Riots In France - The Journeys Of An Islamic Terrorist And A Partisan Of The French Left, A Chronicle Of Two Lives

Abdul al-Rahman grew up in a village near Mopti, a town halfway between Bamako to Timbuktu in Mali. His family were goatherders and had led a simple, pious life. They were little affected or interested in the radical changes that were happening in the country, let well enough alone when ISIS and Tuareg militants asked for water and food. Hospitality was part of their African Muslim culture - one did not refuse guests no matter who they were.  It was part of the brotherhood of likeminded, God-fearing people and was seen as a tribute to Allah. 

The young Abdul was fascinated by these guests.  He wanted to hear their stories of courage and valor, ride their camels, and even shoot their guns.  The guests were very kindly to the boy who clearly thought they were the medieval knights of Muhammed's army, and spent hours around the fire talking to him about Islam, the desert, and the holy war against the infidel. 

They left as abruptly as they came - government troops and French legionnaires had been sighted to the north and east - but their visits profoundly influenced the young boy who wanted to be like them, to leave his uninteresting, hard life and join them in their holy crusade. 

 

He never got his wish, for French soldiers had pushed ISIS militants far in the desert and close to Algeria, the government in Mali had fallen and a new more aggressive one had taken its place. Abdul returned to his goats, the scrub brush of the northern Sahel, and herding his troupe on the long, hot journey to the Mopti market. 

At about this time, the emigrations to Europe had begun, and the countries of the EU governed by welcoming regimes who felt it was their moral duty to admit needy refugees, did not only open their borders, but assisted the refugees who had come in small unseaworthy boats, many of which floundered during the crossing. 

Abdul's father said that the family's future was in France, and if the boy could make his way there, he would soon be able to bring everyone over.  With a hundred euros, a small bag of provisions, and Allah's blessing, Abdul made his way to the Mediterranean with a salt caravan, found passage across the water into Spain where he was welcomed by border security, and after weeks of travel by foot, freight cars, and cattle trucks finally arrived in France. 

The northern suburbs of Paris have become notorious after the insurrection of a decade before when thousands of Africans descended on the center of Paris and rioted from the Rue de Rivoli to the Eiffel Tower. It took the government weeks to finally bring the disturbances under control, but the angry spirit of revolution remained.  On the surface the northern suburbs were quiet, but behind closed doors, radical Islamic leaders planned for an eventual new and more complete assault on white infidel France. 

By the time Abdul arrived in Paris and got settled with his distant cousins from Timbuktu who took him in, the restiveness of the community had reached its limits.  It was no or never to take to the streets, demand attention, reparations, and restitution, and consolidate the growing Muslim minority in the city and throughout France. 

Young men like Abdul were recruited into the movement, treated royally as new soldiers of Allah, indoctrinated and educated in the way of civil disorder, and prepared to defend themselves against the police. 

Abdul, a simple, uneducated, credulous boy took this enthusiastic welcome as a sign of the coming prosperity and good fortune which would enable him to bring his family to France; but he never lost sight of the job at hand - bringing white, Christian Paris to its knees. 

It was a heady, exciting time for the young boy.  He was a soldier in the army of Allah, a trusted comrade of men and boys from Africa, and a crusader in the fight for a Muslim caliphate which would extend from east to west and from there to all parts of the world. 

The white, wealthy, Christian French were the enemy, the infidel, to be eliminated by Allah's righteous sword. The battle against them was no less than jihad, one of many fights to establish an Islamic regime. 

During his time in the norther suburbs he came to hate white people and saw them as the oppressors, the former colonialist overseers and enemy of the black man.  If they died at his hand, he would be rewarded by Allah. 

And so it was that he took to the streets in October 2026 to lay waste to the privileged enclaves of Paris.  Thousands of black and brown Muslim immigrants like him joined in protest, raided, looted, and destroyed shops owned by the oppressor, defied the police and won each and every battle they fought. 

Martine Fontenay had always been a proud advocate for the socialist governments that had ruled France with so much dignity, compassion, and consideration for the French worker.  Although the grand socialist experiment in the Soviet Union had failed to fulfill its promises, this was not because of the idea - Marx, Engels, and Lenin were brilliant thinkers who brought hope and moral justice to the people - it was due to the overreaching of Stalin who lost his way.  

Socialism in Western Europe was still and would always be the only political philosophy which offered justice, equality, and social harmony.  

Martine supported the open borders which allowed thousands of needy sub-Saharan Africans and Maghrebians to come to Europe to flee the harsh autocratic regimes and enforced poverty of their countries.  France would welcome them, shelter them, and give them every benefit due to a native Frenchman. 

Martine was a small business owner with a florist shop on the Rue de Rivoli - a family establishment since before the war, and well-known for the quality of its offerings, the art and grace of its arrangements, and the generosity of the staff.  

All was good with Martine.  She balanced private enterprise with a firm belief in statism, socialism, and progressivism.  She was proud to be French, a country which for centuries had led Europe in statesmanship, arts, letters, and philosophy. 

She resisted the nationalism of those who reminded Frenchmen that their country was The Eldest Daughter of the Church for having repulsed Muslim invaders at Roncesvalles.  It was that xenophobia which lay behind Islamophobia, and she knew and firmly believed that Islam was a religion of peace.  Muslims were always welcome in France for their piety and religious devotion added to the similar Christian devotion of the native-born. 

Even though the higher taxes authorized by successive socialist governments took a significant bite out of her profits, she never once protested.  Such tax revenues were necessary to assure that the poor, the marginalized, and the disadvantaged got their due. 

She shook her head in dismay at the reported misery in the northern suburbs.  The African immigrants who lived there deserved better, and even the most liberal governments were not doing enough.  It was time for a further opening of the national treasury to help these honorable, worthy citizens. 

Then came the October riots.  Her shop windows were smashed, gasoline was poured over every display, every table, every appointment, every flower, and set alight.  She could only stand and watch on the sidewalk as her beloved shop went up in flames. 

 'I am one of you', she pleaded, but for all her support of the black man, the Muslim, the immigrant, and the foreigner, she was just another white Christian who needed to be terrorized and destroyed. 

Abdul was one of those who torched Les Fleurs de Paris and who danced around the flames, cheering loudly as the building incinerated and was turned to smoking rubble. 

'How could you?', she said, grabbing Abdul by the shoulders; but he just shoved her to the sidewalk, spat on her, and joined his comrades as they broke into the more lucrative shop next door, and ran out with thousands of dollar of merchandise. 

Abdul was never arrested and made his way back to the suburbs delirious with the joy of victory, embraced by his comrades and shouting 'Allah be praised!'. 

Martine broke down with uncontrollable sobs as she looked at the smoldering embers which were her store.  She was beaten, morally confused, and bitterly angry.  She had nothing now - no longer a faith in The Other, no business, no history, alone, and irreconcilably lost. 

'Be careful what you wish for' is the first thing that comes to mind, but that demeans the tragedy of Martine Fontenay.  She meant well, she thought she was doing good, but lost her common sense, logic, and objectivity along the way.  She ended up a disillusioned, credulous, frustrated and angry woman but still had no understanding of what had happened.  

Such is the fragility of idealism, a philosophy which is rarely put to the test.  Martine Fontenay did not choose to question her beliefs, the Africans did it for her. 

Plus Sizes Disappear - The End Of Fictional Reality And The Demise Of Identity Culture

Letty Marshall was a 'plump' girl.  That was how her parents always referred to her even as she burst even sizes three grades too big for her.  

The girl had an insatiable appetite.  'Growing girls need food', was how her father kindly observed as his daughter put away enough food for an army base.  There was no end to requests for more, no matter what was served. She was insatiably omnivorous. Meat, potatoes, vegetables, salads, and deserts were all the same to her.  She was simply unstoppable at the dinner table. 

She raided the refrigerator, kept bags of Pecan Sandies and Oreo cookies under her bed at night, drained carton after carton of chocolate milk at school lunch, and begged and cadged the Salvadoran ladies behind the lunch counter for seconds and thirds. 

Most parents are used to buying new clothes for the children as they outgrow the old; but in Letty's case, the Visa bill was extraordinary.  She ballooned into a caricature of Michelin Man before she was ten, nd adolescent hunger only accelerated her weight. 

 

Fortunately for her, she grew obese at a time when fat-shaming was a no-no and inclusivity was in. Plus size women were no different than anyone else, said progressive advocates, and should be treated with the same love and respect.  Stores like Lululemon were outed for discriminatory sales practices when they limited their selections to Size 12 - 'a normal size for normal young women', said then CEO Charlton French who was summarily dismissed by the company's board.  Plus sizes returned to the racks.  

Lululemon didn't want fat girls ruining their svelte, youthful image. They put the plus size racks near the rest rooms and broom closets and wished they could somehow engineer a special entrance for them.  Image is everything in sales and marketing, and Lululemon resented the social pressures that were trying to force them into a market miasma they had fought years to avoid.  

'We are not for everyone', the Marketing Director announced when the company policy reverted to 'normal' and the fat racks were removed.  He might well have said, 'Fat people not welcome, they ruin the brand'. 

Meanwhile, in a tribute to diversity, Letty Marshall was elected Prom Queen at Lincoln Roberts High. She waddled up the stairs to the podium to give an address to the student body and then climbed down to dance with her partner, Prom King Randall Owens, captain of the football team, dreamboat, voted the most desirable boy on campus.  

Randall knew it was a set up.  He and his girlfriend, the svelte, Hollywood-ready darling of the school, voted most likely to succeed, most likely in the movies, laughed at the proposition.  He, this gorgeous hunk of manhood dancing with a preposterously grotesque Jabba the Hut caricature because the principal, proudly out of the closet, all dykey with butch haircut, suit, tie, and cordovans, a caricature of all lesbian women, wanted to show her true colors and the flag. 

Students were not supposed to notice either the obesity of Letty Marshall or the Bernal Heights tough girl persona of Ms. Weldon, the Principal.  They were instructed to treat everyone as equals, accept their differences as part of the human condition but never the laughable circus performer ridicule to which they would have been subjected in a less tolerant, obtusely ignorant period. 

The school gym was overheated - despite May weather outside, the heat pumps had not been shut down - and Letty because of her size always the first to perspire with even modest effort, sweated like a pig, drenching her prom dress and leaking onto the rented tux of the Prom King.  

The scene wasn't exactly like the prom scene of the horror movie Carrie where the prom queen is set up by a group of catty girls, has pigs' blood dumped on her from the rafters, and then in horror and with violent anger uses her supernatural powers to set the gym on fire and incinerate everyone. However it was on everyone's mind as the chosen couple danced around the floor to the enforced silence of the crowd. 

Then the dam burst and the students couldn't take it any more.  They had been so corralled, trussed, harnessed, and intimidated by school administrators anxious to present the school as the most evolved and progressive of the district, that it was inevitable that there had to be a tipping point.  A shout came from the back row, something about Burger Queen and Big Whopper, then echoed again and again up and down the assembly.  Before the principal was able to restore order, the place was like a bear pit. 

You really can't blame the students.  After all day after day they were told to see things that just weren't there.  The school valedictorian was a dummy from the inner city, transferred to this predominantly white school to make it more diverse.  In his graduation speech, dressed in a dashiki, Rasta braids down his back, a stand out for nothing except his origins, he babbled something about the Mississippi River, Gone with the Wind, and the white oppressor.  Assuming loud and prolong applause, he continued to stand at the podium until the principal gave him the hook. 

The president of the class was a gummy 'little person' perhaps the least likeable of any of the hundred or more students, a pissy little runt who pushed and wheedled himself to the front of the cafeteria line. 

Teachers whaled away during each and every class about diversity, equity, and inclusion, banging on about Engel's work on 'Classless Equality' and the plight of the black man.  Even French I had its go at diversity. In textbooks the Cafe des Deux Magots, the Latin Quarter hangout for Beauvoir, Sartre, and Camus, now had Algerians and Nigerians sipping wine at the front tables. 

In other words the school had it coming.  What were they to expect?  A herd of complaisant, obedient sheep?  What was adolescence if it wasn't objection, defiance, and individual expression.  The school with their incessant reminders to respect diversity, their sensitivity seminars, and their public admonishments to hew the progressive line should have seen the prom event coming. 

Poor Letty Marshall.  She was the victim in all this. She was too dimwitted to realize she was being used as a pawn in someone else's game.  She was just as manipulated, used, and abused as the affirmative action students who don't belong in competitive circles, and who are seen for the undereducated and less intelligent social props they are.  

If people were simply left to rise and fall in the same Darwinian epic that has described human and animal society since the first signs of earthly life, everyone would be far better off.  Honesty is the best policy and when fiction is foisted off as fact, the wheels are soon to come off the bus. 

When the diversity dust settled and it no longer had the foothold in American society it once did, Letty Marshal went on a diet, and thanks to Ozempic, lost an elephant weight.  She was much healthier and much happier, especially because she could now fit into those cute Lululemon jumpers. 

American History Redux - Prairie Justice, An End To Protected Groups, And A Return To Laissez-Faire

For anyone who grew up even a few decades ago, it is hard to understand how Americans' skins have become so thin - how insults, innuendos, slights, and insinuating remarks have become such causes célèbres.  Bullying was par for the course on school playgrounds, an element of maturing; a learning process whereby the weak in their defeat learned about the enemy and the middling figured out how to evade, negotiate, compromise, or avoid.

Taunts were expected – racial and ethnic slurs and remarks about disability were common currency, the labeling of ‘other’, the natural signifiers of difference and threat to the community  No one was animated by hatred.  There was no hostility towards Jews, Poles, or Italians.  They, after all, were the furriers, druggists, and clothiers of our communities; those who worked lathes and presses or cut hair, paved streets, or cut hair.

At the same time, it was assumed that in an America still honoring self-improvement, individualism and enterprise,  foreigners would quickly and surely become economic and social players.  It wasn’t long before ‘No Irish Need Apply’ became ‘Only Irish Need Apply’.  Irish Americans quickly figured out the system and within a generation or two ran Boston, Philadelphia, and New York .

The Mafia, perhaps the most powerful and influential organization of civil society since the partisans of radical Republicanism during Reconstruction, was quintessentially American.  Its communitarian, hard-knuckled, authoritarian, and generous neighborhood rule after only a few decades of struggle, expressed the best of the Republic.

In a generation the Jews of the Lower East Side, rag-pickers, pushcart-sellers, and money-lenders came to rule New York and Hollywood.

This self-reliance, individualism, and fiercely competitive spirit was not just an occasional feature or one which applied only to the waves of immigration in the early Twentieth Century.  It came a century before when the new American republic learned of the vastness of the lands that lay beyond Philadelphia and Boston.

In the spirit of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny, new Americans moved across the Ohio River and settled the prairie, the plains, the Southwest, and the Pacific coast.  There was no law and order, no government caretaker, no one to tell settlers what to do or how to do it.  Lawlessness was met with force, justice at the end of a six-gun, compromise and contract by standoff, violators shot, rustlers and cattle thieves hanged from the nearest tree.  

It was a time of rugged individualism, self-motivation, optimism, and adventure. Wealth was created, income earned, the market was no different from Paleolithic trading of cowrie beads. According to embryonic market forces, things increased in value and required more defense, will, and commitment to hold. The algorithm had not changed an iota millennia later. 

The West was a violent place.  If it wasn't rustlers, thieves, and outlaws, it was the Comanche, the Apache, and the Piute - all intent on defending their land from white usurpers.  To make the new nation whole, to build it from coast to coast took courage, determination, and purpose.  Settlement by settlement the nation became populated, productive, and wealthy. 

Nobody gave anything to those who settled western lands.  Pioneers, settlers, farmers, and ranchers built their own empires and defended them with resoluteness and defiance. 

The American character of today is a product of the past. America's recognition of history, pride and cultural patriotism is a living legacy.  Westward Expansion, that heady period of American history where Monroe and Jefferson were determined to create a country from coast to coast, to create a European continent in the New World, to dominate, control, and profit from the remarkable land discovered by Columbus, settled by pilgrims and cavaliers in New England and Virginia, explored and claimed by Lewis and Clark, and settled by new citizens tempted by the unimaginable richness newly settled. 

Wagon trains, the horse-drawn caravans of 'prairie schooners', the Donner Party and the crossing of the Rockies to the promised land of California, the winning of the Southwest, the clearing of the cypress, snake-infested swamps of Mississippi to make way for cotton plantations, the northward expansion to Alaska...all were not simply the ordinary territorial imperative common to all countries in history, but an expression of common character.  

So it is with dismay and disbelief that anyone with even a cursory look at American history and culture sees the erosion of this individualist ethos, the closing of the American mind, the inhibition of free expression, the dampening of an entrepreneurial spirit in favor of communalism, and the attempt to reform and reconfigure the country according to utopian notions. 

The genius cluster - Musk, Page, Ellison, Huang, Zuckerberg, Bezos and others - are called oligarchs by progressives. Wealth and individual success are ipso facto signs of elitism, white privilege, and rightwing extremism. Protected groups - blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, transgenders among others - are deemed off limits for criticism, social satire, inquiry, and doubt. Legitimate inquiry into the nature of intelligence, talent, creativity, social integration and any other socially relevant characteristic can only be carried out within careful, 'respectful' parameters - i.e. not at all. 

The culture of diversity and identity demands an ipso facto acceptance of all racial, ethnic, and social groups as equal and thus beyond criticism or inquiry.  Why the black man still is a product of lawless, dysfunctional, and anti-social communities is a question not to be asked because it has been answered - racism and white oppression.  The seemingly irrational conclusion that biological sex is no proven indictor of sexuality which is a social construct is considered received wisdom.  The redistribution of wealth to create a fictitious state of universal equality is an a priori truth.  

As a result of both trends - the creation of protected, untouchable classes and the assumption that a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion is the final, absolute, unquestioned final social paradigm, the ethos of America has been seriously challenged.  The individual is not only dismissed but demeaned in the pursuit of social justice.  European civilization is at heart a racist, colonialist, exploitive culture which should be expunged from history, of no relevance to the new America. 

The American Left is most like Pol Pot, the Cambodian dictator who announced that his country was in The Year Zero.  The past existed only to be destroyed.  Every trace of the bourgeois, capitalist, depraved culture which came before his Maoist insurgency had to be erased.  As a result millions of Cambodians were killed in a nationalist genocide. 

With Donald Trump, progressive shibboleths are being taken down one by one.  The redistribution of wealth, the gender spectrum, open borders, multiculturalism, the derogation of private enterprise, the rise of statism and big, interventionist government, limitations on free speech as a means of engineering equality, are being challenged as features of a discredited, failed socialist system.  

Outliers are becoming fair game for satire once again, a sign of the health of free speech, in danger during the depths of the Biden era.  Every protected community has enough strange and curious habits and characteristics to fill a Jackie Mason bill at Grossinger's a thousand times over.  Comedic satire is hilarious because those outlandish clothes, pimp walks, street slang, and faux white talk of the ghetto are funny! And so are swishy, girly-girl, sashaying gay men.  Or the 'I Am Me' waddle of plus-sized woman. 

For very European immigrant group the taunts heard from resident Americans were shots across the bow, urgent messages to shape up, fly right, and act American. Italians, Poles, Irish, and others were not robbed of their ethnic identity.  They just subsumed it within the larger cultural ethos of the times. 

Today's identity culture says, 'Hands Off!' and the journey to full integration within society is slowed, deferred, and made even more difficult.  The 'Other', the outlier has always been suspect since the earliest human settlements. 'Stick to your own kind' has been the rule, not the exception; but majorities have always been inclusive when outsiders join in. 

Progressive 'diversity' and identity politics have encouraged separatism and isolation 

The genius cluster - the billionaire entrepreneurs who have remade American culture through almost unimaginable technological advances - are not oligarchs but seminal Americans.  Schools should not focus on those who will be the least productive members of society but those with the most potential.  Talent, intelligence, creativity, individualism, and ambition should be promoted not discouraged. 

The artificial, politically-sponsored tethers that restrict children's activities and speech should be removed.  Let children figure out who they are by themselves, thus preparing themselves for the adult world. 

Let America be America again.