If not. difficult to solve?

I have no strong opinion to the question of contraception but it would be sensical to promote and educate people (both men and women) that parenting is good (arguing with nature is hard) especially when the nation needs more births.

I feel obligated to apologies, but won't. I do accept to having to point out I'm in no way stating contraception should be illgal or anything of that sort.

I concede that for solutioning the short term issue of shortage of workers, there are no other scheme to employ, I'm out of idea. No wait! There are officially almost 3 million unemployed residents in France. I won't try to demonstrate it's in fact double this number, nor bring up the argument a few million don't really work given they do just as little as they get paid.

We are taken for fools. And a number of idiots found no alternative than setting stuff on fire. It's not just immigrants rioting.

But anyway population fluctuates. These things tend to work themselves out normally when your main goal is the good of the nation and not just inflating the GDP as quickly and recklessly as possible.

A system that says "The number of working-age people must be at least 5x the number of retirees" is literally demanding unending (super)exponential growth. It's fundamentally impossible on a finite world. It's going to break down at some point. The only question is whether that happens before or after filling the developed world up with immigrants from the undeveloped world.

This means when someone is in their mid fourties and will retire in 20 years, someone needs to give birth to a child so that it will grow up and start working just in time for the retiree. If children get born too early, then you run into the problem of them needing their own caretakers. These children don't compensate for someone else leaving, so they add to the population and their future caretakers will also add to the population leading to an exponential Ponzi scheme.

Seriously though, workers on what? I find it quite odd to base the value on workers as being a percentage of retirees, that's entirely detached from demand, productivity and opportunity.

"We need more workers to fund the old ones that stopped!" I get the basic logic, but it's stupid.

This is the unexamined premise that keeps on going unexamined. Europe makes less and less each day, growing more and more dependent on China for production (as on the US for security, although Europe seems a little less dependent on Russia for energy now). Automation fills the tedious, low-skill jobs that remain onshore, and the promise of industrialization, digitalization, and now AI is that fewer human workers are needed to sustain equal productivity. Why does the sane world that frets about offshoring and AI gutting employment also need unskilled immigrants to be "moar workers?"

Plus there are still gaps, things which cannot be automated or offshored, and many which will only do so after great effort. Lotta money to be lost there without bodies.

Having a large and rapidly growing underclass also sounds like an unhealthy demography. Immigration won't solve the problems facing France, it'll make them worse.

Youth unemployment in France is at 17%.

I don't think pushing up the retirement age matters too much for youth unemployement, as those two groups compete for very different jobs (no 60+ year old will start vocational training as a nurse).

"How do we make the economy good" is obviously an extremely hard problem. I think a very important question is whether the 17% are actively seeking for jobs or considering themselves already entirely removed from the system.

France has a large industrial base, with many, many large companies (and suppliers for those companies), training people to have skills relevant to those companies seems an important consideration.

If that is the case you don't actually need more workers, but you have a very serious issue with young people leaving society and either by choice or circumstance not entering vocational training.

You do not need a 5 year degree to become a carpenter or nurse, if your country has a lack of those AND a significant unemployed youth population, the solution is obvious. Importing workers for those roles, just means that you are removing those training opportunities from your own population.

This has been a significant problem in the UK since brexit for farmers⁰: local workers are not willing to do that sort of work for that little pay¹ so the reduced availability of migrant workers has meant some crops simply went un-picked because the farmers were unable to afford to offer more³.

In other parts of the employment market where significant learning/experience is required before starting, there potentially are a different set of difficulties meaning jobs go unfilled despite there being unemployed people otherwise available.

--

[0] and others offering seasonal or otherwise temporary physical work

[1] and/or in many cases unable to do it as fast² increasing costs to the employer

[2] though that problem would fix itself in time with practise, if people at least started the job

[3] as they'd have to swallow the cost on already miniscule margins in many cases, to the point where wasting part of a crop is financially better than paying more so they don't have to

Upper class does not care about price of food.

I think this is hard to prove. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

A cop shot an unarmed teenager in the face point blank. So he wouldn't get away. What kind of "social contract", or whatever one would call it, is that? I mean, being invisible and rightless, but allowed to work and get a tiny fraction of the value your work represents, until someone just murders you and then makes it out you were such a danger to them?

I don't know about other Germans, but if I was treated that way, I would burn things down, too. At the least. Show me that you have no problems killing me, and that you wouldn't miss a beat, and I would not just roll over and live out my life making you richer and even bolder in that insolence.

The thing is, we aren't treated that way (neither are Swedes or whoever you might have in mind) and most of us leave the whole "don't wait until it's you" mostly to a poem by Niemöller, where it doesn't make any demands of us.

At the end of the day, the French have no obligation to change their society to accommodate newcomers; nor do the newcomers have any obligation to change their society to make themselves acceptable to the French. The problem is that trying to get these two groups of people to live alongside each other is a failed experiment.

It might be more appropriate to say it was a government that made this choice. The French nation didn't get a say. Just like all other Western governments deciding to allow mass immigration, the people generally our opposed but never get a voice.

Labeling something reductionist doesn't mean it's reductionist, nor magically make the argument go away like you desire.

The same idea applies to the military-industrial complex in the US. Very few people are clamoring for further war. But neither major political party offers a legitimate alternative. There's no voting against it. Lobbying and direct monetary gain by the very top of society mean those in power want it, because they stand to gain personally, even if some recruit from a downtrodden town gets his legs blown off.

Likewise for mass immigration. The people in charge of major companies love reduced labor costs. And governments love increasing their tax base. They're the ones who get a say. Nobody else is even asked.

Let's set aside the complexities of how governments are formed in a parliamentary system, and also ignore the subversion of representative government by lobbying. This is really simple: there was no vote on this in any western government. And in fact, political parties that explicitly oppose further mass immigration to Europe are gaining rapidly in popularity. But the governments actively subvert them. For example, there is talk of outright banning Alternative for Germany, a political party in Germany opposed to mass immigration.

So called left-wing parties now only care about Identity politics. They have abandoned the working classes.

If the elites really wanted more people they could increase the incentives for domestics to have children.

https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/wallis-and-futuna-broadband...

A few questions: - Why do we have to host any Algerian, considering they are now independent? - Are we allowed to kick them out the way they kicked us out of their country sixty year ago? If not, why not?

France is allowed to do this if it asserts the right to do so. The only question is: will it?

oooh I'm not sure I agree with you here.

A similar scenario (though very much on the micro level) is "the birth of a child doesn't obligate either parent to accommodate the newcomer."

I'm not saying the french need to bend to their every whim, or that the immigrants dont need to adopt the local culture as well. Its a two way street. When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

The french culture remains irresistible, but social issues keep rising, immigrants are simply more impacted by those issues and the media makes sure to call out people's religion or ethnical "background"

Macron isn't Christian enough but France tolerates all religions, for good reasons. I would be OK for him to stay longer, but cutting off social media, and invading privacy is a blasphemy that should grant deporting him to Dubai, or any city state where he would fit in.

As can be seen in every country in the world, as soon as you have more than a handful of immigrants coming in at once, they form enclaves and resist assimilation - indeed, it’s usually only their children or their grandchildren that do thanks to the influence of school and interaction with their peers.

> Multicultural. About 36% of the city's population is foreign-born, one of the highest among US cities. The eleven nations constituting the largest sources of modern immigration to New York City are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Russia and El Salvador.

I could reference other concrete examples, instead making sure to mention NYC as nobody would call this extremely small numbers, or caveat the fact those migrants were of "european origin" for the most part, or having to get some half racist simplistic response.

to justify some biased view of "all countries of world", at least make some attempt to back it up with some factual reference

New York isn't a country, a megacity with over 8 million people is rather well suited.

France. A country that saw large waves of migrations, which don't qualify as "small numbers". Not saying everyone is seamlessly blending in, but if your reference is what mainstream media makes of it, or a repeat of electorate seeking politicans, then travel a bit more, or go shake some hands with people you seem to think categorically different, you may see a bit of reality instead.

It wouldn't be necessarily a racist response if made against situations in certain cities in France given the extent of assimilationism of that nation, but I call that comment racist given the critic of NYC. New York through its entire existence has been waves of migrants, multi cultural in its DNA, with shapes and influences that changed over time but some would say is exactly what made this city shine and get so admired internationally: a financial pole, with countless architecture prouesses, exceptional arts, culinary and service excellence.

Those "enclaves" have been there since its genesis. What we see when the model is just acculturation.

The unfounded statement that no country in the world can "assimilate" past a certain ratio of minorities is the viewpoint that societies must reflect one particular fantasy view of some homogeneous ethnical soup. In that case sure, Japan is heaven, Singapore offers a hell of a picture, and every other societies that adopted yet other models are a myth, politics have little to nothing to do with any resulting conflict, revolt and violence, just some cross culture hate and over 200 borders not firm enough for comfort.

And Brighton beach is almost entirely Russian. And not only Russian, but those who refuse to assimilate to the point of being unable to speak english - wiki says 98% of them don’t use English as a primary language.

Now, what are the results of that?

> For a year, Siena College has been polling voters on crime and whether they feel it’s a problem in New York state. Last month, 92% of those polled said they believe it’s either a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem,

>>France

Hello? Have you seen the title of this thread? France has literally been in a state of riot for decades. Look at the number of riots in 1990-2000. Now, how many of them were because of or carried out by French natives?

Exactly.

Not to mention, the yellow vest riots never stopped. 5 years ongoing now. And two more riots in 2022.

Does this sound like a country full of happy people? No, sure doesn’t, does it? Sounds like a country where a bunch of people with radically different beliefs, ideologies, religions, and way of life were shoved into a room and told: Be Nice. Or Else.

What do you think will happen when the French say, Or Else, What?

The result of that? I don't know, I've been there and find it very much multi cultural. Crimes?

Crimes in NYC have been on constantly decreasing trend since its peak in the 80s. To again be on the rise since the fallout of covid prevention measures.

wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City

If polls aren't inline with the trends, take it up with the mass media falsly portraying the situation.

I did see the title of this thread yes, have you? A head of state displaying once again his total lack of creativity.

France surely isn't a country full of happy people. It's interesting you mention the yellow vest riots/protests, they answer your own question on whether riots are carried out by french "natives" or religious and culturally incompatible scum.

I do agree certain waves of migrants were shoved into some suburbs, expected to factory work, which they did in the since the 70s in particular, making the other factory workers rather unhappy, and now there are almost no factory left and to remain nice or else... I do also wonder, or else what?

No matter what cultural background, religion, or mother tongue language a person is attached to, deprive that person of social walfare and you eventually get revolts: pubic march and collective expressions, and unfortunately also incivility and then rioting, even mass shooting or other "terrorist" desperate form of expressions.

The newcomers were accommodated, just not feted. They have rights, but those don't override the rights of other French citizens and residents.

> When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

Sure, if the immigrant has new food, or music, or religion, etc, then they'll provide new choices to their society. Society is under no obligation to take those new choices, and not doing so isn't harming the newcomer.

And this is in the context of maintaining a functioning society. Driving through crosswalks at high speed isn't one of the available choices for anyone.

Which means they get to choose who represents them when laws are being made...

While I agree with you completely on this (though unfortunately we draw different conclusions from this agreed-on premise)… This is simply not what the message has been on immigrants since, I dunno, probably the 1960s or 1980s. The populace hasn’t always been given a choice whether to let immigrants in or not, but in the cases where they did have a choice, they were told immigrants would not change the character of the nation, only improve it. Sometimes this was called assimilation, but this message was delivered in other ways as well.

If the populace had been given an honest choice of “yes immigrants + yes change” or “no immigrants + no change”, your argument would carry more weight for me, but it’s my impression that instead they have been receiving a consistent and solid message that they can choose “yes immigrants + no change”, which is probably where the resistance to change is coming from. It’s not fair (and more prosaically, not effective) to rugpull those people and tell them actually, it was “yes immigrants + yes change” all along.

Don't social class and education play a big role here too? University-educated professionals in country X very often have rather different attitudes from poor villagers in country X, so whether your immigrants from country X are mostly university-educated professionals vs mostly poor villagers may be much more significant than the mere fact that you are accepting immigrants from that country.

> Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth.

The two largest non-European immigrant groups in Australia are Chinese-Australians (over 5% of population) and Indian-Australians (over 3%). Among second-generation Chinese-Australians, 35% of married men and 48% of married women have a non-Chinese spouse; for the third and subsequent generations, the percentage rises to 69% for men and 73% for women. Similarly, for second-generation Indian-Australians, 56% of married men and 58% of married women have a non-Indian spouse. And those are figures from the 2006 census, [0] and I expect 2nd/3rd+ generation intermarriage rates have likely increased since then.

Isn't that an example of "assimilation" working? My friends in high school included a half-Chinese guy and a half-Indian guy, and I have half-Japanese second cousins – and I couldn't tell you what differences in culture exist between them and myself, I don't know whether there actually are any.

[0] https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/v17n1_2khoob...

I don’t think that makes much of a difference. I’m part of the south Asian diaspora immigration to America—that community carries with it culture and attitudes from back home as much if not more so than any villagers. In particular attitudes towards government, social hierarchy, child rearing, social obligations to others, etc.

Which country you’re talking about also makes a difference. America, in particular, was mostly founded by the poorest immigrants from Europe. The Germans, Italians, and Irish came here from the absolute bottom of the ladder. In my observation, poor immigrants from Latin America are a better cultural fit than university educated Indians or Chinese.

Also, refugees (as in Europe) versus voluntary immigrants (as in Australia and Canada) makes a big difference. If you poll people in Asia and the Middle East, only single digit percentages of people say they would leave their home country if they had the opportunity if they had the chance. So the people who undertake voluntary immigration are a self-selecting group of especially anti-social people. My parents left Bangladesh because they don’t like Bangladeshis. This is not an uncommon background for those Asians whose kids end up inter-marrying.

And finally, Indians are a bit of a special case. Remember India (and Bangladeshi be Pakistan) was a British colony for hundreds of years. My mom grew up with English, reading the canons of western literature, etc.

> nor do the newcomers have any obligation to change their society to make themselves acceptable to the French

But this is non-obvious at the least, and it would surely be met with some argumentation that it's the opposite.

"The cultures are just too different to mix, that's the root of all of the trouble" should sound instantly familiar to anyone who's ever read a history book. At the end of the day, if this is the debate we all want to have, fine, we can repeat that entire historical debate for the Nth time. But we should be clear what is being debated.

There’s obviously more to “history” than America’s experience with black people. My home country of Bangladesh exists because two different cultural groups didn’t want to share a country, and the separation worked out great. And of course even in the context of black people in America, lots of people are sour on integration. Listen to the podcast “Nice White Parents.” A consistent theme is how white parents want integrated schools, while what black parents want is for their mostly-black neighborhood school to be as good as the white kids’ school. Or read this article by a black New York Times columnist about the joy of leaving New York for Atlanta: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/opinion/georgia-black-pol....

As an immigrant myself, it sucks to raise your kids in somebody else’s culture. At least in America we have pluralism, where the cultural groups mostly agree to leave each other alone. I’d never want to live in France if it meant raising my kid to be French.

The race/culture distinction between modern nationalism and racism is just a historically-revisionist excuse. In actuality segregation was heavily reliant on cultural arguments, and the arguments you're raising here now are almost verbatim the arguments raised by segregationists (literally down to "only white people want this"[0]). You might not like to hear that, but it's simply true. Here's George Wallace on the subject[1]:

> White and colored have lived together in the South for generations in peace and equanimity. They each prefer their own pattern of society, their own churches and their own schools – which history and experience have proven are best for both races. (As stated before, outside agitators have created any major friction occurring between the races.) This is true and applies to other areas as well. People who move to the south from sections where there is not a large negro population soon realize and are most outspoken in favor of our customs once they learn for themselves that our design for living is best for all concerned.

Pro-segregation arguments were heavily reliant on culture as a justification for separation. Segregationists argued that separating White and Black culture threatened the "peace" between these supposedly incompatible societies, and they were quick to argue that segregation actually benefited Black citizens and that many of them preferred "separate but equal" access to resources. Black communities had their own churches and schools, they argued, and it was unjust to both White and Black culture to force those rich but very separate traditions to intermingle.

If Wallace was alive today and gave this same speech about immigration, I think you'd be defending it.

[0]: That you link to Charles M. Blow is particularly funny here given that in that very article he argues against strict separation based on culture or race -- effectively arguing not for isolationism for Black communities but for deliberate self-motivated integration back into the communities that they originally fled from in order to recapture political power within a white-dominated culture.

[1]: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdf...

You’re invoking a logical fallacy. Just because a rationale is invoked pretextually in one context, doesn’t mean it’s not valid in a different context. And the difference in context is critical. “Segregation” was about keeping people apart (and disadvantaged) in their own country. That concept has no bearing on voluntary immigration between countries.

You’re missing the critical part of Blow’s article. He proposes: “That [black people] return to the states where they had been at or near the majority after the Civil War, and to the states where Black people currently constitute large percentages of the population. In effect, Black people could colonize the states they would have controlled if they had not fled them.”

Blow is proposing that black people leave the northern states where they constitute a minority and return to southern states where they constitute a majority or near majority. There’s nothing integrationist about that proposal—the central premise is that being a minority in someone else’s community sucks and it’s better to live in a community where the majority is people like yourself.

> “Segregation” was about keeping people apart (and disadvantaged) in their own country. That concept has no bearing on voluntary immigration between countries.

The distinction you raise here is arbitrary and mischaracterizes the historical debate. Segregationists argued that segregation was not about disadvantaging the Black community. Wallace argued that he had done more for the Black community than anyone else in the South and was directly investing resources into building up the Black community. Wallace very vocally objected to people conflating "segregationism" and "racism." He argued that he was not racist, and that his policies were intended to benefit the Black community. After all, he argued, why would non-white people even want to go to schools and churches where they would be a minority?

In addition, the argument for separation of culture based on the lines between countries almost directly mirrors the arguments made by Southerners about the distinction between culture based on the lines between States. The only difference is scale, evidenced by the fact that many of those same people so quickly and easily made the same arguments about countries. The South argued that segregation was a way to preserve the autonomy and community of a State. Their argument was always centered around political/government/geographic separation.

This is a perspective that is largely lost today because we are more connected in the modern US than we used to be and state divisions feel more arbitrary. But a segregationist would have instantly recognized your argument about the culture of a country and would have instantly said, "yes, that's what I'm talking about. The South and the North are united, but we're still basically different governments, we have nothing to do with each other. We just happen to be under the same federal umbrella, that doesn't mean we're a shared culture."

So I don't think I'm making a logical fallacy at all. This is not me saying "oh, Hitler liked dogs too." This is me pointing out that your argument is a copy-paste of segregationist speakers with "race" swapped out for "immigrants", and that every single defense you have raised of your position looks like it came out of a segregationist pamphlet.

----

> the central premise is that being a minority in someone else’s community sucks and it’s better to live in a community where the majority is people like yourself.

This is an inaccurate characterization of Blow's central premise, evidenced by the fact that Blow is pro-immigration. Obviously he doesn't agree with you, or he would agree with you. :)

Blow is making an argument about political power, yes. He is not making an argument about the intrinsic benefits of cultural divisions and he is certainly not making an argument about the benefits of homogeneity; he is making an argument about the use of political power to combat systemic oppression. Blow specifically calls out in his article that he is not arguing against mixed society, he is purely interested in getting population numbers to the point where Black communities can enact legislation to combat structural racism. It's also worth noting that Blow's argument is not "live and let live", it's specifically to overwhelm white power structures and enact state-wide legislative policies that would affect majority-white communities as well.

Blow is not trying to form a separate Black society. He is trying to enact structural changes across the entire United States.

It's honestly pretty gross to put his arguments in the same camp as an ideology that skirts uncomfortably close to great replacement theory on the regular. And I can't stress this enough, it's objectively wrong to equate them, given that Blow himself does not agree with you on immigration policy.

But in the interest of being very up-front and clear about my position, I also think it's pretty obvious that France has an Islamophobia problem. I don't think it changes anything about my argument, and I don't think someone advocating for segregation based on religious differences is any better than someone advocating for segregation based on race.

A description of French Muslims as if they're some kind of invading religious force who's going to forcibly convert France is divorced from reality, and it's basically just great replacement theory reapplied to a religion.

So whether rayiner wants to separate everyone based on race, class, religion, ethnicity, whatever -- blaming all of a country's problems on immigrants is still a segregationist dog-whistle. I'm kind of tired of everybody playing coy games about this. The anti-immigration anti-mixing-of-the-cultures arguments that show up under these articles are transparently parroting people like George Wallace, and then their authors try to put on a surprised pikachu face when the comparison is drawn. But the comparison is appropriate and relevant -- modern anti-immigration panics have extremely strong parallels to anti-integration movements of the past.

https://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/

Culture has a historical basis. The NYT funded the 1619 Project which asserts that all white American history can be attributed to enslavement of Black people. Also, since the people who run the NYT likely promote the idea that we should reject the influence of Old Dead White Men because they do not appeal to non-white audiences, don't be surprised if anyone assumes that race and culture are closely related. I certainly do because they may well have a point. I don't see any reason to believe people with no ties to this country will care about its history or culture or future except for their own ends.

A number of people have vocalized the viewpoint that culture is incomplete without race essentialism such as Indian Hindu Nationalists who are erasing Mughal empire history from their curriculum or ethnic groups in California who passed a bill to require ethnic studies that focuses on Black, Latino, and Asian studies. In the former case it would be difficult to argue that Hindutva was merely just cultural. So it is not just Americans who do not distinguish between race and culture.

And it isn't a good example given the driver wasn't an "imported terrorist"

Not an invalid point that Europe has been importing some terrorists since libya, syria and a few other countries fell into chaos. Which countries funded, promoted and held arms and military interventions that ultimately caused such chaos btw?

To your point there could have have been riots, yes, why not. What was the police doing, too busy writing traffic tickets instead of working on preventing more serious threats? What were public servants doing for the city of Nice and its social total disymetry, just take a good look at the wealth on the rivera yet masses are on minimum wages asked to pay 1000 euro for a tiny apartment.

There can't be any acceptable reason to run over anyone, but 86 people in their graves isn't a reason to implement a law which down the road would lead to even more murders which of course had a gooe chande to trigger what we've seen this last week.

I prefer we just block candy crush personally, if it has any effect on instinctive violence and self control among youngsters at least it won't be a negative sum move.

We can link wikipedia articles to each other all day. Somehow ethnic French people managed to contain their anger and not burn down majority immigrant neighborhoods after that happened.

The cop who shot Merzouk was also arrested shortly afterwards and will be facing trial, it's not like the act was ignored or swept under the rug.

Furthermore, your argument fails on the premise that it assumes a symmetry of power between these groups, which is not the case. anyone who doesn't know much about france's history with immigrants should watch La Haine(1995)[0], it's a movie but it gives a good glimpse into what's going on.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247

I don't think there's any real evidence that people of immigrant background get "murdered by the police on a systemic basis" in France. If you have well sourced statistics on this, feel free to post, but for now it just sounds to me like a parroted talking point.

> is completely different compared to some individual's terrible reaction to a provocation. it's a sick system vs a sick individual, thus it's quite the reach to make that comparison.

Somehow, when the police engage in misconduct that's a systemic problem. But all of the following are just "isolated incidents" attributable to "sick individuals", no systemic issues with their culture or belief system at all right? No reason at all for ethnic French people to be upset or fed up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Marseille_stabbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Paris_knife_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_police_headquarters_stab... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nice_stabbing

> your argument fails on the premise that it assumes a symmetry of power between these groups, which is not the case.

Seems like you can never have a conversation about certain groups where they're afforded any agency.

Seems like you and people like you have this belief system where people of an immigrant background can't be held accountable for anything. Basically it seems like if immigrants (and their descendants) come to a country and they're poor, don't learn the national language, don't respect the existing culture and political order, or engage in criminality, there's always a group of people like you who say the blame lies with the host country or the majority demographic population.

> should watch La Haine(1995)[0], it's a movie but it gives a good glimpse into what's going on.

I don't think watching a fictional film from nearly 30 years ago is going to be particularly valuable for improving my understanding of the current situation in France.

Just because you deliberately ignore the evidence to uphold your bigoted narrative does not mean that the evidence does not exist:

1) "Police, justice et discriminations raciales" by Fabien Jobard (2015): This book examines ethnic discrimination by the police in France, drawing on empirical research. It discusses how ethnic minorities, including immigrants, experience disproportionate levels of identity checks, violence, and harassment from law enforcement agencies.

2) Reports by human rights organizations: Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented incidents of police harassment and discrimination against immigrants in France. Their reports often include firsthand accounts and testimonies from individuals who have experienced such abuse and oppression.

>Somehow, when the police engage in misconduct that's a systemic problem. But all of the following are just "isolated incidents" attributable to "sick individuals", no systemic issues with their culture or belief system at all right? No reason at all for ethnic French people to be upset or fed up?

So when the french police systematically oppress and murder french citizens with immigrant background you dismiss this fact while demanding evidence, while the evidence is publicly known, but you are very diligent in collecting every single immigrant french citizen's crime and have no problem with immediately blaming their belief SYSTEM. It's evident that you are not making objective judgments but are driven by bigotry and prejudice.

>I don't think watching a fictional film from nearly 30 years ago is going to be particularly valuable for improving my understanding of the current situation in France.

Although it's a film it accurately delves into the socio-economic struggles faced by marginalized communities in France. These issues still persist in French society, and the film provides insights into the root causes and systemic problems that continue to affect these communities today. Just dismissing it as fiction just shows that you have no interest whatsoever in having a nuanced discussion but just want to propagate your bigoted talking points.

Even if that was true, and it is not, it's not related to the current situation where a violent criminal was shot trying to escape. This situation would be an obviously justified police shooting for a criminal with any other skin color.

> you dismiss this fact while demanding evidence, while the evidence is publicly known, but you are very diligent in collecting every single immigrant french citizen's crime and have no problem with immediately blaming their belief SYSTEM

No, we're blaming the rioters belief system - not the criminal in the car. Your belief system, where any crime committed by a minority is justified by past circumstances. We're blaming the people who go out of their way to make everything racial even when that is causing people to get shot as cities burn in riots.

> It's evident that you are not making objective judgments but are driven by bigotry and prejudice.

No, you're the one trying to bring everything except the crime and the police stop into the equation to muddy it. And amusingly, failing to go the step further and account for the fact that the cop who shot him was also ethnic Algerian which kinda blows a hole in your racism theory.

No, excellent straw man though.

> On the one hand you have unhinged individuals, on the other the state. Which do you think is the one that is expected to be responsible and fair and held to high standards?

The police officer who shot Nahel Merzouk was arrested shortly after and is facing charges. He still needs to see his day in court. What else is the state supposed to do at this point?

Sorry, that wasn't what I was trying to suggest. I'm pushing back against the idea that mass violence is justified simply because you think a member of your in-group was wronged. The non-immigrant French manage not burn cars in the street and loot PS5s when one of their own is murdered.

> as if the unhinged terrorist had anything to do with the larger muslim population.

Interesting. In your view it's fine to view the actions of one police officer as "happening in the larger framework of systemic racism and bias against immigrants."

So what's wrong exactly with viewing the actions of one muslim immigrant murderer as happening in the larger framework of fundamental Islam, rejection of secular values, and resentment/hatred of the French people and state?

I'm confused. This seems to be based on a narrative that Nahel was an immigrant, but I read that he was born and raised in France and was a french citizen. So hardly "invisible and rightless".

Also, the officer who shot him was arrested and is being charged. Isn't this exactly what you would expect to happen even in a perfectly just society?

i hate that i see these kinds of authoritarian, victim-blaming takes when it comes to the implicit "establishing law and order" -- you did not deserve to die, but allow me to imply you deserved to die (because of your transgressions).

the cognitive dissonance is so real this almost reads like satire.

Putting aside whether Nahel was a threat to pedestrians, the officer in question was apprehended and charged. That's the system working.

So if this video didn't exist, which the police didn't make and might not have released if they did, what then?

To say the system is working is a horrible thing to say in light of that. How many homicides happened in a similar way with no video by third parties? We both know that we both don't know, by definition. And it's a privilege to not be held awake by that question, to not live with that fear in the back of your head 24/7. If not for yourself, then maybe for your wayward son, who you so hope will grow out of it.

Besides, and this is like an insulting cherry on this turd dressed up as cake people should be happy be get to eat: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230704-fundraiser-for-o...

If fear of the tiny number of police shootings in France is constantly in the back of your head, either you are in a state of constant paralyzing fright or your fears have no relation to your risks. More people are killed by lightning in France than are shot by police.

He’s not unarmed. He’s driving a 4,000lb chunk of metal that could kill more people in a few seconds than any gun short of a fully automatic belt fed. Eugen Grigore killed twice as many people as the columbine shooter did in far less time.

So we have a person who is in control of a dangerous weapon, who has already demonstrated his willingness to put pedestrians in danger, and who already had 15 different criminal charges. He was literally charged with resisting arrest a week prior.

He’s also appeared in videos for bangers with lyrics like these:

“While I rob them, and no one comes to tell me A-B-C… Me, I'm only good at making my weapon speak”

Ultimately, this seems like a pretty clear cut case of FAFO to me.

Here’s the question: where was this outrage when 12 year old Lola Daviet was found raped, strangled, cut up, and stuffed in a suitcase by another Algerian? I didn’t see riots for her, and those who dared protest her rape, murder, and dismemberment were labeled fascists by the media.

So how is it that raping and murdering an actual child, who wasn’t even old enough to go to sleepovers with her friends by herself - how is that OK, but this isn’t?

Then when the thing settles you go in, get the paralyzed human/animal/whatever, put it in a cage, then wait for it to de-paralyze.

Noone gets hurt, plus the idiot who cannot follow commands won't be killed. Would be so easy.

In no way am I saying he deserved to be shot, please understand that.

But 15 incidents with the cops? At 17? Honestly France has to take a look at their punishment scale surely? I'm assuming him being under 18 is what led to it reaching 15 incidents without serious jail time. But how on Earth does false plates, no insurance, and selling drugs not earn you at least some jail time?

What are you talking about? Literally everything you are complaining about is false.

> being invisible

They are not invisible. There are riots with extreme violence when one of their criminals is shot by police, even though the cop is facing a murder trial. In contrast, Muslims in France committed multiple attacks against ethnic French people and there were zero riots. If the Muslims in France are invisible, how come a death of one of their criminals causes such indignation to result in a violent riot? But multiple terrorist attacks / targeted assassinations / stabbing / shootings / murders perpetrated by Muslim in France against the ethnic French population don't cause enough indignation to result in a riot?

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Samuel_Paty

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Marseille_stabbing

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Paris_knife_attack

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_police_headquarters_stab...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nice_stabbing

> being rightless

Tell me, what rights do ethnic French people have that Muslim French citizens don't?

> allowed to work and get a tiny fraction of the value your work represents

You must not be familiar with the French welfare state. I guarantee that the Muslim immigrants and their children receive MUCH more from the government than the work they produce.

> until someone just murders you

And is prosecuted for it!

> I would burn things down, too

Consider you don't know what is happening in France before you proclaim support for riots and violence.

People keep saying both of these things, and it's not clear that either of them is true? I mean, the whole "race riot because a cop murdered a nonwhite person" phenomenon is also pretty American, and it's not exactly a tight-knit social democracy?

The racism is definitely a problem, but you have to remember that quite a lot of the younger generation of nonwhite people are French; i.e. born in France holders of French nationality, considered to be "French" by the French census, educated in French schools, and occasionally shot at by French gendarmes.

If France did not want to be full of Algerians it should not have tried to make Algeria French, at the cost of a huge number of lives, but there is no time machine for that.

Citizenship and ethnicity are two different things. Nobody is denying the existence of French citizenship, but this insistence on denying the existence of French ethnicity (as the French state insists on doing) is just dishonest. The difference between the two has been acknowledged for as long as multiethnic states have existed.

I hope that clarifies the situation for you.

- US style, incorporate the migrants into the fabric of society by forming detectable enclaves that, nevertheless, don't riot in the streets.

- Focus on cheap energy over environmentalism, allowing everyone to enjoy rising standards of living.

- Migration that cynically but effectively focuses only on skilled migration, forming an over-class of highly skilled and motivated migrants to support the socialist underclass.

The issue here is they seem to be trying to bring in a new underclass, then stomp them repeatedly with COVID policies and living-standard squeezes (look at the cost of energy people, this is a crisis for someone!), then throw the police at them. A bold gambit with questionable prospects.

I seem to recall street riots in the US during the summer of 2020. Is the US actually avoiding the same fate as Europe, or is it just not currently at a flashpoint?

I think the actual reason is something like a vast western empire promoting diversity as a good thing for your country. The 2015 immigrant surge into Europe was not because EU countries needed workers. Similarly, countries that have tried to block immigration like Poland and Hungary are accused of being far right fascists and uncooperative and NGOs from the US come after you. The general belief seems to be that too many white people is a bad thing and backwards.

The diversity train is a relatively new phenomenon.

EU expansion to the East had many factors. One of them being to have less barriers to get a cheap seasonal workforce pick vegetables in western EU countries [1].

Go back a few more decades: Germany in particular asked hundreds of thousands of people from Turkey to immigrate into Germany to help rebuild it after WW2. It's now the biggest foreign-origin population in Germany.

Not sure about France though.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/business/europe-labor-rig...

Not quite, because the earliest wave of Turkish immigrants came after the migration agreement between Turkey and Germany in 1961 (and Germany was rebuilt at that time). The reasons for this agreement – initiated by Turkey – were curiously complex and not simply economical ones.

As a person whose parents are from India I take offense to the idea that family values in western countries are somehow incompatible with immigrants, both of my parents came to the US separately and decided to get married and have kids out of their own volition. Europe obviously has separate problems and migrant workers aren’t exactly the same as tech workers from India coming to the US but just because other cultures are different doesn’t mean they’re from alien planets or something.

Although I am sympathetic to Indians, I think people in India would not like it if a lot of Europeans showed up. It says here that Indians are 3.1% of the population of Great Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Indians. I can't imagine Indians would appreciate it if 3.1% of India were European immigrants. Neither would people in a lot of other countries. I think people in the West have a right to their own culture if other people do because the nation of immigrants propaganda is revisionist. Japan has chosen not to import people. I don't think the choices are to let people in or die.

They have lived beyond their means for a long time. The solution is they have to either boost productivity generally with a mostly stagnated population, have fewer people at present levels equivalent of output, or accept a lower quality of life.

You can see the fact that they're living beyond their means even in supposedly well-off countries like Denmark / Norway / Finland / Sweden / Netherlands, where the household debt to income figures have been shockingly high for 10-15 years now. They're the most indebted people in world history, pretending it's sustainable (maybe for Norway, thanks to their extreme per capita pollution output via fossil fuels).

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm

The Baltics and some parts of Eastern Europe, are the best positioned going forward.