Pave: "100% French" Mystery Youths On The Move

Le jour 143 de Sarko

We have to say that, and it is important to also understand the real nature of these movements [i.e., the pan-France riots of 2005], there is no ethnic or religious basis of this movement, as we can see in some other parts of the world. But it is true that the feeling of discrimination, the feeling of maybe not having the same equal chance... but what is interesting, is that most of these young people, they want to be 100 percent French.

Dom,
the seagull and then-PM,
waving off the 2005 riots on his watch
PARIS November 28, 2005 (CNN*)

And what better way to express your 100 percent Frenchness than mobbing and mayhem, one of the great national pastimes of France.

YOUTHS RIOT IN FRENCH TOWN**

SAINT-DIZIER October 5, 2007 (AFP) - French police clashed overnight with youths who went on a rampage in a town in eastern France, prompting Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to travel to the troublespot.

Between 40 and 50 masked youths used metal bars to smash a firefighters' vehicle and a police car dispatched to a shopping mall in Saint-Dizier, said Yves Guillot, the head of the Haute-Marne regional government.

The youths then fanned out across the town of 30,000 inhabitants, setting fire to two buildings, a car rental office and 16 vehicles. Police reinforcements were sent in to quell the violence.

Again the AFP did not get a good look at the mystery youths -- and forgot to canvas witnesses for details.*** AP manages to at least have gotten a peek.

DOZENS OF YOUTHS ATTACK POLICE PATROL, SET FIRES IN FRANCE

SAINT-DIZIER October 5, 2007 (IHT/AP) - The rampage in a tough neighborhood in Saint-Dizier, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) east of Paris, revived memories of a wave of car burnings, vandalism and clashes with police by youths in 2005 fanned by feelings of alienation among French youths of Arab and African origin.

... Police have little or no control in some housing projects, where they face insults, projectiles or worse when they enter. Firefighters, as symbols of the state, have also come under attack and at times get a police escort on their way in.

Sporadic incidents of violence are not uncommon in the Vert-Bois neighborhood, whose population is relatively young and made up mainly of north African, Roma and native French people.

The curious construction "native French people" we understand to mean those French whose 100 percent Frenchness is 100 percent ethnically zero.

Oh. [Pause.] By the way. All 40 to 50 mystery youths successfully escaped. No arrests were made.

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* The complete transcript of this astonishing interview can be read here.

** Absolutely no Muslims or Maghrébins sighted during the writing of this report.

*** Sometimes the news services look long enough to get a peek at rioters. Here the AFP identifies the Boulogne Kop, a clutch of white PSG football fans, wilding. And here, the NYT identifies white college-age students protesting electoral outcomes.

PFFT (What is this?): 100% French mystery youths ½ | Rayonnement français 0