Via Will at VP, Theodore Dalrymple has a thoroughly chilling account of what’s going on in and around Paris. First, after witnessing two young thugs attempting to rob a parking meter by breaking into it with a screwdriver, he sums up the wholly and contemptibly pathetic liberal position, which amounts basically to “belly up and begging for mercy”:

Several things struck me about the incident: the youths’ sense of invulnerability in broad daylight; the indifference to their behavior of large numbers of people who would never dream of behaving in the same way; that only the elderly tried to do anything about the situation, though physically least suited to do so. Could it be that only they had a view of right and wrong clear enough to wish to intervene? That everyone younger than they thought something like: “Refugees…hard life…very poor…too young to know right from wrong and anyway never taught…no choice for them…punishment cruel and useless”? The real criminals, indeed, were the drivers whose coins filled the parking meters: were they not polluting the world with their cars?

And how many people in New York, LA, or SF have witnessed some similar situation and quietly thought the same thing? But onwards, to the heart of things:

The state, while concerning itself with the details of their housing, their education, their medical care, and the payment of subsidies for them to do nothing, abrogates its responsibility completely in the one area in which the state’s responsibility is absolutely inalienable: law and order. In order to placate, or at least not to inflame, disaffected youth, the ministry of the interior has instructed the police to tread softly (that is to say, virtually not at all, except by occasional raiding parties when inaction is impossible) in the more than 800 zones sensibles -— sensitive areas — that surround French cities and that are known collectively as la Zone.

Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable: there are now an estimated 8 or 9 million people of North and West African origin in France, twice the number in 1975—and at least 5 million of them are Muslims. Demographic projections (though projections are not predictions) suggest that their descendants will number 35 million before this century is out, more than a third of the likely total population of France.

Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order.

No one should underestimate the danger that this failure poses, not only for France but also for the world. The inhabitants of the cités are exceptionally well armed. When the professional robbers among them raid a bank or an armored car delivering cash, they do so with bazookas and rocket launchers, and dress in paramilitary uniforms. From time to time, the police discover whole arsenals of Kalashnikovs in the cités. There is a vigorous informal trade between France and post-communist Eastern Europe: workshops in underground garages in the cités change the serial numbers of stolen luxury cars prior to export to the East, in exchange for sophisticated weaponry.

A profoundly alienated population is thus armed with serious firepower; and in conditions of violent social upheaval, such as France is in the habit of experiencing every few decades, it could prove difficult to control. The French state is caught in a dilemma between honoring its commitments to the more privileged section of the population, many of whom earn their livelihoods from administering the dirigiste economy, and freeing the labor market sufficiently to give the hope of a normal life to the inhabitants of the cités. Most likely, the state will solve the dilemma by attempts to buy off the disaffected with more benefits and rights, at the cost of higher taxes that will further stifle the job creation that would most help the cité dwellers. If that fails, as in the long run it will, harsh repression will follow.

But among the third of the population of the cités that is of North African Muslim descent, there is an option that the French, and not only the French, fear. For imagine yourself a youth in Les Tarterets or Les Musiciens, intellectually alert but not well educated, believing yourself to be despised because of your origins by the larger society that you were born into, permanently condemned to unemployment by the system that contemptuously feeds and clothes you, and surrounded by a contemptible nihilistic culture of despair, violence, and crime. Is it not possible that you would seek a doctrine that would simultaneously explain your predicament, justify your wrath, point the way toward your revenge, and guarantee your salvation, especially if you were imprisoned? Would you not seek a “worthwhile” direction for the energy, hatred, and violence seething within you, a direction that would enable you to do evil in the name of ultimate good? It would require only a relatively few of like mind to cause havoc. Islamist proselytism flourishes in the prisons of France (where 60 percent of the inmates are of immigrant origin), as it does in British prisons; and it takes only a handful of Zacharias Moussaouis to start a conflagration.

It’s a fairly long article, but you ought to read every word. And if you don’t find this worrying in the extreme, you’re not paying enough attention, because at least some of what Dalrymple says here, with some minor and obvious caveats, could also apply to the South Bronx, Crown Heights, or South Central LA. Obviously, we’re not anywhere near as far gone down this road as EUrabia is, but as Mark Steyn says here, “…the one advantage North Americans have, is that Europe is ahead of you in the line. It’s relevant to U.S. security, too.”

All well-earned needling about quagmires and intifadas aside, and at the risk of sounding completely hysterical, it’s my belief that if the current unrest in France is not stopped quickly — and the only way to stop it is going to be some very unpalatably harsh measures at this point — the possibility of actual civil war in France is not exactly remote. And perhaps the most chilling thing of all to take away from all this? Dalrymple’s article was written two years ago, making it yet another clear warning that the Left, in its all-encompassing arrogance, chose to ignore.

Update! Via Reynolds, a second front in the Eurabian intifada has opened up in Denmark.

Ask yourselves why they hate you, EUnuchs.