidence that surfaced showed that the police officer was in no danger. That is what set off the rights once again.
In the hours that followed, literally tens of thousands of primarily young males, many of them minors, poured out and launched violent riots in the suburbs of French cities. These riots appeared Nantes in the north to Marseille in the south. They set fire to cars and public buildings that, included schools. They began to pillage local stores, and hundreds of people were arrested in the process. The government has reported that 170 policemen have been injured. This appears to many as once again racial since the rioters, this time, are third and fourth-generation descendants of migrants. There have been reports that some are said to have used firearms to harass the locals living mostly in social housing.
Terrorist attacks of 2013 on the Bataclan Club in Paris and 2016 in Nice resulted in a significant shock to French society. Consequently, a state of emergency was declared and then extended. It was finally lifted in 2017, but a new law passed simultaneously made some of its provisions permanent. This has left scars that some view as racial against Arab immigrants.
When we look at Europe, what is interesting is that in absolute figures, France remains much more unattractive for continued migration. Social welfare is far better compared to other European countries. In France, the proportion of people born abroad has been stable at around 10% for years because of those terrorist attacks. In Austria, this proportion of migrants has risen from 13% in 2015 to over 20% today. Friends in Austria complain that their society has been forever altered. The massive immigration wave of 2015-2016 hit Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and Austria primarily because of their welfare systems. France was at no time a target country for this mass immigration at that time.
President Emmanuel Macron had to cut his trip short to the pathetic EU summit on migration. Macron has come out and blamed TikTok for the escalation of violence. Interestingly, Twitter began to suppress user accounts in France that posted images and videos of the riots last Friday. Twitter even shut down accounts of non-France origin for posting about the riots. Because of French media law, Twitter avoided committing a criminal offense. Macron is also making the parents of those rioting minors responsible. Back during the 2005 riots, his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, in response to the growing violence, cut social benefits for their families. That was 15 years ago.
The post The French Riots first appeared on Armstrong Economics.
