One could look at France's economic and financial situation (catastrophic) or at the many social problems plaguing an already very frustrated population, but I want to focus on one specific aspect of the current French crisis: the complete alienation of the majority of the people from the ruling elites which I will illustrate by one very telling example: the growing hysteria of the French elites about a brilliant philosopher - Alain Soral - and one stand-up comedian - Dieudonne M'bala M'bala.
I have already written about these to remarkable people (here, here and here) and I urge you to read these past articles to get a better picture of what is taking place now. For those who are really not willing to read a few background pages, I will begin by the following mini-introduction.
Diendonne M'bala M'bala is a French-Cameroonian comedian which was by far the most popular comic in France until he made one short sketch about a religious Israeli Settler on French TV. The sketch was not particularly funny, but it really enraged the French equivalent of the US AIPAC - called CRIF in France - which began a systematic campaign to smear, ban and silence "Dieudo" as he is known in France. Dieudo refused to roll over and retaliated by making fun of those persecuting him which made him the darling of many of those who hated the financial elites running France since 1969. Now completely banned from any public media, Dieudo is still the most popular comic in France.Alain Soral is a French author and philosopher whose political career included a membership in the French Communist Party and the National Front. He is credited with developing the concept of "gauche du travail - droite des valeurs" (literally "left of labor - right of values") which can be summarized as the simultaneous advocacy of socialist/social ideas and measures in economic and social issues combined with conservative moral, ethical and religious values in ideological, ethical and cultural issues. He is the founder of an extremely interesting movement called "Egalite et Reconciliation" which aims at reconciling native French people (called "Francais de souche" or "root French") with those French people who recently immigrated to France (called "Francais de branche" or "branch French") and to make them co-exist in complete equality. Because of his numerous "politically incorrect" ideas and very overt statements, Soral is absolutely hated and feared by the French ruling class. Even though Soral has also been completely banned from any public media, He remains immensely popular with the general public and his books are all best-sellers.
Soral and Dieudo are very different people, they have very different backgrounds and they have very different personalities. There even used to be a time when they were sharply critical of each other. But when the French elites decided to basically destroy them they became closer together and now they are good friends, and they openly support each other, as a result we have this truly bizarre phenomenon: a White philosopher and a Black comedian have jointly become a kind of "two-headed Emmanuel Goldstein" of modern France: the elites absolutely hate them and the media as gone into a completely Orwellian "two minute of hate" frenzy mode trying to convince the French people that Soral and/or Dieudo are almost a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Needless to say, this thesis is so stupid that Dieudo makes fun of it in his shows while Soral ridicules it in his books and uses it to show that France is run by a tiny elite of vicious and arrogant SOBs.
In truth, one has to admit that the French elites are facing two formidable enemies. Dieudonne is truly one of the most talented French comedian ever while Soral is without any doubt the most original and brilliant philosopher France has seen since WWII. Furthermore, French law makes it rather difficult to completely ban a show or a book. God knows, the French elites have tried, and both Dieudo and Soral have been taken to court numerous times for "racism" and "anti-Semitism", both of them have been physically assaulted several times by the thugs of the "LDJ" (Jewish Defense League) and both of them are constantly harassed by the authorities (the French version of the IRS and the FBI). Yet, this systematic campaign of persecutions has clearly backfired against its authors and given Dieudo and Soral a (well-deserved) martyr status. Finally, Dieudo and Soral have shown that they are extremely sophisticated users of the Internet where their shows, special events, interviews, books, monthly news roundups have been extremely popular and are seen by many millions of people in France and abroad.
Gradually, Soral and Dieudo have built a real political movement which is active both on the internal front and on international issues.
As I mentioned, "Egalite et Reconciliation" or "E&R" stands for a full acceptance and integration of Muslim immigrants into the French society. This is crucial because unlike the French National Front, E&R does not advocate the expulsion of immigrants out of France. Not only that, but E&R even denies that immigrants are the real problem. Of course, E&R does not deny that unemployment is huge in France, nor does it deny that a large percentage of crime and violence in France are committed by immigrants, but they see that as an effect of previous political mistakes and not as a cause of the problems of France.
Likewise, E&R is very openly pro-Muslim. Not in a truly religious sense, most members of E&R are not deeply religious people, but rather in the cultural sense. E&R primarily see Islam and French Roman-Catholicism as two sources of ethnics, morality and civilization as for whether one is religious or not and accepts the theology of these religions is left to the individual member. This is quit different from the utterly sterile "ecumenical dialog" which seeks to find common teachings to Jesus Christ and the Prophet Mohammad while desperately trying to overlook the very real and deep theological disagreements between these two religions. Instead, E&R advocates a common stance on most, if not all, issues faced by French Muslims and Christians. And that makes sense.
Think about it: both Islam and Christianity are clearly opposed to the values of capitalism, profit maximization, speculation, usury, sexual immorality, the destruction of the traditional family, imperialism, etc. While the theological roots of Islam and Christianity are different, most of their ethical philosophical teachings are very similar. Frankly, I can think of only one big difference and that is the fundamentally different views Muslims and Christians have on the death penalty, but since the death penalty has been abolished in France in 1981 this hardly matters today.
Of course, both Christianity and Islam have their crazy perverted deviations such as the plutocratic and genocidal policies of the Papacy in the past or the liver-eating Wahabis the world is facing today, but E&R has no problems rejecting and condemning them. On the Christian side, E&R advocates a type of popular Roman-Catholicism seen in the pre-1789 France which has little to do with some of the worst excesses of the Papacy. On the Muslim side, E&R is especially close to the teachings Sheikh Imran Hosein and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. They are also close to the Iranian supported Centre Zahra in Paris. I would say that the type of Muslims attracted to E&R are exactly the same as the type Christians attracted to it: politically progressive, religiously strict, observant, but tolerant. Needless to say, the potential of this radically new movement is absolutely huge because it unites Left and Right, Christian and Muslim, religious and secular (as long as they are not anti-religious), native and immigrant, White and Black, rich and poor. But what seems to really trigger the panic of the French elites is the deep penetration of this movement into the notorious French "banlieues", the destitute suburbs which over the past decades were filled with immigrants from Africa and which have turned into no-go zones of lawlessness and crime.
To understand this phenomenon it It is crucial to understand the following: crime in France is not, repeat *not*, the product of recent immigrants or religious Muslims. Recent immigrants and religious Muslims have strong roots in their culture, families and lifestyles which categorically prevent them form being criminal. And poverty has nothing to do with this either. I personally have lived for 20 years right next to a big mosque attended by huge crowds of dirt-poor Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, the Balkans and the Middle-East I can attest that never, I mean that literally, never, was any crime committed in my neighborhood by the folks who came to this mosque. Quite to the contrary, these mosque attending Muslims were far better behaved, and more courteous, than the locals. In fact, it was clear that these people were going out of their way to show the (initially rather frightened locals) that they had no cause to fear them. The worst "crime" these Muslims regularly committed was to park their cars on the curb and that was because there were not enough parking places available. Finally, at the end of each Holy Month of Ramadan, the Muslims invited the entire neighborhood to join in the celebrations, to sample the many delicious dishes offered, and to visit the mosque. To say that these Muslims were perfect citizens would be an understatement.
The so-called "Muslim crime" in France is always linked second generation youth gangs who have lost their cultural and religious roots and who know little or nothing about them but who are also rejected by the local, native, population. As Soral likes to say "nobody goes from the mosque straight into a gang-raping spree". It's really either/or - but not both. Soral calls these thugs "Islamo-racaille" which can be loosely translated as "Islamo-thugs" - a very nasty and dangerous type with no sense of right and wrong and who exteriorizes his alienation by abusing the natives whom he hates. These are exactly the types who feel a deep attraction for the crude brutality of Wahabism and who end up killing cops in France or joining the liver-eaters in Syria. Their "Islam" is really only a pretext, a pious justification, for their psychopathic thuggery. I suspect most crusaders were exactly of the same psychological makeup.
Most young immigrants are, of course, somewhere in between the family-educated and observant type and the out of control lawless thugs. And for the very first time a relevant political movement offers them a very attractive option: E&R.
In essence E&R tells them "instead of being neither, be both - be Muslim and be French, don't hate the natives who have the same oppressors as you do and who are your best friends and allies, our enemies are trying to turn us against each other to better rule over all of us, let us therefore unite and stand together". This is an absolutely new and original message.
In the past, only two movements openly dealt with the immigration issue. On one hand you had the National Front who advocated policies such as the "national preference" (better social and labor laws from the natives), the crackdown on crime (more police, stricter laws, more and bigger jails) and the expulsion of all immigrants (except, possibly, those with a French passport - and even that was debated). On the other hand, you had an organization created by the Socialist Party called "SOS Racisme" which openly advocated the rejection of the native French culture by the immigrants who, under the nice-sounding slogan of "right to be different", were encouraged to hate the natives and demand a full acceptance of their cultures of origin by the French society. Over the past twenty years the "tag-team" of the National Front and SOS Racisme has only served to make the issue of immigration in France infinitely worse. The latest, and particularly ugly, development on this front has been the new political line promoted by the French elites.
The very same elites who 20 years ago created and covertly financed SOS Racisme and its moronic slogan "Touche pas a mon pote" (don't touch my buddy) have now declared that Muslims are, after all, a serious problem. While in the past these elites were systematically ridiculing Christianity, they are now saying that "Islam is not compatible with the Republic". As for the youth in the "banlieues", they are now presented as potential terrorist or al-Qaeda sleepers. As a result, when the French elites are not legalizing homosexual marriages they are busy banning the hijab in schools and complaining about too much halal meats in the stores. And while only a tiny percentage of Muslim woman in France cover their faces, the French elites have now officially banned the burqa and the niqab in public places. Clearly, Muslim immigrants in France have now been downgraded from "buddies" to enemies.
It is against this background that more and more young immigrants are flocking to Soral, Dieudonne and E&R whose popularity is rapidly growing. Recently, an absolutely incredible event took place, something unthinkable just a few years ago.
In one of his sketches Dieudo sang a song called "Shoananas" a rather basic play on the words 'Shoah' (from the Hebrew 'HaShoah' or 'disaster' - name by which the French Jews often refer to the "Holocaust") and 'ananas' (pineapple). Sure enough, the CRIF, SOS Racisme and other organization sued Dieudo for "incitement to hatred". Dieudo was sentenced to a 20'000 Euros fine and he appealed the decision. On the day Dieudo's appeal was heard by the court, something absolutely extraordinary happened. I found two YouTube videos which show the event and which I will both show because of the high probability that one, or both, of these videos will be banned (guys - download them now while you can!). Here they are:
Short version:
Longer version:
For those of you who do not understand French, let me summarize what we see.
Members of the Jewish Defense League (LDJ) show up to scream insults at Dieudo and his supporters who, in turn, shout all types of abuse at the LDJ members and wave pineapples at them while sining "Shoananas". The cops keep the two sides apart as best they can. Then the supporters of Dieudo begin to chant "liberte d'expression" (freedom of speech) to which the LDJ members reply "am Israel hai" ("Israel is alive" in Hebrew) and begin to sing the Israeli national anthem. At this point the supporters being to sing the French "La Marseillaise" from the top of their lungs totally drowning out the completely overwhelmed LDJ activists. Now take a close look at the faces singing "La Marseillaise" - do you see that a lot of the people singing it are clearly Brown and Black? These are precisely the type young people taken mostly, but not only, from the notorious 'banlieues'. These could be the same people who in 2001 and 2002 booed the French national anthem during soccer matches (a big scandal at the time).
The Marseillaise is first and foremost a revolutionary song, and when it is not so much sung as it is shouted by a large crowd waving fists, this is a very very serious development. Needless to say, none of that was ever shown on the French media. But you can bet that the elites saw it all and one can only imagine the fear they felt as these images.
Coincidence or not, but the fact is that when the cops heard the crowd behind them singing the Marseillaise, they began pushing the LDJ activist out of the court-building. This is not very surprising considering the immense popularity Dieudo and Soral enjoy in the various uniformed services (more about that below).
Something very important and very new is happening in France. The traditional political paradigm of Right versus Left is falling apart if only because the official "Right" and the official "Left" have become indistinguishable from each other. And in the meantime, the E&R phenomenon is becoming not only bigger, but deeper. More and more young Frenchmen are looking back at the history of France since 1945 and they are gradually coming to the realization that the country has been rule by a arrogant cabal of plutocrats who overthrew de Gaulle in 1968 and who replaced this remarkable national leader with a protégé of the Rothschild family, Georges Pompidou, who began is career as a director of the Banque Rothschild and who was later by the French elites to replace de Gaulle. The French plutocracy which, together with the CIA, had covertly orchestrated the "May 68" riots to achieve "regime change" in France, now had free reign to radically change the "sovereignist" political course chartered by de Gaulle. Can you guess when the policy of mindless import of cheap foreign labor into France began? Under Pompidou, of course! Now, thanks for E&R both native and immigrant French people are re-discovering their common history and are beginning to understand that they both were victims of the same politicians.
In the meantime, the regime in power commits one blunder after the other. The latest one is both very funny and very serious. This is the huge scandal surrounding the "quenelle".
Originally, the ""quenelle"" was a French dish which, if well prepared, could be quite delicious. This is what a "quenelle" made with pike looks like:
Dieudonne did probably not realize the far reaching consequences of his words when he began referring to each of his jokes mocking of the regime in power as a "quenelle". To add some emphasis, Dieudo than began to show, with his arms, the various sizes of ""quenelle"s" which he, or his supporters, were "putting" to the elites. The small ones were shown has having the length of about a hand, while the big ones, the really successful ones, where shown as having the full length of an outstretched arm. This is a typical image of Dieudo showing a "big "quenelle"":
To make things worse, it became something of a sport to approach well-known personalities and to have a photo taken next to them while flashing the "quenelle". People were making "quenelle"s everywhere, especially when photographed next to regime officials.
Check this photo of the French Minister of the Interior, Manuel Valls, a rabid Zionist who has openly called for the repression of Dieudonne and Soral in a major speech in from the a congress of the Socialist Party:
Valls is the clueless grinning idiot in the middle, surrounded by a group of young Frenchmen flashing the "quenelle". Needless to say, when this photo was published the entire country exploded in laughter, making the "quenelle" even more famous.
In the meantime, the League against Racism and anti-Semitism (the equivalent of the US ADL in France) declared that the "quenelle" was an "inverted Nazi salute and a symbol of the sodomization of the victims of the Shoah", I kid you not! Predictably, the French Internet exploded in laughter. The regime did not find that funny at all and it reacted with the kind of paranoia which one would expect from dictators like Stalin or Saddam Hussein: it literally launched a witch-hunt to try to detect more or less overt ""quenelle"s" and when such a gesture was detected, it attempted to punish those responsible if they were civil servants, especially in the police and military. And, sure enough, the Internet was flooded with all types of folks flashing the "quenelle" in defiance of the regime's wrath.
Dieudo, of course, invited uniformed officials to come to his theater in Paris to perform a "quenelle" onstage, with him. He also created a website solely dedicated to photos of uniformed people defiantly flashing the sign: http://www.dieudosphere.com/les-"quenelle"s.html
Now the regime is completely lost and confused. On one hand, it is simply impossible to sanction all the people who flash such signs, even disciplining only those in uniform is impossible. Initially, the French Chief of Staff had demanded "exemplary sanctions" against the first two soldiers who flashed a "quenelle" (in front of a synagogue they were ordered to guard), but now he have to punished entire crowds of defiant soldiers, most of whom hate the regime anyway. On the other hand, how can the regime ignore the fact that it is being openly defied, mocked and ridiculed?
Here we are reaching a topic whose importance cannot be overstated: how can one achieve regime change in a democracy who has been completely bought and paid for by a plutocracy? This is question which is as absolutely crucial for France, as it is for the USA, the UK or any other EU country and the reply to this crucial seems to have eluded most of the million of people in the West who are completely disgusted with the regime in power but who see absolutely no realistic way to change it.
Violence is clearly not an option. The regime has been very clever to label any form of "direct action" as "terrorism" while creating a monstrous spy-state which would dwarf Ceausescu's Securitate. If you try as much as throwing a brick at a politician, they will call you a terrorist and lock you up for many decades.
Playing the electoral game is futile. The plutocrats own the media which, standing on the shoulders of folks like Edward Bernays has learned how to brainwash a population far more effectively that Hitler or Kim Il-Sung ever could. Basically, as shown by yesterday's vote in the US state of Washington, elections are bought. Period. "One man one vote" has long been replaced by "one dollar one vote".
Trying to convince people by regular information campaigns has proven useless too. If anything the double facts that the 9/11 Truth movement has proven far beyond reasonable doubt that the Twin Towers and WTC7 have been brought down by controlled demolition AND the fact that his has had exactly zero impact on the political process in the USA proves that most people have been either zombified beyond rescue or have given up hope in complete disgust and despair.
And yet we, the common folk, do have one formidable weapon left: we can demonstratively show our total lack of respect for this regime and its values. Like Dieudo, we can do that through humor and laughter. God knows we all need a reason to laugh nowadays! And we can do it by showing our complete contempt for all the institutions the regime tries so hard to make us respect. First and foremost, we need to "diss" the voice of the regime - the corporate media - and we need to "diss" the holy liturgy of the regime - the elections. But we cannot do just that as this is only a first step. Next, we need to follow the example of Dieudo and Soral and use each opportunity to openly express our absolute contempt for every shill showing respect of this regime and its values. Not only that, but we need to denounce these propagandists as "paid regime stooges" (which, of course, they are). Lastly, we need to force the regime to show its true face by forcing it to take action against us.
Humor plays a crucial role here because - at least for the time being - it has not been declared illegal. Humor is also a formidable weapon to attack a regime's legitimacy. Here I think of the many sketches which the late George Carlin made about the regime in the USA, like these:
Carlin was brilliant, but he did not have the immense opportunity which Dieudo and Soral are now using with devastating effectiveness: a large percentage of the population which is already not only deeply alienated by the regime in power, but which has the cultural, religious and historical roots to dare look at another model: I am talking about the Muslim immigrants in France.
Sure, the USA has the Nation of Islam lead by a pretty interesting leader, Louis Farrakhan, but the problem with the NOI is that its teachings are not truly Islamic and that cuts them off from the rest of the much larger Islamic world. Besides, ever since the murder of Malcolm X by two NOI activists I suspect that the NOI has been thoroughly infiltrated by FBI plants.
In France, however, the Islamic community has a much more organic link to the Islamic world, including to countries like Iran which fosters a far more refined and sophisticated look at the flaws of modern society than either the pro-regime mosques in France and abroad or the Wahabis.
It is, of course, ironical that the French who for many years have seen the Muslim immigration to their country as a curse are now coming to slowly realize that this might well have been a blessing. I do not mean to paint a rosy picture of Islam in France: there are plenty of unsolved problems to tackle both for the natives and the immigrants, and certain forms of Islam are probably really not compatible with the original French traditions and culture. And yes, there are many signs that the current social brew might explode sooner or later. But the phenomenon of Dieudo, Soral and E&R gives me the hope that this explosion does not have to be a destructive one, that it could also be a liberating one.
What I am sure of is that some form of explosion will happen. Not only if France ruined economically, but the regime in power is loosing its legitimacy literally day by day. Should it come to a confrontation, and that is a very real possibility in France, it is by no means certain that the police and security forces will continue to remain loyal to the plutocracy in power which, after all, has only made the life of the regular cop much worse. I can easily imagine a "bank holiday" turning into a violent uprising and after that, anything could happen. One of the most knowledgeable observer of the French political scene - economist and author Pierre Jovanovic - believes that President Francois Hollande will not even be able to finish his current term in office.
Of course, I do not expect Dieudo or Soral to become President or Prime Minister, neither will E&R become a big political party anytime soon (not to mention that it's creators did not register it as a party). That is not the point. What I do hope for is that this movement will trigger a re-definition of the French political scene and create a force bold enough to take on the current power establishment head-on, something which has not happened since May of 1968 (the National Front, whose rise was secretly aided by the French Socialists in order to split the French right has long been fully co-opted into the system). Considering the many deep systemic and structural crises currently plaguing Europe, France could lead by example, if only because France's problems are not much different from those facing the rest of western Europe.
The Saker