France

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Typhoon
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Re: France

Post by Typhoon »

May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Alexis
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はい、そうです

Post by Alexis »

Typhoon wrote:Oui ou non?

Vrai ou faux?
はい、そうです。

Yes, that's the way it is. Reactionaries are fashionable, and declinism is the latest trend.

Now actually, this can't just be treated as a mere fad, because it meets a feeling which is widespred and expressed by a very large, possibly even a majority part of the country's population. A parodoxical feeling, still, when one remembers that France has the highest - or more precisely, less low - natality among all developed countries. Which is more than a bit strange, for supposedly über-pessimists.

A few precisions may be useful, still:
Seven prisoners out of of ten, it is estimated, are Muslim
No. That figure is an outlier, estimated in one prison in the North region where the part of Muslims in the population is much higher than average. The best that can be said about proportion of Muslims in prison (religious statistics are forbidden by law) is that 27% of inmates ask for special provisions for Muslim rites (don't remember which ones), and not all Muslims ask for such. So the real rate must be somewhere between 30% and 60%.

Much higher than the 8% of French population that is Muslim, still.
Submission is no mere exercise in Islam bashing. It is far more a satire of Europeans than Muslims. European man, to Houellebecq, is so spiritually deflated that he accepts Islamic occupation as, if nothing else, a welcome opportunity to have more than one wife.
I have not read Houellebecq's Submission, and I don't intend to, but this is clearly a satire. The very fact that it had such a large success is proof that penetration of Islamic mores is not popular and reaction is required by the majority.
the next president will find themselves in charge of a miserable, conflicted country. In a recent poll, 61% of French people said Muslim immigration should be stopped, which, especially given that up to 10% of French people are Muslims, is an astonishing statistic.
"Miserable"... might be something of an exaggeration. I don't think I'm living in a miserable country. :)

Regarding the answer about Muslim immigration, it may be useful to remind that French people are far from being alone in Europe with that kind of idea. France is actually barely above the European average on this.

Image

One may also note that the much-caricatured Le Pen... does not propose this, therefore may be considered left-of-center, if not positively leftist :mrgreen:
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Heracleum Persicum
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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Nike

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Alexis
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Re: France

Post by Alexis »

Heracleum Persicum wrote:Nike
Huh? What does that news have to do with France? :|
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

Alexis wrote:.
Heracleum Persicum wrote:
Nike

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Huh? What does that news have to do with France? :|

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Alexis , when Villeneuve Loubet forbid Burkini on their beaches, I asked my many French friends what this about .. I had never seen a single Burkini on french beaches anywhere

They said, they (the French Arabs) Provoking us.

In that sense, jugging in a "Nike Hijab" am sure will be seen as provocation, and, outlawed .. am sure

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Alexis
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Re: France

Post by Alexis »

Heracleum Persicum wrote:Alexis , when Villeneuve Loubet forbid Burkini on their beaches, I asked my many French friends what this about .. I had never seen a single Burkini on french beaches anywhere

They said, they (the French Arabs) Provoking us.

In that sense, jugging in a "Nike Hijab" am sure will be seen as provocation, and, outlawed .. am sure
The law forbides ostentatious religious signs in schools. Therefore this will not be allowed in sport classes.

Apart from that, no problem, as long as the law remains what it is.

Regarding the provocation, that is one indeed, but it's not French from Arab descent who are responsible, it's Islamists.

Supporters of an ideology, not people from a particular ethnic background.
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Heracleum Persicum
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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Fashion wakes up to Muslim women’s style

With the Islamic economy growing at double the global rate, mainstream designers are jumping on the ‘modest wear’ bandwagon

1577.jpg
1577.jpg (103.08 KiB) Viewed 1219 times


Fashion France's big money earner .. and .. margins astronomical

If Islamic economies growing @ double rate (as western), France, am sure, will jump "head first" into Fashion for Muslim woman.

Alexis, maybe Le Pin missin somethin :lol:

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Alexis
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Re: France

Post by Alexis »

Heracleum Persicum wrote:
With the Islamic economy growing at double the global rate, mainstream designers are jumping on the ‘modest wear’ bandwagon
There is no such thing as an "Islamic economy".
Fashion France's big money earner .. and .. margins astronomical

If Islamic economies growing @ double rate (as western), France, am sure, will jump "head first" into Fashion for Muslim woman.
I don't think so, as regards French designers. :)

Regarding "double rate" economic growth in Muslim-majority countries as in Western countries, I have strong doubts this could be maintained long term. Oil and energy prices fluctuate.

The future for French designers is Asia, beginning with China.
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Re: France

Post by noddy »

fastest growing is marketing speak for smallest.

im sure the numbers of sports playing chicks in the islamic world is yuuuuuuuge.
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Re: France

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

noddy wrote:fastest growing is marketing speak for smallest.

im sure the numbers of sports playing chicks in the islamic world is yuuuuuuuge.
Burka Beach Volleyball. Think of all the room for sponsors on those uniforms!
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Heracleum Persicum
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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Alexis wrote:
Heracleum Persicum wrote:
With the Islamic economy growing at double the global rate, mainstream designers are jumping on the ‘modest wear’ bandwagon
There is no such thing as an "Islamic economy".
Fashion France's big money earner .. and .. margins astronomical

If Islamic economies growing @ double rate (as western), France, am sure, will jump "head first" into Fashion for Muslim woman.
I don't think so, as regards French designers. :)

Regarding "double rate" economic growth in Muslim-majority countries as in Western countries, I have strong doubts this could be maintained long term. Oil and energy prices fluctuate.

The future for French designers is Asia, beginning with China.


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Notion, economy of nations who believe in Islam, is oil, assumes those nations not intelligent enough, pretty much "racist"

And, Guardian says Muslim nations economy will grow (@ lest) double than western .. in fact, odds are great western economies will shrink.

Re China, down the road, france might be @ receiving end of Chinese Fashion etc .. China will rule pretty much everything.

Only one who might have a chance against China, are the Germans and Japanese .. nobody else.

China will have the best Wine, Champagne, Cognac, etc etc .. remember buying in French airports "Foie gras" for those prices, now "Foie gras" dime a dozen .. and .. those Caviar you eating in France comes from CHINA.

For awhile , French chic had novelty for Chinese, not anymore

http://www.businessinsider.com/louis-vu ... ina-2015-2

https://www.ft.com/content/51e1dc9e-8c3 ... 9a1dfede9b

In generation or two, Chinese will rule fashion and CHIC, not Europe or france .. Chinese people do not relate to Europe or France (they consider their culture and civilization superior) .. not so the Moroccans and Tunisians and Arabs.

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Alexis
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France... and mostly Development

Post by Alexis »

Heracleum Persicum wrote:Notion, economy of nations who believe in Islam, is oil, assumes those nations not intelligent enough, pretty much "racist"
That is not racist, that is factual. Most important export of Muslim-majority nations is oil and gas. Please check it out.
Generally, calling facts "racist" doesn't help. :|

Obviously that is not true for nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey or Morocco, but if you sum all of them out as you proposed to ("the Islamic economy"), then the majority of their exports are energy products.

The future of course may be different. However, it has not begun being different, therefore that future may as well be a generation from now, as it may be much farther out. Anyway, it's not now, and you were speaking about the present.

Note that this is not about smarts ("intelligent enough"). Smarts generally do not depend on place, time or people, yet development has accelerated, slowed or even gotten into reverse in different places, times and countries, therefore development cannot be a question of difference in smarts. These stark differences have to be linked to social & institutional factors rather than individual, chance or genetic ones.

I don't know how Muslim-majority countries will find their own way towards development. Nor when they will do so. And you don't either, though of course you would like it to be very quick, nay just right now.

What I suspect is that present obsession with Sharia is a strong impediment to development, even where it does not lead to sectarian war - and it does often lead there. Total separation of Mosque and State may well be a pre-requisite for development.

Tunisia is the only Arab nation where religion and State are strictly separated. It's also the only country where the Arab Spring of 2011 did succeed and result in a democratic and liberal regime. Coincidence? I suspect not.

My personal conclusion is that when Muslim-majority nations begin to really develop without the crutch that large energy resources presently provide, just like Europeans, Americans and East Asians have already done, they will also be much closer to same East Asians, Americans and Europeans. And their societies will have changed a lot regarding individual rights.

The sooner, the better! For many obvious reasons... including that women are much prettier when they don't wear a veil nor any other submission sign on their heads, and Muslim women are no exception :lol: !

But again, I don't know when that will happen, nor does anybody else.

in fact, odds are great western economies will shrink.
Desiring it does not make it so.

China will rule pretty much everything.
Same as previous.

Only one who might have a chance against China, are the Germans and Japanese .. nobody else.
Again... :)
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right



Interesting

The nordic nations place 2B .. eastern nations, pretty much fascist.

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Alexis
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The two extremes - A fundamental choice for French presidenc

Post by Alexis »

Good in-depth article from the Gatestone Institute on our April-May election.

French Elections: Populist Revolution or Status Quo?
"If the Macron bubble doesn't pop, this may portend the realignment, not just of French politics, but Western politics in general, away from the left-right division that has defined Western politics since the French Revolution, towards a division between the people and the elites." — Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, French political analyst.

"This divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between patriots and globalists." — Marine Le Pen, French presidential candidate.

(...)

So what is driving Macron's political ascendancy? French analyst Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry explains:

"The best way to look at Macron is as a kind of anti-Le Pen, or, to stretch the bounds of logic even further, a 'populist from the top.' If Le Pen is anti-establishment, Macron is the incarnation of the French establishment, a graduate of ENA, the top civil service school that trains the country's elites, and a member of the Inspection des Finances, the most elite civil service track. His only experience in the private sector is through the revolving door as an investment banker. And yet, Macron sounds off populist rhetoric: His candidacy, he says, is about sweeping out a corrupt system (even as he is supported by the vast majority of the French establishment).

"It would be only slightly churlish to say that the parts of the system Macron wants to do away with are the democratic ones; witness his full-throated support for the EU in a country that has rejected it at the polls. Macron supports various liberalizing reforms, and Angela Merkel's welcoming policy towards migrants. He is, of course, a social liberal. In a country that takes culture very seriously, he has argued that there is 'no such thing' as French culture; rather, there are many cultures with which the French perform a kind of synthesis. His biggest donors seem to be French tax exiles residing in London and Brussels.

(...)

Le Pen is offering voters an historic opportunity to reassess relations with the European Union, reassert national sovereignty and stanch the flow of mass migration from the Muslim world. By contrast, Macron is offering votersincreased European federalism, the transference of yet more national sovereignty to the European Union, and the further multiculturalization of French society.

If polls are any indication, French voters appear to be more comfortable with the status quo. The populist revolution that began in June 2016 when British voters decided to leave the European Union, and cross the Atlantic in November when Americans elected U.S. President Donald J. Trump, will not be spreading to France in 2017.
I don't think the present statu quo - Macron planned to win by about 60% to 40% against Le Pen in the runoff - will necessarily remain.

The real campaign has just began yesterday with a very widely watched debate between the 5 main candidates. Also, the level of undecidedness as measured by polls is historic, and while Macron has the most undecided voters, Le Pen the most convinced.

I expect the decision to remain uncertain until the very evening of the second round on May 7th.

Whatever the result, the basic message of the article is fully correct: this may portend the end of the Left / Right divide, which is being replaced by a Globalist / Nationalist divide, which also is a Technocratic / Democratic divide, and a Private Interest / Common Interest divide.
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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Alexis
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Re: France

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For French speakers, this study of present balance of forces in the French presidential campaign may be of interest.

Présidentielle - Le véritable rapport de force, ou Macron et Fillon au coude-à-coude

What is the proper way to put it... "I generally agree with the author" :lol: :mrgreen:

Very short English executive summary:
- Studying in depth most recent polling data, one discovers that the centrist and rightist candidate are in fact neck-to-neck, and both may be Le Pen's opponent for the runoff
- That the leftist Mélenchon could be her opponent is an outside chance, but can't be excluded
- As for the runoff, Le Pen most probably will be defeated, however the possibility that she would win is larger than generally acknowledged.
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Alexis
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Le Pen's N°1 Fan in Russia

Post by Alexis »

When Le Pen met Putin in Kremlin a few days ago, she received a gift from Maria Katasonova, one of the leaders of Russia's National Liberation Movement, a conservative and sovereignist movement, who has become probably Le Pen's N°1 supporter in Russia. She has been described as a "pasionaria of the nationalist internationale".

Anyway, here is her gift to the leader of France's FN. This work was painted in 2015 by the nationalist artistic collective White Star

Image

You will remark the spectacular youth of these three iconic figures, notable concerning Le Pen who is 48, not to speak of 64 yo Putin or 70 yo Trump!

This is the purest tradition of what was once named "Socialist Realism" :mrgreen: :P
Another example here:

Image

Some things never change! :)

Ms Katasonova announced on Twitter that she was leaving for France on March 27th for a "secret mission"... :lol:

As for her activities last year, before she became a Le Pen fan, here they are:

Image
Simple Minded

Re: Le Pen's N°1 Fan in Russia

Post by Simple Minded »

Alexis wrote:
Image
Alexis,

White people look pretty much all the same to me. Are you sure this is not Ivanka Trump? This could be the smoking gun the US Dems are looking for.
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Alexis
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Re: Le Pen's N°1 Fan in Russia

Post by Alexis »

Simple Minded wrote:Alexis,

White people look pretty much all the same to me. Are you sure this is not Ivanka Trump? This could be the smoking gun the US Dems are looking for.
Ivanka Trump? No, this is Hillary Clinton.

You can understand it when looking up the legend. In "Crooked Hillary", "Hillary" stands for Ms Clinton. :)



... You were speaking of the picture on the T-shirt, right? :mrgreen:
Simple Minded

Re: Le Pen's N°1 Fan in Russia

Post by Simple Minded »

Alexis wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:Alexis,

White people look pretty much all the same to me. Are you sure this is not Ivanka Trump? This could be the smoking gun the US Dems are looking for.
Ivanka Trump? No, this is Hillary Clinton.

You can understand it when looking up the legend. In "Crooked Hillary", "Hillary" stands for Ms Clinton. :)



... You were speaking of the picture on the T-shirt, right? :mrgreen:
:lol: touche' Which I believe is French for "you got me!"

Luckily..... I can still tell the difference between old white women and young white women..... ;)

How much longer remains to be seen.... :(

Not sure if I should like a French-Russian White woman more than a French White woman or a Russian White woman or less than either. Please advise. ;)

One of my French AREVA co-workers and friends tells of when she and her French crew went to the Flemish part of Belgium to work on one of their nuclear steam systems.

She says: "For three days, they treated me & my crew like sub-humans. On the fourth day, they were all suddenly nice to us. One of my guys asked one of their guys what the !@#$%&* was going on. The Belgian replied "Well for three days we thought you guys were Belgian-French, but now that we know you are French-French, it's different." :o :shock:

Like I said, white people. They're all like that. :D
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Re: France

Post by noddy »

Maria Katasonova has a very pollutable gene pool.
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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Jean-Luc Mélenchon, admirer of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, sworn enemy of NATO and high finance, and candidate of his own “France Unsubjugated” movement, who has been drawing tens of thousands to his rallies, especially the young,. .

..

“What is the liberty of the employee who is fired for not working on Sunday?” he asked the crowd, delivering repeated thrusts at capitalism. “What is the liberty of 120,000 families whose water is cut off because they can’t pay the bill?” His advisers depict him as a kind of French Bernie Sanders. Unlike Mr. Sanders, though, he has no vigorous party establishment to block his way.

“Masters of the earth, you have good reason to be uneasy!” Mr. Mélenchon yelled at the festive, youthful crowd on Sunday, some wearing revolutionary Phrygian caps, as he stabbed the air with his fist and paced back and forth on the stage. “Give it up! Give it up!” the crowd yelled, a message clearly intended for Mr. Mélenchon’s opponents.

“There must be decent salaries,” Mr. Mélenchon shouted into the microphone. “That’s why the minimum wage will have to go up!”

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Folks .. sit tight, fasten your seat belt

Monsieur bourgeois wants the cake and eat it too, not work Sundays but drive Mercedes.

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Re: France

Post by noddy »

Image
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Re: France

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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Alexis , my Condolence for the terrorist attack in Paris Champs-Élysées

Will this help Le Pen ?

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Re: France

Post by Apollonius »

The French, coming apart - Christopher Caldwell, City Journal, Spring 2017
https://www.city-journal.org/html/frenc ... 15125.html


... In our day, the urban real-estate market is a pitiless sorting machine. Rich people and up-and-comers buy the private housing stock in desirable cities and thereby bid up its cost. Guilluy notes that one real-estate agent on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris now sells “lofts” of three square meters, or about 30 square feet, for €50,000. The situation resembles that in London, where, according to Le Monde, the average monthly rent (£2,580) now exceeds the average monthly salary (£2,300).

The laid-off, the less educated, the mistrained—all must rebuild their lives in what Guilluy calls (in the title of his second book) La France périphérique. This is the key term in Guilluy’s sociological vocabulary, and much misunderstood in France, so it is worth clarifying: it is neither a synonym for the boondocks nor a measure of distance from the city center. (Most of France’s small cities, in fact, are in la France périphérique.) Rather, the term measures distance from the functioning parts of the global economy. France’s best-performing urban nodes have arguably never been richer or better-stocked with cultural and retail amenities. But too few such places exist to carry a national economy. When France’s was a national economy, its median workers were well compensated and well protected from illness, age, and other vicissitudes. In a knowledge economy, these workers have largely been exiled from the places where the economy still functions. They have been replaced by immigrants.

After the mid-twentieth century, the French state built a vast stock—about 5 million units—of public housing, which now accounts for a sixth of the country’s households. Much of it is hideous-looking, but it’s all more or less affordable. Its purpose has changed, however. It is now used primarily for billeting not native French workers, as once was the case, but immigrants and their descendants, millions of whom arrived from North Africa starting in the 1960s, with yet another wave of newcomers from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East arriving today. In the rough northern suburb of Aubervilliers, for instance, three-quarters of the young people are of immigrant background. Again, Paris’s future seems visible in contemporary London. Between 2001 and 2011, the population of white Londoners fell by 600,000, even as the city grew by 1 million people: from 58 percent white British at the turn of the century, London is currently 45 percent white.

While rich Parisians may not miss the presence of the middle class, they do need people to bus tables, trim shrubbery, watch babies, and change bedpans. Immigrants—not native French workers—do most of these jobs. Why this should be so is an economic controversy. Perhaps migrants will do certain tasks that French people will not—at least not at the prevailing wage. Perhaps employers don’t relish paying €10 an hour to a native Frenchman who, ten years earlier, was making €20 in his old position and has resentments to match. Perhaps the current situation is an example of the economic law named after the eighteenth-century French economist Jean-Baptiste Say: a huge supply of menial labor from the developing world has created its own demand.

This is not Guilluy’s subject, though. He aims only to show that, even if French people were willing to do the work that gets offered in these prosperous urban centers, there’d be no way for them to do it, because there is no longer any place for them to live. As a new bourgeoisie has taken over the private housing stock, poor foreigners have taken over the public—which thus serves the metropolitan rich as a kind of taxpayer-subsidized servants’ quarters. Public-housing inhabitants are almost never ethnically French; the prevailing culture there nowadays is often heavily, intimidatingly Muslim.

At the opening of his new book, Guilluy describes twenty-first-century France as “an ‘American’ society like any other, unequal and multicultural.” It’s a controversial premise—that inequality and racial diversity are linked as part of the same (American-type) system and that they progress or decline together. Though this premise has been confirmed in much of the West for half a century, the assertion will shock many Americans, conditioned to place “inequality” (bad) and “diversity” (good) at opposite poles of a Manichean moral order. This disconnect is a key reason American political discussions have turned so illogical and rancorous. Certain arguments—for instance, that raising the incomes of American workers requires limiting immigration—can be cast as either sensible or superstitious, legitimate or illegitimate, good or evil, depending on whether the person making them is deemed to be doing so on the grounds of economics or identity.

At a practical level, considerations of economics and ethnicity are getting harder to disentangle. Guilluy has spent years in and out of buildings in northern Paris (his sisters live in public housing), and he is sensitive to the way this works in France. A public-housing development is a community, yes, and one can wish that it be more diverse. But it is also an economic resource that, more and more, is getting fought over tribally. An ethnic Frenchman moving into a heavily North African housing project finds himself threatening a piece of property that members of “the community” think of as theirs. Guilluy speaks of a “battle of the eyes” fought in the lobbies of apartment buildings across France every day, in which one person or the other—the ethnic Frenchman or the immigrant’s son—will drop his gaze to the floor first. ...
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