France – Riots : Where were the politicians ?

Cars burned, shopfronts smashed, stores ransacked and mayors threatened with death. After pointing the finger at teenagers in the suburbs, France’s political class has woken up from a long slumber and, eureka !, found the culprit : it’s not the minors who have set France on fire, but their parents. The latest politician to wake up from his long slumber is ex-minister Jean-François Copé, who wonders, with disconcerting hypocrisy, in the columns of L’Express : « Riots: where were the parents ? »

French version : France. Emeutes, où étaient les politiques ?

The galimatias that follow isn’t even worth dwelling on, as the former Minister of the Interior brews every conceivable cliché on the crisis of parental authority, but, to top it all off, he concludes by calling for a new law to punish these parents, a law « to be drafted now for adoption in october through ordinance »!

I think that if we were in a country that truly respects freedom of speech, these same parents could write a column titled « Riots: Where were Jean-François Copé and other political leaders ? »

Blaming parents for acts committed by their children still happens, but it is more common in the worst dictatorships, where even siblings and cousins are punished for « threatening state security, » or simply for « insulting the head of state. »

If France has fallen « into another world, that of shame » due to the abandonment of the concept of authority, whose fault is that ? To parents who are forced to applaud fads, ideologies and behaviors that run counter to the most basic values governing the world ?

When parents are asked to impose gender theory on their children, which denies the evidence of genetic determinism of sexual preference and argues that it is rather linked to social norms, what can one expect ? And this, at the the risk of having custody of their kids taken away and having them thrown in a center or foster family.

Following in the footsteps of Catholic organizations in the spring, a number of UMP deputies a few years ago called for the withdrawal of school biology textbooks dealing with the gender theory of sexual orientation. One UMP MP even wrote to the interministerial mission for combating and vigilance against sectarian aberrations, denouncing « a sectarian aberration ».

In his letter to the President of Miviludes, the Parliament member from Saône-et-Loire pointed out that « the mental hold on action by promoters of gender theory, either individually or in micro-groups, is all the more serious as it risks destabilizing young people and adolescents in particular, and altering their development, as psychologists, child psychiatrists, and sociologists have pointed out ».

These very parents and their youth, who are asked to abide by the laws and respect « the values of the Republic, » observe that in France, one has the right to insult Jesus, burn the holy books of the three religions, but merely mistreating the LGBT flag can land you behind bars.

African, Muslim, or Arab origin parents (as they are the ones targeted by political vindictiveness), are expected to forsake their religion in order to embrace new beliefs, to submit to the imposition of new sacredness, including the ideology of LGBT.

Afterwards, we will question the parents’ resignation ! No amount of sanctions in the world can restore an authority whose identity has been usurped in favor of a thought dictatorship, which leads to the notion that anyone who thinks against the prevailing ideology in the West is inevitably deemed to be outside the law.

The depoliticization and even the apoliticization of society are nothing but the consequences of a postmodern politics that has killed the image of the head of the family as the guardian of authority. In any case, in all families, the best education is one that opens a beautiful horizon for their offspring, with each parent being convinced that the best is the most normal for their children.

With the decline of the family, the death of the father, and the erosion of teacher’s authority, the street has simply become the battleground for the grievances of these outraged youth, even if one can lament that this indignation is primarily based on feelings and often far removed from reality.

After all, if politicians have a solution to propose, it is to get « back on the right track » these lost, disempowered youth, who have no sense of belonging to any community, neither to that of their parents’ origin nor to the society that has nonetheless provided them with schooling (failing to educate them), and who feel no guilt but rather see themselves as victims of everyone.