Since the epidemic first burst on the scene during the mass riots (in 300 different places) over grain prices in 1775, France has acquired the questionable reputation of being a riot centre. Although events such as the storming of the Bastille, the Paris Commune of 1871 and the student uprising of 1968 have acquired prominent places in the romantic renditions of history, they have also reinforced France’s reputation as a country never quite at ease with itself. This is not to say that the awful riots last week that followed the needless shooting by the police of a teenager of Algerian origin in a Paris suburb has the potential of turning either the social or political order upside down — as some impetuous radicals hope. Like the race riots of October 2005, when two young men of African origin were accidentally electrocuted while trying to evade a police chase and which prompted President Jacques Chirac to declare a three-month state of emergency, civil disturbances of this nature serve as a slow-burning fuse to trigger a mental rejig of the popular imagination.

The immediate outcome of the orgy of violence that led to hundreds of cars being torched and incalculable destruction of retail outlets both big and small isn’t likely to generate a wave of introspection over the patchy and imperfect integration of non-white French citizens in the larger national project.

Traditionally, the fault lines in France have not been centred on colour but more on culture, which included a deference to the State and its authority. But the rise of ordinary street violence and crime, especially in the non-white ghettos that surround Paris, has broken down the assumption that every resident in France is French unless proven otherwise. Last Friday, in a needlessly gratuitous comment that we in India are quite accustomed to, the meddlesome United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was “time for the country to seriously tackle the deep problems of racism and racial discrimination among law enforcement.” He was, of course, referring specifically to the trigger-happy French police whose presence has become a provocation in certain parts of Paris. In 2022, the number of people of black or Arab ethnicity killed by police guns for not complying with a traffic stop was as high as 13.

This is undeniably disturbing. In the popular imagination of ordinary, law-abiding French men and women, the brutalisation of the police isn’t being attributed to prejudice. It is being blamed on the wilful refusal of a section of the ethnic minorities to adhere to what the British philosopher, Sir Roger Scruton, dubbed the breakdown of “ordinary decencies”, the very soul of the social consensus that binds society. It is significant, for example, that a crowdfunding initiative to ensure that the family of the policeman responsible for shooting the teenager last week isn’t put into difficulties, managed to overshoot its 50,000 euros target by 100%. It suggests that the 42% vote that Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (earlier known as the National Front) polled against President Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the 2022 presidential elections is sufficiently energised and outraged after the recent riots. Indeed, the more agonised liberals and socialists pontificate on the raw deal the ethnic minorities are receiving at the hands of the neo-liberal administration, the greater is the appeal of those calling for the ‘Reconquest’ of France from the new enemy within. This ‘Reconquest’ has a wider appeal than the ultra-nationalist Reconquest Party founded by the former television journalist, Eric Zemmour.

The steady encroachment of sensibilities associated with the Centre ground is a facet of contemporary European politics. Whether in Spain or Italy, France or Germany, not to mention Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, parties associated with nationalist politics have made tremendous headway in the past decade. Part of this owes to a backlash against an overbearing State, but far more significant is the gut-level antipathy that is developing in the indigenous population to uncontrolled illegal immigration from North Africa and the failed states of WestAsia. Germany has perhaps succeeded best in integrating the million or soimmigrants that were legalised and accommodated in the wake of the astonishing show of generosity by the former chancellor, Angela Merkel. However, given the painful post-Covid adjustments the other countries of western Europe have had to make in their economies, the anti-immigrant tide is fast rising in Europe.

To attribute this antipathy to prejudice is facile. Britain, for example, witnessed a bout of ‘Paki’-bashing and anti-Asian sentiment in the late-Sixties and Seventies. This has, however, been replaced by a sneaking admiration for the sense of enterprise and achievement displayed by these communities from the former British colonies, many of whom have seamlessly moved into the middle classes. The Conservative Party in Britain was once seen as a party of white privilege. Today it boasts an Asian prime minister and an Asian home secretary. Rishi Sunak is lagging in the polls. However, this isn’t on account of his race.

The problem in France, it would seem, stems from the ambivalent attitude of the ghettos towards authority and the State. Surveying French history, there are two traditions that coexist simultaneously in an uneasy equilibrium. The first is the nationalist tradition that, in recent years, can be traced to the legacy of Charles de Gaulle that incorporates conservative statism. It was always at odds with one face of the revolutionary tradition that abhorred State authority. This didn’t include the once-powerful French Communist Party, which was socially conservative and unflinchingly statist. There was also the Vichy tradition that was tarred by the brush of collaborating with the Germans from 1940 to 1944, but whose social outlook favoured State-driven conservative nationalism.

In his bid to make the French economy more competitive and modern — undeniably an overdue project — Macron has eroded the Centrist faith in an all-pervasive State. This, in turn, has triggered two different reactions. The first, by those left impoverished, whose commitment to French cultural values is tenuous; the second, by those whose vulnerability is coupled by personal distress over the sense of decay that the riots epitomise. How these conflicting impulses will play out in post-Macron politics will be interesting to observe.