It is Arabs that have cause to be racist considering what France did in Algeria.
A Berber Jew is playing with fire whipping up xenophobia.
Right-wingery across the Channel
- Thread starter Le Baron
- Start date
It is Arabs that have cause to be racist considering what France did in Algeria.
A Berber Jew is playing with fire whipping up xenophobia.
richardg
Admonishtrator
I defend nobody, just observing how I seem to see more racism in France than UK. So a non-Gallic success in politics surprises me.
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
All very interesting, except Zemmour is French, born in France. His ancestors have been French since 1870 (apart from a few years during WW2, because Vichy). He claims Berber origins (so not an Arab), and is not a Muslim. So a similar background to millions of other French people.
If he fails, it will be for other reasons.
PaulMB
pfm Member
So did I. But perhaps they were French citizens while they were in Algeria, since Algeria was considered actually part of France and not a colony.
^ Wiki says his parents were "Berber Jews from Algeria with French Citizenship who came to metropolitan France during the Algerian War'. So between 1954 and August 1958 when little Eric was born.
Similar story to our own Nasti Patel then. They would get on well except Eric has some strange ideas about women too.
Similar story to our own Nasti Patel then. They would get on well except Eric has some strange ideas about women too.
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
According to the French Wiki his parents came to France in 1952, so before "The Events" started in 1954. The parallels with Priti Patel are indeed quite striking. Eric has strange ideas about many things, not just women and feminism.
His ancestors became French in 1870 as a result of the Crémieux decree, which, among other things, extended automatic French citizenship to all Algerian Jews (Muslims still had to apply individually and renounce Sharia law). The Jewish community in Algeria had generally welcomed French occupation after 1830, and most of them left Algeria for France *or Israel* in the 1950s and 60s.
*Edit*
Last edited:
richardg
Admonishtrator
It's really hard getting a view on it as someone too busy working to watch tv and read up on it, particularly when I am only half way there in French fluency after 3 years. But in comparison to UK, I notice more 'traditional' people, more religion, I am regularly faced with more authoritarian systems and bureaucratic regulations, there are definitely more people that think the vaccine program is just the government enjoying exercising control (probably 70% of people I know think this). I am not surprised that the right is increasingly visible. I am surprised, however, that the right is not trumping the moderates and already in government.
It seems just as messed up as UK but in slightly different ways. Possibly more corrupt, just as many nasty people in power, more cheating of taxes , and much, much more drink driving. It's a good place but has a dark underbelly from what I have seen so far. I wouldn't be looking over the channel in envy at the way of life here. Or the politics.
It seems just as messed up as UK but in slightly different ways. Possibly more corrupt, just as many nasty people in power, more cheating of taxes , and much, much more drink driving. It's a good place but has a dark underbelly from what I have seen so far. I wouldn't be looking over the channel in envy at the way of life here. Or the politics.
PaulMB
pfm Member
I think once you know a country, each has its "dark underbelly." There is a saying, especially among people with more than one "homeland," that the one that makes you angriest is the one you belong to most.
But returning to France, the accepted wisdom is that the French have always, deep down, despised everyone else. A bit like the English, but different. But today they are overshadowed by Germany on the continent (as happened before) and completely obliterated culturally by the anglophone world. Poor dears, a long downhill slide from Napoleon!
richardg
Admonishtrator
I heard an argument that Napoleon is in fact the cause of many problems here....that things are so over-processed because of the Civil Code that he had some part in creating? A code that was supposed to think of everything but did not. If it's not in the code, it's not allowed. Years later, non is still the response to just about everything!
I'd love to hear a more informed view about this. it's fascinating, but as I said, I have no time for reading books on stuff like this!
Things I envy looking back towards the cliffs of Dover, are: the ability to comprehend (and deliver) decent customer service, avoiding paperwork (finding ways of doing things with fewer unnecessary steps - eg you can use your national insurance number for a variety of things in uk. Here I have one of those and another number for my residential visa another for my personal tax file and another for my status as a sole-trader) and fish and chips. The rest you can keep!
PaulMB
pfm Member
For many people, certainly for the French, Napoleon was the greatest statesman and military genius the world has ever seen. If, on the one hand, he was a ruthless dictator and conqueror, he also introduced modern, liberal reforms wherever he conquered, and supported scientific progress against religious obscurantism. Thanks to Napoleon we have decimal measures, meters and centimeters, kilos and grams, etc. Wherever he conquered, Jews acquired the civil rights they had been denied under local monarchies, and in many cases lost again after Napoleon's fall.
For the Brits, of course, he was a "Corsican tyrant" who sought to destroy all that was good in the "natural order of things," which for England meant a form of democracy based on a rigid class system and monarchy. The restoration of Europe after the fall of Napoleon is today seen as a pretty shabby reinstatement of old-style feudal regimes.
I too would like to hear a more informed view of the Civil Code. From what I understand, it was the establishment of a legal system from scratch, to replace the accumulation of laws and customs accumulated over the centuries, which is what England still has today as Common Law. I've heard Italian lawyers praise Common Law as a positive example of pragmatic common sense, compared to the Civil Codes used in most continental countries.
For the Brits, of course, he was a "Corsican tyrant" who sought to destroy all that was good in the "natural order of things," which for England meant a form of democracy based on a rigid class system and monarchy. The restoration of Europe after the fall of Napoleon is today seen as a pretty shabby reinstatement of old-style feudal regimes.
I too would like to hear a more informed view of the Civil Code. From what I understand, it was the establishment of a legal system from scratch, to replace the accumulation of laws and customs accumulated over the centuries, which is what England still has today as Common Law. I've heard Italian lawyers praise Common Law as a positive example of pragmatic common sense, compared to the Civil Codes used in most continental countries.
russel
./_dazed_and_confused
The Romans?
Yeah, well the roads go without saying, don't they?
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
I would guess most people in France (at least those that take an interest, a dwindling tribe) take a slightly more nuanced view of Napoleon's legacy these days. Great statesman, certainly. The list of his achievements in just 15-20 years is phenomenal. But his blunders and crimes are no longer brushed under the carpet (e.g. reinstating slavery in the colonies). Military genius: he was certainly brilliant and extremely successful in his early days, but he failed to recognize the limits of his considerable powers and embarked on unnecessary campaigns (Spain, Russia 1812) that bled France dry. France's loss, England and Germany's gain, and it took France almost a century to recover (Zemmour's shtick is that France has never recovered: so unfair!!!). His anniversary this year (N's, not Z's) was muted and both sides of his legacy were in evidence.
I agree with all your other comments. It took the French 3 1/2 revolutions to finally get rid of feudalism, but they kept at it and don't regret it. Royalists are a small eccentric minority (<1%). As for the Code Civil, it has evolved since Napoleon but the base is still there and it still works, just about. Common Law is pragmatic common sense in so far as 2 parties can agree to almost anything within reason (provided they have good lawyers to "define reason", which may be one reason why lawyers like your Italian friends love it). Left to its own devices though, you get what we see in the US and to some extent the UK these days, with litigation and tort gone wild, 30-page leases on a simple house and lawyers absconding with a high % of GDP. I've seen American industrial companies spend on product liability what their German or Japanese counterparts were spending on R&D (as a % of sales). I remember reading a long time ago (at a time when the Japanese were conquering the world's markets,including the US) that a single county around Houston had more licensed lawyers than the whole of Japan. Common law means regulation by lawyers, Code law means regulation by bureaucrats. On the whole, I believe bureaucrats are slightly cheaper, but I'm not sure.
However these arguments are simple to follow. It "stanstereason, dunnit?" Vote for me, you'll no longer have to pay for the freeloaders, the dossers and scroungers, why should you have to pay for all the lazy fat bastards clogging up the hospitals with diabetes? False it may be, but it's considered fact by a great many.