Two Minutes To Midnight

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The violence in France is spreading. Over 300 towns and cities have now reported some degree of rioting. Belgium and Germany are now seeing copycat car-b-q’s.

Now, for the record: I do not believe there is an organized Islamicist cabal calling the shots in France.

That doesn’t reassure me, though. I don’t think anybody should be reassured.

Not all riots lead to revolutions. But revolutions generally grow out of the initial, chaotic conditions that riots breed.

Both riots and revolutions are things of chaos; they exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It’s those initial conditions which give me pause:

– Even the most … tolerant… of French public figures speak of the rioters as being alienated, set apart.
– The rioters, for their part, seem willing to confirm such an impression — they identify themselves as Muslim, not as French.
– The rioters come from North African stock, who came to France after the Algerian civil war… in which a Muslim insurgency wore France down and sent them packing.

Hmmm.

I find myself thinking of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. The novel’s heroes wish to overthrow the rule of the UN, and form a cabal to that end. They plan and work, carefully, diligently, towards being able to mount such a revolution. But the revolution happens spontaneously, as the result of a gangrape carried out by a squad of the UN’s troopers. The cabal finds itself swept up in the spontaneous riot…

and turns it INTO an uprising, and then a revolution.

Given the initial conditions under which the original anger “on the streets” turned to torchings, and spread, and is taking on a life of it’s own… well. It doesn’t take a genius to see that an organized group, which has aspirations to political power, might see this as a golden opportunity.

Nor does it take a genius to figure out which KINDS of groups might succeed in harnessing these angry non-French, Muslim rioters. (Hint: It won’t be Mennonites.)

I’m not worried about the rioters’ current cooperation, or lack thereof.

I’m worried about what might be growing in that malign, chaotic soil.

Not what Baudelaire had in mind, I think. But les fleurs de mal , in very truth.