It Could Happen Here - Their Voice Is Fire: The Banlieues And The New Uprising in France

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Robert and Mia discuss the most recent round of uprisings in the French suburbs, the long colonial history behind them, and the people trying to make a quick buck by lying about them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Oh, It Could Happen Here is the podcast that you're listening to right now. And while we normally talk about it could happening here, if you've been living in France recently, then some of it has been happening to you. I don't know if that's a bad introduction. We're talking about the riots that have recently convulsed large chunks of both European France and some of their overseas territories. So we're going to be chatting about that. I've seen a lot of disinfo.

There's a lot of people flipping out about guns and stuff and a lot of bad information, people blaming it on Ukrainian weapons sneaking over. All that's bullshit. But there's a real fascinating history here and the riots. As much as people people specific bad actors have attempted to make them into like some new and horrifying thing it's not just like a oh france be rioting thing there's like there's like a a history uh that's that's pretty clear that explains

like why this this happened in france this time why it happened in 2005 why it happened in what the late 80s yeah well 2007 was i think the other big one in this kind of i mean these have been happening yeah it's been happening for decades we're gonna talk about all of that yeah so uh so mia i'm gonna let you uh take take take the lead here and i'll chime in pr in yeah so okay i guess we should we should basically briefly talk about like before we go into the history, like, what actually this is. So, well, I guess it'll be two weeks ago when this goes up. A cop did, like, a traffic stop of this kid in a car, and they just put a gun through the window and shot him. It's really bad. There's video of it.

If, for some reason, you want to see a cop sticking a gun in a car and shooting a 17-year-old, it's really bad. There's video of it. If for some reason you want to see a cop sticking a gun in a car and shooting a 17 year old, it's really bad. This has kicked off like. I it's OK. It's always difficult to measure how intense a riot is. When it started, people were I saw people saying it was like more intense than like the 2005 ones. This is like, you know, we've talked a lot

about French rioting on this show. These specific kinds of riots are like by far the largest and most intense like kinds of riots that happened in France.

This is like a significant escalation from everything that's been happening even in the last sort of like seven years, which have been,

you know, like there've been a lot of riots in France recently. These are by far the most intense. in in the time i've been writing this the police killed a second person by okay so i'm gonna give my account of what i think happens the the french police are going like oh well who can who can say how this person was hit by a projectile? But as best I can tell,

they shot a guy in the chest with a flashball, which is, a flashball is like, it's effectively a grenade launcher that shoots flashbang grenades. Now, it's supposed to be like a, it's a quote-unquote less lethal munition, but the thing about less lethal munitions is that if you shoot people directly with them, they die, and they just fucking killed this guy.

They're less lethal because they are not meant to be shot at people they're meant to have a dispersal effect when shot near people if you shoot people with them yeah they're very much lethal yeah and you know we talked about uh in the last episode that i did about this uh there was there was another guy who thankfully has regained consciousness but was in a coma for several months because he was also shot by i think he was shot by a maybe i forget i should have actually looked this up before i did this but he was shot by like a similar less lethal mutation and he thankfully has survived this guy did not like they just

killed him uh the reporting about it has been terrible like the guardian headline said man struck by man struck by projectile at protest, which again, this guy was shot by the cops like directly into his chest with one of these weapons. So it's been really bad. And, you know, OK, so to get an understanding of what's happening here, too, I want to go through this. There are sort of like four broad types of people who rioted France. four broad types of people who rioted france so okay so the first kind of writer i think is the one people are like maybe most familiar with which is like the french far left like riots a lot this is mostly anarchists some other people and that's like a kind of standard parisian riot will be these people rioting um you know we talked a bit about sort of the development of the black bloc

in france in the last episode we did about this um there's you know there's we talked a bit about sort of the development of the black block in France. And the last episode we did about this, there's, you know, there's also sort of like more mainstream, mainstream left, like trade union groups who will have giant marches. And those also sometimes turn into riots because they get attacked by the police and stuff like that.

And those ones tend to be larger. Like the, the, the trade union ones have more people, but tend to be less variety. There's the gilets jaunes or the yellow vests who are mostly people from rural areas who either sort of like do roadblocks in rural areas or they come into cities and do marches and riots and they riot pretty intensely

um and these three groups have started to be you know like part of what we've been seeing in the pension like reform protests and like riots have been these groups we're starting to work together reform protests and like riots have been these groups were starting to work together but there's another group of people in france who riot who are the residents of the bonn louis i that's not how you pronounce it god damn it okay before before before i did this i looked up how you pronounce it and i've now forgotten it's bonn lear that that's how you well okay yeah i'm not gonna i'm not gonna offer you any advice on how to speak French. I have to say this word like 40 times in the script. I can't pronounce French words without doing the ha ha ha,

which is, I know, I'm a child of the post 9-11 era. It's written into my DNA. I can't help it. I'm sorry. You guys were right about that war, but it's still like seared into me as if with a laser cutter so i'm not going to try to pronounce it my my excuse is i'm holding a grudge for that time they owned a bunch of shanghai for like a bunch of years so that's a fuck there's actually many

fine reasons to insult the french they're just all things you can go after every other powerful white country that ever existed yeah um or other country for that matter i mean france is pretty classic classic colonialism in a lot of ways yeah and we are oh boy are we gonna be getting into that yeah which actually that that's that's a good you know good jumping off point for who these people are so the bonnie so the bundle i might just say suburb because i i fuck i can't do this yeah look it's it's the french word for suburbs suburbs in france are different like in in the united states the suburb suburbs have been up until at least pretty recently a fairly reactionary um like um uh whatchamacallit uh white flight

yeah yeah it's a lot of white conservatives lived in the burbs it was kind of like one of the reliable areas for republican votes and stuff in france like upper income people people with more money are a lot more frequently living near the center of town um and the suburbs a lot of which were like built specifically for like communities of people from from french overseas population who were moving to the country like these they set up like public housing and stuff for them. The idea was that if you like moved people over in communities into these neighborhoods, it might make integration and stuff easier. There's a lot of reasons why this didn't work that I'm, you know, not an expert on, but like there were a lot of problematic aspects of the execution, including the attitude among, the attitude that goes back pretty far were a lot of problematic aspects of the execution, including the attitude among the attitude that goes back pretty far among a lot of French folks that like, well, you know, a positive thing is if they just kind of become French and drop any other aspects of their of their heritage.

And anyway, whatever. It's a whole thing. But yeah, we're going to we're going to we're going to get into this. Yeah. And we talk about suburbs in France. We are not talking about like areas where upper middle class people bought giant houses, right? Like that's not what they are. These are these are very like they're not they're not exactly the same as like American housing projects, but they're much closer to that than they are like, you know, the sort of American white flight stuff.

Yes. The people who live there, there are some white people, like white French people who live there, but there's also a lot of French people who are like either like pretty, some of them are pretty recent immigrants. There's a lot of people from Algeria, like specifically, and the way that like the French understand this basically is like all these people are like black and Muslim and like that, you know, okay, the French are very racist. Like, and this is the thing that like, i was in academia for a little bit right like i i like thought i understood the like average level of racism of an academic holy fucking shit oh my god um i'm gonna i'm gonna quote for something about the suburbs like that that's from a piece i'm gonna talk about that piece just a little bit because i think it's a really interesting way of thinking about like what the attitude in France,

in France, like France is. So this is about the banlieue. The French word for suburb is banlieue, a word derived from banier, meté, a ban, that is to exclude or banish.

And this is a thing. This is from a, a, a, a, an article called the French autumn riots, 2005 and the Crisis of Republican Integration. And this is a really interesting piece because like half of it is like pretty reasonable sort of like analysis of how the left sort of just like failed and betrayed these people. And the other half of it is them talking about how like Muslim people and like people from like North Africa have like inherently patriarchal, like reactionary family structures.

And that because of this, they can't be like integrated into French society. And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, this is just a random academic. And he just like, sounds like a storm front guy.

It's, it's, it's fucking wild. So I want to talk a bit about how, how these things came to be, because I think it gets to sort of like you know what what what what these places actually are and why these people are writing and to do this we need to go back to the french conquest of algeria so all right so so the the

french government yeah uh it's like this is a yeah it, it's second, maybe to the Germans in terms of like the brutality of the conquest. And honestly, like, that's, it's kind of a, they're both so horrific. It's kind of pointless to be like, which of these is worse. These are both like genocides that large chunks of the world just decided to pretend didn't happen. Yeah. Although the thing with the French version of it is it because it's the french it's like like the the actual end the french political end of it is basically like a tragic comedy

so i'm gonna tell the story yeah a lot of it's the result of incompetence and i mean we talk about this in our napoleon the third episodes of behind the bastards but yeah yeah so like like the official cause of spell life for the french of this war is that the French took out all these grain loans under the directory and then under Napoleon from the Algerian government. The Algerian government was like, hey, are you ever paying this back? And the French were just like, no. So this ended in a tiff where the governor of Algeria hit the French ambassador with a flyswatter. and this this led to the the french monarchy at this point is uh led by this guy named charles the 10th who's mike duncan calls him one quote one of the great idiots of history and he's like about to get overthrown so he's like oh i'm gonna i'm gonna invade algeria this is gonna like

distract everyone from the fact that everyone hates me and they're gonna overthrow me and this doesn't work right like so the french like conquer algeria but charles x is overthrown literally three weeks after this finishes but the sort of crucial thing here is that like the successive french governments keep control of algeria and they you know this this is like one of the places where the sort of like modern french racism emerges from is there there's this you know the whole invasion is wrapped up in this like like monumental layer of racism that's about like you know oh we're gonna go we're gonna free algeria from quote like oriental despotism this is like a civilizing mission and we're gonna like you know and this is like this is this is the stuff that you know if

you've been if you've seen any like french social media posts about this like now right like this is the stuff that you know if you've been if you've seen any like french social media post about this like now right like this is the kind of racism they still do which is a like they consider islam like a backwards culture it needs to be like integrated into french republicanism and you know this is yeah this stuff is this specific kind of french racism is very very old i i mean if you also briefly mention we're're gonna mostly talk about algeria here because like a lot of the people who end up living in these suburbs are algerian but like the french had a whole empire uh they conquered a bunch of parts of like a bunch of western africa they you know yeah and this was also it's it's worth noting a lot of it was conquered very recently. It was only in the late 1800s, I think, that they solidified their control over Algeria. It was kind of right in the same period, just kind of directly ahead of the Franco-Prussian War that they took a lot of Indochina. They were kind of later to having huge overseas possessions.

was um they were kind of later to having huge overseas possessions um but unlike the germans they made up for it in in terms of the breadth of their uh their acquis acquisitions if you want to call it that it gets it gets yeah well although the one thing i think is interesting about this is like algeria the french conquer algeria after they've lost haiti yes it's like a very interesting sort of like thing here but like you know but one of the things that this gets to is that like the French state, you know, like literally it doesn't like, it doesn't matter like who, like in what period of time in French colonial history you get to the

straight is just the, the French state is just structurally anti-black. Like it is so unfathomably racist. And you know, the way this sort of plays out in Nigeria, right. It's like they, they hold onto Algeria for 130 years but one of the sort of products of this right is that okay so like

algeria is now part of just like the french empire effectively right and this means that over the over the sort of decades the the french government starts like importing algerian like workers into france because okay so one of the the French carry out basically a series of genocidal campaigns where they just like progressive different French regimes steal more and more of the land that anyone ever in Algeria had

until you get to a point where Algeria is just effectively a French settler colony. They've displaced all these people and they start, you know, recruiting them to go work in France. But this becomes a huge problem for the French state because, you know, now they have a bunch of colonized people in France who they need to, like, keep colonized.

And in order to do this, you get, like, you know, you get Foucault's boomerang, right? Where you have these French police that are trained in Algeria who are used, like, algerians in france and you know i've said it like it's not just that it's used against algerians right it's used against like people from all over the sort of french empire from like northwest africa even even people who were from haiti who who like wound up in france but this comes to a head in 1961 when there's just one of the weirder parts of french

history is there's like a second coup attempt where all of these officers these like these french officers in algeria are like terrified the french people had voted to like that could have led to algerians getting the ability to like vote over like self-rule right and the french like colonial officers in algeria go nuts over this and they try to overthrow the government and it fails but the result of this is that de gaulle gets like dictatorial powers in france for like five months and in october of that year the algerian national liberation front which is like the you know this is like the the giant sort of movements of the, like French, of the Algerian anti-colonial movement. Like they have this giant protest in Paris and the police just start shooting them. I mean, this is, this is, this is, this is, you

know, like, this is not a riot, right? Like this is, this is just like, they have a giant peaceful march. The police start just killing them. They kill several hundred Algerian protesters. They, they throw their corpses into the Seine'm gonna read this quote from the bbc one photo captured the chilling sentiment of the time showing graffiti scrawled along a section of the sen's embarkment saying here we drown algerians and they kill like at least 200 people probably more than that they are like they're throwing like children into the river to try to drown them it is fucking awful um and the french government like they deny that this happened for decades the the the first this massacre is in 1961 right the first the first like french

prime minister to a french president to admit that this happened did it in – I think it was 2011. It was 50 years later that the first French politician admitted they did it, and the government has still never apologized for this. So this is what the French police are, right? Like they are these people. They are, you know, they're the people who like a bunch of Algerians did a protest for independence and they killed like they threw their children's corpses into a river. And this is the sort of long range backdrop of like everything that's happening in modern France like today, right? that like france was an empire still like is in a lot of ways an empire and their police are just like unfathomably violent and racist i mean yeah i i think i i might say like if you're american pretty fathomably violent and racist but but yeah like it is it yeah, I think that's a fair summary. If there was ever a reasonable society on earth that people could live in, it would be very easy to go, this is the most racist thing you've ever seen. But unfortunately, we all live in hell world and our metrics are like – like have the Brazilian police killed more people per capita than the American police?

Yeah, again, it's one of these like, we don't need to litigate this. Like, I think the point is that when people kind of like flip out over these images of buildings being lit on fire and shit getting broken and, you know, people shooting out cameras or even like beating folks, you know, in the street as part of a riot and freak out about, you know, how the place has gone to hell. Like violence that exceeds that by many factors has been like the norm for segments of French society going back as long as the United States has existed. So, you know, like the ugliness that you see in the moment of the riot is not – like focusing on that and ignoring what's caused it, like why people have been – like reached a pitch where they're doing stuff like that is kind of an error.

An error at least in like historical analysis. an error, at least in like, um, uh, historical analysis. Um, and I think also an error in terms of like the severity of, of what we're looking at,

like none, like all of the, the ugly shit that's happened. Cause at least one person was killed by rioters and all this, but like all of the ugliness of this current set of riots doesn't compare to one boat sinking in the Mediterranean. Yeah. Um,

like, and, and that, those things are very much tied together you know france has had a significant role in why northern africa is the way it is right now um and why large chunks of like uh uh the that continent um have endured waves of successive starvation famine death uh war like yeah i don't know like you know i want to i want to like i want to just briefly talk about vietnam for a little bit because sure i

think something that like people don't really understand is that like okay so right at like both in the 30s in vietnam and sort of through world war ii like huge portions of the country were starving and they were starving because the French had completely fucked their economy and was like, was taking all of the food and was taking all of the resources. And like, you know, like that's, you know, that's a big part of the reason why the original sort of like war in Vietnam

that the French fight happens, right? It's like, it's why people like drive them out is that there are like just innumerable people who just fucking starve and die because the French colonialists were just like, fuck you. And, you know, like they the French Empire, it doesn't get as much attention as like the British or the Spanish or like the Americans. But it was like incomprehensibly inhuman in terms of just like the shit that they did. And I fuck them. They lost yen been food. They'll lose again. incomprehensibly inhuman in terms of just like the shit that they did and i fuck them they lost yen ben food they'll lose again uh well yeah i think we should note um when it comes to like the violence of the french police we're when we're talking about how they are

very american in the way they do violence that That is reflected in the statistics. The French police are the deadliest police force in continental Europe. Part of why is that recent law that was passed in 2017, which made it a lot easier for French police to be able to fire their weapons, specifically at people they think might be about to commit a serious crime. Part of the reason for the change in the law was the,

oh God, the Charlie Hebdo mass shootings. There was just this belief that, because two police officers were killed in that, and there was this kind of belief among segments of the population that maybe if the police had been able to be more aggressive, they would have responded more successfully to the shooting. I think the existence of the american police and and the number of mass shootings we have might argue against that but that's one of the things people will say is is why this shooting happened and yeah and i think i think it's worth noting the effect of that law that law like it more than doubled the average number of of uh like of very very specifically like the

number of like north and west african people who like french people who get shot by the police doubled and yes and depending on the year right it either doubled or in some cases almost tripled yeah right it's been extremely stark the the change it's also worth noting that, you know, in 2005, we had a huge set of riots in the suburbs of Paris. I think it killed one person. And the riots were sparked as the result of police were chasing two kids. I believe they were Algerian French kids, and they wound up hiding from the police inside of a building that was part of one of the trains and got electrocuted.

Yeah, I think what it was is that they were trying to go home, and they decided to cut through a construction site, and someone called the police on them. They were away from the police. I've heard different versions of this. And I don't think we're ever going to know precisely what occurred.

Yeah. Like there, there was a version that was circulating at the time. And now that might be true, but I don't know about, but there, there's a version of it that says that like the police stood there and watch these kids get electrocuted.

And that's possible. I don't know if that happened, but like, a lot of people certainly believed that that had happened. Yeah. And it was not obviously the death of these kids, as is always the case when you have riots this big, was sort of helped to catalyze existing feelings. One of the things that was sort of in one of the reasons why people were angry was that

Muslims in France at this point in time had essentially zero representation. In 2005, Islam was France's second most popular religion after Catholicism. There were 7 million French citizens of Arab or African origin. They had no representation in the National Assembly. Not a single member of the National Assembly was a Muslim or even Arab or African in their descent. So there was literally no representation. They were targeted by the police. These kids die a suspicious death,

and people riot like motherfuckers, you know? It was a pretty good set of riots. Yeah, it was. That one, the 2005 ones, I can pull some of the stats on it uh before i i want to go back yeah i think i've got some right here actually yeah at least um i think they burned they burned 10 000 cars yeah uh multiple police stations government ministries like city halls yeah 230 public buildings damaged uh yeah so it was they went pretty hard yeah i mean it was it was like you know this is

only the time this this was the biggest like unrest in france since 1968 and it is worth noting some of the differences between the government's reaction to the riots we just had and to the 2005 riots uh in 2005 the interior minister of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, called the people involved in the riot scum who needed to be got rid of. Yeah, it was pretty ugly. And there was sort of immediate defense of the police force for their actions. It's been a bit different in this most recent case. For one thing, Emmanuel Macron immediately said that the shooting was horrible. The actions of the police were bad,

which got the police very angry at him. Camera footage of the shooting then came out and made it very clear that this was an execution as opposed to a complicated situation, which isn't to overly defend Macron and the administration.

You can see just some, how things have changed in France politically. Well, I think the other thing, the other thing that's going on there is that Macron is just a way weaker government than the French government wasn't in, in like 2005, right?

Like one of the things, you know, so one thing I was looking at was, so in 2005, the French deployed 11,000 police to try to contain it. And they kind of didn't, but in like the stuff that happened happened two weeks ago, there were 45,000 police deployed. So I think it gets to the severity of what's happening and how scared the French state is of it.

Because the current French government is not very stable. of it because you know like the current french government is not very stable they've been trying to like they're on they're like this is like the fifth round of like riots that they've seen in the last like seven years yeah yeah um which is also evidence that like the police who have largely gotten what they wanted from the government uh in over the last 17 years or so uh have not succeeded in at all reducing the severity and in fact have continued to spark um this kind of like these kind of riots welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

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Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I

mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15 percent every single year. But if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The other thing that's going on here right so partially it's because the french police are like unbelievably racist yeah um the other thing that's going on here is this sort of i mean i guess you call it like the long-range crisis of capitalism right like youth unemployment

in the suburbs is 45 percent and this is the kind of thing that caused the arab spring right was like you know you have all of these populations who are just structurally unemployed right there's no jobs for them uh what what they you know something like they what jobs they can get are like these just awful like you know like americans are familiar with dog shit service sector jobs right like it's it's like, it's that kind of stuff. And, you know, and this is a product of a lot of sort of long range, like political trends, right? It's, it's, you know, like capitalism is spitting people out of the social system.

The other thing that I think is, I think is really important about these protests is that like the, the kids in the suburbs are like not really connected to the french left and there's a reason for that and the reason for that is this movement that happened in 1981 so in 1981 we got really the first of this kind of riots so you know these these suburbs were like mostly these like housing developments i guess were mostly built like in the 70s uh to to accommodate like a new flow of migrant workers from mostly from algeria from other places too and in in 1981 you get the first of these riots and french society is like holy shit because there's a bunch of non-white

people rioting and they lose their minds and after the first set of riots which the first and the thing the thing that's i think interesting about this too is the initial riots aren't that big like they're they're like pretty small compared to like what has come after compared to stuff has happened right technology was in its infancy at that point we were still okay that's slightly unfair like people people in france in that period were pretty good at rioting it's just that like these ones it wasn't as bad as it was gonna get and part of the reason it gets that bad is so okay so the the the first um the the after the first of these riots there's this giant there's know, there's an attempt by the French left to like organize these people. And they have this, they have this thing called the Buer movement.

I don't know. It's French. It's B-U-R. I think we've, we've all established that we're not going to be impressing anyone with the level of our understanding of the French language. Yeah. Look, but you saw that they they had they had this sort of anti-racism movement and you know they carry out in a hundred thousand person march from marseille to paris but the problem is this movement starts to like fail almost immediately it starts to fall

apart because you know at this point mitterrand who is – he's on and off again as the French prime minister for a lot of the 80s. And Mitterrand is from the Socialist Party, and his plan for this is basically to attempt to co-opt this movement and to turn all of these people who live so the Midrian does some reforms kind of to like put money into these communities. But like, again, these people are being structurally disenfranchised by a combination of sort of French racism, like the physical urban geography of these of these suburbs like just capitalism in general and you know these are these are sort of like macro forces and i midiran's plan to stop the riots is he has he has these summer music festivals that like hire unemployed youth that are that are that go by the name and i'm not making this up sos receipts me they're just like y'all this is this is our plan to solve the riots we're just gonna have like these like good work guys music concerts no i think you i think you got it i think you got it this weirdly this kind of works for a little bit there is there was a there was a apparently a fun version like a a better version

of that that occurred in uh in oregon uh in like i think it was the 1980s when they were uh they were going to have like a republican convention in town and so the the state governor um i think mccall was his last name um was like okay i'm gonna throw a big like music festival like two hours south of of portland and i'm gonna tell the cops not to bust people for drugs but yeah um yeah different thing yeah yeah this thing you know the problem with this thing is again like the the point of this is not actually to sort of solve the point of this is not actually to sort of solve the sort of structural racism of french society or do anything about capitalism it's it's to build a voter voter base for the socialist party and you know after a couple of

years of this the people in this movement like the act the actual kids in the suburbs are like what the fuck like our lives still suck shit like you guys haven't changed anything and you know there's and there's a there's a lot of promises the french socialist party breaks one of the important ones is that they the french socialist party had been promising to let immigrants vote in local elections and that just fucking vanished right this has never happened this is part of why there is like no there's so little representation in the french government and you know the the actual the actual sort of broader goals of this anti-racism movement it fails and there's a there's an undocumented workers movement that sort of comes that like splinters off from it but it's completely destroyed

by the french business class and you know france in this point period still has some very strong unions and the unions just like we're like no fuck you like die and just told them to fuck off and from there and from from the betrayal of the socialist party and also simultaneously the other thing that's happening in the 80s is the rise of sort of like these french neo like the french new right is like resurgent these guys when i say the french do right these people are like fucking neo-nazis right like very very very very a bunch of very famous french neo-nazis who modern neo-nazis read appear in this period um and they start doing there's a bunch of anti-immigrant murders that are just horrible and but you know the state is just could of gone like, eh, whatever, like, fuck it.

You guys can die. And so, and this has a massive impact on, on the culture of these suburbs and, you know, what, what the, what kind of political possibilities they have, because these people like, like to this day, you will get people talking about like the great, but talking about the great betrayal and how they got fucked by the socialist party. Like to this day, you will get people talking about like the great – talking about the great betrayal and how they got fucked by the Socialist Party. And so like these people don't – like they have very little contact mostly with the mainstream French left. The mainstream French left is – especially the central left is really fucking racist. Like even the Communist Party is really fucking – and part of what was happening here too is the 80s is the period where the Communist Party collapses. And so like all of the sort of like the organized left factions like don't like them the unions are like what the fuck are these algerians like fuck them they're muslim we hate them uh and you know so so the the legacy of this is that the government does some welfare policies and they like try to do some job creation a little

bit but this was always just doomed to fail because these are you know like what like france in this period is de-industrializing and so the product of this is like you have all of these people who are now just unemployed who were attempted like like you know there was an attempt to integrate them into the left and the left just fucked them but you know obviously they can't they're not going to go to the right because the right hates them like even more than the French left does. And you get these – and what happens is like these people, these masses of precariously employed or like unemployed immigrants become this like massive focus of the French state. And when conservatives take over in the 90s, like they use them as this like racist scapegoat for like every problem. They begin this like massive authoritarian like campaign against black and muslim people and

like you know like we're we're in the u.s right like we know what that looks like and you know and one of the other things that that starts to happen is like like the french state and the french right like portray all these people sort of like like the 80s is also the period like you know this this is this is right after the uh the iranian revolution there's this like rising fear of Islamism. And the way that the state responds to this is basically by going, well, all these people are like Islamist terrorists. We hate them. All of the jobs programs that have been set up and all of the welfare programs disappear.

The funding for the music concerts even just vanishes and all of this stuff is happening particularly it's like particularly intensely in the early 2000s and that's that's the other context that leads up to the 2005 riots is that like by 2005 people who are living in these places have seen

like like really serious deteriorations in their standards of living in like the last like four years because these programs are just being destroyed and you know and then you know and you get these protests that start in 2005 and there's another very similar thing that

happens in 2007 when the police like crash into two kids on a motor like a police car crashes into two kids on a motorcycle and kill them and there's like a smaller but like very very intense like series of riots and then it's kind of weirdly quiet for a bit you know i mean i might say quiet okay it's been quiet from the rioting end uh the french police keep killing people one of the things that everyone the people are talking about in this one is in 2017 it came out that the french police just like

fucking raped a teenager and it it's fucking horrible yeah and and then i think leads us kind of into into like into the sort of modern like the thing that's happening right now which is that you know like the the kids who are riding in the street and i think i think this is a big part of the reason why it's this intense is that you know these are these are like 17 and 18 year olds right they are they're old and they're you know they're they're too old to believe in this sort of like fairy tales of French liberty and equality. They know what that looks like. They know that it's... French liberty and equality means a police baton fucking breaking your skull because you were walking down the street.

But they're also... They're 17 or 18. They're too young to know that they're supposed to be afraid. And because of that, they have... They burned down multiple police stations. too young to know that they're supposed to be afraid. And because of that, they have, you know, like they burned down multiple police stations. Like it's, the writing has been just incredibly intense. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast

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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also

have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that is,

has probably been the major touchstone people have heard about these riots, uh, on social media and stuff is, uh, or at least the thing that I saw being spread the most was like the fact that rioters were using firearms. Um, there's a couple of reasons, things that like I noticed one was people flipping out over like the presence

of guns in France. and, and interestingly folks on both sides of this, I think, got stuff wrong because people – on one hand, you had people being like, where the fuck did they get guns? Something suspicious must have happened. They must have come in from Ukraine because France is a European country and European countries don't have guns in the civilian population. Like, yes, they do. in the civilian population. Like, yes, yes, they do. France, actually, interestingly enough,

France is one of those countries that primarily regulates who is allowed to own what kinds of guns as opposed to what kinds of guns can be owned. So in France, with the right licensing, you can own most of the kinds of firearms that you can own in the United States. In fact, in France, if you have the proper kinds of permits, you can own something like an AR. In fact, in France, if you have the proper kinds

of permits, you can own something like an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine, which you could not purchase in the state of California. Now, these are still very stringent gun control. If you're going to have, because again, they split the kinds of firearms into category, and the most restricted kind of firearms are semi-automatic rifles like AR platform guns. If you're going to have something like that, you're doing an intense background check. You're submitting to random searches by the police. It's not nearly as easy as it is to acquire firearms in the US, but there are quite a lot of firearms. I think you're allowed to own up to 10 magazines per per gun and a thousand rounds or something like that. That said, I don't believe the majority of the guns that we've seen on the

streets and the riots are normal legal civilian owned arms. That said, the existence of guns in these protests has also been heavily overstated, largely a result of footage of shit like people shooting out cameras with what are actually air rifles uh that folks just assume are real firearms um there's also been shit like there was one video that went really viral that was a petrol bomb being set off by protesters at a government building and it was just blue checks on twitter people who who pay Elon for it, were spreading it saying, look, people are using RPGs in the riots. Rioters have rocket launchers. There were a number of folks who got tens of thousands of shares and likes claiming that these were examples of like heavy weaponry from Ukraine getting over to the US.

For one thing, if guns were – if weaponry was getting out of ukraine rpgs are not like the thing that people would be psyched to get you can get rpgs in europe and you're generally getting them from north africa right like or from the balkans you know there's no shortage of com block weaponry in that part of the country but it was not an rpg being used um yeah well this is something i want to talk about a little bit is that the, the actual thing, the, the actual weapon of the French writers is fire.

And this is something, they are way better at this than, than the Americans are. Right. Like, I mean, I saw a video of, I've seen,

I saw a couple of videos that were just wild. Like there's some, I don't even know how they did this. Someone had set like one of those like skyscraper tall construction cranes on fire and not the bottom of it. Right. They said that they set the cabin on fire. It's like, I don't even know how you do that because like, like, did they, did they climb

up the thing? Like they got, they, okay. So like, did they set it on fire and then climbed down while it was on fire? Like, how do you even do that? I saw another video that was unbelievably funny where a bunch of protesters like like in front of the mayor of their town covered his car in gasoline and lit it on fire, which was very funny. But like but like, you know, this is this is the thing like fire is like fire is area denial, right? Like, yeah, that's that and that's key. Yeah, it's closed down avenues of advance.

You're able to protect your flanks. like you're able to close down avenues of advance you're able to protect your flanks and and also also it is it is a very very good way to like it is a very very if you if the thing you want to do is destroy a police station like lighting it on fire is a very very good way to do that and you know it's it's very effective at like destroying cars too is the other thing i think i think absolutely enough of it sure yeah and and and like the other thing that's been happening is there's been a lot of looting, but this is, I actually think the most depressing part about these entire riots is that

most of the looting, you know, like I'm, I am pro looting. This is, this is like one of my stances, right. But like,

like there is a lot of looting that is people looting high end goods that they normally just would never have access to. Right. That's not what's happening here. Most of the looting that's happening here is food and medicine yeah and that is the most depressing thing like the fact that people are doing subsistence looting is like maybe the most depressing thing i've ever heard in my entire life like yeah i i i jesus christ oh god yeah i mean it makes sense you know yeah and like the last like you know it's the cost of living crisis just like and again the fact that like we're talking about places with 45 youth

unemployment right like it's the conditions are so unbelievably bleak that like, yeah, I mean, like this, this is what happens when you do this to people is like, they fight back. The other thing I want to talk about is, is that a lot of these people are like, one of the things that people focus on, it's just, I actually think it's very funny that there was, there was a guy interviewed in the New York times who had like the moderate position on the riots and their moderate position on the riots was it's okay that they're burning police stations, but why are they burning schools? And I want to talk about the burning schools thing a little bit,

because this is something that gets talked about a lot. And, you know, okay. Like this, this is, you know, this is a sort of sociological question that gets,

because, because this, this is like burning schools has been a thing. That's like, this was, this is like burning schools has been a thing. That's like, this was, this happened in 2005 happened in 2007. It even going back to some of the riots in the eighties and nineties, people were burning schools.

And the reason these kids are burning schools, right. Is that most of the people, the people who are burning these schools are like, there were kids who went to these schools. Right. And you know, they were either in these schools or they just got out and they realized

these schools didn't do shit. Right. Like going, going to one of these schools or they just got out and they realized these schools didn't do shit, right? Like going to one of these schools doesn't lift you out of poverty. Studying hard doesn't lift you out of poverty. You're fucked. And so like, yeah, of course these people are lighting their schools on fire, right? They're attacking the actual French institutions that were systematically set up to fuck them. And one of the other, one of the things that people always talk about

is why are you, you get this with American riots too. People ask, why are you burning your homes? Why are you burning your own community? Specifically with the French suburbs, these suburbs are a cage. They were built as a cage. They were built specifically as a cage they were built specifically

as a cage to contain a bunch like as as france's way of containing this non-white labor force that they that they imported into the country and so you know and it's like yeah and every every single day the bars of the cage are just are fucking getting are shrinking right the the cage is shrinking the walls are getting tighter and tighter there's less food there's less money there's less opportunities and yeah you know at some point people start burning down the cage and and everyone just is like walking around going why why are you burning your cage down at your home but the it's still a cage like the fact that the fact that people are made to live in the cage doesn't make it any less a cage and that's that's why these people are that's why this was that's why these people are burning it because they like they know

from you know just the the experience of their everyday lives of what it's like to live here that this place is fucking killing them and so you know they're they they they responded in sort of the classic french fashion which is to light it on fire. It is. Look, if the goal was to integrate these people into French culture, there's an extent to which they – They worked, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There you go. You created –

The beauty of globalization. You created the absolute best writers in all of France. Yeah, again, in terms of the people flipping out about stuff, like, I think it is important to think about to keep in mind why people are doing this, how bad a situation has to be for people to, as you said,

like burned their houses, their homes down around themselves. Like when, when you think about like looting as a function of basic survival, like that's the degree to which these people have been like stretched out. Um, and the fact that people are freaking out over shit like guns and it's largely,

honestly, when I talk about that, largely the reason why is because there's a whole ecosystem of, um, mainly largely right wing people like media influencers, a lot of whom got blue checks as soon as Elon offered it because it puts them up higher in the search results, who started making money in 2020 posting riot porn from the United States and who are desperate to return to those days.

So anytime there's disturbances anywhere, they're going to try to like, what is the most, you know, oh, you know, a lot of folks on the far left and a lot of folks on the right are angry at, you know, the US for sending weapons to Ukraine. Well, let's blame this on that. Or, you know, I want to make some sort of point about gun control and pretend that like French gun control laws, you know, don't work because some of the rioters have old shotguns or AKs that got smuggled in from across the Mediterranean. So I'm going to make it about that. dishonest media influencer and all of which ignores like the humanity of people who are are in a desperate situation and acting desperately as a result yeah and i think and i think the everything that that really pisses me off about this is that it obscures the actual parts of this that are interesting and that are you know like that are genuinely radical in ways that yeah i

don't like one of the things that they the people tried to do in this was like people tried to break their like their friends who'd been like arrested by the french state out of prison and they they didn't they didn't they ended up failing because and this is one of the other things that's been happening is lots of countries have police anti-terrorism units right the french have like multiple kinds of them they also have like military police units but the french were using these like anti like like specifically anti-terrorism units against the protesters and that that's one of the units that got deployed i'm pretty sure if i'm if i'm if i'm if if if the sources i've been reading are correct that was like one of the things that happened in this was an anti-terrorist they

sent an anti-terrorism unit to stop a prison break and that's i think you know it's it's a really sort of emblematic thing of of what the French state is and like where it's going. The French Republic was born from a bunch of people trying to storm a prison. And it has now gotten back to a bunch of people trying to storm a prison and they send a bunch of like fucking anti-terrorism police after them. Some of these weird right-wingers were like, look, this is what happens when you let all these foreigners into your country that destroy the culture. I'm like, man, there's not a goddamn thing more French than attacking a prison.

Yeah. Than attacking your own prison. Like, that is the most, like... These people have literally returned to tradition. they think they think they've become french royalist again it's just like oh god like in inshallah they suffer the same fate like i i i anyway whatever it's it's very frustrating um the way in which like we're seeing kind of I think I don't know we'll see I probably shouldn't be such a doomer because I don't actually know the

extent to which all that worked for the kind of people who were attempting to grapple and wrestle these riots into something that could make them quit cash but it is kind of a reminder that those people are still there that like infrastructure of deceit

still exists and every time you know the next time there's big riots or protests here every time it happens anywhere that shit is all going to spin up um i will say one of the in terms of like stuff that worked uh the use of pellet guns to take out cameras was it seemed to have been extremely effective. Oh, I should, okay. There's, there's another thing I should talk about that like didn't,

doesn't show up on film much for obvious reasons, but like one of the most effective things that was happening in these riots was people using cars to break down the fronts of stores. Yeah. And, and the second, the second one that was very effective was people use it. Like there was a lot of use of scooters as like a way to get,

as a way to get a, like move around really quickly as a way to redeploy as a way to like like as like like you know okay the the the thing about these protests that is that is really sort of interesting in a lot of ways is like it's what what what they've basically done like not not from a sort of anarchist ideological perspective, but from an organizational perspective, is that they've created a bunch of networks of affinity groups. And so the way this stuff is happening is you get a very small group of people who are capable of moving very quickly, and they just go do a thing. They don't tell anyone else what they're doing. There's no sort of top-down central command that you can just sort of stop. There's no sort of like, there's, there's no sort of like top down central command that you can just sort of like stop.

Right. It's, it's this incredibly sort of decentralized, uh, like it's, it's this incredibly sort of centralized movement. And the police just like, it took them like a week, like over, like about to like really like take back control of these places. like really like take back control of these places and you know and like right now with the period we're entering is like a period that we saw right after the george floyd uprisings which is like this is the period where like the police cracks down and like tries to arrest a bunch of people yeah simultaneously like i don't see a world where we don't see another one of these in the next like five maybe ten years because none of the structural problems are like all the structural problems with the french state are just getting worse and worse and worse and worse and yeah you know at some point someone is

like like i think i think the the problem with this and the problem with the french movement in general has been for the last about 20 years right right? There have been a lot of very, very similar sort of riots trying to bring down governments and they mostly don't work. But at some point someone is going to figure out something and they are going to do it. And France like could well be a place where that

happens just because the state's capacity to do violence is you know, like the state's legitimacy is just purely reduced to its capacity for violence. And I don't know. That's not great, but I mean, it's what's happening. And I don't know. I hope I hope I hope someone beats them and I hope the people that beat them are better than the current pack of murderous jackals.

Speaking of other things that are like a long and proud tradition in french politics yeah like there is nothing more french than overthrowing the i mean that's not just french right that's like yeah that's like everywhere where you're like wow these people suck i hope they get overthrown and also not by someone worse. Yeah. No more Napoleons. Yeah, no more Napoleons. Napoleons bone apart. That's the plural. All right.

Well, I feel like, are we, is that us for today? Yeah, I think that's been our riots. All right. That's been our French riots episode, everybody. Until next time, I don't know, maybe acquire and train with a pellet gun.

You know, they're easy to get, uh, surprisingly effective, legally, not firearms. You know, you can like,

look, the thing they're very useful for, if there's like small animals that are like trying to eat your fucking garden. Yep. You can use them on that as well. Small animals for the government. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Broth. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of Rife, an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.