I noted after the recent anti-immigrant riots in Ireland that the natural thing for any government to do in that situation would be to try to placate the mob. Instead, the government vowed revenge against popular sentiment.
Just so, in this situation in France, where you have vigilante groups forming to do the job cops won’t do, the logical response from the cops would be to give amnesty to all of the vigilantes and then swear that the cops are going to do a better job in the future. Instead, the government is vowing revenge against vigilantes.
What I’m saying here is not controversial. Whenever you have normally law-abiding citizens rising up and engaging in violence, and being backed by the majority of the population, the government is doing something very wrong, and the government should by rights respond by addressing the issues that led to the formation of extrajudicial violence.
I’ve given the very recent and very obvious example of the riots in China against the virus measures. The Chinese government – which we’re told is “authoritarian” and “autocratic” – didn’t respond by doing mass arrests of the protests. Instead, they very quickly announced, in response to the mass protests, that they would be immediately loosening the virus restrictions.
When a mob forms, it is not simply representative of the people in the mob. That’s not the way a society works. When a mob forms, it is representative of widespread popular sentiment. That’s why, all throughout history, going back to Ancient Rome and presumably before, when a mob formed it was considered by the government to demonstrate a need for policy change.
The French government has issued a plea against vigilantism in the wake of the slaying of a teenager in rural France by a group reported to have shouted “stab white people”.
A representative of Emmanuel Macron’s French government has now visited the rural community of Crépol where, over a week ago, a gang of “outsiders” raided the annual village dance and stabbed several people, killing sixteen-year-old Thomas. It is reported witnesses heard the attackers say “We are here to stab white people”.
In remarks that followed not only attack, but which appear to have been more aimed at the reaction among the public to the brutal attack, government spokesman Olivier Veran said the state shared the pain of those impacted, but warned people should not be tempted to take the law into their own hands.
Well, the issue is: the cops are not taking the law into their hands.
From the beginning of governments and police, when the police didn’t enforce the law, the people started to do it.
It’s a tale as old as Batman.
(Pretty sweet gun Bats has got there.)
Veran said it was for the judiciary to dispense justice, not the French people, and that there was a risk of society reaching a tipping point over the attack and response, reports Le Figaro. He said: “Can’t stand these violent gangs anymore? We neither. What cost Thomas his life was neither a news item nor a brawl. There is a risk of our society tipping over if we are not up to the task… we do not respond to violence with violence, but with justice”.
There might be something lost in translation here, but “justice” is violence. I mean, just think of the Justice League. What do they do?
They beat people up.
For those who felt motivated to strike back at the migrant community they perceived as being behind the death of Thomas at the village dance, justice came swiftly this week, with six people receiving sentences of six to ten months in prison each for their involvement in what was described as an “ultra-right” demonstration in the town of Romans-sur-Isère on Saturday. The group were also debarred from standing for election for five years with their conviction on Monday.
This is just sick.
These “ultra-rightists” (I like the term, actually) are trying to protect the city.
The police defend the criminals!
The march, featured in the above video, took place on the 25th – six of the participants are already sentenced!
The court system moves swift when you’re white!
It was claimed that some of the young people who launched the attack on the Crépol dance had travelled from the Romans-sur-Isère suburb of Drôme and the prosecution said this “ultra-right” group had gone there in return to exact revenge for the death. Among those in court were reported to have been a soldier, a computer developer, and students between the ages of 18 and 25.
This is an actual Justice League.
Or maybe The Ultimates.
I recently re-read the first two Ultimates, by the way, and they really hold up – even if Mark Millar is a total fag now.
The public prosecutor warned “No one can take justice into their own hands outside the law” and that anyone who tried would be punished.
The French government followed up the prosecutions with the statement it was going to ban three “ultra-right” groups it said was responsible for the march on the migrant neighbourhood at the weekend, one of which it named as the ‘Martel Division’, presumably named for the 8th century Frankish leader who united France and played a pivotal role in turning back Islamic occupation of Europe at the Battle of Tours.
Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin said of the ban: “I am going to propose the end of a group called the Martel Division. Just the name obviously scares us… I believe that there is a mobilization among the ultra-right which wants to push us, as Mr. Roussel said, into civil war… No one is going to replace the State.”
Actually, history shows very clearly: when the state refuses to do its job, while continuing to collect taxes and force people to do things against their will, someone does replace the state.
The fact that all of this domestic unrest is happening across the continent at the same time that the Europeans are attempting to launch a three-front war against most of the rest of the world does not bode well.
If Europe intensifies the war on Russia, and joins the wars in the Middle East and Asia, this is going to create a lot of pain at home. It’s going to be a whole lot harder to crack down on angry mobs. The masses of people – who one has to assume already support these mobs to a large extent – will start joining the mobs.
None of this appears to be very well thought-through.
Snake Baker contributed to this article.