The Sound Of Silence

Who’s speaking out on behalf of us? Where are our generals and admirals, who seem to have no shortage of opinions when it comes to race and sexuality?

France 2023: Is this the moment the French officers warned us about two years ago?

I was putting the finishing touches on this piece when recent events in France have forced a wholesale revision on my part. Twitter account @redstreamnet provided an overview of the situation, along with extraordinary footage:

Protests and riots have erupted across multiple suburbs in Paris after police shot dead a 17-year-old teenager for allegedly not stopping his car when ordered to. Naël M, who was of Algerian heritage, was driving a rental car early on Tuesday when he was ordered to stop by traffic police.

Police initially said the teen drove his car straight at them. However, a video posted on social media showed two officers trying to stop the vehicle, with one pointing his weapon at the youth through the car window before firing at close range as the youth attempted to drive off. Somebody in the video can also be heard saying, "you're going to be shot in the head," before the officer opened fire.

The shooting sparked riots overnight, with cars and trash bins set alight and bus shelters destroyed while fireworks were set off outside the local police station. Riot police used tear gas against protesters who built barricades. Protests also occurred in the center of Paris while riots also broke out in Asnières, Colombes, Suresnes, Aubervilliers, Clichy-sous-Bois, and Mantes-la-Jolie. 24 arrests have been made.

The police officer who killed the youth has been detained on homicide charges as an investigation is conducted. Yassine Bouzrou, a lawyer for the family of Naël M, said that police had killed him in “cold blood” and their actions were not a form of “legitimate defense.” The boy's devastated mother said, "they took my baby away from me”.

There were 13 fatal shootings during traffic stops last year and three in 2021, with the vast majority of those shot being of black or Arab descent, multiple sources confirm.

Two things immediately came to mind. One, the situation reminds me of the storyline in the movie Athena, released to Netflix last September. Two, it reminds me of a letter written by retired French military officers in spring 2021 in the right-wing magazine Valeurs, something I happened to be thinking about a lot lately as well. It caused tremendous controversy at the time, both in France and the United States. I’ve mentioned it once or twice before on this blog, but I’ve never posted the entire letter. Two years later, I feel compelled to do so, given recent events in France and elsewhere.

Here’s the letter translated into English via Google Translate:

Mister President,

Ladies and gentlemen of the government,

Ladies and gentlemen parliamentarians,

The hour is serious, France is in danger, several mortal dangers threaten it. We who, even in retirement, remain soldiers of France, cannot, in the current circumstances, remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful country.

Our tricolor flags are not just a piece of cloth, they symbolize the tradition, through the ages, of those who, whatever their skin color or their faith, have served France and given their lives for it. On these flags, we find in gold letters the words “Honneur et Patrie”. However, our honor today lies in the denunciation of the disintegration that strikes our homeland.

– Disintegration which, through a certain anti-racism, is displayed for a single purpose: to create on our soil a malaise, even a hatred between the communities. Today, some speak of racialism, indigenism and decolonial theories, but through these terms it is race war that these hateful and bigoted supporters want. They despise our country, its traditions, its culture, and want to see it dissolve by tearing away its past and its history. Thus they attack, by means of statues, old military and civil glories by analyzing remarks that are several centuries old.

– Disintegration which, with Islamism and the hordes of the suburbs, leads to the detachment of multiple parcels of the nation to transform them into territories subject to dogmas contrary to our constitution. However, every Frenchman, whatever his belief or non-belief, is at home everywhere in France; there can and should be no city, no neighborhood where the laws of the Republic do not apply.

– Disintegration, because hatred takes precedence over fraternity during demonstrations where the power uses the police as auxiliary agents and scapegoats in the face of French people in yellow vests expressing their despair. This while infiltrated and hooded individuals ransack businesses and threaten these same police forces. However, the latter only apply the directives, sometimes contradictory, given by you, the rulers.

The dangers mount, the violence increases day by day. Who would have predicted ten years ago that a professor would one day be beheaded on leaving college? However, we, servants of the Nation, who have always been ready to put our skin at the end of our commitment - as required by our military status, cannot be passive spectators in the face of such actions.

Also, those who lead our country must imperatively find the necessary courage to eradicate these dangers. For this, it is often enough to apply without weakness the laws that already exist. Do not forget that, like us, a large majority of our fellow citizens are exasperated by your swaying and your guilty silences.

As Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, said: “When prudence is everywhere, courage is nowhere. So, ladies and gentlemen, enough procrastination, the situation is serious, the work is colossal; waste no time and know that we are willing to support policies that will take into consideration the safeguarding of the nation.

On the other hand, if nothing is done, laxity will continue to spread inexorably in society, ultimately provoking an explosion and the intervention of our active comrades in a perilous mission to protect our civilizational values and safeguard our our compatriots on the national territory.

As we can see, it is no longer time to procrastinate, otherwise, tomorrow the civil war will put an end to this growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will bear the responsibility, will number in the thousands.

A month later, a new letter was released, again in Valeurs, this time authored by active-duty French servicemembers, leading to concerns President Emmanuel Macron was losing control of the military. I won’t share the entire second letter here, but I did want to highlight what I felt were the key points:

Yes, our elders are right about the substance of their text, in its entirety. We see violence in our towns and villages. We see communitarianism taking hold in the public space, in public debate. We see hatred of France and its history becoming the norm.

It may not be for soldiers to say that, you will argue. On the contrary: because we are apolitical in our assessments of the situation, it is a professional observation that we deliver. Because this decline, we have seen it in many countries in crisis. It precedes the collapse. It announces chaos and violence, and contrary to what you say here or there, this chaos and this violence will not come from a “military pronunciamento” but from a civil insurrection.

Finally:

Yes, if a civil war breaks out, the army will maintain order on its own soil, because it will be asked to do so. This is the very definition of civil war. No one can want such a terrible situation, our elders no more than us, but yes, once again, civil war is brewing in France and you know it perfectly well.

The reason these letters struck such a chord with readers - myself included - wasn’t just the blunt warning of civil war. It was knowing that there were people under arms out there watching it all unfold, ready and willing to step in if needed. And if those people aren’t the men and women of a nation’s armed forces, who would they be? Who else possesses the credibility and, more importantly, the public’s trust, to play that role?

Predictably, the retort from critics primarily concerned the legality of what the retired (and later, active-duty) soldiers did and whether any lines, written or unwritten, were crossed. Generally, we don’t want our soldiers opining on political matters. But if they ultimately serve society and possess moral as well as legal duty, then expecting them to remain silent on matters of life and death, the fate of the nation they’ve sworn to protect, doesn’t make sense, either. After all, it’s what they spoke out about that draws attention, rather than the fact they spoke out at all.

For example, check out this 2020 CNN article listing all the defense officials and retired officers who spoke out against President Donald Trump during the height of the civil unrest that summer. Outside scholarly circles, nobody viewed what they did as “dangerous,” nor did they fear the prospect of the president losing the military. If anything, I’m sure a large percentage of Americans would’ve had no problem if the military overthrew Trump. For a moment, anyway, the military becoming a political actor wasn’t something beyond the pale.

But maybe the military becoming embroiled in politics shouldn’t be beyond the pale to begin with. War is a political matter, after all. In America, military servicemembers pledge their oath to the Constitution, not to a single person (like a king), the state, or even the people. The Constitution being a political document, it’s nearly impossible to isolate the military from political matters and the troops are, whether they know it or not, political actors to one extent or another.

From a 1995 essay by a retired Marine Colonel, Michael Wyly [bold mine]:

Politics in a military organization is wrong. But … whether or not we support the Constitution is not a political matter. It has not been since 1789, when it was ratified. All of us swore to support it back when we joined. Were the Constitution to somehow cease to be, we would all be released from our oaths. We would no longer have a military because there would no longer be a mission.

There are major implications to that essay, paragraph, and the sentences in bold, perhaps beyond the scope of this post. I’ll say, however, the fact is both a curse and a blessing: there are only two scenarios where the Constitution would cease to be - state collapse or its voluntary suspension. In the former, the military would likely collapse along with the state and in the latter, suspension of the Constitution would be impossible without the military’s go-along. The Founders really knew what they were doing, didn’t they?

But the other side of the coin is that the Constitution is open to interpretation and can be manipulated by bluntly political actors. The troops, after all, aren’t expected to be Constitutional scholars and, as I’ve argued previously, the system works only if troops can trust, on an intrinsic level, that they’re being issued only legal orders. Part of that involves trusting the person issuing the orders. There’s no way the arrangement is viable if the troops believe the Constitution and the people giving the orders are distinct from one another. After all, orders might be issued in writing, but it’s not the piece of paper you’re obeying.

I’m drifting off-course here and, originally, this post of mine contained a long section related to the matter of military leaders commenting on political matters. For now, it suffices to say that military leaders have been weighing in on political matters for quite some time now and that experts in the arena believe it’s actually rather necessary. Again, it matters less that they spoke up and more what they said when they did. For now, it seems LGBTQ+ and race issues are the only political issues military leaders can speak out about and they must do so in full-throated affirmation of the Left’s position.

Meanwhile, speaking out about crime, the right to live free from barbarism and victimization (the real kind, not by virtue of historical injustices or hearing things you don’t like), apparently seems off-limits for military leaders. At least I haven’t heard our generals and admirals say anything about it. Crime is, as I keep saying, a national security issue, a fact which will become more apparent with time. It’s an issue that affects the troops as much as it affects the public. It’s at least of greater relevance than LGBTQ+ or even race issues, despite the Regime’s attempts to dominate our lives with them.

The retired French officers and troops seemed to understand this back in 2021. Sure, that was two years ago and the civil war the soldiers warned of has yet to materialize. You can go further back in time and see similar warnings of civil war in France, but, as in the U.S. and elsewhere throughout the West, things bend, but don’t break. Still, it’s a worry that won’t go away, since things don’t seem to get any better, either, as evidenced by the ongoing civil unrest in Paris and its suburbs.

From the British conservative magazine The Spectator last month:

2022 was a record year in France with the arrival of nearly half a million legal migrants. This is on top of those who are in the country illegally. According to the MP for Nice, Eric Ciotti, president of the centre-right Republican party, there could be as many as one million in this category.

The crisis in France has become so grave that respected politicians are warning of looming disaster. In a television interview on Thursday morning, Bruno Retailleau, the Senate leader of the Republicans, expressed his fear for the future. Lamenting the government’s reluctance to tackle what he described as the ‘migratory chaos’, Retailleau said this inertia could ‘lead to civil war’.

In France along with broader Europe, immigration is playing an outsized role in destabilizing the country. It’s fomenting extremism on both sides, a fact the French elite find inconvenient, similar as in the U.S., given the mileage built up trying to fashion political extremism as an exclusively right-wing phenomenon:

The most – possibly the only – coherent political response came from prime minister Elisabeth Borne, currently visiting the French Department of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. ‘The fact that this fire is linked to the relocation of a reception centre for asylum seekers shows that there is a rise in extremism in our country,’ she said. ‘Obviously we must be very, very vigilant on this subject. Extremism is present on both sides of the political spectrum.’ 

The idea that extremism could be present on the left caused uproar. ‘Incredible, dangerous’ was the reaction of Chloé Ridel, the spokeswoman for the Socialist party. 

But the facts speak for themselves. Since March nearly 2,000 police officers have been injured by far-left extremists during pension reform protests and environmental demonstrations. Shops, restaurants, banks and town halls have been burned or vandalised, so too the office of Eric Ciotti, the president of the Republican party.  

On that occasion there was no round of applause in parliament from left-wing MPs.

What’s undeniable is at the heart of the anxiety is crime. America doesn’t have the same kind of issues with immigration as France and Europe do, but on either side of the Atlantic, increasing chaos and disorder is the outcome, be it from immigrants or those already here. More important, there’s a perception, rooted in reality, that the authorities are either powerless to stop it or worse, intentionally fomenting the chaos and disorder under anarcho-tyranny. In such a system, crime is leveraged by authorities as a form of social control, a way to terrorize those invested in the system’s continuity into compliance.

In addition to what’s happening in France right now, there were three other recent events that got me wondering if it’s past time for someone to speak up candidly as the French soldiers did two years ago. The first incident also comes from France. There’s a a multitude of reasons why so many people think civil war could happen there [WARNING: graphic]:

https://twitter.com/ZemmourEric/status/1670895324397748224

It’s incidents like these that have so many French on edge. This is a day-to-day reality they have been living with for years. Places where people talk so openly about civil war aren’t in good health. It’s just not something people think about when things are tranquil and certainly not a topic of polite conversation.

In the United Kingdom, there was a shocking crime that drew more attention for the way the victims’ families and the public responded than the crime itself:

Nottinghamshire Police arrested the man on Tuesday morning on suspicion of murder.

CCTV footage showed the moment the suspect was Tasered by police and arrested.

University of Nottingham students Barnaby Webber, Grace Kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 66, were tragically killed in the horrifying scenes on Tuesday.

At 5.30am a man, believed to be of West African origin, was dragged by cops from a white van that had just smashed into three people on Maple Street in the city.

One has been left in a critical condition while two others had minor injuries.

The owner of the van, Mr Coates, was later found dead.

Here was the disturbing response from the mother of one of the victims:

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1669407778815836160

It’s as if she regards her son as a wartime death, a necessary sacrifice. On second thought, I don’t hear the loved ones of the war dead ever tell the public how they’re supposed to feel about their deaths. At most, to be grateful, but that’s it. And what’s there to be grateful about, anyway? What happened to Barnaby Webber and the other two victims was utterly senseless.

Here in the U.S., an abhorrent crime occurred in Seattle earlier this month:

The pregnant owner of a Seattle restaurant was executed at a red light in front of her husband last week by a convicted felon from out of state with a history of mental health issues, authorities say.

Cordell Maurice Goosby, 30, a convicted felon out of Illinois also wanted in Indiana in connection with a 2020 domestic battery case, was charged last week with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the first-degree — both charges including a firearm enhancement — in the shooting death of 34-year-old Eina Kwon, who was 32 weeks pregnant, and the wounding of her 37-year-old husband Sung-hyun Kwon. The couple’s unborn child did not survive.

“Mental health issues.” Where have we heard that before? Why do we tolerate these people out and about in society like this?

About the unborn child:

In a Medium post, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office explained that Goosby was not immediately charged with murder for the death of Kwon’s unborn girl because of Washington State law.

“We are committed to ensuring justice for each victim in this case. Under Washington State law, a person can be only charged with homicide for the death of a person who was ‘born alive.’ The medical records are still being reviewed by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, Seattle Police investigators and King County prosecutors,” prosecutors said, answering several questions about the steps taken in the investigation.

I don’t want to make this about abortion, but Washington is a state with liberal abortion laws. In order to have liberal abortion laws, unborn children cannot be defined as living beings. I never regarded myself as “pro-life,” but one has to be willfully ignorant to think abortion didn’t play a role in the de-humanizing of this unborn child. You have to be a truly depraved, morally bankrupt individual to think that there should be no consequences whatsoever for the death of the baby. It all underscores what a tragedy this incident really is in every way imaginable.

Who’s speaking out on behalf of us? Where are our generals and admirals, who seem to have no shortage of opinions when it comes to race and sexuality? Our politicians, right up to the president, have shown no concern and are happy to condemn us to our fates. Meanwhile, we’re not allowed to speak out, not without a cost, and we’re also not allowed to notice patterns. Doing so can cost us our livelihoods and everything we hold dear in our lives. What sort of freedom is this?

The simplest explanation is that our leaders, military or otherwise, aren’t speaking out against crime, while spouting left-wing platitudes on race and sexuality, because this is how things are supposed to be. And should we really be surprised? After all, the military’s purpose is to maintain the existing order. If anarcho-tyranny, racialism, and the prominence of LGBTQ+ism is the status quo, then that’s the order they’re supposed to be defending, isn’t it?

We live in a world where what you say matters more than what you did. We also live in a world where who matters more than what. When those French officers and soldiers spoke out two years ago, they caught everyone’s attention not just because of what they said, but because they were soldiers. Politicization of the American armed forces might’ve cheapened anything military leaders and representatives have to say at this point, but what they choose to talk about and what they have nothing to say about speaks volumes.

In many ways, what those French officers and troops did was brave, but it shouldn’t have been: all they did was state the obvious. Yet stating the obvious has become an act of bravery, because so much of Western society today is predictated on pretending like there’s nothing obvious about anything, unless someone in a position of power says so. Again, it’s why those letters from two years ago struck such a chord, because not only did they speak truth to power, they were exactly the kind of people you listen to when they do.

There is going to be a heavy price to pay for all these years of denying reality; in France, that bill may now be coming due. I’ll close with this sobering analysis of the situation by Adam Parsons of Sky News:

Nobody in France, let alone Paris, will be taking this lightly. It may be nearly 20 years since the city was rocked by three months of riots and a state of emergency, but many remember them well and fear a repeat.

That summer of violence was prompted by the killing of a teenager, just like these riots. And many of the other ingredients are still there.

In the suburbs of the French capital, you can find plenty of housing estates that simmer with discontent - unemployment, racism, high levels of crime and a sense of disconnection from French society.

Add to that a chronic mistrust of the French police, and it doesn't take much for anger to explode into violence.

The government know this, and they're reacting. President Macron has expressed concern, saying "nothing justifies the death of a young person" and sent "the sympathy of the nation" to the family of Nael, the teenager shot dead.

But he also knows that this could all spark a fresh political battle as well.

Jordan Bardella, president of Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National party, has already defended the police, saying they face a climate of violence that should be met with controls on immigration.

Macron and his interior minister Gerald Darmanin must now watch and wait anxiously.

They can't condone mob violence, but nor do they want to turn a blind eye to the police killing a teenager.

They don't want to inflame social tensions, but nor do they want to ostracise the police.

And they wait to see whether the violence was a one-off, or the start of something much bigger and much more dangerous.

What do you think? Is France finally on the eve of civil war? Do you think U.S. military leaders should speak out more about the growing domestic instability in our own country? Or have they relinquished whatever credibility they once had?

Max Remington is a defense, military, and foreign policy writer. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentLoyalist.

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