France On The Brink Of Civil War

This may be just the beginning of an even darker chapter in French history. What might the future hold in store?

I mentioned two entries ago that I’ve been quiet concerning events in France because they’re ongoing and I don’t like getting my facts wrong as things are still unfolding. After over a week of rioting, however, I feel compelled to speak on the matter, in part due to the lack of information coming out of France. This is because the government under President Emmanuel Macron is imposing something of a media blackout under the pretense of combating misinformation.

Misinformation is always problematic. However, France is no stranger to mass rioting. Yet this is the first time their government has gone to this extent to control the flow of information coming out of the country. Consider this: if what’s happening in France is just business as usual, as some people suggested early on, why would they take over the airwaves like this?

The answer is obvious: because the situation really is that bad. Footage that emerged in the early days of the rioting was shocking, to say the least. The rioters appear to be armed with firearms (so much for gun control) and explosives, so while there has been only one reported death - a firefighter - thus far, the situation remains combustible, and there’s the potential this could go on for a while and that it could eventually devolve into major bloodshed.

A state of emergency has yet to be declared by Macron, however. I’m not in a position to say whether such a declaration would be warranted, but it’s very much the case doing so would be a signal that the French authorities have lost control of the situation. For comparison, a state of emergency wasn’t declared for almost two weeks in the 2005 French riots, which ended up lasting three weeks. Again, it’s possible the situation doesn’t rise to that level of urgency and the authorities do have the situation contained. And again, we have no idea, because the government is controlling the flow of information.

Even those who have downplayed the apocalyptic perception of the riots don’t deny the situation is serious. Already, the damages have exceeded the cost of the 2005 riots by an order of magnitude, even though the present-day unrest has lasted only a third as long. I think it’s safe to say this isn’t the usual French riot and certainly well past the point of being a “mostly peaceful” protest. Here’s a French police officer talking about what they’re facing:

https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1675971516704366594

France’s police union, Alliance Police Nationale, released a statement a few days into the unrest. Translated into English, this is what it said [bold mine]:

Faced with these wild hordes, asking for calm is no longer enough, you have to impose it!

Restoring republican order and putting the arrests out of harm's way should be the only political signals to give.

Faced with such abuses, the police family must show solidarity.

Our colleagues, like the majority of citizens, can no longer endure the dictates of these violent minorities.

This is not the time for union action, but for the fight against these pests. Submitting, capitulating and pleasing them by laying down their arms are not the solutions given the gravity of the situation.

All means must be put in place to restore the rule of law as quickly as possible.

Once recovered, we already know that we will relive this mess that we have suffered for decades.

For these reasons Alliance Police Nationale and UNSA Police will take their responsibilities and warn the Government now that at the end, we will be in the action and without concrete measures of legal protection of the Police, of adapted penal answer, of consequent means brought, the Police officers will judge the height of the consideration carried.

Today the police are in combat because we are at war.

Tomorrow we will be in resistance and the Government will have to realize this.

Some people may consider what the representatives of the French police have to say as hyperbole, but they’re the ones who have to do the hard work of restoring order. The fact they feel under siege by both the insurrectionists and by their government shows how high the stakes are. If the people who are charged with restoring order and those who give those orders aren’t on the same page, I’m not sure how they can fix any of this. It’s not even clear what side the government is even on, or if they’re even on any aside their own.

As usual, the French authorities, as do most Western authorities, are trying to contain the inferno (both figurative and literal) and allow it to burn out without resorting to heavy-handed measures. But it’s impossible to peacefully deal with rioters and, as time goes on, heavier-handed measures will need to be taken lest the unrest continue. It’s almost like, in the West, it’s our way to let things get worse before we do what was always obvious would need to be done.

In my opinion, the biggest question at the moment is where the military stands in all of this. I’ve written at length about how both active-duty and retired French military servicemembers warned of this day two years ago. They remain silent at the moment, unnerving, given the context. Contrary to popular interpretation, the letters they wrote in 2021 weren’t warning of a coup d’etat, but making the rather obvious statement that if France descended into anarchy and chaos, as it appears to be at the moment, they wouldn’t simply stand aside. They would need to be ordered into the fray, unless President Macron wants to really lose control of the situation. If the military gets involved, then they’d be firing on people in their own country, which would without question constitute a civil war. I can understand why Macron and the French government may want to avoid this, but again, they may yet be delaying the inevitable. By comparison, during the 2021 South Africa unrest that occurred around the same time of year, the government didn’t deploy the military until after the worst of the rioting had begun to subside and tremendous damage had already been done.

There’s been speculation the military could intervene unilaterally, without orders from their commander-in-chief. I’m not qualified to speak on the matter, but if this occurred, it’d constitute a coup of sorts, since they’d be acting independently of their supreme commander. I bring this up not to suggest such a thing could happen, but to underscore the gravity of the situation in France. This is a First World country, part of the vanguard of Western Civilization. What happens in France won’t merely stay in France. There’s already been spillover riots elsewhere in Europe and the French unrest has been compared to that of the Black Lives Matter riots that roiled the United States in summer 2020. There’s a growing sense France is at a crossroads of sorts, where it either decides to secure its future or subject itself to a state of permanent conflict and unrest that can only get worse with time.

All riots, however, eventually burn out. A reason why civil wars aren’t fires waiting for a spark to happen is because fires require energy to be sustained. Gradually, the energy is spent and even those who might’ve supported the rioting early on want things to go back to normal. Terrible as these riots are, how this round ends may not be as decisive as many of us anticipate. This may be just the beginning of an even darker chapter in French history. What might the future hold in store?

Back when he was still at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher related what a Frenchman had told him while visiting the country back in 2021. It’s pretty shocking to read, but it’s clear today that those who’ve been saying these sorts of things knew exactly what they were talking about [bold mine]:

In France last week, I heard a lot of talk about impending “civil war.” The term came up because of an open letter some retired French generals published in the French conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles, warning that the suburbs were about to explode. They called the coming catastrophe “civil war,” but from what I could tell in my various conversations last week, they’re talking about something more like The Troubles in Northern Ireland: long, sustained, urban guerrilla conflict. One source with whom I walked through the rain and across the river put it like this; this is very close to what I heard from other informed observers, so I’ll let this paraphrase stand for the rest:

If the suburbs all go off at the same time, France does not have enough police and military personnel to restore order. Everyone in power, both in the military and the civil government, knows this. So do the thugs of the suburbs. Anything could spark this conflagration. Anything. It could go off any day. This is what accounts for a lot of the deep anxiety in French life today. That, and the fact that there is no clear solution, and maybe no solution at all.

Perhaps because we had a longer talk than I did with other sources with whom I discussed the matter, this source said something I did not hear from the others (to be fair, I didn’t ask): that he would favor rounding up the Muslim troublemakers of the suburbs and shipping them all back to where they (or their parents) came from, without flinching, and without apology. This man — with an advanced degree, very cosmopolitan — doesn’t see any other way. He told me that this next presidential election, and possibly the one after it, will seal France’s fate. That is to say, by 2030, we will know if France will survive intact, or will collapse, one way or another. If this source is correct, France faces a terrible choice: either to cease to be a liberal democracy, or to cease to be French.

I stay away from predicting the future. However, I think what we’ll see, after the unrest dies down, is a whole lot of hostility in the country on both sides. There’s just no way they walk away from this thinking, “Jeez, we’d better call a truce or something!” Those rioting clearly harbor very hard feelings towards France and the French increasingly feel under siege from what can only be described as an invading force, no matter how long they’ve been in this country.

When you factor in the guns and explosives the insurrectionists have access to, along with the organization exhibited, the ingredients for a protracted urban guerrilla war akin to The Troubles of Northern Ireland are all there. Maybe things will get quiet for a while, but just as things got quiet after the riots of Northern Ireland in 1969 and the deployment of British troops, tensions ratcheted up yet again, culminating in that bloody year and Sunday of 1972, followed by a quarter-century of low-intensity conflict that took countless lives and left scars which have yet to heal.

The nightmare may just be beginning. There’s also a Summer Olympics scheduled to kick off a year from now in Paris; I recall commentary stating the civil war could kick off around then. What’s for certain is that France will face a unique and dangerous security environment going forward. It’s hard to say what the ultimate fate of France and the French people will be, but once more, it’s not looking good.

What lessons do events in France hold for Americans? My answer might surprise some of you, but not much. I’ve said it before; France’s problems, even concerning immigration and race, aren’t the same kinds of problems the United States faces. Though I wholeheartedly reject the notion that merely being an immigrant makes you virtuous or that America is a “nation of immigrants,” it’s also true that our experience with immigrants, at least in the last several decades, has been far better than that of the Europeans. The same can be said of Australia and Canada (note they’re all Anglosphere countries).

Why that’s so is something that creeps beyond the scope of this piece. I’ll say, though, that the U.S. expects very little out of its citizenry aside from paying taxes and keeping your mouth shut. Though it isn’t easy to become a citizen (other places are more difficult) here, being a citizen is cheap once you become one. What it means to be an American has become so fluid and indistinct that literally anyone can be an American, for good and ill.

France isn’t like that. The French have a much stronger sense of identity and expects newcomers to not only speak the language, but to adopt French culture and customs as well. You can see how that might be a problem for some, especially for those from cultures that possess a strong sense of identity themselves. Ironically, France also has a very inclusive sense of citizenship, but all it seems to have done is emphasize to its residents of overseas descent just how different they really are.

This is the crux of the problem. France has spent decades trying to incorporate people, many of them subjects or descendants of subjects of their former colonies into their homeland. Thinking that having an inclusive, liberal, and secular conception of citizenship would smooth the transition has turned out to be a fatal error. The predominantly Arab, sub-Saharan African, and Middle Eastern rioters and protesters want the benefits of living in France without being French themselves, even when given the opportunity. I don’t know how any society fixes something like this. They don’t want to be part of your nation, but they don’t want to leave either. It’s a recipe for violence.

Coming back to America, we are a physically massive country (France could fit several times within) along an equally massive economy that provides plenty for everyone. Combined with the low expectations the state imposes on the citizenry, it’s much easier to be a minority or newcomer here than anywhere else on the planet. If the U.S. began to expect more out of its citizens, however, tensions would likely rise, given our identity-driven and racialist society. Likewise, if our economy didn’t provide abundance for everyone, including the poor, there would be greater conflict among the population and that conflict could break down along racial, ethnic, or religious lines. All throughout history, you see examples of different peoples fighting each other when there’s less land and resources to go around.

And this is where what’s happening in France does have lessons for us. I spend a lot of time talking on this blog about how America isn’t a peaceful place with a low-intensity conflict brewing that’s certain to get worse with time. We live in a country that’s set up well for the future no matter what challenges come our way, but the road is still certain to be a bumpy one. At some point down the line, the U.S. will no longer be a superpower. Life is certain to get more expensive, jobs less plentiful, and while the pie may continue growing indefinitely, the slices of the pie will get gradually smaller, as our population continues to grow while economic growth doesn’t translate to higher wages and more capital.

If even in today’s relative good times, there’s still this much hostility and tension, why does anyone think it’d get better when the hard times arrive? We just had the biggest single episode of nationwide civil unrest around this time of the year in 2020. It’s impossible to deny that “it” could happen here, because it did. The next round is likely to be worse. It’s also not likely to be immigrants leading the charge, but Blacks in America, who feature at the center of nearly every instance of civil unrest in our country’s history, coupled with the support of hard-line leftists of all races.

Long-term, the biggest problem immigrants are likely to cause is further solidifying single-party rule under the Democrats, thereby facilitating their far-left totalitarian aspirations, along with a further diluting of the American identity. The loss of American identity creates whole host of issues, foremost being that it’ll increase social conflict within the country, since even multicultural democracies need some unifying identity or dominant demographic to maintain order and tranquility. Otherwise, the only alternative is authoritarian governance. If the U.S. is to remain intact through the 21st century and possibly into the 22nd, the country may need to become a true empire in order to survive and remain viable, but that’s a different rabbit hole for another time.

For now, I’d focus on the present and understand the U.S. has the ingredients necessary for another social conflagration on a large scale. Even at its worst, I don’t see it becoming quite like France or South Africa, but you never know, either - the 2020 unrest took many of us by surprise, myself included. Crime itself can be a form of low-intensity warfare and I’d expect it to feature at the center of the next great American revolt, the same as in France. Combined with the apathy, at best, and collusion, at worst, on the part of our leaders, there’s plenty of fuel for a fire and repeat cycles of unrest followed by an uneasy peace. I’m not quite ready to put it out there bluntly, but I’ve dropped hints along the way: I think we’re a year or two away from the kick-off of another escalation in the American internal conflict.

Which brings me to the final part of my commentary in this entry: preparedness. What does France tell us with regards to prepping?

• You might know it’s coming, but you’ll never see it coming: Like the people Rod Dreher interviewed in France two years ago, “it could go off any day.” But we could also get into a car accident any day, yet it doesn’t happen like that, either. This is the great challenge of preparedness which can never be overcome: recognizing when its hitting the fan. This is why preparedness is so important: you can devote your time to figuring out what’s going on while also not having to scramble to figure out what to do and what you need. Why? Because you’ve already taken care of all that.

• There isn’t really a “happening” moment: Well, there is and there isn’t. France is certainly experiencing an SHTF, potentially Without-Rule-of-Law (WROL) situation. But as I explained in depth earlier, how this instance of unrest concludes may prove indecisive and merely the start of a much longer, overall more consequential, period of history. Even the ultimate legacy of 9/11 wouldn’t be known for 20 years - we went on the attack, only to return home from Afghanistan and Iraq with little to show for it. The lesson is that you need to regard even major events as ongoing and, therefore, find a way to keep living your life, because you’re not the one writing history here. Always focus more on what you can control.

• Have preps, have a plan: None of the preceding absolves you of the need to be ready for the day. If anything, it underscores the absolutely necessity of being prepared and having plans in place in case of SHTF. Once you recognize it’s popping off, do you know how you’re going to get home? If you cannot get home, do you have a secondary destination or even a bug-out location? Do you have a “go” bag in your car with necessary supplies? How do you plan on securing your family? Do they understand the plan? How well do you know where you live to find alternate routes in case unrest makes it dangerous to stick to your normal routine? Don’t get stuck and don’t get lost.

• The government will be utterly useless: Sure, they’ll eventually take unrest more seriously - after all the damage has been done and things begin winding down because there’s nothing left to burn or loot. We see this play out time and again: in the U.S. in 2020, South Africa in 2021, and bit of it in France this year. Granted, I think the French police were just outnumbered, but you have the government of President Macron refusing to declare a state of emergency and the president himself appearing seemingly detached from the reality of what’s happening in his country during the first few nights. Do yourself a favor and accept reality ahead of time: the authorities will be overwhelmed or they simply won’t care enough to come save everything from being destroyed and people being attacked.

• Understand you may end up being the last line of defense: Unlike in the U.S., the French do not have the same right to bear arms as we Americans do. Still, when you have to defend yourself, you have to defend yourself, even if that means using katanas, as these Frenchmen did during the ongoing unrest. Only fools and idiots like the people running our governments think everyone’s just going to cower in fear because someone in charge told them to. There are few instincts as powerful as the human being’s will to survive. I’ve discussed the pitfalls of gun ownership before, but not only is it our right as Americans, it’s absolutely crucial to our survival as a people. I’ll never tell someone to place themselves in harm’s way or do anything legally questionable, but just understand: your safety during an SHTF/WROL situation could very well come down to you and you alone. Decide now if you want to be a survivor or a victim.

• It may all go on for a while: No, I’m not talking about a long-term SHTF/WROL situation, per se. Full-blown civil wars aside, most SHTF/WROL situations don’t last more than a few weeks. Granted, they’re a long few weeks, but what I’m saying is not to expect a return to happier times once it ends. Sure, things might go back to a relative state of tranquility for a while, but with underlying animosities and tensions still present, it could all flare up again and sooner than you think. The unrest in France might be winding down, but what follows could be an even longer period of violence. Find a way to keep living your life, but don’t become complacent and switch off, either.

It might be that America is better-prepared to weather these kinds of storms than given credit for, thanks to our gun culture and self-reliant attitude. Not everyone buys into either, of course, but it’s up to you if you want to. If what’s happening in France troubles you, perhaps its past time to get ready for the long crisis we find ourselves in.

What do you think? Is France on the verge of civil war? Or is it already in one? What lessons do you think it all holds for the U.S.? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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