Move Over, 1968. C’est la Révolution. With Palestinian Flags. Trump & Zelensky Feuding. Obama ‘Appalled’ by Omar Investigation. Elise Slotkin Says Quiet Part Out Loud. The Perils of Resume Inflation. And More
France “reels from unrest,” as a Washington Post headline has it. France is certainly reeling all right, but “unrest” doesn’t begin to capture the magnitude of what’s happening in France. Move over, Paris 1968.
“The French Republic Is Under Attack” proclaims The Free Press. “France’s radical left,” Simone Rodan-Benzaquen argues, “wants its followers to believe they are fighting tyranny. But burning city halls and terrorizing public servants is an assault on democracy, not a defense of it.”
Here is how she begins:
C’est la Révolution, on prend la Bastille!” the protesters shouted as they broke into Marseille’s city hall in France on Saturday. It’s the Revolution. We’re taking the Bastille. Carrying a Palestinian flag, they overturned furniture and knocked a bust of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, to the floor. Protesters elsewhere stormed buildings across the country.
By evening, the city hall of Limoges, in west-central France, was burning. Its roof was destroyed; its century-old bell tower collapsed. In Bordeaux, in the southwest, rioters ransacked the official residence of the prefect, the national government’s local representative. More than 2,000 people were arrested; more than 600 police officers were injured. Several hundred shops were damaged across the country, according to the interior minister. By Sunday afternoon, fresh clashes had broken out in Paris.
“If This Isn’t a Civil War, It Certainly Looks Like One” is the Free Press headline over a story by Andrew Hussey, who lives in Paris and has heretofore “insisted that France is not coming apart.” Living close to the massive destruction taking place in Paris, Hussey went to bed Saturday night less convinced.
The Islamic element must not be ignored. “Saturday’s violent desecration of the French Republic was a mob jihad against democracy itself,” argues Brendan O’Neill in a Spiked Online story headlined “How ‘Palestine’ conquered France.” O’Neill writes:
Can everyone just stop it with the ‘school protests’ shit now? Or the drivel about this being a protest over the ‘cost of living’? It should be clear to all that we are watching the violent undoing of the French Republic itself. A great society coming apart at the seams. Tragically, the fuse for this anti-republican savagery was lit by the republic itself – by its leaders’ willful throwing open of France’s borders to half the world, their supine abandonment of the ideals of assimilation, and their suicidal indulgence of the intifada frenzy that swept France in the wake of the Hamas pogrom of 7 October 2023. The mob might be starting the fires, but the elites gave them the matches.
This is why the omnipresence of the Palestine flag matters – it confirms France is being consumed by the flames of anti-Westernism, by a nihilistic disdain for the very virtues of our civilization. For that is what the so-called Palestine cause now embodies – not concern for the Palestinian people but contempt for ‘the West’. Not a desire for a ceasefire in the Middle East but a longing for fire here at home.
A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Why France Is Burning” notes that far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon sees an opening in the riots. The editors conclude with a warning:
France is in a violent democratic funk, and it will probably get worse. Don’t think it can’t happen in the U.S. given the current state of American politics.
It’s not just France. There are riots in Belgium, Lisbon, and Milan. The CNN story just linked says that in France “the vast majority of protesters have been peaceful.” In other words, “mostly peaceful” despite the destruction and arson. Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, has a report on the 54 groups apparently behind the French uprising. This story (“‘They Have to Leave Our Country,’ ‘We Don’t Want a Caliphate’“), which quotes a party leader of right-wing Alternative for Germany, is guaranteed to stir controversy.
President Trump has waived sanctions and tariffs against Russia, which were put on Russia in accordance with the Lindsey Graham law. A highly critical editorial in the Wall Street Journal is headlined “To Russia with Love, Signed Donald”:
President Trump’s assistance to Vladimir Putin keeps growing by the day, and in the latest example he stuck a shiv in the back of the legacy of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. …
On Sunday Mr. Trump said on social media that he is trying to negotiate a peace deal and doesn’t “want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.” But he’s been courting Mr. Putin this way for two years, to no avail….
Congress is preoccupied with the Nov. 3 election, but Mr. Trump may not appreciate the anger he’s courting if he keeps aiding Mr. Putin. When the election is over there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump’s budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe and American interests.
President Trump is saying that Ukraine’s President Zelensky “never wanted to end the Ukraine war.” The Wall Street Journal reports that Russian President Putting “is floating” an idea of a summit with Trump and Chinese dictator Xi to discuss a Ukraine Deal. Not on the invite list: President Zelensky.
Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York examines the facets of President Trump’s job approval and how it might affect the midterms. Sean Trende cautions, “For the Love of God, Please Don’t Overinterpret Early Voting.” Trende contends that putting too much emphasis on early returns is the “Elvis-in-a-potato-chip” of election analysis.
While Republicans are facing dismal polls, the Democrats are losing the once solidly Dem Jewish vote. “Jews in New York and elsewhere are finally letting go of a party that is increasingly hostile to their interests,” argues Zach Kessel in Free Expression. The stats are impressive. Kessel says the Dems “have only themselves to blame.”
Meanwhile, two Dems have made remarks that I find more revealing than perhaps they realize. Former President Barack Obama has denounced the investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar as “so appalling.” This is a kind of blatant radicalism that the one-time “deporter-in-chief” kept semi-under wraps. Powerline’s Scott Johnson has a good post about Obama’s entering the fray on Rep. Omar’s behalf.
Getting to Know You Better. And in the second revelation, Democratic Senator Elise Slotkin said the quiet part out loud—if the Dems win the House and Senate, they should prosecute Trump officials so young people will be afraid to join the administration. Miranda Devine writes that, though Slotkin advertises herself as a moderate, “this is how the Bolshevik left plays the game.”
Last week we also got to know Katie Zacharia, President Trump’s ill-fated White House Press Secretary for a few tortured moments. Matthew Hennessey writes about Ms. Zacharia and the risks of resume inflation:
The longer the lying goes on, and the higher you climb in your chosen field, the greater the likelihood that you’ll get caught in your own traps.
The most surprising feature of the midterms is the rise of socialism in the United States. I want to recommend three important articles on this. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel speaks about the rise of socialism in American politics in Imprimis. Gary Saul Morson reviews Paul Mason’s book “Reds,” a “global history of communism,” at the Washington Free Beacon, and John Ellis wrote a few days ago about how radical professors have “poisoned the electorate” because they have indoctrinated rather than educated.
“Sally Rooney’s Radical Chic,” by Dominic Green, who is always fun to read, debunks the notion that the mopey Irish novelist is a martyr for free speech.
Speaking of mopey, Ms. Must has a rule never to get broody about stories I meant to mention but forgot in my daily rush. But I haven’t been able to shake my feeling that it really was unforgivable that I forgot “The Concept Creep of Nonconsent,” by Christina Bottoms, at City Journal, which is pegged to the Cornell allegations of sexual assault. What happens when someone remembers a sexual incident differently after time has passed? Recommended this morning is Heather Mac Donald’s post on X about the progressive Cornell’s imperative to believe accuser Jane Doe. As Heather urges, enjoy!
