[Translated from Le Figaro (Paris)]

Debates and Opinions

URBAN VIOLENCE: THE REASONS IT'S SPREADING
By Lucienne Bui Trong

Le Figaro (Paris)
November 7, 2005

http://www.lefigaro.fr/debats/20051107.FIG0257.html?100443

It shouldn't surprise us, though, because it's part of the global phenomenon of urban violence that was in its embryonic stages thirty years ago, and has been constantly expanding ever since. As early as 1990, the security branch of the police recognized in this violence a fundamental social fact. It sized up the situation. The riots were taking place in zones that are already marked by a violence of daily life exercised by small groups of youths, mostly French born of immigrant parents, occupying public space, animated by neighborhood nationalism and hatred of institutions. All you had to do was take note of the daily violence: the level it had reached in a place made it possible to predict the strength of the collective reaction should some incident or rumor occur awakening the locality's solidarity. You could thus establish maps of danger zones.

This device allowed us to show the growing strength of the phenomenon and to note some developmental tendencies. In 1991, we inventoried about a hundred hot points, among which forty, the hardest hit, were the scene of acts of violence against police; in October 2000, there were, respectively, more than 800 and 160. The operational patterns intensified: the use of firearms when gangs fought, stocks of projectiles and incendiary bottles, routine ambushes against police, the rise of trafficking turning areas into lawless zones. As early as 1995, with the appearance of cell phones, the violence spread beyond the neighborhoods where it started: there were incidents in city centers, clashes between gangs, raids on high school students at demonstrations. Since 1997, there have been ludic riots without any incident to start them that break out at New Year's or on July 14. Enclosed in this same ex-urban counterculture based on resentment and a hatred stirred up by international news, the potential rioters practice every day, cultivate challenges to the Republic and its institutions, propagate and maintain rumors and stereotypes, repeat explanatory analyses of violence that exonerate them of any personal responsibility. When the signal is given that the party is to begin, that the last locks have been broken, almost assured of impunity they throw themselves joyfully into an adventure that is all the more exciting for its martial atmosphere (which is only a false appearance, since the only objective of the massive deployment of forces is to allow interventions free of risks for the rioters).

The present events follow these broad trends. Every neighborhood that's burning was inventoried as a problem area. None of the acts of violence committed is new in itself. As the ludic riots allowed us to foresee, the acts of violence are breaking out here and there simultaneously, without being set off by a local event. Nationalism is always at work, playing an emulatory role.

From a qualitative point of view, there is thus nothing new in the banlieues. We can nevertheless ask about the reasons for this considerable expansion, whereas riots in recent years have remained limited, rarely attaining the seriousness and duration of that of Vaulx-en-Velin in October 1990. Quickly snuffed out, they gave less opportunity for inclinations toward imitation.

Bad luck played a part: when, after three days, the Clichy-sous-Bois riot was going to calm down, solidarities other than purely territorial ones were awakened, after the explosion of a tear-gas grenade in front of the entrance of a prayer room.

The revival of anxiety made a phenomenon that was already abundantly present on television (the only form of media, along with the Internet, to which can seriously be attributed encouragement of the spread). Televisual mediatization has become more powerful. It has been very oriented toward recalling social problems which, while they are real, should not be placed in the balance so as to justify the criminal acts of violence that are taking place. Once again, television has played the role of a drum rallying the troops. In the past, persistent flare-ups of disseminated violence thus took place in support of political polemics or media attacks, as in June 1995, during a municipal election campaign, in which the debates had been centered on "national preference" and on insecurity, or in October 1997, after the Villepinte conference on insecurity, which was the pretext for numerous pieces about violence.

Finally, and above all, once again with the support of television, the events have been instrumentalized by the political enemies of the minister of the interior, who have repeated over and over the terms "scum" (racaille) and "vacuum up" (karcher), without ever putting them in their context (the death of a child who was the victim of a settling of scores between gangs at La Courneuve), or ever specifying that they only designated a small minority of delinquents and not an entire population worthy of respect. Thus caricatured, these words have become a rallying cry for potential rioters already fascinated by images of acts of violence.

Speeches about excuses were then overemphasized, normative positions were rejected as politically incorrect, and the police served as scapegoats.

By choosing dividedness when confronted by violence, several persons well placed to send powerful televised messages thus took the risk of fanning the embers which normally would have gone out more quickly.

It is still the case that urban violence continues expanding and chipping away, causing the flight of the inhabitants who have the means to leave and accentuating the process of ghettoization.

--Honorary divisional captain (commissaire).  Former head of the "Villes et banlieues" section at the Directions centrale des renseignements généraux [the security branch of the police force].

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Home page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu