Asymmetric Warfare 02: France - The mob, the state and the super state

Recent history tells us what we need to know.

Current events in France add to the already long list of 21st century French riots which have developed due to similar trigger events around cultural and racial tensions, political policy decisions and wealth disparity, all of which are couched in the ongoing deliberate destruction of the social contract to serve a globalist and Americanisation agenda that has been actively pursued by Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron, as well as wider EU political and financial corruption.

The course of current events is not new within France, which has long harboured deep racial and cultural animosity towards its migrant and ex-colonial populations. Those divisions are long enshrined in the demographic topology of Paris, whose inner “museum” is largely the preserve of its white, affluent French “natives” while the outer banlieue house the poorer migrant and ethnic populace. The metro serves inner Paris while the poorly kept RER over ground trains haul the suburban populace in and out of their inner museum service jobs. It is common knowledge that anyone with a migrant or non-white name stands little to no chance of renting a property inside Paris’ peripherique ring road. France suffers long standing anti-black racism and the nation also still harbours deeply conservative views to the extent that over a million people marched through Paris in opposition to gay marriage rights. That protest culminated in a Professor executing himself at the altar of Notre Dame as the ultimate objection. Mathieu Kassovitz’s seminal 1995 movie, La Haine (Hatred), starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui, depicts issues that seem to have barely changed in thirty plus years and reach cyclical boiling point on a periodic if not increasingly frequent basis.

The current riots are also reminiscent of the UK police shooting of Mark Duggan¹ in 2011 that birthed a streak of rioting and looting across multiple UK cities (timeline).

Similarities between the events run deeper than the superficial root cause of a wrongful shooting of a minority by a state agent. In both cases, the police wilfully lied from the beginning about the circumstances and justification for the killings, and in their own ways the police closed ranks. In the UK, the Duggan shooting is a lesson in how the UK police kill people then engage in a massive cover up with collusion from other parts of the state. The killing of Jen Charles da Silva e Menezes is another such example.

Nahel Merzouk’s Killing

Without the video evidence that shows the circumstances of the shooting of Nahel Merzouk, it’s quite possible that the French police’s lies would have stood and the killing been swept under the rug. The simple fact that the police issued false initial claims about the circumstances of the shooting demonstrates a concerted attempt to cover up the incident from the outset. In court, it would have come down to witness testimony against the word of the police. Video evidence has been key to exposing the incident for what it more truthfully was.

The police fatally shot Nahel at point blank range in a vehicle that was stationary and clearly did not pose a threat to the police officers themselves. The car had not struck the officers before or during the event. It is likely that the officers have already argued or will argue that they believed the car could have posed a threat to others had it been allowed to drive away, thereby satisfying Article L.435-1.

Article L.435-1

French police are empowered to shoot citizens under Article L.435-1. L435-1 is remarkably ambiguous and could, in the absence of other evidence or convincing testimony, likely hinge on the sole judgement of police officers who could then back each other in testimony after the fact.

The Article reads:

In the exercise of their functions and dressed in their uniform or the external and visible insignia of their quality, the agents of the national police and the soldiers of the national gendarmerie may, in addition to the cases mentioned in article L. 211-9 , to use their weapons in cases of absolute necessity and in a strictly proportionate manner:

1° When attacks on life or physical integrity are made against them or against others or when armed persons threaten their life or physical integrity or those of others;

2° When, after two summonses given aloud, they cannot otherwise defend the premises they occupy or the persons entrusted to them;

3° When, immediately after two summonses addressed aloud, they cannot compel to stop, other than by the use of arms, persons who seek to escape their custody or their investigations and who are likely to perpetrate, in their flight, attacks on their life or physical integrity or those of others;

4° When they cannot immobilize, other than by the use of weapons, vehicles, boats or other means of transport, whose drivers do not obey the order to stop and whose occupants are likely to perpetrate , in their flight, attacks on their life or physical integrity or those of others;

5° With the exclusive aim of preventing the reiteration, in a short time, of one or more murders or attempted murders which have just been committed, when they have real and objective reasons to consider that this reiteration is likely given the information they have at the time they use their weapons.

There appears to be enough in the Article for the police to make a good case that Nahel’s attempt to restart the vehicle posed a threat via the vehicle (see points 3 and 4, above) and that, combined with his failure to obey, justified his killing. That would be the simple, obvious argument to make.

Whether that argument is what the prosecutor has evaluated and rejected remains to be seen. Le Parisien now reports that the motorcycle officer who killed Nahel has been arrested, placed in pre-trial detention and charged with intentional homicide:

The incarceration was required by Pascal Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, “in light of the facts and the need to preserve the investigations”. This decision is undoubtedly also symbolic. In particular, it is a question of justice showing firmness towards this 38-year-old police officer suspected of murder, while adolescent death elicits anger since Tuesday evening at the cries of “No justice, no peace”.

The two investigating judges in charge of the investigation considered that the use of his weapon by the brigadier did not correspond to self-defence or to article L. 435-1 of the Internal Security Code, which authorizes the police and gendarmes to open fire during a refusal to comply as soon as the driver is likely, in his escape, to harm the physical integrity of law enforcement officials or pedestrians.

“The prosecution considers that the legal conditions for the use of the weapon are not met”, said the Nanterre prosecutor in the morning. During his police custody, the police officer explained his gesture ( by its will ) to avoid a new leak, by the dangerousness of its inducing behaviour in ( him ) the fear that someone will be overthrown and the fear of being injured.

However, it should be noted that points 3 and 4 of Article L.435-1 are both contingent on an AND clause that requires the perpetrator/victim/suspect to be capable of, willing and likely to attack someone or something in the course of or as a result of their flight. To satisfy this clause, the police will have to testify convincingly as to their suspicions and beliefs and/or present substantive evidence of Merzouk’s ability and intent to attack someone or something.

Although the Nanterre prosecutor is initially quoted as determining Nahel’s shooting does not comply with the Article, this will be determined by a likely lengthy investigation and trial, which is and will become more politicised. While the prosecutor said that the officer’s arrest is necessary in order to preserve evidence and perform an investigation of the kind that French law enables and/or demands, this may not imply actual guilt or liability, or point to a particular outcome. It is arguably a procedural necessity.

VST’s Predictions

1. The riots in France will burn out having achieved nothing for those expressing rage at Merzouk’s killing.

2. The police officer will be exonerated and return to duty.

3. The investigation will be more protracted than it actually needs to be.

4. Political opportunism will ensure that the state legislative outcomes move further towards totalitarianism and authoritarianism.

5. Macron will not step down. He will give the police and military enough of what they demand to remain in power.

6. Even if Marine Le Pen is politically bolstered and gains power, the net policies implemented both between now and then and also under her will still track WEF/Globalist goals when the sums are scrutinised.

7. This event may look like it is spreading and some might fear that it precipitates “civil war in France” and possible EU collapse, but it will not achieve this.

Burn out

The riots and looting show lack of focus, direction and purpose. The damage has been done indiscriminately and unintelligently. Target selection looks amateurish with no thought for the consequences, to the point that it is fellow citizens who are bearing huge amounts of property damage. Looting of private property isn’t justified by state crimes or misconduct. Police crackdowns and increasingly militarised responses with high arrest rates take highly motivated chaos agents out of the game and deter the weaker followers and opportunists when there’s no real movement and goals. Anger does diminish over time, especially when it is not directed towards other purposes.

Officer exoneration

The threats issued by the two police unions are likely to carry more net weight with the state than any demand for justice from marginal (if explosive) groups that do not and probably cannot (at this time) command support amongst the majority. If the state abandons the police and/or military, it becomes vulnerable to a coup by either. If it retains control over both, it can fight an insurrection indefinitely. The unions are effectively demanding that the officer gets off otherwise the police will begin to operate on its own agenda. The military statement largely echoes the superior/elitist/right-wing/racist sentiments expressed by the police.

Drawn out investigation

The state will engage in judicial theatre and drag its heels in order to dull the memory of the event, obfuscate it and pursue political opportunism in parallel. Laws and controls will likely be introduced off the back of the riots that increase the strength of the state and its agents before a verdict is reached, in order to further diminish all future protests in much the same way as the UK has been pursuing for the best part of a decade.

Political opportunism will prevail

The genesis of a political event and how it is used are separate but conjoined. In this case, the cause looks relatively organic, although one must consider how remarkable the timing, positioning and audio quality of the video footage were. The mob appears to be lacking leadership, purpose, objectives and coherent voice, while alienating itself from wider society. This is easy pickings for state and experienced political operators to take advantage of. The narrative appears to be a simplistic binary:

• Minorities express extreme rage at yet another injustice and use of excessive state force, and who can blame them given France’s history?

• This is the long lamented outcome of unchecked and ill thought-out immigration and integration policies and unless this is finally, terminally dealt with, France will descend further into civil war etc, so roll on the crackdown.

In the first case, nothing has changed and nothing will change for the better. The gallic shrug eventually follows. In the second case, the EU moves further along a trajectory that is already destined to deliver globalist and WEF agendas. It doesn’t matter if there is disruption along the way. The periods of disruption simply provide the pretext for further control, censorship and brutality. The first point feeds the second because it is rage unintelligently expressed, unmanaged and unsustained.

Macron doesn’t need to step down

If political opportunism delivers more of the globalist/WEF agenda, why should Macron step down? As a national pawn in a supernational game, Macron has not failed. He authorised a huge amount of force, did next to nothing to lead citizens, barely moved at Elton John’s concert and will now set about spending tax Euros on some repairs while blaming those arrested. If he retains the confidence of the police and military while the majority of citizens don’t side with the rioters, Macron is not under threat so why should he step down?

Le Pen’s agenda is likely to still deliver WEF/Globalist goals

If we take the Daily Express’ brief summary of Le Pen’s top line promises as a reference, how might her rhetoric be acceptable to those above her?

• Deportation of undocumented migrants and foreigners convicted of crimes

• Withdrawing residency rights for migrants out of work for more than a year

• Removing birthright citizenship

• Asylum request processing outside of France

• Withdrawing France from NATO's military command structures

• Ensuring the French constitution prevails over international law

• Ending Franco-German cooperation agreements established after 2017

The first four points are not incompatible with anything the WEF/WHO/UN agendas seek to implement. They are simply a right-wing approach to internal housekeeping that gives the state harsher control over who it determines to be a citizen. They are also ways to nominally lower a developed nation’s population and degrade the standard of living for those kicked out to places where they “do less climate damage”. In terms of net consequence, these point could score extremely low and take a long time to implement. They are reminiscent of the UK Tories’ promise to “control immigration”, which was a total lie from the outset to anyone who could parse language.

As for withdrawing France from NATO structures, this is not the big deal it could be, given the present state of NATO, which has been proven to be unable to fulfil its stated purpose against the enemy it was specifically designed to fight.

International law doesn’t really exist because it is unenforceable, so promising your law will prevail is to simply big up the status quo.

There’s a possibility that cancellation of post 2017 Franco-German cooperation agreements will mean little to nothing in real terms. If one cancels an agreement but in practise still behaves in line with the agreements, the cancellation is moot. Also, if many of the things in the agreements were largely inconsequential window dressing, the agreements and their cancellation are largely theatre. Brexit itself demonstrates perfectly how to execute the theatre of agreement cancellation while continuing to conform.

• No income tax for those aged under 30

• VAT at 0 percent for essential products as long as inflation is one point higher than growth

• No employer contributions on pay rises up to 10 percent

• Increase to low pensions and early retirement at 60 for 40 years of work

• An end to inheritance tax for middle and low-income families

These are both monetary bribes and perfectly easy to modify or abandon. One should expect the French far right party to be prepared to buy its way into power and even be prepared to try to meet at least some of these promises to some extent. There are plenty of tricks to pull when it comes to finances.

On energy, Le Pen openly backs nuclear. Quelle surprise. This is the only choice anyone has and everyone knows it. France is simply doing what it’s always done, and it’s always made sense to do it. Le Pen should be applauded for overly expressing this basic common sense.

According to the Express, Le Pen is also intending to clamp down on Islam, starting with “starting with a headscarf ban… and aims to ban anyone wearing a headscarf from public life, both on the streets and in publicly owned buildings. She also intends to strip people who hold ‘extreme’ views of their French citizenship. Ms Le Pen has also extended potential bans to Islamic associations that contradict the French constitution.”

While this will sound extremely flippant, how could someone defend the implementation of such policies within the present EU and western DEI environment? There is a general and growing backlash to the DEI agenda and the gibberish extremes to which it is being taken. This backlash is growing most notably against the excessive, disproportionate and unbacked trans arena wherein logic gives way to screaming diktat. This is an easy zone in which to pick up majority political support. Attaching an anti-Islamic spin to this is trickier, but there are simple tropes one can employ. If one espouses the sovereignty of a given state and the primacy of its laws within its borders, then in the case of Islam it is relatively straightforward to state that if Islamic nations impose their standards in law and life on all who live and travel within their borders, then France is doing the same i.e. “If you want to be a Muslim and wear a headscarf, go somewhere that welcomes that.” Similarly, this is much like saying “sharia law will never be tolerated here,” and so on. Le Pen is no shrinking violet and is well versed in taking and defending strong and distasteful stances. Times and circumstances are favouring the rise of the right, as they have before and an anti-Islamic stance is unlikely to be end Le Pen given that only 4% of the French population is Islamic. Again, one might argue that this is a form of near meaningless theatre.

Le Pen is a vaccine fanatic and backed lockdowns and masks. She questioned vaccine mandates and the curtailment of rights for the unvaccinated, but that’s small beer if you are still expecting people to do things that are literally insane and harmful to themselves and wider society.

The EU is unlikely to end because of these riots

Bear in mind that the Dutch are having massive amounts of their food production shut down and their property stolen by the state. Germany is litearlly deindustrializing itself on a near permanent basis. The EU in general is nosediving into the ground along with the rest of the west. That is full tilt clown show WEFism, and yet nothing on the scale of the French riots has been reported occurring elsewhere until one teenager got shot. These riots are possibly pulling back after a week, even if there’s been some reported leak to Belgium. For this to mean more and be of greater threat to the EU, the leadership, focus and sustainability needs to materialise out of somewhere. But why would it? People in other nations won’t rebel en masse against the things they should be rebelling against until they are personally and practically homeless and starving, and by then it will be way too late.

In VST’s opinion, it is already too late. We are simply along for a ride we know is coming.

Whatever these riots are and however they have been fomented and spread, they play into the hands of those in power, who know that the way to deal with unruly minorities who are politically unsophisticated is to beat them and ignore what they are screaming about. This was the case in the UK Duggan riots and it has been the sustained approach in France throughout les Gilet Jaunes campaign, which is one of if not the most sustained and focussed protest campaign in Europe in the 21st century.

When it comes to taking control of a social movement, the state is far better equipped and its job is much more simple. It simply has to hold a line using any and all tools at its disposal, which are often as basic as street level fighting. Citizens are stuck dealing with their own confusion, ineptitude, disorganisation, atomisation and lack of leadership, funding and vision, before they start dealing with chaos agents in all forms and usurpers from the state or elsewhere.

Pop-up, piecemeal, rage-driven summer flash mobs aren’t what a state needs to be worried about. It’s the mob that knows what it doesn’t want and knows how to make sure it never gets it that the state needs to worry about. Despite three years of people knowing what’s coming, there’s still no significant, overt and sustained street level fight against the WEF/globalist agenda, which is still progressing in law and in practise. This rebellion is nowhere to be seen in the most violent and heavily armed society in the western world, and its constitution tells its citizens exactly what the guns are for and defines that now is the time to fire them at the government, yet no one there is and no one there will. They are barely cognisant of the level of total corruption infesting their nation because divide and conquer, distraction, learned ignorance and helplessness, debt peonage and manufactured narratives work when it comes to controlling an entire population.

VST will go as far as to say that, from where it stands, if the Merzouk riots are truly organic, they expose us as children fighting each other in a sand pit at the height of gigantic tantrums while the teachers look on and ready detention and lines for all the kiddies in the pit. What should be happening is that the kids outside the sand pit should have encircled the teachers and be rushing them into the pit. Instead, they’re all queuing up for lunch, as usual.

It’s Soylent Green on the menu, and it always will be. Chow down, fuckers.

1. Mark Duggan was reportedly under UK police surveillance as part of Operation Trident. Police claimed that at the time of his attempted arrest and shooting, Duggan was suspected of possessing an illegal firearm, yet the evidence and testimony suggests that the police may have planted a firearm at and interfered with the crime scene. Just the accusation of the firearm possession combined with BBC headlines that Duggan was 'among Europe's most violent criminals' had the obvious potential to bias public perception towards the belief the police shooting was justified because Duggan was “obviously bad or criminal”, despite major testimony and evidential problems in the investigation. Ultimately, if Mark Duggan was not in possession of a firearm at the time of his attempted arrest, did not threaten the safety of those in proximity and was not committing a crime, there was arguably no grounds for his killing. Even if he had possessed an illegal weapon, that alone is not grounds for the police to open fire with the intent to kill.

The subsequent investigation into police conduct and Duggan’s killing:

• took years;

• was riddled with inconsistent testimony from just police witnesses;

• heard public eye witness testimony that contradicted the testimony of the police;

• comprised so many issues that even Wikipedia’s account of the investigation demonstrates that there was likely a police cover up;

• exonerated all police officers involved;

• blocked demands to reopen the investigation in light of other evidence.

What was revealed later on was that the spectrum of people taking part in the riots was broader than just “townie chav scum”: “1,292 rioters had been handed custodial sentences totalling 1,800 years at 16.8 months on an average.” Rest assured, police did not perform all those arrests during the riots. Many were the result of protracted intelligence analysis that enabled the later identification of perpetrators from video and likely cellular/device signals intelligence. The rioting subsided in less than a week, with rain notably affecting play.

It remains to be seen just exactly how far the French state will go to protect its agents but it is clearly being held to some form of ransom by the police unions and possibly elements of the military aristocracy. At the same time, there are at least two narratives in play; one that tells a tale of a wrongful shooting of a teenager who may have had a history of run ins with the police for a spectrum of potentially criminal activity; another broadly pins blame on migrants in general for the periodic chaos that engulfs parts of France.

Before we consider how current events in France might play out in the near future, let’s take a moment to consider how the UK dealt with the Duggan case and also the de Menezes case in 2005.

The UK Police Investigates Itself and Finds Itself Innocent

The French police officer who shot Nahel Merzouk has been arrested and charged, in line with French procedural requirements. Compare that to the UK procedure employed in the investigation of the Mark Duggan shooting. The UK police, through the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), investigated itself without those involved necessarily being arrested and detained at all. Even the IPCC itself admitted to having misled the British public via its own false media statements about the Duggan shooting. Police witnesses were allowed to effectively retract their incriminating statements then replace those statements with what could be lies to square up their stories. That is what happens in a police state when the police carry out extrajudicial killings.

This also happened when the UK’s Metropolitan Police under (now) Dame Cressida Dick killed Jean Charles da Silva e Menezes on the London Underground in 2005. In the case of de Menezes, an “anti-terror” surveillance operation misidentified him as a terrorist target, wrongly pursued him as he travelled on foot and by bus from his lodgings into the Underground and then ran on to a train. The police surveillance team identified de Menezes as the suspect they believed had carried out a terrorist bomb attack on London public transport only the day before. In their active pursuit, they allowed that target to board a bus and enter the Underground system. Police did not identify themselves or challenge him before killing him. The police killed de Menezes on a tube train with seven shots to his head and a total of 11 shots, despite him being the wrong person and having done nothing to indicate that he was a terrorist. In the end, the UK government paid de Menezes’ family a paltry £100,000, and no officers were charged with any wrongdoing, save for a Metropolitan Police Commissioner who was found liable under British Health and Safety at Work legislation. Cressida Dick was promoted and given a damehood despite overseeing an innocent Brazilian man having his head blown off in a crowded tube train for no reason other than police incompetence over which she presided as the commanding officer. One view of the investigations is that multiple state agents colluded to ensure a general whitewashing of the judicial process.