“Nobody Rioted for Him”

[Guest-posted by Mary Madigan at Exit Zero]

Michel Pajon, the Socialist Mayor of Noisy-le-Grand, yesterday called, on radio, for the army to be brought into his town to restore order. Pajon said:

“Women have been made to stop on the streets of my town. They were dragged from their cars by their hair. They were practically stoned. And their cars were set ablaze. The situation is absolutely dramatic and totally unacceptable. this is a real scandal. I sound the alarm bell in my town. If the state is incapable of defending us, we will have no choice but to defend ourselves. My town has a psychiatric hospital which has been attacked with molotov cocktails. This is beyond comprehension. I have never seen anything like this in my entire life. I do not ask for the resignation of the Interior Minister. I want him to do his job. At the moment he is not doing his job. Send in the army? I do not know, for a socialist to say that the army has to intervene is an inconceivable admission of defeat, but what can I say is that one cannot abandon the people like this. At some point we need to know whether this country still has a state”.

The French version is here. No, I didn’t translate it. This is thanks to Neal, commenting at Harry’s Place, who said:

These *male* rioters are not the victims: it is their fellow non-rioting inhabitants (think: women, children, the elderly) – the majority – who are the real victims. THis is not ‘society’s’ fault. People have lived in far worse circumstances – without state benefits – and have NOT rioted. The parents of these rioters did not riot.

Some of the rioters are choosing to use the utmost thuggery on victims who cannot fend for themselves. they are criminals.

Of the riots, Mehr News, spokesjournalists for the Iranian Millionaire Mullahs, said:

TEHRAN, Nov. 6 (MNA) — Iran’s Association of Muslim Journalists (AMJ) issued a statement on Sunday condemning the violation of Muslims’ civil rights in France and calling on the French government to cooperate with them in establishing a fact-finding commission in order to investigate the conditions of French Muslims.

The AMJ said that the mistreatment of Black French Muslims over the past two weeks has deeply influenced Iranian public opinion.

“We suppose that the French government has carried out the recent discriminatory and anti-human rights acts under the influence of the Zionist lobby in France to limit the social and personal freedoms of the Muslims residing in the country, which is quite unacceptable on the part of a country that claims to be democratic,” part of the statement read.

“The rough treatment of Black people whose countries were colonized by France for decades shows that colonialism is still dominant in the policies and the thoughts of the officials of France, who claim to uphold freedom and patience.

The Viking Observer had promised to write about local, Danish issues, but the latest issue of the Observer, dripping with sympathy for the rioters-as-victims, was just too much:

The Observer is the Sunday edition of the British leftwing paper the Guardian, and for this Sunday the paper had opted to include a “Focus”-article on the riots. It opens up with victimology at full tilt, assuring us of the innocence of the two youths, then describing how they ran from police despite said innocence. We end up with the youths killing themselves when they choose to crawl over a 2-metre wall adorned with scull and crossbones, to be electrocuted by the electricity substation behind the walls. The thing gets raised a notch more by the mention of the two devastated families.

But during all the coverage of the riots, did you ever hear about Jean-Claude Irvoas?

The same day that the two youths electrocuted themselves, Mr. Irvoas (51) got out of his car to take a photo. Instead, he was set upon by three arabs [or, according to some accounts, drug dealers — .ed] and beaten to death while his wife and daughter – both still in the car – could only look on in horror.

Nobody rioted for him.

But that is not what angers me – that is the treatment the Observer chose to give him. After the victim-worship of the two youths in the top-3 paragraphs of the article, Mr. Irvoas is stashed in part of the 2nd-last paragraph, but only as a pawn in an evil politicians´plot to get “the intolerant rightwing vote”. What brings my blood to near-evaporation state is that neither he nor his family qualify as victims – they are “victims” – hyphenated people who apparently had it coming …

By paying more attention to the rioters than the victims of their violence, we reward bad behavior. No matter what is driving these riots, as any parent knows, rewarding bad behavior is a very bad idea.