Ellie Krasne joins this week’s episode as we consider the mass riots that have torn through France in recent weeks, which have led to over 600 arrests and nearly 250 police injured. We talk about why attributing this criminal behavior to a lack of resources, Islamophobia, and colonialism does not align with the facts. We also look at what these riots mean for the U.S. and other free societies.  

Ellie Krasne is the founder of Krasne Strategies, a consulting firm that works with conservative advocacy and policy organizations. She is a Visiting Fellow with Independent Women’s Forum and AEI Civic Renewal Fellow. Her writing has been published in numerous outlets, including The Des Moines Register, The Daily Signal, and the Jewish News Syndicate.


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, we look at the mass riots that have torn through France in recent weeks and have led to over 600 arrests and nearly 250 police injured. We’re going to look at why attributing this to criminal behavior due to a lack of resources and colonialism does not align with the facts. And we’re also going to look at what these rights mean for the United States and other free societies. And joining us to break it all down is Ellie Krasne. Ellie Krasne is the founder of Krasne Strategies, a consulting firm that works with conservative advocacy and policy organizations. She is a visiting fellow with Independent Women’s Forum and AEI Civic Renewal Fellow. Thank you so much for being here, Ellie.

Ellie Krasne:

Thanks for having me on.

Beverly Hallberg:

And so I thought we would just start by you giving us the lay of the land of these riots that started a few weeks ago. So you are based in France, so you have seen this up close and personal. I know the origins began after the death of a 17-year-old Algerian, of Moroccan descent, man. Tell us a little bit about this incident and how that sparked this unrest.

Ellie Krasne:

Absolutely. So that is correct. The riots were the result of a 17-year-old young man named Nahel Merzouk, who was killed in an incident with a police officer. After that, it was on June 27th, and for about a week, Paris was quite literally burning. There were metro stations that were shut down. There were trains lit on fire, city halls lit on fire, and police stations destroyed. A Nike store was looted, how stealing tennis shoes will avenge someone’s death is beyond me. But that did happen. If it’s helpful, I’d love to just take a step back and talk a little bit about the order of operations that led up to the shooting because I don’t think American or frankly French media did a great job at reporting on this. So early in the morning on June 27th, there was a yellow Mercedes with Polish license plates, and I’ll get to that in a second, in the center of Paris. Nahel was the driver. He was 17 years old. For context for an American audience, at the age of 17, you cannot get a driver’s license in France. You don’t have a learner’s permit, you don’t have anything.

It is illegal to operate a motor vehicle at the age of 17 in France. So there are two police officers on motorcycles. They try to pull him over, but he ignores it, he continues driving. There are a few more traffic violations that happen and the car is moving throughout the city towards La Defense. If anybody watched Emily in Paris, that’s where her boyfriend Alfie lived. During this time, Nahel basically runs a red light, he almost hits a pedestrian and some cyclists. Eventually, the car hits traffic and it’s pretty heavy traffic. So the car is essentially forced to stop. The two police on motorcycles are still with him, and one police officer goes behind the yellow car and one goes to the left on the driver’s side. At this point, Nahel steps on the gas to move the car, the officer discharges his weapon, it hits Nahel, and Nahel is declared dead in the hospital a little bit later.

I don’t offer any of this to say whether or not what the police officer did was right or wrong, but just to set up what led to this, that it wasn’t as if a police officer randomly approached a car and shot a kid point-blank. That’s not at all what happened.

Beverly Hallberg:

And was there a video of this that was spread?

Ellie Krasne:

I do know that there was a video of the point when the car finally stopped in traffic. So there is a video of that. On the point of the yellow Mercedes having Polish license plates, and this is real inside baseball France crime syndicates. But basically what some criminals do is they rent a car in Poland under the name of a business, and then they take the car to France and they essentially sublease it to their friends. Whenever there’s a traffic violation or any damage to the car, the rental company can’t really attribute it to anyone because it happened in another country and under a business name. So again, none of this is to say what the police officer did was right or wrong. I’m not commenting on that. But given the very serious issues that link these car rentals from Poland to crime, there was possibly reasons for the police officers on motorcycle to have an interest in what was going on here in trying to understand that.

Beverly Hallberg:

And of course this scenario reminds us of what happened in the United States, and that is a tragic death of George Floyd where mass riots were started after that death. Do you think that that was thought of as these riots started, that they saw what happened in the United States? And were people doing this under the moniker of social justice?

Ellie Krasne:

Very good question. I think unfortunately protests are a time honored tradition in France and more so riots are. Although the motivations were very different, we saw this back in the springtime with the pension reforms. In France, this history… So in a good way, protests, right? It’s seen as a way of driving social change and making your voice heard against the government. What I would argue is that when you have a bloated administrative state and vast labyrinth of a social welfare system, when people don’t like what’s happening to them, really the only tool they’re left to use is force. When there are fewer individual rights, fewer individual liberties, that’s what leads to this. I am in no way justifying violence, but that’s a culture that France has inculcated. When it comes to social justice, although I don’t think the protestors or the rioters would use that word, I do think that it comes from a same or similar strain of thought where the idea is you have somehow been wronged for what you perceive to be some kind of systemic failure, whether that is a cultural failure, a failure of the government.

And so these protests and riots are your revenge. These are really your way of making a difference or drive that change that you hope to see. And unfortunately, we’ve seen that time and time again in France. In France, when it comes to these particular riots, this sense of revenge and the sense of justice touches on something that is a big social and cultural challenge in France, and it is how to integrate these Muslim communities who have come to France in the hundreds and thousands of millions since the 1960s. We saw two inflection points in immigration, one happening in the sixties, the next happening in the two thousands. Of course, this isn’t to say that all of France’s immigrants are bad or wrong, but we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t say there are some integration challenges.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah, well, even former president Donald Trump said last week that these riots prove that we must redouble our efforts to ensure that anyone who comes to America shares our values and assimilates into our culture. How has France handled assimilation? Do you feel like it has happened or is that something that is lacking?

Ellie Krasne:

Very good question. So the way France and the United States think of assimilation is quite different. In America, as you know, we have the concept of “E pluribus unum,” so we can carry with us our differences in our ethnic identities and our religion, but still partake in the American experiment. In France, their concept of egalite under egalite fraternite, really leads to the idea that we are all the same, which is of course not true. And so they are struggling with assimilation because there are populations coming not necessarily out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, not coming from Western Europe, with very different world views, and these communities are struggling to truly integrate in French culture. I saw this firsthand. So something France does require is that people who immigrate to France take four civics and integration courses. Mine actually were in Nanterre, that’s the town in the north of Paris where Nahel grew up, and it’s a four part class.

And during one class, the teacher was talking about France’s concept of liberte, so freedom of speech, freedom of expression, religion, commerce, movement, and you probably know where this is going, but he said, “So can I draw a cartoon of Jesus? Is that okay?” Class said, “Okay.” “Can I draw a cartoon of Muhammad?” Three women in the class proceeded to argue with him stating that drawing a cartoon of Muhammad was a violation of their religious liberty. By the way, of these three women, two of them were college educated, one of whom had a master’s degree from her home country and worked in finance. So these were by no means uneducated people or people who have not been exposed to different ideas, and yet there they were arguing over something that you and I probably agree is very fundamental, which is freedom of speech.

And that was a very eye-opening experience for me. So France does have an integration and assimilation problem. I wish I had better news, but unfortunately they are not doing well and the system that they’re using just isn’t working, as we saw a few weeks ago with these riots.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, one of the things that you had just published, and it’s on iwf.org so people can go check it out, you talk about three myths as to why these riots started. So three common things that people are saying. One is lack of resources, one is Islamophobia, and the other is colonialism. I realize those are all big topics on their own, but I want to start with lack of resources. Is this because people are not happy with the social welfare system that is in France? Now, of course, France has a larger social welfare system than we have in the States, whether that’s healthcare being one of the most prominent, but also even where people live, a certain amount, I believe statistically, roughly 30% of low income housing has to be mixed with the other populations. Is this about a lack of resources?

Ellie Krasne:

I would argue no. This is not about a lack of resources. You just illustrated the point beautifully. But in France, by law, all cities are required to have a minimum 30% of social housing or what we might call in America, public housing. In Nanterre, the part of Paris where Nahel grew up, 50% of housing there is public housing. Moreover, France has special health insurance for people who can’t afford supplementary insurance. They even have custom health insurance for people who are illegal immigrants. And about 40% of men who are in France ages 18 to 30 under an irregular immigration status use this health insurance. Last and certainly not least, we have taxpayer funded daycare that’s allocated based on income. So there is absolutely no shortage of resources for people. I would argue that unfortunately, given France’s welfare state and very, very strong unemployment benefits, they’ve actually disincentivized work. So when you have a bunch of young men who are not incentivized to work and they don’t have that sense of fulfillment and responsibility, that could actually lead to more criminal activity and dissatisfaction.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, let’s go then to this other one because this is a big one that we’ve been hearing quite a bit. This idea of colonialism. Even we heard this term quite a bit, even when King Charles was crowned King. This talk about whether or not the UK is a country or a region that we should even be looking to because of colonialism. How does that fit in with the discussion? Who is it on the ground who is talking about France and colonialism and that’s why these riots must happen?

Ellie Krasne:

Absolutely. So I think we do see it in a little bit of mainstream and more left wing media here, just like we do in the United States. It’s also something that a lot of Americans really like to throw out there, but it’s just simply not true. You just mentioned England for example. They had colonial rule over India for what, the better part of 200 years. And so many Indian people have moved to the UK and built incredible lives, and even their prime minister is Indian. So to correlate colonialism with criminal behavior, it’s just factually wrong. And I would argue it’s borderline racist because it’s suggesting that people based on their ethnicity or their ancestry, don’t have an ability to make good choices and build a meaningful life for themselves.

The last couple of points I’ll make on that is indeed France did have colonies in North Africa as well as other parts of the world. They really completely left in about 1962 following the Algerian war. And then my own in-laws, they were Jewish refugees from Tunisia, so they lived in French colonized Tunisia. And unless they’re harboring a deep family secret, I’ve never seen them light a car on fire before. They’re pretty happy with their life in France, and they had four wonderful children, one of whom I’m married to.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, let’s round out the conversation as far as how does this relate to the United States? What can we learn about these rights in France? First question for you on that angle is how did the authorities respond to these riots? Did you see a lot of people put in jail? I know we have some numbers on it, but in reference to how many people were out there, what was the punishment like? Did you see hesitation on behalf of the police and did they set curfews up? How did they respond?

Ellie Krasne:

Absolutely. So France deployed, I think upwards of 45,000 police officers all over the country because the riots eventually spread outside of Paris into smaller cities throughout the country. We saw hundreds of police officers injured, several hundred arrests made. It remains to be seen what kind of punishments these criminals will receive. I will share one anecdote that might inform how we think of this in the US. In France, people who are judges are part of a labor union because France has multiple, what we would call labor unions. And part of what that union has agreed to with the government is they cannot have mandatory minimum sentencing laws, or that’s how we would call it. So it is tough to impose harsh punishments on these individuals.

Moreover, France has pretty strict regulations about overcrowding jails. So it is tough to prosecute people and ensure that they receive the appropriate punishment. Most importantly, and we’re hearing a little bit about this right now, when the riots were at their peak, Macron suggested basically social media censorship because so many people use social media to communicate. And right now, a regulator in the European Union has advocated for the same thing. So while none of us I think want criminal activity or riots, we also don’t want to live in a police state where the government can order a private social media company to regulate speech on their platform.

Beverly Hallberg:

And what do we make of these large crowds, the type of riots, of course, we look back to the United States and think about the George Floyd protest and even protests that still take place where it seems that young people are more and more dissatisfied with the Great American experiment and the American dream. They talk about capitalism as being a horrible thing. What does this say about the future generation that there does seem to be such unrest and also disillusionment with one’s country that they live in?

Ellie Krasne:

That’s a great question. I wish I had better news, but I think these are a little bit scary to see for the West because if we’re seeing similar behavior patterns on both sides of the Atlantic, it is time for people who value freedom and democracy and opportunity. Although France and the US have vastly different systems, I think we more or less have those shared values, and we need leaders who are going to lead and inspire people to believe in those values again, but most importantly, create policies that create more freedom, more opportunity, more opportunities for people to work, and get the government out of people’s lives so they can experience that true flourishing.

Beverly Hallberg:

And then just final question for you, any potential that we’re going to see or you’re going to see more riots this summer, or do you think that this has calmed down, or is everybody still on high alert?

Ellie Krasne:

Well, France goes on vacation every August, and the only thing more important to the French than riots and protests is vacation. So definitely not for the near future. Unfortunately, I do think if there’s another incident, we might see this flare up again, although I truly, truly hope that Macron and his ministers are ready to respond swiftly and with force to control the riots.

Beverly Hallberg:

All right. Well, Ellie Krasne, we so appreciate you joining us today and want to remind our listeners, once again, you can find some of her writings on the riots by going to iwf.org. But Ellie, thank you so much for joining She Thinks.

Ellie Krasne:

Thank you.

Beverly Hallberg:

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