Thread by @arctotherium42

Thread with excerpts from "The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and its Arabs" (2014). This book, by a leftist (participant in communes) author, portrays race riots by Arab immigrants to France as simply one more episode in a centuries-long war between the two.

Both the French Left and Right framed the 2005 riots as part of the long French tradition of revolt. But they were wrong; the protestors were mostly Arabs rioting against France itself, not against "the bosses" or "the state."

The rioters (remember, Arab immigrants and their descendants) see themselves as soldiers in a long war against France, Europe, and even civilization itself. Recall that the author is on their side.

Arabs and Africans in France tend to be Anglophiles, who like England, the English language, and Anglophone culture (rap music and football). Presumably the Anglo model of racial privileges is more attractive than the French model of assimilation.

After the brutal on-camera murder (by an Algerian) of an 8 year old French Jewish girl, Miriam Monsonego, the Algerians in France tended to support the killer. Their view: "France is our enemy," we live here because "France is easy" (ie, they give us free money).

To stop Algerian football clubs from serving as an anticolonial rallying point, the French administration mandated at least three Europeans in all clubs. This is analogous to 'anti-discrimination' statutes, requiring a certain number of women, blacks, etc, in the US today.

The Algerian War of independence was incredibly brutal, full of torture and massacres on both sides, often by people who had lived and worked civilly with each other for decades.

As is often the case, the French government underestimated the magnitude of the immigration wave from newly-independent Algeria; they guessed 100K would leave in the first year and got 1.35 million - not counting the Algerians, who quickly followed their former overlords.

Newly-independent Algeria was a cause celebre of the worldwide Left, which saw it as a beacon of hope and freedom for the postcolonial world. It quickly became a bloody disaster wracked by civil war and massacres, worse than under the French.

Independent Algeria being a shithole with a collapsing economy but booming population, Algerians quickly began demanding visas to France, emigration being the major hope for opportunity. The 'ultra-violent' civil wars made this worse.

The Algerian civil war of the 1990s included such charming episodes as a group of shouting men hacking up a village with axes, throwing babies in ovens, mutilating corpses.

In 1998, the multiracial French football team won the World Cup for the first time. This was treated by the French press as a moment of reconciliation for France and Algeria and triumph for multiculturalism, but the Algerians themselves did not see it that way.

"In today's Algiers, the French may have left, but France is still the enemy. Yet it also represents the Promised Land... the visits by Chirac (in 2003) and then Sarkozy (in 2007) were met by crowds chanting, 'Give us our visas!'"

1950s Morocco was very popular among English-speaking writers for the easily-available drugs and freely available gay sex, being much less morally uptight than America.

Moroccans perpetrated the Madrid train bombings in 2004.

The process of radicalization in the Moroccan diaspora often begins with smoking weed and bonding over shared grudges, like getting rejected by a girl because she was a 'racist'.

Moroccans see all of Spain as rightful Muslim soil and do not distinguish between Spanish 'occupiers' and Jews.

Average Muslim terrorist in Europe: very long string of petty crimes, always let out with a slap on the wrist, married a Spanish junky for citizenship.

The view of young Moroccans towards France: we hate the French, and also "France must help us!"

The prison population of France is thought to be 70% Muslim.

Muslim prisoners are not like imprisoned European ethnic cliques; they behave like an army and constantly threaten the guards.