THE recent violence across France is a warning call to us all.
After riots involving multiple cities, 45,000 police and 3,000 arrests, a simmering peace appears to be holding.
Yes, an inexcusable shooting sparked the uprising, but the tinderbox relationship that France has with its immigrant population was waiting to ignite.
The fact that no one had recorded the dead teenager’s ethnicity, because the Republic, part founded on Egalite, forbids acknowledgement of racial differences or collection of data, shows how unaware the French are of minority needs.
Former Equality and Human Rights’ Commission chief Trevor Phillips emphasised this point in the Times this week, describing “shocking levels of segregation,” where minorities in France are condemned to “a separate world, in which houses, schools, hospitals and transport are routinely substandard.”
These huge suburbs of low-cost housing on the edge of every French city are breeding grounds for despair, dissent and crime.
And for many of those living there, the shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk by a gendarme unleashed their frustration.
Fundraising for the teenager and the gendarme have further exacerbated the divide.
A lot more money has been pledged for the latter.
President Macron has blamed social media for fanning the flames of insurrection and his officials have described the rioters as ‘vermin’.
The situation is political dynamite, re-invigorating Far Right parties, like Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest, which targets mass immigration and Islam in France.
Alternatif fur Deutchland’s Alice Weidel calls the riots a “glimpse into the future of Germany,” still struggling with Angela Merkel’s million migrants.
Meanwhile the latest EU migration summit just ended in another impasse, with several countries refusing to accept allocations.
Along with the rise of the Right across Europe, zero migration is increasingly the call.