When in doubt, burn something
French police have killed a man after a synagogue was set on fire in the north-western city of Rouen. The man was armed with a knife and a metallic tool and was shot after he threatened officers, the Rouen prosecutor said…French reports say the suspect was Algerian and was appealing against an order to leave France.
You could also call it clash of the colonizers and the colonized, but then colonization itself is often entangled with monotheistic rivalry. Christian countries get to colonize Muslim countries because they have The Correct God™ – and vice versa. It’s basically the same god, but it doesn’t do to say so.
Earlier this week a memorial in Paris that honours 3,900 men and women who helped rescue Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two was daubed with red-painted hands.
Yeah that’s nice. That’s a lovely sentiment. Let’s bring back ol’ Adolf while we at it, yeah?
I would like to think that France had evolved beyond the colonialist mentality, but it’s not always true. This week there has been major rioting (still going on) in New Caledonia, a part of France located in the South Pacific. For several decades there has been continuous immigration by nice wealthy white people from European France, to the extent that the Kanaks, the indigenous population, have become a minority in their own country. During this week there has been a lot of criticism of the Kanaks (who are aided, amazingly, by Azerbaijan, of all places), but nothing much sympathizing with their being driven into extinction. Right-wing politicians (most notably the charming Eric Zemmour) have made a big issue of what they call Le Grand Remplacement, a theory that soon the traditional (Christian, Jewish) inhabitants of France will be replaced by Muslim immigrants. That’s just a theory, but the real observable replacement occurring in New Caledonia is rarely mentioned.
When it comes down to it, all gods are the same in that they are all equally nonexistent. One nothingness looks very much like the next.
Athel Cornish-Bowden, I had a recent, far too short trip to New Caledonia and found the people amazing, especially on Lifou where we laughed at my pathetic attempts at school boy French while drinking local beer and learning about Vanilla production. And praying to every sort of God we could imagine as the 40 year old “tour bus” careened and caroomed along goat tracks.
Unfortunately, due to a medical emergency in one of our party, we missed Noumea. Maybe that was not a bad thing as there seemed to be very few French in the places we visited.