April 27, 2021 - 3:33pm
France is obsessed with dates. Almost every town has a street named after a significant date – frequently the day of liberation from the Nazis.
So when twenty retired French generals published an intemperate open letter warning of “civil war” on 21 April, it was a deliberately provocative move. The date marks 60 years to the day after a group of retired generals and some active officers tried to mount a coup against President Charles de Gaulle to prevent him giving Algeria its independence.
The letter talks of a military coup unless the government did something or other to combat “Islamism” and the “hordes” rampaging in the multi-racial suburbs. Not only is the language provocative, but it is also absurdly extreme: “growing chaos…civil war…final explosion…intervention by our active comrades…cowardly politicians… responsible for thousands of deaths.” No practical suggestions were made of what the government might do.
The first signature was that of Christian Piquemal, a former head of the Foreign Legion, aged 80, who has a history of involvement with racist organisations. His letter was published by Valeurs Actuelles, a far-Right magazine, before it was picked up elsewhere.
What to make of all this? The first thing to say is that we are one year from the first round of a French presidential election.
Within three days of the publication of the letter (addressed to President Emmanuel Macron), the far-Right leader Marine Le Pen responded in the same magazine by praising the far-sightedness of the retired generals and appealing to them to join her in a “peaceful…battle for France”.
I have no proof that this was a pre-arranged statement and response. I suspect that it was.
The second thing to say is that France is indeed struggling against Islamist extremism. The country has suffered more than 30 Islamist terror attacks in the last six years, including the beheading of a teacher last October.
In the most recent attack, a 39-year-old police administrative officer was stabbed to death by a young Tunisian outside her workplace in the quiet town of Rambouillet south of Paris last Friday.
The third thing to say is that the great majority of France’s five million Muslims are hard-working and law-abiding and want to get on with their lives. Referring to them generically as “hordes” (as the letter does) is an attempt to inflame France’s problems, not to solve them.
Finally, the letter contains a great lie. The retired generals accuse politicians, and President Macron, of “evasions” and “guilty silences”.
Is this, one wonders, the same President Macron who is accused of “Islamophobia” by part of the French Left and racism by the U.S. media because he has brought forward a new law this year to crack down on radical Islam? You can dispute whether Macron’s approach is correct; whether it goes too far; or not far enough. Our generals pretend that it hasn’t happened at all.
Conclusion: a disgraceful letter and a dangerous one. Marine Le Pen’s pre-cooked endorsement may do her more electoral harm than good.
John Lichfield was Paris correspondent of The Independent for 20 years. Half-English and half-Belgian, he was born in Stoke-on-Trent and lives in Normandy.
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Subscribe“The great majority of France’s five million Muslims are hard-working and law-abiding and want to get on with their lives”
The problem is that, like everywhere else they go, Muslims wish to get on with their lives separated and ghettoised from the wider society and culture of the country they occupy, and demand that advanced liberal democracies defer to the religious and ideological tenets of Islam. This demand is backed by an implicit fear of extreme violent reprisal for those who offend against Islam.
As the demographics play out, and the Islamic population of Europe grows, so too will its political power and demands.In due course, the established political parties will be abandoned and Islamic specific political parties will form. In countries with proportional representation, they will have the numbers to be power brokers. In first past the post countries such as Britain, their geographical concentration will yield a disproportionate number of seats.
While a Muslim population the single digits might be sustainable a population of 20% or more will wield considerable political power and set up an irresolvable conflict of values within European democracies that will inevitably result in violent conflict. Islam is a supremacist ideology of conquest. It does not seek to live with other faiths and cultures but to colonise and replace them.
Either Europeans finally muscularly assert the values and ideals that have been hard fought for over centuries, and demand Muslims accept them or leave. or we are destined in the decades to come for the return of a Europe blighted by religious conflict.
One has to wonder as to why much of the political class of Europe and much of the self regarding progressive commentariat have taken the knee to Islam, a submissive position that can only be to the detriments of native Europeans and their cultures and traditions.
The response here and in other media outlets to this letter has been so bitter that one wonders if it has struck a nerve?
As I understand the argument an 18th century person like Captain Cook should have had the sensibility of a 21st century woke person when he arrived in Australia & simply left. However these same people do not think that these dear visiters to our shores should be expected to behave in the same fashion if they do not feel they can adapt to the usual European rules. Instead the majority should adapt to a way of thinking that countries such as England have never followed , and the countries in Europe that did ,decided otherwise many centuries ago.
There was an article a while ago about a man called Sir John Bagot who described the rise and fall of empires & it seems the west is definitely in the latter stage and this sort of self-defeating behaviour is typical.
Another option is that people could vote instead of sitting at home watching Eastenders.
Vote for whom? A supposedly “patriotic” party that will cut immigration and push back against the woke SJW culture? We did that, they won, look what we got.
Stupid frogs do not even realize the water is getting hot fast.
Agreed. An excellent riposte to the “journalist” author of this article. I do not subscribe to the “lived experience” nonsense so often trotted out as part of the limited vocabulary of the useful idiots, but the author fails to see the rising anger arising from our own very real daily experiences of the erosion of Western liberties leveraged by vocal minorities who are pushing at the open door of weak liberal leadership. Contrary to the political placeholders in the upper echelons of the British forces, the French Generals (retired or otherwise) have had the courage to voice the concerns of the public at large who do not seem to have a resonant voice in the leadership of any of the Western democracies.
PS Using the standard lazy tactic of equivalence “Is this, one wonders, the same President Macron who is accused of “Islamophobia” by part of the French Left and racism by the U.S. media ” has no traction here. There is no equality of terrorism in France or Europe in general and the Muslim population is vastly over represented in this area.
If it is terribly wrong for people to vote populist across Europe (and in the USA for D Trump) and if it is terribly wrong for the French generals to behave as they have done, could you, Mr Lichfield, suggest some way for ordinary citizens in countries like ours to get government to care about stopping mass immigration, particularly the immigration of people who hate our societies and the best of their traditions?
Do we all take up, nationwide, morris dancing and do that in alternate weeks, rather than working?
Do we have a tax strike and endure the consequences, even if it means the authorities putting the entire population in prison?
Please suggest a method which might get the politicians and bureaucrats and corporate media enablers, and the rest of the meritless ‘meritocracy’ and incompetent ‘elites’, to pay attention to valid concerns on this score: a method which is at once one you find non-disgraceful and non-dangerous enough but which is effective in putting this very frightening concern front and centre of the ruling class’s agenda.
No one is saying that France’s 5 million RoP adherents are all active terrorists. It only needs a couple of hundred – less indeed – to terrorise a country full-time; that, and a hinterland of silent toleration from fellow-religionists in sufficient numbers who, either from fear or sympathy, don’t shop them to the police.
This was/is the problem in Ireland.
It was the problem with the Bolsheviks in Russia.
They don’t need huge numbers to succeed, just very small numbers with not actively hostile communities across the map.
“It only needs a couple of hundred – less indeed – to terrorise a country full-time;”
Thank you Peter, I would only add, why do some communities (with very readily identifiable and consistent ethnic and religion patterns) continually produce small but highly dangerous numbers of petty criminals and, more seriously, actual terrorists? You don’t ever see Thai Buddhists in France shooting up the place.
The problem with religion is that the vast proportion of followers do not understand it. In the Catholic past, the true religion was in Latin and the corrupt priests were the ones who interpreted it. Today the true Islam is in Arabic and has to be interpreted by the imams.
Those “corrupt” priests also kept the knowledge alive in Europe for centuries and today they produce fantastic beer (try the Trappists ones) .
And it is not as if the Protestants are covering themselves in glory.
Catholics (and later Orthodox Russians) hammered the Muslims out out of Europe. It was Protestant England (and later Germany) that kept the Ottomans alive while Christians suffered under their rule.
I am anti-religion. I agree that religion in the past was important for knowledge and art. But it doesn’t necessarily make up for the ‘Irish Problem’ or for the priests selling indulgences in past times.
It definitely does Chris. Humans are flawed, and if you take religion away something worse fills the void. Give me venal corrupt priests any day over an ‘open-priesthood’ where anyone can claim greater holiness and attention. Being anti-religion is like being anti-music; after all, Mozart doesn’t realise make up for Lady Gaga, right?
We have new religions and gods nowadays. They are tv, celebs and football.
The country and its economy are falling to pieces around an over exagerated pandemic, people are dying due to lack of treatment from nhs, people have given up most of their freedoms to an over zealous govt. etc etc, and hardly a word of protest.
Try to change the way a game of football and its inherant money laundering is managed, and the govt, royalty and msm are up in arms.
It truly was a bizarre incident wasn’t it? It’s like we can lose our basic liberties, legal protections, have our borders invaded, have vast sums of money extorted from us by tax, thousands of British children gang raped by foreigners, our elderly murdered through neglect in care homes and hospitals, but OH MY GOD did you hear about this new super-league!!!???? We have to act now lads!!!!
I do not understand my own country sometimes. (well, I do but the understanding brings no comfort).
That is still happening today. Christians are being persecuted and murdered throughout the World, in China, Middle East etc., and our pretend Christian govts in the West ignore it.
For evil to succeed, it just needs good men to do nothing.
Real good questions for JOHN LICHFIELD to respond to Peter. His attitude is the same that led the population to vote for Brexit the first chance it got. If the populations real & main concerns are constantly ignored by the “politicians and bureaucrats and corporate media enablers” the population will eventually make these choices for them. Sadly next time it may not be via the ballot box.
Well said.
“I have no proof that this was a pre-arranged statement and response. I suspect that it was.”
This is journalism?
I have no proof of what part of the political spectrum you occupy, but I suspect I know.
And it is very evident which part of that spectrum YOU occupy.
Great comeback. And you refute his argument that the author has not exercised due diligence how?
“The third thing to say is that the great majority of France’s five million Muslims are hard-working and law-abiding and want to get on with their lives.”
Oh yawn. This hog don’t wash anymore. Much as it saddens me, war is coming. The nations are rising Mr Lichfield. The generals are right.
Hard working? So their contribution not the exchequer through taxation exceeds their benefit receipt? I think not.
General Christian Piquemal was brutally arrested (knocked to the ground and manhandled) in Calais, while preparing to give a speech. He was imprisoned subsequently.
This article is the lowest of the low i have so far encountered on this site. Wash your mouth out, Lichfield.
I have said for some years that I believe there is a 5 to 10% chance of a military coup in France. They do, at least, still have a military, although quite a lot it is chasing Islamic militants around the Sahel.
The alternative to the 5 to 10% chance of a military coup is a 90 to 95% chance that France becomes an Islamic country. At which point, the likes of this writer will not be allowed to write in any meaningful sense.
It doesn’t appear to me that Lichfield has any intention to write in any meaningful sense anyway.
True. I’ve been reading him for about 30 years now as, believe it or not, there was a time when I bought or read The Independent almost every day. He was once, or at least appeared to be, an interesting reporter from France, but is now beyond all reason.
I don’t know that I’d put the probability as high as 10%, Fraser, but I certainly agree with you that it isn’t 0%.
History talks to us here. In 1789 the French middle-class woke left ejected the regime and its institutions and replaced it with a vacuous republic, which was itself ejected 11 years later and replaced by another monarchy. The Napoleonic monarchy lasted longer than the republic because he controlled the army, but it was one generation deep, so after Napoleon’s death, the Bourbon and then Bonapartist restoration, the interim settlement was a form of republic that’s 1/ only about 150 years old and 2/ legitimately deposable by military force, like all its antecedent regimes.
I don’t know who these generals speak for, but there is absolutely no element of “it couldn’t happen here” about a military coup in France, because it has, it does, and it is respectable. The general at the head of any such coup will be declaring himself to be a new Napoleon, not a new Cromwell or Pinochet.
What on earth do you mean when you say a government is “legitimately deposable by military force”?
Legitimacy is conferred by success.
If it fails they were traitors.
SIMPLES!
Very droll. Not sure that’s what Jon Redman was getting at, though. But who knows – maybe he is a would be far-right generalissimo?
Simply that once one regime has ejected another by force of arms, claimed legitimacy, and the claim been allowed, a precedent has been established that makes any later coup d’etat just as legitimate.
I think I’m right in saying that every change of French regime since 1789 has been brought about by civil bloodshed. There was 1789, then Napoleon’s coup of 1799, his military defeat in 1814 and ousting by his generals, his military ejection of the Bourbons in 1815, his second forced abdication, the 1848 revolution that overthrew the Bourbons, the military coup d’etat of 1851 whereby the President appointed himself Emperor, the defeat of 1871 that saw in the 3rd Republic, the defeat of 1940 that produced first Vichy then the 4th Republic, and the Algerian civil war that replaced it in 1958 with the current 5th Republic. And of course the usual middle-class rioters were on the streets again in 1968.
Do you notice the pattern? Use of military force or a mob to establish a new regime in France is not regarded as delegitimising of it, because for the last 250-odd years, that’s how they’ve all been established.
Lots of things have happened historically that we (in various societies around the world) no longer consider quite so acceptable. I’m not sure your historical argument would mean that either French society would consider a military coup acceptable, or that it could be justified on a philosophical basis that is compatible with democracy.
Interestingly the Turkish army saw itself as a simliar sort of guardian of the country’s secular democracy, but their last attempted coup in defence of that principle seemed to meet popular opposition. Although in retrospect I’m not sure all those who opposed the coup would be happy with the elected president’s response, that’s mere speculation on my part. The only thing we can tell definitively is that there seemed little popular appetite there for coups of the sort you consider legitimised by French (and perhaps Turkish) history.
“France’s generals have disgraced themselves.Threatening a military coup has dangerous ramifications”
Just told it how it is, that’s all. So that upsets you – Big deal.
Are you suggesting that coups or other violent changes of government are a good thing? Historical evidence suggests otherwise.
Better a coup and, perhaps, some hope for France instead of the inevitable and inexorable slide towards total Islamization.
Coups and revolutions are always dressed in the best of motives – until they start to devour their children.
Yes, that’s why a restoration of the monarchy would be the best option 🙂
I didn’t say violent change was a good idea – Did I?
You seem have a problem with comprehension. Why don’t you learn to engage with what people have actually said, rather than with your fantasies.
On closer inspection, I see that your statement is not as clear as I thought. Sorry for the suggestion.
Are you saying that France’s generals are “telling it like it is”, but that the generals are not “threatening a military coup”, and that Mr Lichfield is therefore not justified in being disturbed by the “serious repercussions” that such a threat (if serious) would encourage? Or what?
“I have no proof that this was a pre-arranged statement and response” – but despite that I’ll put it out there anyway. If you’re a journalist shouldn’t you try and find some proof first?
The primary job of many journalists these days is to get the smear or innuendo out there first, regardless of the facts.
don’t be so old-fashioned.
Whether they have disgraced themselves or not depends on what you consider the military’s role to be. There are three institutions that pre-date the French Republic that continue to operate: the Army, the Navy and the Quai d’Orsay. I am fairly certain that a good number of military officers see the military’s role as serving France first and the Republic second. To someone from the Anglophone countries that sounds rather odd, but it certainly isn’t odd from the perspective of many European military traditions. They are not claiming the power to make policy, but they are warning the government that should its policies fail and should civil unrest get out of control they may decide to shove the politicians aside and restore order. If you know French history (or that of many European states), such an assertion would not seem unexpected.
The main trouble with islam, is that the founder and his book support and promote violence against every non believer and follower of every other religion.
There is no such thing as a moderate muslim. If they are not willing to turn their back on mohammed and the koran, they are believers in a religion that is a threat to us and our families.
We have a right to defend ourselves against people that follow a religion that targets us.
All followers of this religion need to be removed, and i can’t see them doing so without pressure being applied.
The reconquest of Spain is the template. It proves however bad and irreversible it looks, it is a totally reversible situation.
My money is on Italy rather than France being the first to seize the moment. Check the polls, Salvini has lost a few % points, but Brothers Of Italy are flying.
Once Italy takes action the rest of europe will follow, and i am sure the silent majority will be with it.
Dhimmi is an interesting word if you do not know the concept, as I guess you do not by your post.
“In the dhimmi system (which was in itself Islamiclaw that extended rights and protections to religious minorities “ofthebook“) it is stated that ” [the People of the Book] must be shown gentleness (page 4)” as long as they have paid their tax in full.”
Actually worked pretty well in MENA till Nasser and his crusade for Arab Nationalism, from Pan-Arabism, and the 6 day war which set all the sides in stone, that the Christian and Jewish sections of every Muslim city and town began to migrate out, of necessity.
I suggest you ask the Coptic Christians and non muslims in Pakistan or minorities such as the Yazidi in Iraq about Dhimmitude:
It is the subordinate status of Chrisitans and Jews and all other non muslims under traditional Muslim rule — couldn’t ride a horse, couldnt repair places of worship, etc. Today, the condition Macron’s France and other European countries are sinking into.
Under Macron, non-Muslim France is sinking into a state of total dhimmitude.
Sure, and ask the Armenians and so on – but I was saying for the most part every Muslim city, and main towns, had a Christian and Jewish section which operated freely within the rules, and that this is a law of Islam. This began to fall apart in the 1960s, and by now virtually every Jew has been driven from almost every Muslim nation.
The Yazidi are not of the Book,
It is just another name for a protection racket.
‘Be grateful for second-class status because it’s better than death’ is quite the take but it’s also true. And your basic point that the Muslim world is on a retrograde course is also valid.
I do not think Christians and Jews in Islamic nations were so much second class, as under slightly different laws, but still given the freedoms of commerce, protection, justice – only allowed their own rules as well. In Iran the Christians still have a wine industry I believe, and always have, under Islamic government. Last I heard the last Rabbi of Kabul is holding a very valuable Talmud in his possession, protected by the changing Afghani governments.
One of the most interesting places was Lebanon. Beirut was the Zurich of the Levant…when it was Christian, Druze, and Muslim (Shia and Sunni) balanced. But when Arafat pushed in the Palestinians the balance was broken, and it dissolved into civil war (Israel certainly made it worse with the Shatila camp slaughter they managed… it was all a total disaster – the ultimate example of how ‘Diversity’ is NOT Strength!)
Another “Marcia su Roma”- March on Rome?
Even Churchill admired the first one, with some reason.
SO you start by criticising Islam for promoting violence against followers of other religions, and end by advocating violence against muslims, in some sort of medieval-style expulsion.
You are what you hate!
I simply advocate the right to self defence.
It sounds more like collective punishment (considered a war crime, interestingly enough).
“The great majority of France’s five million Muslims are hard-working and law-abiding and want to get on with their lives”
The great majority of pit bull terriers never kill a child. We should therefore not worry about pit bull terriers.
I genuinely wonder whether ‘the great majority’ of the muslim population of either England or France are ‘hard-working’ : a majority, possibly, but do we know what proportion of that community are claiming benefits? Are there any statistics on this?
There are stats, Fred, for the UK at least. If you google “Ethnicity facts and figures” you get the UK data.
The most economically inactive (“which means they were out of work and not looking for a job”) ethnicity is Pakistani / Bangladeshi; 39% are inactive.
The next most inactive groups are Asian and Asian Other, at 31%. Black and Mixed come next at 25 and 26% inactive.
White British are 20%.
There’s nothing hard-working about UK Muslims.
50% unemployment for muslim men in the uk, 75% for muslim women while they soak up taxpayers money to have large families that are then fed, housed, given medical care and education.
‘a 39-year-old police administrative officer’. She was 49 actually. I hope the rest of the piece is more trustworthy. 🙂
It is not. There’s the slandering of General Christian Piquemal for starters, you may want to read up on him and how the socialist Hollande govt handled him in Calais, 2016.
Ah yes. When he was arrested for giving a speech to a crowd that, by a remarkable coincidence, was part of a completely independent and illegal far-right anti-migrant demo which was nothing to do with him, and was happening around him, without his knowledge, and had just handed him a microphone for no reason.
What’s criminally atrocious is that an anti-illegal-migration demo can be labelled as “illegal” in France, an allegedly ‘democratic’ country where freedom of assembly is a civic right.
You can call it “far right” as you please, it still does not make them “far right”. Or it just means that what you call “far right” is the normal, rational, legitimate political stance. It certainly is when it comes to the position on illegal thirdworld immigration.
There’s zero excuse whatsoever for NOT opposing thirdworld mass-immigration into Europe.
Giving a speech to an assembled audience is not illegal. What is illegal is the destruction, vandalism, arson, looting and violence what leftwing riots (BLM etc.) regularly engage in, in France as well as elsewhere. Which riots are predominantly perpetrated by thirdworld immigrants.
So how far right does someone have to be to count as far right in your special book? Was Hitler far right? Front Nationale (or whatever they are called now)? Combat 18? Anders Brevik?Thomas Alexander Mair? John Timothy Earnest?
But people on here keep telling us that African-born Blacks are much more hardworking and virtuous than those allegedly dreadful and feckless and criminal Black people born in the west. Are rascists not able to keep their story straight any more?
It’s the political class and the apologists for islamofacism that have disgraced themselves. I’m with the generals.
As an officer, I don’t think what they did to be very prudent. However, from what I’ve read, it doesn’t appear to have been coordinated with Le Pen, and Fabre Bernadac appears to have distanced from her.
That being said, the concerns that they highlight on wokeness and disintegration are not without merit and reflect growing alarm at the pace and direction of events.
However, military people sometimes have an instinct to see military solutions in non-military problems. Threatening vaguely civil war or coup is very irresponsible though and risks undermining the constitution that they presume to protect. Only open liberal discourse can discredit wokeness and reclaim republican legitimacy. However, liberals (true sense of word) also need to take the gravity of the moment very seriously.
‘the far-Right leader Marine Le Pen’ Stopped after that, tired of this lazy labelling of people. An article on why you think she’s far right would be more enlightening. As far as I can see she’s a patriot and wants to confront the growing fundamentalist religion of peace, she wants a return to the France she remembers, what exactly is wrong with that? We now effectively have blasphemy laws in this country as well, a teacher in hiding for showing a cartoon.
This is the doing of the political class, maybe the retired Generals are correct.
Sweden or New Zealand.
USA? (This would seem impossible 4 months ago, With Biden “ in charge” much much more likely)
This seems highly unlikely in NZ or Sweden, and unconstitutional in the USA.
I suspect the Pakistani PM’s remarks are for internal consumption. There is an election this year, after all.
I would say that it is highly likely in all the countries you list. The politicians across the West have made their choice for us, and that choice is Islam. This has been apparent for some years now.
You forgot Canada. In this race to the bottom, they are a strong competitor.
I see no mention in the comments about the football match last night which was stopped because it was Ramadan and one of the players had to take sustenance at sunset.
As much as I would love England (same as France) to survive as European Nations in prosperity and freedom, those ideals are not always guaranteed to prevail if we allow an invasion to take place, invasion as in “immigrants who come with their own law for us to observe”, not really an immigrant, really an invader, if this continues it eventually will be a matter for the military, these particular immigrants have no love for democracy either. The generals in France and many of use everywhere observe the curve which we are on, and sadly it is getting worse every day. What we saw on June 7 2020 in London was what Enoch Powell had warned us of.
As Trotsky said, revolution is impossible until it becomes inevitable, Marxist idealists of Europe must touch base with reality!
The Empires were destroyed by the Marxists, in the UK case the Marxist landslide of 1945, and after that terrible event the successful colonies were destroyed creating the refugee crisis and loads of other cultures trying to get back the better European rule but not always prepared to take in the culture which created that rule. So we don’t have harmonious societies any more, that is the worst case, but even if the immigrants were prepared to accept the European culture there is simply not enough room and resources for them in Europe. We can’t recreate the Empires internally because the Marxists will see that they fail and will overthrow the state in that way.
The French Military have not disgraced themselves, they have stated a fact. There is a curve which we are all on and if we don’t get off that curve we will end up having to fight for what we love and for what is ours, or so we think, it will be put to the guns, and if irresponsible politicians allowed this to go that far, the guns will decide and then we will have to live with that.
These people demand rights for their minority position. However, once they become a majority, other minorities are denied any rights whatever.
There is a strong correlation between the proportion of Muslims in a country and the need for direct rule by the military. The Generals are just a little ahead of the curve.
A very good point!
Au regard des commentaires ci-dessous, vous aurez compris, Mr Lichfield, que les britanniques, peuple pragmatique, ont une meilleure connaissance de la menace qui plane sur mon pays que vous. En conclusion, occupez-vous de vos affaires et laissez faire les vrais défenseurs de notre civilisation.au lieu de prétendre défendre nos gouvernants actuels.
Très bien dit!
Your forgetting Cecil King and his comic opera fronde.
Un général ça ferme sa gueule, Massu told President de Gaulle in 1968. Army officers have no more right to a political voice – as opposed to their private opinion – than the fire brigade does. Today’s Figaro reports that 18 of the letter’s signatories are being summoned by a military council which is as it should be.These men need to be slapped down.
Earlier in Macron’s presidency, he got into a public fight with General Pierre de Villiers, the head of the armed forces over military budget cuts. The result was that de Villiers “resigned”.
It’s not the job of military officers to attack civilian leaders. If they have grievances, they make these known to the government privately or publicly via friendly politicians journalists.
There isn’t a general on the face of the earth who thinks he doesn’t have enough toys to play with but then he’s not the finance minister who juggles of all the competing demands for more public spending.
Un général fait de son mieux avec ce qu’on lui donne et garde ses grièfs pour lui. C’est ça son boulot.
To paraphrase Bismarck:
The great questions of France (West) will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.
Populists (Patriots) don’t want to accept the truth.
Perhaps we should hold a seance and ask Mr Bismarck which side has the most iron and is prepared to shed the most blood.
My point again is that a strong, organised religion wins, hands down, against a general population who think only of their own pleasures. I agree with Mr B.
Wouldn’t be quite so sure about that. Threaten my pleasures at your peril. Mess with my pleasures and God may have mercy upon your “strong, organised religion” and your stinking prophet and caliphate. (“you” in the rhetorical sense of course, not ‘you Chris’.)
I think it’s rather a matter of collectivism vs individualism; of ideology vs ratio and ethics. International socialism (internaz¡sm) vs Europe.
“Eisen und Blut” Good old Bismarck!
There is almost an echo of Enoch Powell in all this.
I know, right? But then again, he was essentially right. We have bribed our minorities and bowed down before them to keep them at peace, but how long can that go on for? Race-relations are tragically getting worse, not better. The irony is, the better treated they are (unless you want to claim that 2021 is somehow worse than 1971) the more they complain and demand special laws and treatment.
I’d say people from most origins have integrated pretty well. No hindu rape gangs or sikh terrorism issues, or buddhist knife attacks. The only other issue is the blacks and their disproportionate contribution to violent crime and their following of victim identity politics that is totally racist against whites. This will not end well for them. Although, i am sure a lot of blacks are bullied into backing BLM or at least stay quiet.
Yes, I was going to say that. Apart from Caribbean blacks and a large minority of Muslims, pretty well every other demographic has integrated happily. Nobody ever says “don’t walk through Golders Green at night, it’s too dangerous with all those Jews”, and if there even is a Chinese equivalent to GG, I don’t know where it is.
There are really only two demographics that can’t integrate. As they can’t do so anywhere else either, the likelihood is that whatever the problem is, it lies with them, not us.
That was funny Jon, thank you. Yeah, walk through Golders Green at night, you might not get mugged but and you might get your money invested wisely with significant annual returns.
There is that risk, Aaron. A gang of Jewish accountants might come up to you, take over your affairs, do over the taxman for you so he gives you 20 grand back, and then send in their bill for £500. It’s a real jungle, is NW11.
Oh those pesky Jews! Next thing you think know they’ll even offer to represent you at court while you’re suing an actual mugger.
She wasn’t stabbed. He cut her throat. Presumably he was trying to replicate the beheading of the teacher, and the 90% beheading of the priest celebrating mass, and the beheading of an off duty soldier in a London.
Scotland is already halfway there.
Macron, despite his utterances on his intentions to control radical Islam, is not doing anything about radical Islam. The generals are quite right that the do-nothing politicians who keep kicking the can down the road are simply ensuring that the radical Islam problem will get worse and worse and, eventually, will lead to civil war. The same could be said for other Western European countries, of course, but France seems to be further down the path than the others. The writer of this piece is simply part of the problem.
In the US, our politicians routinely engage in “evasions” and “guilty silences”. If these rise to the level of “a great lie”, we are in a collective deep hole. Maybe we are.
Curious, is it not, that no such qualms were expressed by the western chatterati when the Algerian military actually DID perform a coup back in the 1990s when the Islamic Salvation Front swept to office in that country? I guess it’s much more sinister when it’s old white guys just TALKING about it.
If this is a sweepstake, I’ll bag Canada and Scotland.
What is your take on the literary success of another French general, Pierre de Villiers, the former Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces who clashed with Macron and resigned ?
Right. So a few things about this.
1) They do not threaten a civil war. They say a civil war is going to happen.
2) “Referring to them generically as “hordes” (as the letter does) is an attempt to inflame France’s problems, not to solve them.” I doubt that term refers to law-abiding Muslims.
3) This whole fuss is certainly not going to damage the right. The military has the population’s full support.
That being said, I find it quite tragic that it has come to this. On the one hand, the Left pretends it is a coup d’Etat, which it isn’t. On the otehr, the right is wooing the far-Right and the far-Right is quite right in its statement of the facts. Which leaves little room for debate about possibly more liberal solutions to the problem of insecurity.
Guess which country they are best friends with? They export donkeys to them. The fact that Pakistan borders India is just incidental , of course.
I think I disagree with most of the comments: if you give up on democracy and say let the power of the gun take over, then you invite the opposition to take up weapons too, they’re the new rules.
Why is it we don’t really make an effort at persuasion? Yes, an uphill battle given our historical support for Israel, and our wars in the middle east, but we used to make a bit more effort to present the best of ourselves. At a time when Arab oil money flooded into countries, which was used to open free ‘schools’ etc., the likes of Thatcher & Reagan were busy closing branches of the British Council, USAID programs, UNESCO programs which ran very popular libraries and cultural/sporting events in Muslim countries. Imagine if we had matched that oil money with similar amounts and funded popular programs in developing countries.
I know we have foreign aid programs but they are often designed to benefit our own commercial interests. We have now imported problems into our countries, but can we first really try ‘soft power’ to solve them (it will cost a lot), rather than a military dictatorship?
“if you give up on democracy and say let the power of the gun take over, then you invite the opposition to take up weapons too, they’re the new rules.”
It only takes one side to start a conflict you don’t want. And if it starts (not by my will of course), then I intend to win. Don’t think I’m alone in this. And if you think opening more branches of the British Council or some such gimmickry are going to even remotely help at this point, you are in denial.
The example of the British Council was just remembering that back in the 70’s-80’s we went in the wrong direction when the other side was being very effective at winning hearts and minds.
“It only takes one side to start a conflict you don’t want”. I don’t know the situation in France, but I suspect that the great majority – native born and immigrants – are on one side and a small minority on the other. I lived in a Muslim country (in a small village) for a couple of years, and like in other places, most people want a peaceful life, to work, and see their children’s lives improve. Their attitude to me was “If that’s what you want too, it’s all OK, we can get along”. Can the French say that they have done as much as they can to help immigrants ‘get ahead’ to that life with a job and a future for the children?
One of the problems I perceive with the approach I’m guessing you are recommending is that is that, to use an old saying, charity begins at home.
What has to be taken from the current citizens to help these new, and often unwanted, citizens to prosper?
Yes, charity begins at home, but as you say, they are citizens, it is their home. What has to be taken from the current citizens? Nothing from the poor. I’m sure some more can be taken from the wealthy. It will cost as much to ignore the problem and let it fester.
They are citizens only because they jimmied the door.
But why not the good old let’s make the wealthy poor ploy.
Actually, the guy who cut the police woman’s throat was a Tunisian citizen.
Wealthy or poor is a moot point. What justification do you think there is to take anything from anyone (wealthy or otherwise) to give it to someone else?? What you propose is theft, plain and simple.
Just as much it is “their home” as your home would be mine if i rolled up in your house and occupied it against your consent. Just as much it is “their home” as France was the home of the occupying naz¡ Germans.
They became ‘citizens’ due to malignant immigration policies of dysfunctional governments. Which policies are not irreversible.
My justification for redistributive taxation is that no man is an island, everyone lives in community, makes their money from the community, and needs a safe community to live in. I suppose I also have Christian principles about sharing and a duty to look after others.
No you can’t move in to my house because I won’t give permission; presumably the French did give permission, and those millions of Muslims are citizens with full rights. Unless the French want to become Myanmar and just terrorise all the Muslims into leaving, they will have to find strategies to deal with the terrorists. I think one of the best strategies is to make sure that all citizens, including Muslims, have a decent life, because most people are happy with that and don’t want it disturbed.
That’s what a country is for. A society, with its societal consensus. A society of its members, and not of those who fancy to avail themselves to its benefits.
And that society has every right to be selective about which others it welcomes into the country, as opposed to letting in everyone who demands entry, indiscriminately.
You can have a diverse, multiethnic society by mixing with those who are beneficial, and excluding those who are detrimental to society’s wellbeing. Selectivity is the key. Welcome the Vietnamese and the Cambodians (they suffered enough under communism), repel the maghrebis.
No, you are proposing to steal from others, by giving their taxes to arbitrary “others”. How is that “looking after others” when you commit crime against your other fellow countrymen? Will you take responsibility for all the French people killed on French soil by thirdworld immigrants?
Your presumption is wrong. As wrong as your interpretation of Christian principles is.
Which ‘rights’ are manmade, administrative affairs, not laws of nature. Reversible, revokable, amendable, if here’s political will.
Nothing wrong with Burma treating the muslims the same way as muslims treat non-muslims, including the Burmese. I presume you have no knowledge of what exactly triggered the crackdown on the muslims in Myanmar.
Repatriating them to their habitats of origin is an eminently good strategy.
The French will NOT have a decent life in France if you want to ensure a decent life for muslims in France.
Maybe you should ask the French about that. You will find that the French are profoundly unhappy with that.
Your presumption is wrong”
Are you saying the French government was powerless to stop the immigrants? Powerless to stop them becoming citizens? Whatever, they are French citizens now and the only realistic way forward is to deal with that fact.
All of my schooling was in Catholic schools – I hope I didn’t entirely misunderstand the Christian principles taught to me.
No. What i’m saying is that successive French governments were complicit in importing the migrants, against the will of the French people.
No. Correcting the mistakes of past governments and expelling / repatriating those migrants is an eminently realistic way forward.
You may have misunderstood them to quite a large extent. That aside the fact is that the Catholic Church is not infallible of course.
The Pope not infallible?
You talk about expelling migrants, which I don’t think is a realistic policy for a Western European country, but of course the migrants have had children, born in France, never were citizens of any other country. Where do you propose expelling them to?
The pope is not infallible, one of the fairly recent synods established that. (And the current pope is an adherent of ‘liberation theology‘, a marxist travesty – he’s a nasty stain on the Roman Catholic Church’s fabric.)
Stimulating voluntary repatriation to their countries of origin is a patently realistic policy. The parents / grandparents of those born in Europe do have a place of origin, it’s not like they have established historical roots in Europe. They migrated over the course of the past few decades.
“ it’s not like they have established historical roots in Europe”
The have children and grandchildren in France who are born-in-France citizens of France and nowhere else – do you really believe they would leave their children to voluntarily return to the places they wanted to leave? Old people returning to countries with no health system, people with children going to countries without a good education system … I think your solution is extremely unrealistic.
Well, they came voluntarily to begin with, as we Europeans did not want them to come. But they did. So i can’t see why a voluntary return should be off the table.
Where exactly you think European health systems and education systems came from? Fallen down from the sky like pixie dust? No. A continuity of European people MADE them, many centuries before ‘colonisation’ was even a word. For some reason Africa couldn’t be bothered with any of that, and the muslim world devolved beyond repair.
So yes, about time they started to get on with developing themselves instead of demanding handouts.
It’s doable, if there’s political will. Main incentive for them coming to Europe is the welfare state. Withdrawing them from the pool of welfare-state clientele would be an excellent stimulation for voluntary repatriation to start with.
It’s not doable for the reason you won’t address – the French, and French only, descendants of the original migrants (but still Muslim) have nowhere to go – they are French citizens and France is their home. Apart from starting a civil war in France, I suspect your solution, a lesser class of citizen for Muslims, would remind most French citizens a little too much of the Nazis and the Jews to ever be too popular.
Why do you think the French people are so stup¡d? There’s zero equivalence between the Jews and the maghreb¡s. In fact it’s the maghreb¡s / muslims who are like the occupying naz¡s in the current situation. The French Jews were an integral part of French society since many centuries. Then the naz¡s invaded France. Now the muslims / b|acks / maghreb¡s are invading France, to finish off what the naz¡s started.
Trust me Rus, you did. And if you think going to a Catholic school gives you an idea of what Christianity/Catholicism is about, then truly your delusion levels are stratospheric.
Excellent rebuttal.
Amen, thank you Johannes. These people are NOT our countrymen (or rather, the Frenchmen’s) – they are invaders. Granted, they invaded with assistance from native leaders, but what of it? Russel Hamilton’s idea that “they are are our countrymen” is dangerous and a little bit evil in that if people like him win this fight, my children will be dispossessed. It’s not just national, it’s personal.
Thank you, Aaron. I’m Hungarian so i will have a safe country to call home shall the sh¡t hit the fan, but i’m very worried about all of you with nowhere to go, for this is your home.
Antisemitism is through the roof in France, Germany, Sweden and London, all aided and abetted by the political left. This is where Europe came to in the 21st century??
Why on earth should the French help those who turned up in their country against their will with jobs and futures for their children?? Why on earth should those immigrants ‘get ahead’ in France, of all places?
Ever heard of Dane-geld?
‘Tis obvious, old boy, that you have NOT spent any time living in a Muslim country.
I spent two years living in a village in the biggest Muslim country in the world: Indonesia. I was in West Java, which is the more strictly Islamic part of Java. Mind you, Indonesia has become ever more Islamic since I left – I was there in the heyday of the dictator Suharto, who kind of kept things under control.