What began as civil unrest in the northern suburbs of Paris a week and a half ago is now spreading in a “shock wave” of rioting across France. During the eleventh night of violence, gangs of young men burned 1,408 vehicles in dozens of cities, French national police chief Michel Gaudin said today. Ten riot police were injured “with fine-grain birdshot fired by youths” during a confrontation last night, the Washington Post is reporting, and a man beaten on Friday today became the first fatality of the disturbances.
It’s a confusing, complex story, and one now that is sprawling out of control across a wide geographic area. It has, however, given many bloggers a bevy of fresh media material for dissection — in particular, the hesitant terminology they have seen in news reports.
“Turn on almost any broadcast or cable newscast and you’ll hear all about” the rioting, writes Neal Boortz, who gripes that much of it is being attributed to the same vague “youths” the Washington Post refers to. “Now that we’ve reached the eleventh night of this violence, you will hear the occasional newscaster actually say the ‘M’ word. Every once in a while … but very sparingly … someone will breach the walls of political correctness and actually let you know that these ‘youths’ are Muslims.”
Hugh Fitzgerald, vice president of the incredibly named “Jihad Watch,” piles on in his assessment of the coverage. In Fitzgerald’s eyes, “So much nonsense is appearing” from NPR to the New York Times, “where Craig Smith is outdoing himself day by day and leaving a nice record for someone to dissect”:
Everything has been done to deny completely any Muslim connection. According to NPR, “young men” rioted in France. These “young men” were also “disaffected youth.” They were “angry and frustrated” because they, these “young men,” were “jobless.” These “jobless” young men and their families lived in “bleak” housing projects and though all medical care and education was free for them (all of it, period) these “young men” were “angry and frustrated” because apparently the state subsidies are not enough to overcome that “anger” and “frustration” and those “demands” which must be met.
Over at The Right Place, “youths” comes under fire, as does “North African” and “African,” with scarcely any reference to Islam or Muslims to be found in the coverage. “Perhaps the writers fear that labeling the rioters by what they are might inflame anti-Muslim prejudice,” The Right Place writes, “But this omission could lead to a false perception by the reader of the issues at hand.” Which, of course, gives The Right Place yet another opportunity to engage in a little blog triumphalism: “The unwillingness of the MSM to ‘tell it like it is’ is the prime reason for the growth of the alternative media, as well as the decline in the MSM’s audience.”
Mister Snitch! takes on not the MSM, but, rather, lefty bloggers, for their general silence on the story. His “by necessity very incomplete” survey of blogs last night showed that “most sites we examined are ignoring one of the year’s most important stories,” while “The one that did mention the riots did not delve too far into their origins.”
For a smart piece examining those origins, we recommend a post by Doug Ireland, a political journalist who lived in France for nearly a decade. Ireland, who has reported on French suburban ghettos many times, says he has “not been surprised by this tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion that is engulfing France. It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes — of both right and left — to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing.”
This being the blogosphere, Ireland’s own politics should be taken into account, but he does accomplish that rarest of blogging feats: He actually adds some intelligent backstory and context, instead of merely sniping at the work of others.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.