Some will surely accuse me of ‘creating a hateful amalgamation of delinquency and immigration’, which I definitely do, simply because crime and immigration are indeed interconnected.

It is quite obvious that the majority of the alien population living in Europe is peaceful, especially the Afro-Arab one. However, it is equally conspicuous that in those countries which are most affected by immigration (France and Belgium in particular), the most violent offences (theft, rape, battery, burglaries, and various forms of assault), crimes of bloodshed, and incarcerations involve immigrant populations, including Afro-Arab individuals. Generally speaking, only a minority of immigrants commit crimes, but most criminals are immigrants. It is a matter of statistics and mathematics, not ideology.

This fact has been acknowledged in a display of courage by Jean-Émile Vié, former Regional Prefect and Honorary Senior Counsellor at the Court of Audit, who, having been released from his duty of discretion, issued the following warning: ‘Today, we must act in urgency to prevent the formation of private militias and ultimately evade civil war.’ I am nonetheless convinced that, in this emasculated and helpless society, no public authorities would dare ‘act in urgency’, and we will be left with no choice but to face this civil war. Unfortunately, the latter may very well turn out be the only way to resolve the issue of criminality.

An Outburst of Ethnic Delinquency

Let’s start with the figures. According to the police and the National Gendarmerie statistics uncovered by the AB Associates agency, there were all in all 500,000 ‘acts of delinquency’ in 1950, including all crimes and misdemeanours. Today, this number has reached almost 4 million offences, which represents an increase of 800% during a period of 49 years. It was actually in 1964 that crime statistics began to grow steadily. The rate of (acknowledged) assaults was less than 50,000 in the 1950s, but is 4.5 times higher nowadays.

In 1998, 45 per cent of all robberies and 15 per cent of all rapes were carried out by minors. In 1972, 10 per cent of crimes and misdemeanours were committed by non-adults, compared to 21 per cent today. In cases of property arson and racketeering, the rate of minors brought in for questioning exceeds 50 per cent. As for drug trafficking charges, there was an increase of 43.5 per cent in 1998 alone. All these figures are largely underestimated considering the fact that, first, the police know very little about what goes on in lawlessness areas, and second, many victims refuse to press charges for fear of reprisal.

Juvenile delinquency increased by 11 per cent between 1997 and 1998, which is a considerable figure. According to police and gendarmerie statistics, 151,000 minors were questioned in 1998, compared to 138,000 in 1997. The same sources indicate that 90 per cent of them are ‘young people of Maghrebian or African immigrant origin’, Comorians, and so on.

This outburst of underage alien criminality is in perfect line with the rising trend among youths of foreign descent when compared to the same age category within the general population, which can only serve to reinforce the theory that, rather than socioeconomic factors such as ‘the decline of paternal authority’ or the fact of facing ‘exclusion from the employment sphere’, it is both immigration and the growing presence of non-indigenous young people which are directly responsible for the eruption of juvenile criminality (a major factor in the disintegration of urban sociality), as I myself have demonstrated elsewhere. The sharp increase in criminality rates that characterises the past decade must be attributed to ethnic and demographic factors, not to socioeconomic ones.

An erroneous form of prejudice subsists within politically correct milieus: the upsurge in our country’s delinquency rates is supposedly due to unemployment, deprivation, and poverty. Indeed, this was the case in the nineteenth century, but no longer today. Contrary to general misconception, there are few delinquents among the ‘excluded’, the unemployed, and the destitute. The ‘new offenders’ view their crimes and offences as both a profession and a game. Socially speaking, they are in actual fact perfectly integrated, albeit in their own way. They have enough food, wear designer clothes, and use mobile phones.

With mathematical precision, the general delinquency curve of the 1950–1998 period reflects the proportion of immigrant populations, a fact that nobody dares to bring up, obviously. The rapid growth of crimes and misdemeanours, which began in the mid-1960s, coincides perfectly with the arrival of the first large waves of immigrants and does not relate to poverty in any way.

Several researchers, including Sebastian Roché (author of An Uncivil Society) and Alain Bauer (author of a What do I Know piece on the topic), point out that delinquency flourished in the post-war boom of the Glorious Thirty, at a time when unemployment was negligible, economic growth strong, and the frenzied consumption of new goods pervasive.

Studying the statistical curves that characterised the 1950–1998 period, they note that:

Until 1993, the ‘aggregate of crimes’ and the ‘number of assaults’ — meaning acts of aggression — followed a parallel progress.

From 1993 onwards, physical assaults have been increasing in number and represent an ever-growing proportion of our general crime rate (143,000 attacks in 1993 compared to 220,000 in 1998). Crimes that target people have been surging regularly (+20 per cent in 1993, + 9 per cent in 1995, + 8 per cent in 1997, etc.).

There has been an exponential increase in the role played by juveniles in our country’s delinquency rates (+ 11.23 per cent in 1998).

According to the police, Afro-Maghrebian people are considered to be responsible for more than 80 per cent of all violent crimes, robberies, and drug trafficking, regardless of whether they are legally French or not. Naturally, one is not even allowed to assemble racial statistics on the subject, much less publish them. It is always preferable to break the thermometer when it indicates politically incorrect yet truthful information, right? However, it’s a foolish endeavour, since the percentage of Afro-Maghrebians in French prisons confirms the facts. In the Baumettes prison of Marseilles, for example, the rate is as much as 80 per cent.

In the Île-de-France district, ‘the rise of delinquency is now a proven social fact, one that Arlette Laguiller is alone to dispute. Regional Councillor Florent Montillot described it as being apocalyptic in character’, wrote Jean Pigeot (Le Figaro, 25–26 September 1999). Furthermore, Police Commissioner Philippe Massoni revealed to the regional council that ‘the area is experiencing an outburst of brutality and a surge in gang-related clashes’. 940,000 crimes of various kinds were identified in the Île-de-France district in 1998. In addition, violent crime rose by 3.08 per cent in the first eight months of 1999. In the past five years, the rate of violent robberies has increased by 37 per cent, assault and battery by 61 per cent, and threats, blackmail, and extortion by 141 per cent.

In June and July 1999 alone, the towns of Sarcelles, Châtenay-Malabry, Villejuif, Saint-Denis, Mantes-la-Jolie, and Aulnay-sous-bois mourned the deaths of 9 people who had been shot dead or fatally stabbed, in addition to about 50 other victims who were seriously wounded. In a report addressed to the local councillors, the Police Commissioner stated, ‘Both hold-ups and crimes of arson are progressing at an alarming rate, and the use of knives or firearms is no longer intended to be a mere means of intimidation’. He also pointed out an increase in the number ‘of ferocious dogs used for intimidation purposes or attacks’, and made an observation that clearly highlights (just as I have done) the beginning of an ethnic civil war, one that goes far beyond mere criminal behaviour: ‘Thugs now consider police officers to be their target of choice. In some areas, anti-police violence has reached such a critical level that any intervention, whatever its cause, is bound to trigger confrontations.’ He then disclosed that there has been ‘a rise in the number of hostile mobs which gather in front of police stations, especially following an arrest’, as well as ‘an increase in the tendency to pelt vehicles with flammable items and heavy objects’. And the list goes on.

The region intends to spend an additional 32 million francs in 2000 to strengthen police capacity, an amount that would otherwise be spent as part of competitive job-creating investments. Jean-Yves Le Gallou, a regional councillor, caused an uproar across the bench of the political Left when he asked the Police Commissioner, ‘What are you doing to prevent gangs, whose members are usually immigrants, from harming people?’ The truth, it would seem, should not be told.

* * *

However, researchers themselves do not dare to mention the real causes of the phenomenon any more than politicians or journalists do. Instead, excuses such as the ‘irresponsibility of the parents’, the ‘lack of appropriate judicial response to the first offence’, and the fact that ‘the school system no longer fulfils its integrational role’ are mentioned. All these are but secondary causes, perhaps even effects. But the root cause behind this explosion of crime, especially in the case of assaults, is that a large generation of immigrant descent has reached pubescent age and refuses to assimilate into the ‘White’ French (or European) society. These youths manifest a deliberately aggressive attitude, one that is based on a mixture of revenge and resentment, but also a fascination for the consumerist model which they feel entitled to enjoy immediately, here and now, without any effort or social reciprocity.

The researchers also point out that this crime rate is bound to grow. According to them, the ‘sanctuarisation’ of property (resulting from sophisticated protection methods) may lead to radicalised violence being perpetrated against individuals. Already now, armed burglaries (i.e., the famous so-called ‘salami slicing’), are on the increase. The researchers obviously omit mentioning the fact that the rise in rates of violence is also due to an increase in the proportion of Afro-Arabs among the younger age groups.

The scenario is thus the following: before the 1960s, at a time when society was still ethnically homogenous, the main causes of delinquency and social violence had for centuries been related to poverty, exclusion, alcohol, and financial uncertainties. These causes were endogenous. Today, they are exogenous. It is no longer economic misery that accounts for the growing number of crimes and offences, but rather ethnic and cultural separation.

The Legitimisation of Criminality and Encouragement of Delinquency

The highest state authorities reinforce the feeling of legitimacy harboured by juvenile immigrants. Following the violent riots, the scenes of looting and acts of degradation which tend to accompany the end-of-year festivities nowadays, our Minister of Social Affairs Martine Aubry said in December 1998, ‘Although it is not always the case, one feels compelled to stress that certain criminal and uncivil acts are sometimes mere reactions to a feeling of unjust treatment.’

This is how these words are to be understood: many immigrant offenders react to racism and economic marginalisation. They are therefore responsible, but not guilty. Such encouragement towards ethnic gang violence only triggers disbelief.

Moreover, the remarks of Ms Aubry are contradicted by the facts: racist crimes (assault, murder, damage to property) are mostly committed by Afro-Maghrebian perpetrators against French natives or Europeans. Secondly, the amount of money wasted by our taxpayers on various social actions in support of ‘young people of immigrant origin’, including those who are delinquents (their holidays, reintegration, employment priority in ‘youth jobs’, massive subsidies to families, etc.), are four times higher per capita than what is spent on young French natives. Where is the injustice mentioned by Ms Aubry?

* * *

Even when faced with the outbreak of violence perpetrated by young immigrants since 1997, one which has gradually shaken schools, town centres, and even the countryside, the ideological dogmas of our anti-repressive authorities remain immovable. One speaks of ‘reinforced educational systems’, but mentioning ‘correctional facilities’ or initiating real repression is obviously out of the question.

Once the fire spreads, there will be no extinguishing it. A long time ago, however, it was indeed possible to put it out, as it was restricted to a few burning embers. As I myself have stated, the reasons behind this institutional paralysis in the face of immigrant criminality lie in the double dogma of educational permissiveness and anti-racism.

As a result of his strong dogmas, Jean-Pierre Chevènement does not dare to assert his convictions and impose his methods, although he is personally convinced that the government’s prevention strategy has failed and will continue to be equally unsuccessful. ‘A consolidated form of education might resolve things. However, I must ask you to convince me that it is indeed the solution that we require.’ In other words, ‘It is but mere foolishness, but I wash my hands of it in order to remain politically correct.’ A consolidated educational system is not based on discipline, physical punishment, or taming recidivistic thugs, but rather on expensive programs of monitoring and personalised aid. In short, it is a reward system! It has obviously led to complete failure, and those it targets despise the whole process, as it only encourages them to recidivate.

* * *

A fear of words is what characterises such a soft ideology and represents the semantic basis of political correctness. When our Minister of Interior Affairs, Mr Chevènement, chose to describe violent immigrant offenders as savages rather than using the right words (gangsters, thugs, rioters, smugglers, thieves, etc.), whenever the state authorities speak of acts of incivility to qualify crimes ranging from robbery to murder and from looting to arson, whenever one considers illegal migrants to be merely undocumented, one might expect the noble-minded Leftist bourgeoisie to be satisfied with this concession, since it is marked by an attempt to avoid calling the crime by its name in order to protect the criminal. Yet this is hardly the case.

From the pro-immigration lobby’s perspective, referring to those immigrants as ‘savages’ still means taking things too far. Yes, you’ve guessed it, it is in fact racism. Writer Maurice Rajfus, creator of the Observatory of Public Freedoms and one of the high priests of the aforementioned lobby, vilifies the word ‘savage’ used by Chevènement: ‘This kind of discourse is worrisome because, soon enough, people are bound to realise that the term “savages” can also encompass the undocumented, the homeless, and the unemployed. This is precisely how they were seen during the heavy-handed interventions conducted in reaction to the various cases of occupation’ (an excerpt from the Bulletin of the Observatory of Public Freedoms, January 1999). Such nonsense is typical of the most stupid and most Trotskyist political Left in the world. One cannot help noticing the demagogic ambiguity regarding those who are unemployed and illegal immigrants.

In terms of political psychoanalysis, this kind of talk, widely reported and praised by the noble-minded press (Libération, 18 January 1999), reveals the message that French pro-immigration intellectuals attempt to communicate: all kinds of criminal acts, ranging from illegal entry into our country to common law misdemeanours, are forgivable and tolerable as long as they are committed by immigrant populations. Any repression targeting immigrant criminality is immoral not just action-wise, but even on a verbal level.

Whatever the case, the dominant ideology has gone beyond mere ideological contradiction. Its members are anti-racist and therefore claim that any desire to punish crime too harshly is racist, thereby implicitly acknowledging the fact that it is mainly immigrants who are responsible for our country’s criminality, a fact that they strive to deny elsewhere!

What are the Causes of Immigrant Overdelinquency?

Whether the focus is on violent criminal acts, drug trafficking, pimping, violations of labour legislation, scams, robberies, burglaries, collective assault, arson, looting, or anything else, the astonishing proportion of cases involving people of immigrant origin can be explained as follows: unable to fit into a European type of socioeconomic logic, and encouraged by a system which does little to dissuade and repress, a significant minority of migrants intentionally chooses the easier path of criminal economy, knowing that law enforcement risks are quite low in comparison with the financial benefits. This is a logic of looting, one that is often more profitable than employment and that reflects a raiding tendency deeply rooted in the cultural memory of Maghrebian populations.

Note that for both ethnical and cultural reasons, Asian immigrants evade this kind of gearing (as they do in the US, for that matter). They have no issues whatsoever with fitting into any productive work sociality while simultaneously maintaining their communitarian autarky, an autarky that they develop efficiently and without the need for violence.

The second cause behind the racialisation of delinquency — a subject to which I will soon return — is mental in character and affects young immigrant generations in particular. This is what Éric Delcroix termed Francophobia and Henri de Fersan labelled anti-French racism, in accordance with the titles of their respective books.

Furthermore, this sentiment is as anti-European as it is anti-French.

* * *

This overdelinquency that typifies teenagers of Afro-Maghrebian origin is not solely due to ethnic causes, but to social ones as well. Let us enumerate them randomly:

The disintegration of the family nucleus and the rise in the number of single-parent families without paternal authority. Mothers can no longer keep their offspring under control, which usually begins when the latter turns 12, and it is street gangs which take charge of the child at that point. From 1995 onwards, we have even witnessed the emergence of delinquent violence at the hands of underage Maghrebian girls.

The surreal egalitarian dogma which is rooted in the French obsession with granting ‘intellectual diplomas to define social value’, an obsession which dictates that 80 per cent of all students are to succeed in passing their Bachelor’s degree. The consequences are not limited to a complete collapse in the level of knowledge of these students (in the 11th grade, 30 per cent of them are now almost illiterate, with the rate totalling 60 per cent among Afro-Maghrebians), but also involve the endemic appearance of school violence. Forced to attend compulsory courses whose subject matter does not interest them and is beyond their intellectual abilities (despite the fact that those subjects are gradually being made easier level-wise), these teenagers only come to school to increase their attendance and prevent the retraction of their family benefits. Under their logic, school premises thus turn into a place of predation and conflict, especially since they view schools as a ‘French institution of repression’ despite the almost complete absence of both punishment and expulsion, a fact which only serves to develop their aggressiveness. From their perspective, therefore, assaulting teachers makes perfect sense.

Generally speaking, Afro-Maghrebian populations were all accustomed to living in a hyper-repressive social environment, which is particularly true of Muslims. In all Islamic countries, any ordinary offence is severely punished. In their own countries, Afro-Maghrebian youths would not dare commit a tenth of what their ‘cousins’ have done in France. Legislation is always adapted to the culture of a given population. However, European legislation is permissive, which means that it is completely unsuitable when dealing with the atavistic behaviour of immigrant children. One should stress the fact that in Arab countries where unemployment is often of catastrophic proportions among young people, youth criminality is much lower than it is in France. Have any experts among our brilliant sociologists ever dared highlight this fact? No solution is valid for all nations and there is no universal explanation for human behaviour. Being highly variable, the latter is connected to ethnic atavism. As a result of their anthropological nature, Arab and African peoples have their own behaviour (just like all nations of the world), one that is due to their biological and cultural substratum.

In reality, the cultures from which those young people originated are repressive, communitarian, regulative, and endowed with both strong values and a binding social morality. They have kept their ethnic memory. In France, these youths find themselves acculturated into an individualistic and criminally lenient society, a society which has lost its strong social values and that is based on noble-minded self-discipline and the egalitarian myth of ‘granting everyone understanding and knowledge in an educational system without constraint’. It is however the case that non-repressive education can only target a minority of people, even among native Europeans. A fortiori, such a utopian solution leads to general anarchy when applied to Afro-Arabs. Since the notion of individual self-discipline originated in northern Europe and has been a long-term and exclusive part of our European ethno-cultural atavism, it is impossible to apply it to peoples from the other side of the planet. Every nation has its own methods of social training and education, and these do not apply to others. If a nation were to be deculturalised and suffered from a loss of identity framework, its once-peaceful members could sink into anarchy and banditry as a result of forgetting their traditional references. This is particularly true for African peoples, who require a strong encompassing community and authoritarian leadership so as not to sink into disorder. Westerners have made a grave mistake in their desire to apply their own rules of government and education to the whole planet.

Footnotes

The above text is an excerpt from Guillaume Faye’s The Colonisation of Europe (Arktos, 2016). If you liked this selection, be sure to check out the whole book.