After days of destruction, Macron blames a familiar bogeyman: video games | Hacker News Reader

After days of destruction, Macron blames a familiar bogeyman: video games

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In the last week, Macron/France :

- call[s] to 'cut off' social media during riots sparks backlash in France (france24.com)

- passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people [2]

- blames Video games [3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36615378

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616037

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36630151

Macron has to do something to divert blame from France’s importation of a underclass from its former colonies.

I don’t see how Europe isn’t totally screwed. Their tight-knit social democracies are not compatible with immigration. But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

You dont need more workers when you have mass unemployment

Labor is not fungible. A janitor can't take a week training course and become a surgeon.

So France is suffering from an influx of immigrant surgeons?

Its not appropriate to answer here in a few lines since France suffers from many issues related to education, a social net that removes incentive to do some kind of work, quotas in certain activities and immigration thats completely uncontrolled. It is a complex set of problems yet the conclusion is not that France needs to import more workers. Its rather an issue on how existing resources are allocated.

> But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

I think this is hard to prove. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

They don’t have enough workers they can exploit

BINGO

The demographic trend (age curve) is a real problem, difficult to solve without immigration.

It’s impossible to solve with immigration. Even with an immigrant population that was completely willing and able to assimilate (unlike those in question), that process takes generations and requires a lack of ethnic ghettos and a high proportion of native and nativized people relative to immigrants. No honest person would say that we could solve Japan’s falling birthrate by rapidly and continually pumping it full of Europeans and expect it to remain recognizably Japanese.

But anyway population fluctuates. These things tend to work themselves out normally when your main goal is the good of the nation and not just inflating the GDP as quickly and recklessly as possible.

Right. And in fact, immigration doesn't solve the issue for a very basic reason.

A system that says "The number of working-age people must be at least 5x the number of retirees" is literally demanding unending (super)exponential growth. It's fundamentally impossible on a finite world. It's going to break down at some point. The only question is whether that happens before or after filling the developed world up with immigrants from the undeveloped world.

Immigration seen that way to me is similar to considering human as cattle. If moral matters in the question.

If not. difficult to solve?

I have no strong opinion to the question of contraception but it would be sensical to promote and educate people (both men and women) that parenting is good (arguing with nature is hard) especially when the nation needs more births.

I feel obligated to apologies, but won't. I do accept to having to point out I'm in no way stating contraception should be illgal or anything of that sort.

I concede that for solutioning the short term issue of shortage of workers, there are no other scheme to employ, I'm out of idea. No wait! There are officially almost 3 million unemployed residents in France. I won't try to demonstrate it's in fact double this number, nor bring up the argument a few million don't really work given they do just as little as they get paid.

We are taken for fools. And a number of idiots found no alternative than setting stuff on fire. It's not just immigrants rioting.

The only real solution is family planning. You don't want a pointless exponential population growth Ponzi scheme where each person has to have three children with their partner. What is necessary are people that join the workforce exactly at the same rate as people exit the workforce. That is the only way you can avoid the Ponzi scheme.

This means when someone is in their mid fourties and will retire in 20 years, someone needs to give birth to a child so that it will grow up and start working just in time for the retiree. If children get born too early, then you run into the problem of them needing their own caretakers. These children don't compensate for someone else leaving, so they add to the population and their future caretakers will also add to the population leading to an exponential Ponzi scheme.

They don’t have enough workers period. In 1960, most European countries had about 5 working age people per retiree. By 2050, there will be less than 2 workers per retiree in France, and just over 1 in Spain.

So we need to eradicate more retirees then?

Seriously though, workers on what? I find it quite odd to base the value on workers as being a percentage of retirees, that's entirely detached from demand, productivity and opportunity.

"We need more workers to fund the old ones that stopped!" I get the basic logic, but it's stupid.

How else would pensions get paid?

Pension funds earn from investing.

Investments in businesses with no employees, which sell their wares to unemployed people?

> Seriously though, workers on what?

This is the unexamined premise that keeps on going unexamined. Europe makes less and less each day, growing more and more dependent on China for production (as on the US for security, although Europe seems a little less dependent on Russia for energy now). Automation fills the tedious, low-skill jobs that remain onshore, and the promise of industrialization, digitalization, and now AI is that fewer human workers are needed to sustain equal productivity. Why does the sane world that frets about offshoring and AI gutting employment also need unskilled immigrants to be "moar workers?"

Because things aren't fully automated or offshored, and because governments need a tax base, which won't exist if that money is going to Alphabet-AI-division, or India.

Plus there are still gaps, things which cannot be automated or offshored, and many which will only do so after great effort. Lotta money to be lost there without bodies.

Because all those developments that result in increased productivity get turned into increased profits for individual companies, not in higher wages or reduced hours for workers.

By 2050, we may all be retirees.

Without immigration France does not have a healthy demography. As much as I am against exploitative forms of immigration, France has strong Unions and Strikes are their national past time. Not an expert in French economy, but a first hand look is their major corporations are luxury brands but the rest of the economy is a meh! Airbus is a collab with other EU countries and perhaps Dassault and a strong defense sector. I would be surprised if French economic pie is not dominated by government and its private sector is rather limited.

> Without immigration France does not have a healthy demography

Having a large and rapidly growing underclass also sounds like an unhealthy demography. Immigration won't solve the problems facing France, it'll make them worse.

>But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

Youth unemployment in France is at 17%.

The unemployment is part of the system. Without the threats of cheap replacement the employees would hold power.

Sure, but obviously France does not need more workers, given that statistic.

I agree, but how would you propose to lower the number of potential workers in France? For context, Macron tried to push the retirement age up, thus increasing the pool of potential employees.

This is of course a hard question. One step certainly would be to encourage French companies to hire and train their own population.

I don't think pushing up the retirement age matters too much for youth unemployement, as those two groups compete for very different jobs (no 60+ year old will start vocational training as a nurse).

"How do we make the economy good" is obviously an extremely hard problem. I think a very important question is whether the 17% are actively seeking for jobs or considering themselves already entirely removed from the system.

France has a large industrial base, with many, many large companies (and suppliers for those companies), training people to have skills relevant to those companies seems an important consideration.

You can have unemployment as well as a worker’s shortage. You can have lots of need for nurses and carpenters, and also have lots of young people not qualified for those jobs who don’t have other prospects.

>You can have lots of need for nurses and carpenters, and also have lots of young people not qualified for those jobs who don’t have other prospects.

If that is the case you don't actually need more workers, but you have a very serious issue with young people leaving society and either by choice or circumstance not entering vocational training.

You do not need a 5 year degree to become a carpenter or nurse, if your country has a lack of those AND a significant unemployed youth population, the solution is obvious. Importing workers for those roles, just means that you are removing those training opportunities from your own population.

So France's problem is that it can't deal with an influx of immigrants skilled enough to put French youth out of work?

When you see the immigrants sociopaths, no wonder. France gives plenty of opportunities, 1st generation of Magreb migrants were hardworkets, but something broke during the 80s/90s, maybe because they couldn't spend enough times with their parents, these generations hanged around and created a social vaccum filled with religion and antofrance sentiment. Now this generation has kids as well, and will continue this echo chamber and a race to bottom while claiming it's all the fault of the country they live in.

But are those unemployed youth willing to do the available jobs for the pay offered?

This has been a significant problem in the UK since brexit for farmers⁰: local workers are not willing to do that sort of work for that little pay¹ so the reduced availability of migrant workers has meant some crops simply went un-picked because the farmers were unable to afford to offer more³.

In other parts of the employment market where significant learning/experience is required before starting, there potentially are a different set of difficulties meaning jobs go unfilled despite there being unemployed people otherwise available.

[0] and others offering seasonal or otherwise temporary physical work

[1] and/or in many cases unable to do it as fast² increasing costs to the employer

[2] though that problem would fix itself in time with practise, if people at least started the job

[3] as they'd have to swallow the cost on already miniscule margins in many cases, to the point where wasting part of a crop is financially better than paying more so they don't have to

That should sort itself via the magic of the markets - either there is demand and the price should increase and the pay should rise, or there is no demand, and farmers will produce less, maybe some will close. The latter is a contraction, but there is no god commandment to keep prices low via immigrant work.

The upper class will complain about the "debasement of money" if you do that.

Do what? Let the market function?

Upper class does not care about price of food.

It's going to be very dirty, but it can be solved. I still hold some faith.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Nahel_Merzouk

A cop shot an unarmed teenager in the face point blank. So he wouldn't get away. What kind of "social contract", or whatever one would call it, is that? I mean, being invisible and rightless, but allowed to work and get a tiny fraction of the value your work represents, until someone just murders you and then makes it out you were such a danger to them?

I don't know about other Germans, but if I was treated that way, I would burn things down, too. At the least. Show me that you have no problems killing me, and that you wouldn't miss a beat, and I would not just roll over and live out my life making you richer and even bolder in that insolence.

The thing is, we aren't treated that way (neither are Swedes or whoever you might have in mind) and most of us leave the whole "don't wait until it's you" mostly to a poem by Niemöller, where it doesn't make any demands of us.

Society doesn’t break out into riots because of one incident. Merzouk is representative of an immigrant community that, from the perspective of the immigrants, isn’t being afforded sufficient rights and opportunities in France, and from the French perspective, isn’t trying to assimilate and is causing crime and unrest.

At the end of the day, the French have no obligation to change their society to accommodate newcomers; nor do the newcomers have any obligation to change their society to make themselves acceptable to the French. The problem is that trying to get these two groups of people to live alongside each other is a failed experiment.

This is a problem that dates from when France decided that Algeria was going to be a part of France. They don't just get to throw it away afterwards, no matter how much they would like to. It was a country that made the choice to intertwine its destiny with Algeria forever, and to its great profit.

> It was a country that made the choice to intertwine its destiny with Algeria forever.

It might be more appropriate to say it was a government that made this choice. The French nation didn't get a say. Just like all other Western governments deciding to allow mass immigration, the people generally are opposed but never get a voice.

This take is reductionist and irresponsible.

That's probably what the governments of ostensibly democratic countries were thinking when they decided to change their demographic destiny without actually getting the consent of the people first. "The people who complain are reductionist and irresponsible."

Please explain EXACTLY what is being removed from the argument, that if added, would change the argument in a meaningful way. Or, if that's too much of an ask, how about ANYTHING?

Labeling something reductionist doesn't mean it's reductionist, nor magically make the argument go away like you desire.

What you're doing is a common propaganda technique used by tyrants and oppressive regimes to silence dissent with pseudo-intellectual discourse.

You should genuinely be embarrassed at this brain dead reply.

Even the most casual possible reading of history will give countless examples of governments acting against the wishes and best interest of their people, and instead acting in the best interest of the government. You can pretend otherwise, but that's choosing to be ignorant.

The same idea applies to the military-industrial complex in the US. Very few people are clamoring for further war. But neither major political party offers a legitimate alternative. There's no voting against it. Lobbying and direct monetary gain by the very top of society mean those in power want it, because they stand to gain personally, even if some recruit from a downtrodden town gets his legs blown off.

Likewise for mass immigration. The people in charge of major companies love reduced labor costs. And governments love increasing their tax base. They're the ones who get a say. Nobody else is even asked.

They chose to keep algeria during their democratic periods as well.

You're implicitly making a claim that's something like: "If a government hosts elections, any decision made by that government reflects The Will of The Majority in the country it rules." That's not true at all.

Let's set aside the complexities of how governments are formed in a parliamentary system, and also ignore the subversion of representative government by lobbying. This is really simple: there was no vote on this in any western government. And in fact, political parties that explicitly oppose further mass immigration to Europe are gaining rapidly in popularity. But the governments actively subvert them. For example, there is talk of outright banning Alternative for Germany, a political party in Germany opposed to mass immigration.

This.

So called left-wing parties now only care about Identity politics. They have abandoned the working classes.

"The people" are fine with lowering age of retirement, and in general not that interested in rising enough new people to sustain economy and social policies of their countries. Granted, immigration policies in most of the western countries has been a disaster, but those did not arrive out of nowhere. It would be great to see discussions and planning on how to shape policies, but this would only hopefully change the reception of immigrants, and not the fact that they're there to stay.

Immigration is to keep the wages down. Also, third world immigration is preferred because those immigrants are more tolerant of crap wages, crap working conditions and crap existence lifestyle than domestic workers.

If the elites really wanted more people they could increase the incentives for domestics to have children.

Immigrants are indeed more willing to do the jobs that domestic workers are no longer interested in doing, but their effect on wages is minimal, mostly affecting lower class, mostly other immigrants. It's unclear if there is anything that can be done to incentivise people to have more children, to the extent that it makes a difference on the macro level. And this is kind of moot point anyway, most western countries that deal with lack of labor force don't have time to wait for children, if their citizens want to keep their level of support.

I agree with that. But there’s a limit to how persuasive that is to generations who didn’t make the original decision. I don’t think there’s an easy solution (or any solution).

This reminds me of a Polynesian island that is part of the French overseas territories. You chose this and you are now responsible for them. The French built an undersea cable specifically for this Island. I don't think the cable will ever pay itself back but that is the cost of the privilege of calling a territory yours. (The cost was around 100 million €, the GDP of Wallis And Futuna is 180 million €).

https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/wallis-and-futuna-broadband...

Algeria has been independent from France for 60 years. They gained independence after a terror campaign with bombings of public places (cafes), beheadings, etc.

A few questions: - Why do we have to host any Algerian, considering they are now independent? - Are we allowed to kick them out the way they kicked us out of their country sixty year ago? If not, why not?

> Are we allowed to kick them out the way they kicked us out of their country sixty year ago? If not, why not?

France is allowed to do this if it asserts the right to do so. The only question is: will it?

>At the end of the day, the French have no obligation to change their society to accommodate newcomers;

oooh I'm not sure I agree with you here.

A similar scenario (though very much on the micro level) is "the birth of a child doesn't obligate either parent to accommodate the newcomer."

I'm not saying the french need to bend to their every whim, or that the immigrants dont need to adopt the local culture as well. Its a two way street. When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

The concept is this: people come, and they assimilate.

The french culture remains irresistible, but social issues keep rising, immigrants are simply more impacted by those issues and the media makes sure to call out people's religion or ethnical "background"

Macron isn't Christian enough but France tolerates all religions, for good reasons. I would be OK for him to stay longer, but cutting off social media, and invading privacy is a blasphemy that should grant deporting him to Dubai, or any city state where he would fit in.

The problem with the assimilation theory is that it only works in extremely small numbers.

As can be seen in every country in the world, as soon as you have more than a handful of immigrants coming in at once, they form enclaves and resist assimilation - indeed, it’s usually only their children or their grandchildren that do thanks to the influence of school and interaction with their peers.

New York City.

> Multicultural. About 36% of the city's population is foreign-born, one of the highest among US cities. The eleven nations constituting the largest sources of modern immigration to New York City are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Russia and El Salvador.

I could reference other concrete examples, instead making sure to mention NYC as nobody would call this extremely small numbers, or caveat the fact those migrants were of "european origin" for the most part, or having to get some half racist simplistic response.

to justify some biased view of "all countries of world", at least make some attempt to back it up with some factual reference

New York isn't a country, a megacity with over 8 million people is rather well suited.

France. A country that saw large waves of migrations, which don't qualify as "small numbers". Not saying everyone is seamlessly blending in, but if your reference is what mainstream media makes of it, or a repeat of electorate seeking politicans, then travel a bit more, or go shake some hands with people you seem to think categorically different, you may see a bit of reality instead.

New York City is a poster child for the problems with immigration. It’s full of unassimilated ethnic enclaves. Shared norms and social trust are almost non-existent, replaced with hostility and individualism. Governance is basically impossible. You can’t have grass roots, Tocquevillian democracy in such a fractured society, so instead you have governance by elites and ethnic politics.

You have a really dystopian view of NYC — have you spent much time there?

I grew up visiting family there (Queens has the largest Bangladeshi enclave in the country). I lived or worked in Manhattan for a year and a half, and my brother has lived there for more than ten years. The city gives me flashbacks to Dhaka.

I did pick NYC as I mentioned in order to hopefully avoid subjective, simplistic and/or half racist responses. One had to be made.

It wouldn't be necessarily a racist response if made against situations in certain cities in France given the extent of assimilationism of that nation, but I call that comment racist given the critic of NYC. New York through its entire existence has been waves of migrants, multi cultural in its DNA, with shapes and influences that changed over time but some would say is exactly what made this city shine and get so admired internationally: a financial pole, with countless architecture prouesses, exceptional arts, culinary and service excellence.

Those "enclaves" have been there since its genesis. What we see when the model is just acculturation.

The unfounded statement that no country in the world can "assimilate" past a certain ratio of minorities is the viewpoint that societies must reflect one particular fantasy view of some homogeneous ethnical soup. In that case sure, Japan is heaven, Singapore offers a hell of a picture, and every other societies that adopted yet other models are a myth, politics have little to nothing to do with any resulting conflict, revolt and violence, just some cross culture hate and over 200 borders not firm enough for comfort.

NYC literally has NINE different “chinatowns”.

And Brighton beach is almost entirely Russian. And not only Russian, but those who refuse to assimilate to the point of being unable to speak english - wiki says 98% of them don’t use English as a primary language.

Now, what are the results of that?

> For a year, Siena College has been polling voters on crime and whether they feel it’s a problem in New York state. Last month, 92% of those polled said they believe it’s either a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem,

>>France

Hello? Have you seen the title of this thread? France has literally been in a state of riot for decades. Look at the number of riots in 1990-2000. Now, how many of them were because of or carried out by French natives?

Exactly.

Not to mention, the yellow vest riots never stopped. 5 years ongoing now. And two more riots in 2022.

Does this sound like a country full of happy people? No, sure doesn’t, does it? Sounds like a country where a bunch of people with radically different beliefs, ideologies, religions, and way of life were shoved into a room and told: Be Nice. Or Else.

What do you think will happen when the French say, Or Else, What?

There is no federal official language in the USA. In NYC? Chinese and Russian are part of its official languages, so new russian or Chinese speaking people who happen to migrate to NYC are language assimilated on arrival.

The result of that? I don't know, I've been there and find it very much multi cultural. Crimes?

Crimes in NYC have been on constantly decreasing trend since its peak in the 80s. To again be on the rise since the fallout of covid prevention measures.

wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City

If polls aren't inline with the trends, take it up with the mass media falsly portraying the situation.

I did see the title of this thread yes, have you? A head of state displaying once again his total lack of creativity.

France surely isn't a country full of happy people. It's interesting you mention the yellow vest riots/protests, they answer your own question on whether riots are carried out by french "natives" or religious and culturally incompatible scum.

I do agree certain waves of migrants were shoved into some suburbs, expected to factory work, which they did in the since the 70s in particular, making the other factory workers rather unhappy, and now there are almost no factory left and to remain nice or else... I do also wonder, or else what?

No matter what cultural background, religion, or mother tongue language a person is attached to, deprive that person of social walfare and you eventually get revolts: pubic march and collective expressions, and unfortunately also incivility and then rioting, even mass shooting or other "terrorist" desperate form of expressions.

> the birth of a child doesn't obligate either parent to accommodate the newcomer.

The newcomers were accommodated, just not feted. They have rights, but those don't override the rights of other French citizens and residents.

> When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

Sure, if the immigrant has new food, or music, or religion, etc, then they'll provide new choices to their society. Society is under no obligation to take those new choices, and not doing so isn't harming the newcomer.

And this is in the context of maintaining a functioning society. Driving through crosswalks at high speed isn't one of the available choices for anyone.

you know they get to vote right?

Which means they get to choose who represents them when laws are being made...

I don't think the people has been asked to vote on mass migration. The political elite decided it was good or inevitable and are focusing their energy on making the French live with it.

> When you let immigrants in you acknowledge that you're letting change in.

While I agree with you completely on this (though unfortunately we draw different conclusions from this agreed-on premise)… This is simply not what the message has been on immigrants since, I dunno, probably the 1960s or 1980s. The populace hasn’t always been given a choice whether to let immigrants in or not, but in the cases where they did have a choice, they were told immigrants would not change the character of the nation, only improve it. Sometimes this was called assimilation, but this message was delivered in other ways as well.

If the populace had been given an honest choice of “yes immigrants + yes change” or “no immigrants + no change”, your argument would carry more weight for me, but it’s my impression that instead they have been receiving a consistent and solid message that they can choose “yes immigrants + no change”, which is probably where the resistance to change is coming from. It’s not fair (and more prosaically, not effective) to rugpull those people and tell them actually, it was “yes immigrants + yes change” all along.

"Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth." (https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594)

> the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government

Don't social class and education play a big role here too? University-educated professionals in country X very often have rather different attitudes from poor villagers in country X, so whether your immigrants from country X are mostly university-educated professionals vs mostly poor villagers may be much more significant than the mere fact that you are accepting immigrants from that country.

> Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth.

The two largest non-European immigrant groups in Australia are Chinese-Australians (over 5% of population) and Indian-Australians (over 3%). Among second-generation Chinese-Australians, 35% of married men and 48% of married women have a non-Chinese spouse; for the third and subsequent generations, the percentage rises to 69% for men and 73% for women. Similarly, for second-generation Indian-Australians, 56% of married men and 58% of married women have a non-Indian spouse. And those are figures from the 2006 census, [0] and I expect 2nd/3rd+ generation intermarriage rates have likely increased since then.

Isn't that an example of "assimilation" working? My friends in high school included a half-Chinese guy and a half-Indian guy, and I have half-Japanese second cousins – and I couldn't tell you what differences in culture exist between them and myself, I don't know whether there actually are any.

[0] https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/v17n1_2khoob...

I think you're spot on in the overall assessment.

> nor do the newcomers have any obligation to change their society to make themselves acceptable to the French

But this is non-obvious at the least, and it would surely be met with some argumentation that it's the opposite.

I'm not going to get into a policy debate about what HN will and won't moderate, but this is so completely obviously a pro-segregationist dog-whistle just masked behind immigration instead of race.

"The cultures are just too different to mix, that's the root of all of the trouble" should sound instantly familiar to anyone who's ever read a history book. At the end of the day, if this is the debate we all want to have, fine, we can repeat that entire historical debate for the Nth time. But we should be clear what is being debated.

I’m fascinated by how Americans are completely unable to distinguish between race and culture. It must be the poor American education system everyone talks about.

There’s obviously more to “history” than America’s experience with black people. My home country of Bangladesh exists because two different cultural groups didn’t want to share a country, and the separation worked out great. And of course even in the context of black people in America, lots of people are sour on integration. Listen to the podcast “Nice White Parents.” A consistent theme is how white parents want integrated schools, while what black parents want is for their mostly-black neighborhood school to be as good as the white kids’ school. Or read this article by a black New York Times columnist about the joy of leaving New York for Atlanta: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/opinion/georgia-black-pol....

As an immigrant myself, it sucks to raise your kids in somebody else’s culture. At least in America we have pluralism, where the cultural groups mostly agree to leave each other alone. I’d never want to live in France if it meant raising my kid to be French.

It's not that Americans are unable to distinguish between race and culture, it's that we recognize a long history of culture being used as an argument for segregation.

The race/culture distinction between modern nationalism and racism is just a historically-revisionist excuse. In actuality segregation was heavily reliant on cultural arguments, and the arguments you're raising here now are almost verbatim the arguments raised by segregationists (literally down to "only white people want this"[0]). You might not like to hear that, but it's simply true. Here's George Wallace on the subject[1]:

> White and colored have lived together in the South for generations in peace and equanimity. They each prefer their own pattern of society, their own churches and their own schools – which history and experience have proven are best for both races. (As stated before, outside agitators have created any major friction occurring between the races.) This is true and applies to other areas as well. People who move to the south from sections where there is not a large negro population soon realize and are most outspoken in favor of our customs once they learn for themselves that our design for living is best for all concerned.

Pro-segregation arguments were heavily reliant on culture as a justification for separation. Segregationists argued that separating White and Black culture threatened the "peace" between these supposedly incompatible societies, and they were quick to argue that segregation actually benefited Black citizens and that many of them preferred "separate but equal" access to resources. Black communities had their own churches and schools, they argued, and it was unjust to both White and Black culture to force those rich but very separate traditions to intermingle.

If Wallace was alive today and gave this same speech about immigration, I think you'd be defending it.

[0]: That you link to Charles M. Blow is particularly funny here given that in that very article he argues against strict separation based on culture or race -- effectively arguing not for isolationism for Black communities but for deliberate self-motivated integration back into the communities that they originally fled from in order to recapture political power within a white-dominated culture. Charles Blow is also, incidentally, a strong critic of nationalism/anti-immigration (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/opinion/charles-blow-bigg...), so I strongly doubt he'd agree with your supposed distinction between cultural and racial segregation.

[1]: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdf...

> It's not that Americans are unable to distinguish between race and culture, it's that we recognize a long history of culture being used as an argument for segregation.

You’re invoking a logical fallacy. Just because a rationale is invoked pretextually in one context, doesn’t mean it’s not valid in a different context. And the difference in context is critical. “Segregation” was about keeping people apart (and disadvantaged) in their own country. That concept has no bearing on voluntary immigration between countries.

You’re missing the critical part of Blow’s article. He proposes: “That [black people] return to the states where they had been at or near the majority after the Civil War, and to the states where Black people currently constitute large percentages of the population. In effect, Black people could colonize the states they would have controlled if they had not fled them.”

Blow is proposing that black people leave the northern states where they constitute a minority and return to southern states where they constitute a majority or near majority. There’s nothing integrationist about that proposal—the central premise is that being a minority in someone else’s community sucks and it’s better to live in a community where the majority is people like yourself.

If something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck and has historically been used in its verbatim form to justify racism and the people who historically used it to justify racism themselves made the argument "you are conflating racism and culture, we're not racist stop conflating these two concepts" -- I think in that scenario it's very much worth looking at whether they might not actually be literally the same argument.

> “Segregation” was about keeping people apart (and disadvantaged) in their own country. That concept has no bearing on voluntary immigration between countries.

The distinction you raise here is arbitrary and mischaracterizes the historical debate. Segregationists argued that segregation was not about disadvantaging the Black community. Wallace argued that he had done more for the Black community than anyone else in the South and was directly investing resources into building up the Black community. Wallace very vocally objected to people conflating "segregationism" and "racism." He argued that he was not racist, and that his policies were intended to benefit the Black community. After all, he argued, why would non-white people even want to go to schools and churches where they would be a minority?

In addition, the argument for separation of culture based on the lines between countries almost directly mirrors the arguments made by Southerners about the distinction between culture based on the lines between States. The only difference is scale, evidenced by the fact that many of those same people so quickly and easily made the same arguments about countries. The South argued that segregation was a way to preserve the autonomy and community of a State. Their argument was always centered around political/government/geographic separation.

This is a perspective that is largely lost today because we are more connected in the modern US than we used to be and state divisions feel more arbitrary. But a segregationist would have instantly recognized your argument about the culture of a country and would have instantly said, "yes, that's what I'm talking about. The South and the North are united, but we're still basically different governments, we have nothing to do with each other. We just happen to be under the same federal umbrella, that doesn't mean we're a shared culture."

So I don't think I'm making a logical fallacy at all. This is not me saying "oh, Hitler liked dogs too." This is me pointing out that your argument is a copy-paste of segregationist speakers with "race" swapped out for "immigrants", and that every single defense you have raised of your position looks like it came out of a segregationist pamphlet.

----

> the central premise is that being a minority in someone else’s community sucks and it’s better to live in a community where the majority is people like yourself.

This is an inaccurate characterization of Blow's central premise, evidenced by the fact that Blow is pro-immigration. Obviously he doesn't agree with you, or he would agree with you. :)

Blow is making an argument about political power, yes. He is not making an argument about the intrinsic benefits of cultural divisions and he is certainly not making an argument about the benefits of homogeneity; he is making an argument about the use of political power to combat systemic oppression. Blow specifically calls out in his article that he is not arguing against mixed society, he is purely interested in getting population numbers to the point where Black communities can enact legislation to combat structural racism. It's also worth noting that Blow's argument is not "live and let live", it's specifically to overwhelm white power structures and enact state-wide legislative policies that would affect majority-white communities as well.

Blow is not trying to form a separate Black society. He is trying to enact structural changes across the entire United States.

It's honestly pretty gross to put his arguments in the same camp as an ideology that skirts uncomfortably close to great replacement theory on the regular. And I can't stress this enough, it's objectively wrong to equate them, given that Blow himself does not agree with you on immigration policy.

He is conflating this with 1971 - there isn’t an army with a religious assimilationist ideology that looks down on you for your script, your language and your skin color here.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what you're trying to say here or what argument you're trying to make. I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me.

But in the interest of being very up-front and clear about my position, I also think it's pretty obvious that France has an Islamophobia problem. I don't think it changes anything about my argument, and I don't think someone advocating for segregation based on religious differences is any better than someone advocating for segregation based on race.

A description of French Muslims as if they're some kind of invading religious force who's going to forcibly convert France is divorced from reality, and it's basically just great replacement theory reapplied to a religion.

So whether rayiner wants to separate everyone based on race, class, religion, ethnicity, whatever -- blaming all of a country's problems on immigrants is still a segregationist dog-whistle. I'm kind of tired of everybody playing coy games about this. The anti-immigration anti-mixing-of-the-cultures arguments that show up under these articles are transparently parroting people like George Wallace, and then their authors try to put on a surprised pikachu face when the comparison is drawn. But the comparison is appropriate and relevant -- modern anti-immigration panics have extremely strong parallels to anti-integration movements of the past.

I’m criticizing his argument not yours.

What makes you think the NYT speaks on behalf of white people?

https://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/

Did the separation work out great for the Biharis? Should the Bengalis in Orangi, Karachi be given one way tickets to the Indian border?

> I’m fascinated by how Americans are completely unable to distinguish between race and culture.

Culture has a historical basis. The NYT funded the 1619 Project which asserts that all white American history can be attributed to enslavement of Black people. Also, since the people who run the NYT likely promote the idea that we should reject the influence of Old Dead White Men because they do not appeal to non-white audiences, don't be surprised if anyone assumes that race and culture are closely related. I certainly do because they may well have a point. I don't see any reason to believe people with no ties to this country will care about its history or culture or future except for their own ends.

A number of people have vocalized the viewpoint that culture is incomplete without race essentialism such as Indian Hindu Nationalists who are erasing Mughal empire history from their curriculum or ethnic groups in California who passed a bill to require ethnic studies that focuses on Black, Latino, and Asian studies. In the former case it would be difficult to argue that Hindutva was merely just cultural. So race and culture being closely related seems like a commonly held belief globally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Samuel_Paty

We can link wikipedia articles to each other all day. Somehow ethnic French people managed to contain their anger and not burn down majority immigrant neighborhoods after that happened.

The cop who shot Merzouk was also arrested shortly afterwards and will be facing trial, it's not like the act was ignored or swept under the rug.

enormous reach here

Getting oppressed and murdered by the police on a systemic basis is somewhat different compared to some individual's terrible reaction to a provocation. it's a sick system vs a sick individual, thus it's quite the reach to make that comparison.

Furthermore, your argument fails on the premise that it assumes a symmetry of power between these groups, which is not the case. anyone who doesn't know much about france's history with immigrants should watch La Haine(1995)[0], it's a movie but it gives a good glimpse into what's going on.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113247

> getting oppressed and murdered by the police on a systemic basis

I don't think there's any real evidence that people of immigrant background get "murdered by the police on a systemic basis" in France. If you have well sourced statistics on this, feel free to post, but for now it just sounds to me like a parroted talking point.

> is completely different compared to some individual's terrible reaction to a provocation. it's a sick system vs a sick individual, thus it's quite the reach to make that comparison.

Somehow, when the police engage in misconduct that's a systemic problem. But all of the following are just "isolated incidents" attributable to "sick individuals", no systemic issues with their culture or belief system at all right? No reason at all for ethnic French people to be upset or fed up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Marseille_stabbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Paris_knife_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_police_headquarters_stab... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nice_stabbing

> your argument fails on the premise that it assumes a symmetry of power between these groups, which is not the case.

Seems like you can never have a conversation about certain groups where they're afforded any agency.

Seems like you and people like you have this belief system where people of an immigrant background can't be held accountable for anything. Basically it seems like if immigrants (and their descendants) come to a country and they're poor, don't learn the national language, don't respect the existing culture and political order, or engage in criminality, there's always a group of people like you who say the blame lies with the host country or the majority demographic population.

> should watch La Haine(1995)[0], it's a movie but it gives a good glimpse into what's going on.

I don't think watching a fictional film from nearly 30 years ago is going to be particularly valuable for improving my understanding of the current situation in France.

>I don't think there's any real evidence that people of immigrant background get "murdered by the police on a systemic basis" in France. If you have well sourced statistics on this, feel free to post, but for now it just sounds to me like a parroted talking point.

Just because you deliberately ignore the evidence to uphold your bigoted narrative does not mean that the evidence does not exist:

1) "Police, justice et discriminations raciales" by Fabien Jobard (2015): This book examines ethnic discrimination by the police in France, drawing on empirical research. It discusses how ethnic minorities, including immigrants, experience disproportionate levels of identity checks, violence, and harassment from law enforcement agencies.

2) Reports by human rights organizations: Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented incidents of police harassment and discrimination against immigrants in France. Their reports often include firsthand accounts and testimonies from individuals who have experienced such abuse and oppression.

>Somehow, when the police engage in misconduct that's a systemic problem. But all of the following are just "isolated incidents" attributable to "sick individuals", no systemic issues with their culture or belief system at all right? No reason at all for ethnic French people to be upset or fed up?

So when the french police systematically oppress and murder french citizens with immigrant background you dismiss this fact while demanding evidence, while the evidence is publicly known, but you are very diligent in collecting every single immigrant french citizen's crime and have no problem with immediately blaming their belief SYSTEM. It's evident that you are not making objective judgments but are driven by bigotry and prejudice.

>I don't think watching a fictional film from nearly 30 years ago is going to be particularly valuable for improving my understanding of the current situation in France.

Although it's a film it accurately delves into the socio-economic struggles faced by marginalized communities in France. These issues still persist in French society, and the film provides insights into the root causes and systemic problems that continue to affect these communities today. Just dismissing it as fiction just shows that you have no interest whatsoever in having a nuanced discussion but just want to propagate your bigoted talking points.

What you are suggesting is that every immigrant is an islamic terrorist or at least sides with them? On the one hand you have unhinged individuals, on the other the state. Which do you think is the one that is expected to be responsible and fair and held to high standards?

> What you are suggesting is that every immigrant is an islamic terrorist or at least sides with them?

No, excellent straw man though.

> On the one hand you have unhinged individuals, on the other the state. Which do you think is the one that is expected to be responsible and fair and held to high standards?

The police officer who shot Nahel Merzouk was arrested shortly after and is facing charges. He still needs to see his day in court. What else is the state supposed to do at this point?

your comment suggested that not burning down muslim neighborhoods was an act of restraint on behalf of the non-immigrant French as if the unhinged terrorist had anything to do with the larger muslim population. Whereas the riots are directed against the state, not against the individual police officer. His action happened in the larger framework of systemic racism and bias against immigrants.

> your comment suggested that not burning down muslim neighborhoods was an act of restraint on behalf of the non-immigrant French

Sorry, that wasn't what I was trying to suggest. I'm pushing back against the idea that mass violence is justified simply because you think a member of your in-group was wronged. The non-immigrant French manage not burn cars in the street and loot PS5s when one of their own is murdered.

> as if the unhinged terrorist had anything to do with the larger muslim population.

Interesting. In your view it's fine to view the actions of one police officer as "happening in the larger framework of systemic racism and bias against immigrants."

So what's wrong exactly with viewing the actions of one muslim immigrant murderer as happening in the larger framework of fundamental Islam, rejection of secular values, and resentment/hatred of the French people and state?

The 2016 Nice truck attack killed 86 people and the law that police could shoot at drivers endangering passersby was put it to address that. It's an unfortunate incident, but when you import a lot of people who are now potential terrorists you have to set up a police state to prevent terrorism. Should the police just ignore these cases given what happened? How would you feel if your child or family member was killed by that truck and how come there were no riots by the native population to protest immigration policy that was bringing terrorists into the country?

It wasn't an unfortunate incident. It was the result of decades of social issues brushed outside by politicians, from the left, and from the right, both and everything in between.

And it isn't a good example given the driver wasn't an "imported terrorist"

Not an invalid point that Europe has been importing some terrorists since libya, syria and a few other countries fell into chaos. Which countries funded, promoted and held arms and military interventions that ultimately caused such chaos btw?

To your point there could have have been riots, yes, why not. What was the police doing, too busy writing traffic tickets instead of working on preventing more serious threats? What were public servants doing for the city of Nice and its social total disymetry, just take a good look at the wealth on the rivera yet masses are on minimum wages asked to pay 1000 euro for a tiny apartment.

There can't be any acceptable reason to run over anyone, but 86 people in their graves isn't a reason to implement a law which down the road would lead to even more murders which of course had a gooe chande to trigger what we've seen this last week.

There's a simpler, more immediate solution: stop importing foreigners that hold to an honor culture and have a low propensity for education. It's not working, so stop making it worse.

I mean… have they tried banning video games though? /s

Sure, zero immigration, nationwide surveillance just in case, a level to firewall all social media platforms, and total ban on fps.

I prefer we just block candy crush personally, if it has any effect on instinctive violence and self control among youngsters at least it won't be a negative sum move.

How is someone born there a foreigner?

In the eyes of some: you have curly hair, like feta cheese you are most likely Greek. Wear sandals and you certainly are are.

As someone that has been living near Nice for the past 11 years I can tell you that rents outside tourists areas aren’t that high… not cheap but not 1k either

Glad they've come down. Anything in the city, not talking off the beach, just not up the hills nor a tiny studio underground a restaurant was in the 800+ euros monthly. Exclusive of extra charges even. That was in early 2000s, I figured the market took at least 20%.

> What kind of "social contract", or whatever one would call it, is that? I mean, being invisible and rightless, but allowed to work and get a tiny fraction of the value your work represents

I'm confused. This seems to be based on a narrative that Nahel was an immigrant, but I read that he was born and raised in France and was a french citizen. So hardly "invisible and rightless".

Also, the officer who shot him was arrested and is being charged. Isn't this exactly what you would expect to happen even in a perfectly just society?

If that were the case, then why is it that the most of the propaganda against him or individuals of similar background involves the notion of "he wasn't a 'real' french person" and demonizing everything about them that can be remotely interpreted as "not french"?

I haven't followed this enough to objectively assess how this is being portrayed, but consider whether "most" of the propaganda you've been seeing is not a representative sample, but has been tailored to engage you.

I'm talking about tweets with 20k+ likes which contain outright lies and demonization of immigrants., so it's not "tailored" made to engage me, they are typical right-wing talking points.

Twitter is not real life.

> A cop shot an unarmed teenager in the face point blank

Make sure to give the full story, please.

[The victim] was "known to the police, particularly for resisting arrest", and had been charged with resisting the previous weekend and five times since 2021. His judicial file included 15 recorded incidents, including use of false license plates, driving without insurance, and for the sale and consumption of drugs.

He was driving a Mercedes-Benz A Class AMG with a Polish license plate at high speed in a bus lane (a car he did not own). When asked to stop at a red light; he started moving and ran the red light. The following chase endangered at least two people and he was forced to stop by traffic.

The cops pointed their gun at him and approached. The shooting happened when he refused to stop ignition and instead started to re-accelerate; trying to go for round #2. Just after the shooting, the two passengers tried to flee the scene (one was arrested; the other succeeded in escaping). The cop who shot immediately provided first aid and called for medical attention. The victim did not survive.

The social contract in this context is "do not resist arrest; and if you are stopped by the police after a car chase and they are pointing guns at you; do not try to flee a second time".

It's not about being "rightless"; it's about not having 15 recorded incidents in your judicial file at the age of 17 and then renting cars to endanger other human beings and then trying to flee when there is a gun pointed at you.

Did he deserve do die ? No. Did he do the bare minimum to avoid getting shot ? Also no. This situation is the consequence of 100 bad decision; the cop took 1 of those; he took the other 99.

And in a country where the legal age for driving is 18.

"comply or else -- no matter what."

i hate that i see these kinds of authoritarian, victim-blaming takes when it comes to the implicit "establishing law and order" -- you did not deserve to die, but allow me to imply you deserved to die (because of your transgressions).

the cognitive dissonance is so real this almost reads like satire.

There's a difference between "victim" and "perpetrator." This kid was not a victim, he faced consequences for his choices. The police officer will face consequences for his, as well.

> A cop shot an unarmed teenager in the face point blank.

He was not unarmed, he was using a car as weapon.

A cop shot an unarmed teenager in the face point blank. So he wouldn't get away.

Putting aside whether Nahel was a threat to pedestrians, the officer in question was apprehended and charged. That's the system working.

That's the system scape goating some poor sap without addressing underlying issues.

> The police have maintained that the shooting was an act of self-defense, as they argue that Merzouk was driving towards the officer. However, since the video was released, this claim has faced significant criticism.

So if this video didn't exist, which the police didn't make and might not have released if they did, what then?

To say the system is working is a horrible thing to say in light of that. How many homicides happened in a similar way with no video by third parties? We both know that we both don't know, by definition. And it's a privilege to not be held awake by that question, to not live with that fear in the back of your head 24/7. If not for yourself, then maybe for your wayward son, who you so hope will grow out of it.

Besides, and this is like an insulting cherry on this turd dressed up as cake people should be happy be get to eat: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230704-fundraiser-for-o...

And it's a privilege to not be held awake by that question, to not live with that fear in the back of your head 24/7.

If fear of the tiny number of police shootings in France is constantly in the back of your head, either you are in a state of constant paralyzing fright or your fears have no relation to your risks. More people are killed by lightning in France than are shot by police.

> Police attempted to pull him over at a red light using sirens and lights, the prosecutor added, but Nahel disobeyed and committed several traffic offences, endangering the lives of a pedestrian and a cyclist.

He’s not unarmed. He’s driving a 4,000lb chunk of metal that could kill more people in a few seconds than any gun short of a fully automatic belt fed. Eugen Grigore killed twice as many people as the columbine shooter did in far less time.

So we have a person who is in control of a dangerous weapon, who has already demonstrated his willingness to put pedestrians in danger, and who already had 15 different criminal charges. He was literally charged with resisting arrest a week prior.

He’s also appeared in videos for bangers with lyrics like these:

“While I rob them, and no one comes to tell me A-B-C… Me, I'm only good at making my weapon speak”

Ultimately, this seems like a pretty clear cut case of FAFO to me.

Here’s the question: where was this outrage when 12 year old Lola Daviet was found raped, strangled, cut up, and stuffed in a suitcase by another Algerian? I didn’t see riots for her, and those who dared protest her rape, murder, and dismemberment were labeled fascists by the media.

So how is it that raping and murdering an actual child, who wasn’t even old enough to go to sleepovers with her friends by herself - how is that OK, but this isn’t?

The cop that killed Nahel committed the folly of doing so on camera.

So many problems around cops shooting people and they die. I'm wondering HOW COME noone researched this to create something that can either penetrate glass or not so hard surfaces, and when comes in contact with the skin paralyzes the offender (like the taser, but this can go through things) or simple paralyzes everyone in a radius of a few meters.

Then when the thing settles you go in, get the paralyzed human/animal/whatever, put it in a cage, then wait for it to de-paralyze.

Noone gets hurt, plus the idiot who cannot follow commands won't be killed. Would be so easy.

>According to his family's lawyers, Merzouk did not have a criminal record,[19] but he was "known to the police, particularly for resisting arrest", and had been charged with resisting the previous weekend[20] and five times since 2021. His judicial file included 15 recorded incidents, including use of false license plates, driving without insurance, and for the sale and consumption of drugs.

In no way am I saying he deserved to be shot, please understand that.

But 15 incidents with the cops? At 17? Honestly France has to take a look at their punishment scale surely? I'm assuming him being under 18 is what led to it reaching 15 incidents without serious jail time. But how on Earth does false plates, no insurance, and selling drugs not earn you at least some jail time?

> I mean, being invisible and rightless, but allowed to work and get a tiny fraction of the value your work represents, until someone just murders you and then makes it out you were such a danger to them? [...] I would burn things down, too.

What are you talking about? Literally everything you are complaining about is false.

> being invisible

They are not invisible. There are riots with extreme violence when one of their criminals is shot by police, even though the cop is facing a murder trial. In contrast, Muslims in France committed multiple attacks against ethnic French people and there were zero riots. If the Muslims in France are invisible, how come a death of one of their criminals causes such indignation to result in a violent riot? But multiple terrorist attacks / targeted assassinations / stabbing / shootings / murders perpetrated by Muslim in France against the ethnic French population don't cause enough indignation to result in a riot?

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Samuel_Paty

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Marseille_stabbing

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Paris_knife_attack

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_police_headquarters_stab...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nice_stabbing

> being rightless

Tell me, what rights do ethnic French people have that Muslim French citizens don't?

> allowed to work and get a tiny fraction of the value your work represents

You must not be familiar with the French welfare state. I guarantee that the Muslim immigrants and their children receive MUCH more from the government than the work they produce.

> until someone just murders you

And is prosecuted for it!

> I would burn things down, too

Consider you don't know what is happening in France before you proclaim support for riots and violence.

Islam isn’t an ethnic group. French Muslims (de souche) exist.

> Their tight-knit social democracies are not compatible with immigration. But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

People keep saying both of these things, and it's not clear that either of them is true? I mean, the whole "race riot because a cop murdered a nonwhite person" phenomenon is also pretty American, and it's not exactly a tight-knit social democracy?

The racism is definitely a problem, but you have to remember that quite a lot of the younger generation of nonwhite people are French; i.e. born in France holders of French nationality, considered to be "French" by the French census, educated in French schools, and occasionally shot at by French gendarmes.

If France did not want to be full of Algerians it should not have tried to make Algeria French, at the cost of a huge number of lives, but there is no time machine for that.

> The racism is definitely a problem, but you have to remember that quite a lot of the younger generation of nonwhite people are French; i.e. born in France holders of French nationality, considered to be "French" by the French census, educated in French schools, and occasionally shot at by French gendarmes.

Citizenship and ethnicity are two different things. Nobody is denying the existence of French citizenship, but this insistence on denying the existence of French ethnicity (as the French state insists on doing) is just dishonest. The difference between the two has been acknowledged for as long as multiethnic states have existed.

> If France did not want to be full of Algerians it should not have tried to make Algeria French, at the cost of a huge number of lives, but there is no time machine for that.

Are you suggesting mass algerian immigration is some sort of retribution for colonisation? I am not even sure I see the link. Germany has mass turkish immigration, I can't remember Turkey being a german colony.

And if you want to talk about past misdeeds, we can also discuss the barbary slave trade and piracy (which by the way was the original reason for the French colonisation).

Alergians choose to go to France because they already speak French, and the first Algerians migrated to European France while they were part of the French Empire.

I don't understand how most of Europe hasn't been more hair-on-fire emergency over the past decade about this.

They're too busy trying to deal with all of the unemployed people, they don't have time to deal with all of the theoretical unfilled job openings.

Although true, it is the "tight-knit" there that is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Europe had a couple of options to merge socialism and migrations:

- US style, incorporate the migrants into the fabric of society by forming detectable enclaves that, nevertheless, don't riot in the streets.

- Focus on cheap energy over environmentalism, allowing everyone to enjoy rising standards of living.

- Migration that cynically but effectively focuses only on skilled migration, forming an over-class of highly skilled and motivated migrants to support the socialist underclass.

The issue here is they seem to be trying to bring in a new underclass, then stomp them repeatedly with COVID policies and living-standard squeezes (look at the cost of energy people, this is a crisis for someone!), then throw the police at them. A bold gambit with questionable prospects.

> US style, incorporate the migrants into the fabric of society by forming detectable enclaves that, nevertheless, don't riot in the streets.

I seem to recall street riots in the US during the summer of 2020. Is the US actually avoiding the same fate as Europe, or is it just not currently at a flashpoint?

The US rioters weren't recent migrants were they? My understanding is it was age-old class politics.

A lot of the rioting in France isn't by recent immigrants either, but more like second and third generation descendants of immigrants. A lot like the groups rioting it the US.

Noted descendant of immigrants George Floyd, yes. Have you had your morning coffee yet?

I had enough to realize he wasn't rioting in the summer of 2020.

He had been a member of said group though.

They could promote policies to increase child birth among the native population and to foster a culture, including religious values, that support that. The justification that they need to import foreigners to support the elderly is nonsensical on it's face. If wealth is the cause of low child birth, what's going to happen when these immigrants achieve the same level of wealth as the native population in the next generation? The logical conclusion is that they are not importing these people to address the economic issue, but for ulterior motives, like diluting the native stock to diminish an ancestral identity that buttresses nationalism.

I don't think needing workers is why immigrants were brought to Europe. That seems like an excuse government gives but it's contradictory that immigrants from other cultures were brought in by the government to work but then also have higher unemployment and use more welfare, citation in here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_France I guess the government could have just got it badly wrong. In theory, worker shortages would lead to higher wages and government efforts to stabilize birth rates like what Japan is trying to do.

I think the actual reason is something like a vast western empire promoting diversity as a good thing for your country. The 2015 immigrant surge into Europe was not because EU countries needed workers. Similarly, countries that have tried to block immigration like Poland and Hungary are accused of being far right fascists and uncooperative and NGOs from the US come after you. The general belief seems to be that too many white people is a bad thing and backwards.

> I think the actual reason is something like a vast western empire promoting diversity as a good thing for your country.

The diversity train is a relatively new phenomenon.

EU expansion to the East had many factors. One of them being to have less barriers to get a cheap seasonal workforce pick vegetables in western EU countries [1].

Go back a few more decades: Germany in particular asked hundreds of thousands of people from Turkey to immigrate into Germany to help rebuild it after WW2. It's now the biggest foreign-origin population in Germany.

Not sure about France though.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/business/europe-labor-rig...

> Germany in particular asked hundreds of thousands of people from Turkey to immigrate into Germany to help rebuild it after WW2.

Not quite, because the earliest wave of Turkish immigrants came after the migration agreement between Turkey and Germany in 1961 (and Germany was rebuilt at that time). The reasons for this agreement – initiated by Turkey – were curiously complex and not simply economical ones.

Another possibility that is surely called a conspiracy theory is to create conflict in society, so the government is allowed to put in place the desired solutions like increased systemic surveillance and more violent police. It's an effective way to erode civil rights.

On the other hand countries like Japan are having a demographic crisis where they have populations that are very old because there aren’t as many young people, and one of the primary reasons Japan doesn’t have as many young people as other countries is because they have very strict immigration laws.

As a person whose parents are from India I take offense to the idea that family values in western countries are somehow incompatible with immigrants, both of my parents came to the US separately and decided to get married and have kids out of their own volition. Europe obviously has separate problems and migrant workers aren’t exactly the same as tech workers from India coming to the US but just because other cultures are different doesn’t mean they’re from alien planets or something.

Having children is not really the problem although what family values are differ across cultures (monogamy vs polygamy, etc) and as I said, I don't think immigration into western countries is strictly because of a lack of workers. There is a deliberate plan in place to change the demographics of western countries to be more favorable to those in power. Things like the Diversity Immigrant Visa and the deliberately uncontrolled immigration into western countries right now are completely detached from a need for workers. The US is actually spending money to undermine Hungary through NGOs because Hungary is attempting to control immigration. H-1B even keeps wages down. The benefits of this accrue to a very small class of people.

Although I am sympathetic to Indians, I think people in India would not like it if a lot of Europeans showed up. It says here that Indians are 3.1% of the population of Great Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Indians. I can't imagine Indians would appreciate it if 3.1% of India were European immigrants. Neither would people in a lot of other countries. I think people in the West have a right to their own culture if other people do because the nation of immigrants propaganda is revisionist. Japan has chosen not to import people. I don't think the choices are to let people in or die.

> But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

They have lived beyond their means for a long time. The solution is they have to either boost productivity generally with a mostly stagnated population, have fewer people at present levels equivalent of output, or accept a lower quality of life.

You can see the fact that they're living beyond their means even in supposedly well-off countries like Denmark / Norway / Finland / Sweden / Netherlands, where the household debt to income figures have been shockingly high for 10-15 years now. They're the most indebted people in world history, pretending it's sustainable (maybe for Norway, thanks to their extreme per capita pollution output via fossil fuels).

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm

The Baltics and some parts of Eastern Europe, are the best positioned going forward.

I don't think they don't have enough workers. European countries mostly de-industrialised and have very little use for an uneducated workforce. But they would decline demographically at a similar rate than China or Japan without mass immigration.

So how is Bangladesh doing with those Biharis and Rohingyas?

More analogous to the current situation, should Pakistan ask all Bengalis to pack up and leave because their experiment in living together clearly failed?

Stay classy, HN.

In 2016 Macron said he didn't want to be a "normal" president and made references to being like Jupiter, the guy has always been a power hungry psycho with an inflated ego

And they love patronizing everyone about human rights and democracy, while in practice taking model on Russia and China. The very definition of hypocrisy.

July 7: we blame video games for these people smashing up Paris

July 14: we celebrate the time our ancestors smashed up Paris so hard they briefly turned France into a democracy

The US government used covid as an excuse to soft-censor misinformation from social media.

How exactly are they going to remotely activate it if, say, Google/Apple don't put a backdoor in just for France(which I'm pretty sure they won't).

Is that bill just saying the police can hack your phone with a warrant?

The headline is corrected in the 4th paragraph:

> President Emmanuel Macron has mostly blamed social media for the devastation, but he has also claimed that video games have inspired copycat violence and vandalism.

Kudos to NPR for using ~60% of their article to call "BS" on Macron. Though they probably should have opened the history book, too - France experienced a number of similar situations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr... ) before social media existed, or modern-ish video games were seriously available.

My reaction: Macron is delusional, and needs to be shown the door.

The saddest thing is, Macron's playbook doesn't seem any different from what I'd expect from most current politicians.

It feels like the real problems the world needs to solve are beyond any existing political will. So it's the downward spiral of denial and self-delusion.

One thing I notice about European politicians: they all come from the same background, come from the same families, same socioeconomic status, attend the same schools (Eton, Science Poe, etc), take the same jobs.

At the end they all provide the same talking points and try to use the same programs. You can't expect change from the same people who have no idea they are the problem.

And this is why diversity is critical in this era. Those same politicians have been ossified in their thoughts. They trundle out the same centrist playbook that may have worked in 80s 90s 00s. And then are surprised when an extremist trundles them in the elections.

@dang - Did user di4na's comment (below) get flagged/killed for using "the s word"? In context, I see no suggestion of physical harm or self-harm, nor other objectionable content.

It probably got flagged for being a racist dog whistle.

That's surely what happened, even though it obviously isn't correct. Islam is a religion, not a race.

It's just as reasonable for the French to complain about Islam as for a progressive Californian to complain about Christianity.

Sadly, HN doesn't seem to take away the right to flag posts when people abuse it.

A progressive Californian and a Christian Californian are as likely as not to have the same racial background. A French Islamophobe and a French Muslim, not so much.

California never colonized a Christian country like France colonized Algeria.

Sometimes the superficial truth is just that, and reality is more nuanced.

You're trying too hard to force a racial context onto France and deny one in the USA.

In California a Christian is less likely to be white, and a progressive more likely to be white than not. And many of those Christians come from countries that the USA has been involved in and not always left in good shape so most of the same dynamics even exist.

Regardless, criticizing religion is fair game and a Euro has a right to criticize Islam the same as to criticize Christianity, even if there's a racial disparity between the membership of the two.

First reaction: Baloney - no mention of race, some previous French civil unrest has very much been white-on-white over economic issues, etc., etc.

Second reaction: Well, we are talking about France. Where suspecting that ethnic or racial divisions are possible is verboten, and the government's policy can be summarized "Napoleon and his armies fought hard to make the Nile a river in France, dammit!". ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_campaign_in_Egypt_and_S... )

It could just be that the comment was deliberately vague and contained nothing but innuendo.

HN gets these kinds of comments all the time, on all sorts of topics: "I know the answer but I can't say it because I'll get downvoted..." and "We're not allowed to talk about the truth, but we all know what it is..." and "Without going into details, I'll just say the article is wrong." These kinds of comments add absolutely nothing to the conversation, and I'd say flagging is 100% appropriate.

If one has something to say, say it clearly or don't bother posting.

I’m not following. In what way is user di4na’s comment a racist dog whistle?

Pure Speculation: In the specific context of current French politics, it is very close to phrasing used by some disreputable Islamophobic / white nationalist / etc. figures.

Is all discussion of immigration racist?

I think it's the opposite - god alone knows what sort of social upheaval Europe would have seen in the financial crisis from 2009 - 2015 if playstation and x-box hadn't been around to distract all the young men with no job!

Same. I think the reason we don't have more riots in Europe is the huge amount of affordable distractions (alcohol, porn, tinder, social media, streaming shows, video games, weed, etc.) to distract us from the real problems (unaffordable housing while increasing immigration and stagnating wages, wealth transfer from poor to rich, underfunded healthcare with ever increasing waiting times, unsustainable pension system, high interest rates on loans with low rates on savings, etc.)

Without all of that we'd see a lot more young men have more free time to protest against their future being take away from them.

Im surprised that there isn’t more government funding for VR technology, outside of the military, for this very reason

The military is funding psy-ops to make you think there'll be hot young e-girls waiting for you if you enlist, instead of big dudes.

For the same reason that drugs are illegal: If there is an affordable happy pill they can't sell you their fake shit anymore. People that give up on the rat race are outside of their power.

Virtual Reality is not real

Also much better panopticon and much broader police powers to suppress protest in advance. As well as the fall of Communism (most of the 68-ish generation of actually violent Left was explicitly Red)

I am not sure this to be the case in practice, maybe the young generation,but the older one, I am unsure.(taking the point of my grand father who couldn't stand most things related to this era).

No surprise that video games in which the player is a rebel or revolutionary against a dysfunctional or oppressive system are so popular. These games pander to and soothe people's discontent. For a while, when playing the game, the player feels as though they are accomplishing something productive to improve their life and environment.

Panem et circenses

It's interesting that anyone who has actually played video games understands, unequivocally, that they are a substitute, not a promoter, of bad behavior.

But really, our politicians barely use computers, so what can we do.

Macron used the words "video games" and that makes him sound like a fool because the correlation between video games and actual violence is nil.

But, I do think he and other people are trying to make a point that there is a lot of content on the web which is horrifying, and sadly young people learn by example. Watching constant reels of people acting awful to each other desensitizes us against engaging in bad behavior.

IMHO, all the garbage videos I see of people doing "pranks" (which are often low grade violence against strangers) just make impressionable teens and young adults feel is is OK do engage in that sort of behavior - especially when it becomes gamified by getting Internet/social media points.

And this is where TikTok comes into play. Scott Galloway makes the argument that China is using TikTok to push a lot of this negative content into America with the effort to cause instability. They are also only pushing highly positive content inside China to bolster "healthy" social interaction. I'm not sure I can say this is 100% truthful, but anecdotally it seems correct.

Why are you watching these videos?

Fair question. I don't actively seek it out but I come across a bit of it on Reddit. Sad to say, its engaging on a primal level, much like how people slow down to view a car crash when they're driving by.

I used to browse the subreddit r/trashy which at first I found funny, but then after seeing the content for a while, I realized its just making fun of people or showing me examples of Confederate racists. I do like r/tiktokcringe because there is a lot of good hearted humorous content, but there too, you see examples of people being jerks.

> like how people slow down to view a car crash when they're driving by.

Or they slow down because the crash causes them to doubt the condition of the road; there may be debris strewn around they need to avoid. A lane may be closed too. When a road is saturated to capacity, anything that gets people to slow down a little bit will cause a chain reaction that snowballs into a full traffic jam. Even slight perturbations without lane closures can cause traffic jams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wm-pZp_mi0

Thanks for answering. I asked as someone who hates Reddit, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok so genuinely never sees any of this stuff.

> IMHO, all the garbage videos I see of people doing "pranks" (which are often low grade violence against strangers) just make impressionable teens and young adults feel is is OK do engage in that sort of behavior

I'm sorry but this is not a factual statement. Violence among the youth has actually decreased sharply since videogames were introduced, and I'm absolutely not convinced that the current red scare (tiktok) is any different.

What has increased are suicides, especially among girls. Which is something I actually would blame social media for.

Male teen suicides were higher in 1990 than today. It’s true that females are higher today but rates are still well below males.

Why would virtual depictions of murder and violence have zero effect, but real people being mean to each other cause a complete breakdown of the social order (at least for short amount of time)?

As far as I know (and from my person experience video games do not cause violence, but desensitization to depictions of violence. Here it is probabbly the exact same, but instead of violence it is depictions of anti-social behaviour.

Because people can tell if the victim is a real person or a video game character. Being desensitized to depictions of violence is not the same as being desensitized to human suffering. It's really elitist and condescending to pretend that regular people somehow can't tell the difference.

>Being desensitized to depictions of violence is not the same as being desensitized to human suffering.

And?

>It's really elitist and condescending to pretend that regular people somehow can't tell the difference.

Did you reply to the wrong post?

There is a world of difference between fiction and non-fiction.

I really think probably the US and France both need to take responsibility for the situations they have created inside themselves rather than blame china. Whatever effect tiktok could be having is minuscule compared to the raw effects of generations of explicitly racist economic policies. Ruthless self-interest is a cultural value of the US! China didn't make it so.

At the very very most, something like you're talking about could only be an intentional trigger to an already-present instability.

I would argue that the influence Tiktok has over Western youth is a far more prescient threat than that of racist economic policies.

Present day is is literally the least racist time in all of history in Western countries, the opportunities are endless for minority populations who immigrated in recent decades.

Tiktok, on the other hand, is quickly eroding the moral fabric that Western society was built on and is necessary for a functioning and productive society

Edit: Also not to mention the national security concerns (for all Western countries, USA, and EU countries) of forking over mass amounts of your civilians user data to probably your number one (or two, I guess, depending on who you ask) geopolitical opposition

Next time I visit the local jail that is almost all black and hispanic I'll remind them about the endless opportunities. Thanks for the lesson.

We used to sell opium to China, now they sell us Fentanyl. We used to polute their minds with Hollywood, not they send us Tik Tok. I would say they are also using shopping sites like Temu and their advertising to annihilate the American mind. What's left of it, I presume.

I can’t confirm it, but read that in China, TikTok feeds are much different - its all stuff like Khan Academy videos and videos about becoming an astronaut, etc.

I'm pretty sure it's because the government enforces more restricted content to children. The company will do anything to increase engagement given the restrictions, but in the US there are no such restrictions.

Because it feeds what ever is popular,most created etc. Most kids have a pressure to be good at school, not to date the hot girl /guy at school. So it creates social craziness in college and boardinghouse but that's another matter.

You don't need China to do that. American corporate robots have been doing it on autopilot for decades.

Absolutely. But blaming China as some unstopable force is just lazy and of course change starts with accepting your own fault in this.

We used to sell opium to China, now they sell us Fentanyl.

This is a pretty sloppy use of "we". The United Kingdom is a separate country on a different continent with a seperate history of wrongdoing. It is like justifying a trade war with China on Pearl Harbor.

Boston Brahmin including Delano Family (FDR ancestor) were involved as well.

Like Anglo countries don't have extremely close ties and similar governments and ideologies that they might as well be a single country.

This is why I always tell people the confederacy actually abolished slavery in 1833.

Right, cus the south is still an independent country

Anybody who has some doubts about this should look up what the east India company flag looked like

Sure, just like the Malaysian flag shows the deep rooted ties to the United States...

"In the early 1800s, the Brits controlled 90 percent of the Chinese opium trade. But within the 10 percent of business handled by Americans, Perkins and his brother James had the largest share. They owned at least seven ships, and held interest in others. The ships sailed from Massachusetts shores to Turkey, where they bought opium; from Turkey to China, where they sold the drug; and from China to Boston, loaded with tea, porcelain and silk."

https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history

The British government started a war to force trade fought for three years, and enforced it militarily. It is not an interesting equivalent to point to minor, private, third party, unrelated to the government, that engaged in trade after the war, and use that to assign blame to a different country.

I think you are 100% right about TikTok.

I think it is planned.

> And this is where TikTok comes into play. Scott Galloway makes the argument that China is using TikTok to push a lot of this negative content into America with the effort to cause instability. They are also only pushing highly positive content inside China to bolster "healthy" social interaction. I'm not sure I can say this is 100% truthful, but anecdotally it seems correct.

Lmao, TikTok is the most censored social media in the West. Creators frequently need to use ridiculous synonym like unalive instead of death (wtf!). If I recall correctly even Vox censored the word suicide when similar video uploaded to Youtube isn't censored.

Your comment does not at all seem to negate your parent. A heavily censored experience is what I would expect if pushing content of any bent (positive or negative) were the point.

I listen to quite a lot of Scott Galloway and my takeaway from listening to him online is outside of tech and finance he doesn't know shit about jack. Even in the west unemployment is still quite high for >25yo. He believes the US should have national service similar to Israel, yet dances right around the apartheid that makes mandatory service necessary. Also, he's rich, if shit hit the fan I'm fairly certain it won't be his own kids on the frontline. It's quite easy to demand commitment from other people you wouldn't voluntarily do yourself.

Our society (and every parent I know) has established that kids are highly impressionable. That’s why so many laws are written to moderate advertising (eg not show a camel smoking a cigarette), moderate content (tv and movie ratings) etc. I can’t go a day without people telling me how manipulative social media is on the news for both kids and adult minds. We casually acknowledge entire elections have been manipulated by the content shown to people on television.

So what is it about video games that have absolutely zero negative impact on impressionable and unstable minds?

Speaking purely for myself, as a life longer gamer (I’m 37), I personally don’t believe video games have inclined me in any way towards violence. I do believe that the idea of handling assault weapons was normalized by video games (it was a non event for me to shoot them at a range when I eventually sought them out), and that trashing cities and committing vandalism became fun. Doesn’t seem like a stretch to me that boys being boys are going to be more inclined to do it, especially without some overarching moral construct to counter balance or (like church).

Why video games and not movies or TV? Why not books or music? And why is church a positive moral construct? Maybe I want my kid playing Stardew Valley to counteract all the violent fire and brimstone they're getting from the Old Testament.

Hell, why not their own history textbooks? France at least one prominent example of a violent revolution that's looked on positively in retrospect! (Of course, when you're the leader of the ruling class, no challenge to the current status quo could possibly be positive in your eyes).

The thing with pinning the blame on any one thing like this is that it betrays one's own biases. Macron grew up without video games like we have today, so they're his go-to culprit — it obviously can't be the violent things I grew up with, I turned out fine, didn't I?

> Macron grew up without video games like we have today, so they're his go-to culprit

Video games were already made a culprit in the 80s and 90s, when Macron was a kid and a teenager (he’s 45). I’m pretty sure he’s aware of that.

Why video games ... ?

He said this so people argue about whether or not videogames make kids violent instead of question why cops are shooting unarmed kids.

It was a distraction. It appears to be working.

> why cops are shooting unarmed kids.

Which unarmed kid? A car is a deadly weapon if you've been driving it through crosswalks at high speed.

If your family had been in that crosswalk you'd be complaining about the lack of policing.

So cops should kill every driver they suspect of being dangerous?

Every driver who was fleeing at high speed through civilians, and who attempts to do it again, yes. Absolutely.

It's literally the time they're supposed to shoot.

I'll quote US law here because it's in English, but it's pretty much the same worldwide.

> "1-16.200 - DEADLY FORCE - Law enforcement officers and correctional officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person."

Fleeing wouldn't be enough, but fleeing in a car after reckless driving that already endangered civilians is.

Were these men speeding through civilians or fleeing dangerously when they were shot?

https://thegrio.com/2021/08/29/footage-of-police-shooting-ma...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy...

Before you answer...

Do you want others to make the same excuse as you if you were shot by the cops?

> Were these men speeding through civilians or fleeing dangerously when they were shot?

No, the men in your stories were sleeping in their cars. One was shot 55 times.

The driver in France had just been witnessed fleeing through civilian traffic and crosswalks. They saw him commit a crime and try to flee to continue risking others' lives. He was shot once, only when he tried to escape.

What do you think these stories have in common?

> Do you want others to make the same excuse as you if you were shot by the cops?

If I was risking other people's lives by fleeing from police and used deadly force to try to escape, then yeah. It's not "an excuse", it's their literal job. They tried to detain him peacefully.

Additionally, he ran through the cop that was propped up on the hood and windshield of the car. We hear the engine rev up, and he accelerates away. It's egregious.

For even more context, here's the specific relevant part of french law for this type of vehicular situation (https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...) is:

"les conducteurs n'obtempèrent pas à l'ordre d'arrêt et dont les occupants sont susceptibles de perpétrer, dans leur fuite, des atteintes à leur vie ou à leur intégrité physique ou à celles d'autru"

meaning, "drivers do not comply with the stop order and whose occupants are likely to perpetrate, in their flight, harm to their lives or bodily injury or to those of others"

Comments like this are why I don't really buy the "distraction" framing. Folks will bend over backwards to find any pretext justifying the murder of people they don't like, no distraction necessary.

Maybe in some circumstances, sure. There is good reason not to like this person, who demonstrated the will and ability to hurt or even kill innocent people.

By fleeing the police who murdered him? I appreciate that you can’t drop the façade for even a moment or the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, but I just want you to know that no one is actually fooled.

That's a lot of metaphors and innuendo. Can you explain a bit more plainly?

Sorry, not trying to use innuendo! I’m explicitly saying that you’re using a post hoc justification for Nahel Merzouk’s murder because you’d already decided that it’s okay for police to murder people like him.

What does "people like him" mean, is that some racist dog whistle?

> you’d already decided that it’s okay

Before I heard his race, yes. Based on the fact that he'd risked people's lives before they stopped him and he was trying to flee to do it again. The police gave him a warning and a chance to surrender.

> to murder [him]

Shooting a violent criminal to prevent imminent further violence is the epitome of justification.

> I just want you to know that no one is actually fooled.

I assure you, no fooling, that I'd support shooting whatever color of criminal was driving the car.

My thoughts are with the pedestrians they nearly hit and those people's families, and the police officers who risked their safety to stop him.

A “violent criminal” who had never hurt anyone or been convicted of a crime? Whatever you say, man. It’s pretty clear what you’re doing here. We’re not going to be able to agree, so I’m ducking out.

Joyriding and fleeing police at high speed through a city is a violent crime. He doesn't have to be convicted - they witnessed it. They told him he'd be stopped and yet he chose to endanger more people trying to escape lawful custody.

> never [...] been convicted of a crime

That's the injustice. He'd been arrested for resisting arrest just the weekend before and if they treated him properly he'd have still been locked up - unable to get himself killed.

> Whatever you say, man. It’s pretty clear what you’re doing here.

You're race baiting. You're taking something an entirely understandable reaction to violent crime that happened between two people of the same race and are distorting the facts to play it up as some systemic white supremacy despite that a whole country has been thrown into violence and people have already died for that lie.

You're trying to get people killed and stoke tensions to support your politics at home because the lives of these people (French people, sit down) are worth so little to you that it's a game.

But please, do go on about what I'm doing.

> arrested for resisting arrest

Oh, so all the justification the police need to strip someone of their rights (or life) is to... Say they need to be stripped of their rights (or life)?

Who has the power in France? The People or the cops?

The police have the power to strip someone of (some of) their rights. It's called arrest. Since there are people out there who won't respond to a stern glare, that power is kind of necessary.

Now here's someone who resists arrest. Yes, the police have the power to use violence in that situation. What's your alternative? A stern glare?

Arrest is a fine power.

Resisting arrest as a crime independent of other crimes is nonsense. If they have no right to detain you, they have no right to detain you, period.

Ackshually, no. They have the legal power to detain you for the purposes of figuring out if they need to arrest you. If they had to have proof, and a conviction, to show that someone was guilty before detaining them they'd never be able to arrest them to take them to court and have them convicted in the first place.

What you're saying is somewhat relevant to false arrest, where a police officer is acting outside his legal role.

In this case though, they had a duty to remove him, even with deadly force, from the car which he'd just risked people's lives with, above and beyond their power to arrest him after removing him from the car.

All I’ll say is that the police statement and the video of what actually happened are both available. So to anyone reading this: you can decide for yourself how reliable the cops are as witnesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Nahel_Merzouk

Nobody is disputing the reckless driving before he got stopped and that's all that matters. The cops weren't chasing him because of racism, they were try to stop a dangerous driver joyriding through traffic.

For whatever reason he didn't stop when the police had their guns on him and he tried to escape in the same car he'd already endangered people's lives with. Had he let the police remove him from the car he wouldn't have needed to be shot to accomplish it. He's endangered people's lives with his car, it's a weapon and he should be treated like an active shooter when he tries to flee with it.

Consider the rights and feelings of the pedestrians he almost hit and their families and communities rather than the gang banger. (If it helps you have empathy, imagine that they - the real victims - might also not be white.)

> Consider the rights and feelings of the pedestrians he almost hit and their families and communities

I don't think "we should stack up feelings against a human life" (or "we should stack up their right to feel safe against a right to be alive") is a winning argument.

There were options for diffusing the situation that didn't involve killing a man. People are justifiably angry they weren't taken.

> There were options for diffusing the situation that didn't involve killing a man.

Those were explored, in the time they had, but in the end he accelerated away.

> People are justifiably angry they weren't taken.

No, they aren't, they're all lying. They say stuff like "he was shot at a traffic stop", pretending he hadn't just sped through crosswalks and didn't have a history of resisting arrest. They don't care one bit what was tried, only that they've got a martyr for their class warfare.

> I don't think "we should stack up their right to feel safe against a right to be alive" is a winning argument.

That's not quite what I said, but regardless it is a winning argument. That's why the police officer has more donations than the joyriding criminal.

> That's why the police officer has more donations than the joyriding criminal.

That implies the officer has the support of the moneyed class, not the most people.

Pitting the moneyed class against the people has historically gone poorly in France. Best of luck to them.

ETA: It is entirely possible that the shooting of Nahel Merzouk was completely legal and the law says there should be no repercussions for the officer who shot him. That's rather the problem: the people, it seems, are tired of the arrangement the law presents and feel powerless to change it.

That is not a stable arrangement and historically, France doesn't alter such arrangements bloodlessly. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/07/french-rio...

> That implies the officer has the support of the moneyed class

Who do you think is walking through the city and driving to work? The idle rich?

The joyriding criminal was in a $100k car, he was hardly a worker.

You've got the class situation exactly backwards.

> It is entirely possible that the shooting of Nahel Merzouk was completely legal and the law says there should be no repercussions for the officer who shot him.

The people of France, and everywhere else, want the police to stop criminals from joyriding through their neighborhoods.

> That's rather the problem: the people, it seems, are tired of the arrangement the law presents and feel powerless to change it.

No, the rioters aren't "the people". They're generally also child criminals and race-baiters (his mother) and they're just upset that one of them got the consequences of his dangerous actions.

The vast majority of the population, including pretty much the entirety of the working class, do not support the riots or the rioters or the criminal.

> No, the rioters aren't "the people".

I wonder if this is what the bourgeoisie had themselves convinced was the case in the late 1700s before the Bastille was seized. After all, only about 600 people participated. Hardly "the people," not by a long shot...

> I wonder if this is what the bourgeoisie had themselves convinced was the case in the late 1700s before the Bastille was seized.

This guy was a criminal who preyed upon and endangered the working class. He didn't sell drugs to Macron's kids, or speed through a crosswalk where the elites would walk. That's why the riots are getting so little support from the average person, even other Algerians, despite the media telling us this riot is for them.

The rioters claim to be upset over a situation that nobody would have a problem with if anyone else had gotten shot, and which the media would have ignored if it hadn't fit the USA's racism narrative.

I think you might be missing the point.

The point is not arguing whether Nahel Merzouk was breaking the law, or whether he was a danger, or whether the shooting was legal.

The point is that the law that made the shooting legal may be sour. It puts a lot of power over life and death in the hands of law enforcement. It's also new for France; the authority to shoot drivers when the officers are in no imminent danger is only a power they have as of 2017.

The Bastille was stormed on the rumor that Louis the XVI was going to arrest the National Assembly, not on action taken. Just as these riots are fueled on the risk of what on-paper authority has been given to French police: if they decide you could be a risk to other people and you move your car one inch, your life is legally forfeit (their call, and you'll be too dead to offer counter-testimony). People believe that bargain of safety vs. their right to life is untenable, and don't believe the system is set up to allow them to change it legally. Hence, the riots.

Earlier, you said

> The people of France, and everywhere else, want the police to stop criminals from joyriding through their neighborhoods.

No disagreement, but I think the concern is the people of France don't want so much risk to their own right to life to protect the community's right to life. Letting the cops decide whether "You probably need killing; you look like a threat" is a huge power to hand to them, especially through the lens of out-groups vs. in-groups and subconscious assessments ("I have this power to protect the people from terrorists; this guy looks like a terrorist, therefore...").

> the authority to shoot drivers when the officers are in no imminent danger is only a power they have as of 2017.

That's not relevant here - they've always had the ability to shoot drivers who are using their car as a weapon or otherwise endangering the public. There's never been a time officers haven't been allowed to use lethal force to stop a deadly crime in progress.

> I think the concern is the people of France don't want so much risk to their own right to life

The only people who seem to be upset about this other than literally other child street criminals in France, are upper-class liberals from the USA who see it as an opportunity to push the racism narrative.

The law abiding people of France don't see themselves in this guy's shoes - fleeing from a justified arrest and endangering people. They see themselves as the people almost killed on the crosswalk, or in almost hit driving their kids home from school.

> Letting the cops decide whether "You probably need killing; you look like a threat" is a huge power to hand to them

The police didn't arbitrarily decide this guy was a risk, they had witnessed him risking people's lives just moments before. They shot only when he took off again.

> this guy looks like a terrorist,

His actions made him look like a threat.

I think we saw the same video and are arriving at different conclusions about the fact pattern, so we likely will not see eye-to-eye. At no point when the officer opened fire was the driver in imminent danger of harming or killing anyone. I agree the driver may have been about to become a danger again; there are myriad ways to deal with that (cutting the driver off with backup, for instance) that don't result in an immediate loss of life.

You see a justified shooting likely (definitely?) preventing other deaths. Those setting town halls on fire do not.

> The law abiding people of France

Again... The law-abiding people of France ca. late 1700s obeyed the orders of their King. Until a revolution swept that entire pattern away. Recoursing to "The law-abiding people's" behavior as inherently correct, just, or righteous fundamentally misunderstands the nature of why riots happen or what effect they intend to have.

> there are myriad ways to deal with that (cutting the driver off with backup, for instance)

Your ideas involve letting him flee and trying to stop him, which is how they got to this point in the first place. What happens when they cut him off and he just speeds off again, or dives onto a sidewalk to make his escape?

> You see a justified shooting likely (definitely?) preventing other deaths.

Justified because it stopped the risk.

> that don't result in an immediate loss of life.

The criminal who risked other people's life lost his, not an innocent person. Those are not equal outcomes.

> The law-abiding people of France ca. late 1700s obeyed the orders of their King. Until a revolution swept that entire pattern away.

The law abiding people decided they didn't want a king and they made it happen. The power of the masses.

> Recoursing to "The law-abiding people's" behavior as inherently correct, just, or righteous fundamentally misunderstands the nature of why riots happen or what effect they intend to have.

You keep shouting out to the revolution kind of like you'd enjoy watching another, but the point is that "the people" aren't upset about this situation. This is their police functioning as intended.

Pretty much everyone is France is sick of the riots and the rioters.

> Justified because it stopped the risk.

You can apply that thinking to literally anyone behind the wheel at any time. In fact, as of 2017, police basically have carte blanche to do that, by law.

That is concerning. Especially coupled to the perception that it isn't native white French people getting shot. Ever.

> The law abiding people decided they didn't want a king and they made it happen. The power of the masses.

Executing the king and establishing a new government was de facto illegal. There was no legal process for deposing the monarchy.

> You keep shouting out to the revolution kind of like you'd enjoy watching another

Oh, quite to the contrary: I believe it would be a disaster and leave the country in a much worse state. Which is why I'm positively praying the duly-elected leadership get its collective head out of its derrière and start listening instead of trying to blame, of all things, videogames. They'd be doing a much better job of serving their people (who, I hear, are sick of the riots) by doing so.

The US suffered a little over a year of BLM rioting because, among other reasons, the decentralization of US police authority meant the federal government could do very little to alter police policy (and, by extension, police brutality). When the New York police union responded to the videotaped death by strangling of a man on the street with a "Won't someone think of the cops" speech, there was little to be done. France, IIUC, has no similar division of power. I hope, for their sake, they chart a better course than the US did, because they aren't nearly as big; I don't know if they can afford a year and a month of this.

It's too early to say whether the French Revolution was positive or not

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...

> Why video games and not movies or TV? Why not books or music?

There's no dichotomy, all of these things effect the people who experience them. Whether this is harmful or for the best is highly subjective, and depends a lot on the specific nature of the experience. But regardless, to say that somebody can read books and not be at all effected by those books is absurd. If that were the case, if reading books were nothing but a NOOP waste of time that had no effect on the reader, then why does our culture encourage people to read?

We encourage people to read because books do change people and most people think it's a net positive. Nonetheless, it is possible that books in general are a net positive, but some books might be a negative influence on people (and others, an unusually positive influence.) Video games aren't special in this regard. They, like anything people might experience, will influence those that experience it. Whether this influence is for the better or worse overall is highly subjective (which is why most people aren't very keen on empowering censors who lack nuance.)

Yes, children are impressionable and I don't think that stops at the age of 18, otherwise the biggest tech companies wouldn't be advertising companies. Being repeatedly shot and killed by other humans in virtual format taught me the lesson that other people can be quite skilled at shooting and killing me, presumably in real life as well, and I'd very much like to avoid that in a situation where I can't just press "A" to respawn.

Sounds more like police should be banned from gaming, instead of the children they murder

All of that may or may not be true, but Macron bringing it up is designed to distract from the fact that a police officer went really aggressive on a 17 year old, then shot him dead when he tried to flee. Apparently this was just a routine traffic check. The kid was Arab, so there is an implied racial aspect to it as well.

Here's the video of the actual shooting:

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230627-french-police-of...

The police of course lied and tried to spin it as the kid was some sort of threat, then the video came out. The kid was unarmed, and the police had is gun drawn and pointed at his head, threatening to shoot him. The driver inched forward and was shot at point blank range.

Here's the NYT summary on it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/europe/france-prote...

In response to the violence Macron seems to be going full authoritarian to combat it by threatening to cut off social media and whatnot. We've of course seen this by dictators like Putin when he was being criticized for the Ukraine war.

> So what is it about video games that have absolutely zero negative impact on impressionable and unstable minds?

And unlike movies and advertising, video games require active participation. Yet they somehow have zero training effect while passively watching advertisements is seemingly universally accepted to be a form of brainwashing. It’s bizarre.

FPS are mass shooting training simulators. Full stop.

Does everyone who plays FPS become a mass shooter? Obviously not. But find me a school shooter who didn’t obsessively play FPS. It’s nearly impossible.

The actual radicalization of most US mass shooters, plus a couple of international ones of the same ideology, has been through far-right propaganda. It turns up again and again in their manifestoes and target selections, such as Anders Breivik.

Conversely much of Europe's really nasty political violence pre-dates video games. Europe is probably more peaceful now than at any time since .. 1914?

(There have also been Islamist mass murders in Europe; it's the 18th anniversary of the London Tube bombings. However that seems to have finally fallen off? I would love a good analysis as to why)

> political violence pre-dates video games

I'm talking more about things like school shootings, which were pretty much non-existent before the invention of the FPS.

they're still pretty much non existent in Europe, outside of a few big outliers like Brevik.

they happen in the US all the time because you can get an AR-15 for $400 and little scrutiny.

video games are just as popular in europe, they don't have the tools to make it happen.

School shootings are also quite often political violence, it's just that there's a conspiracy to not recognise them as such. As well as to ensure the continued mass availability of weapons in the US.

Example of political school shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massa...

Example of non-political school shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre ; resulted in the handgun ban and no more school shootings.

>Does everyone who plays FPS become a mass shooter? Obviously not. But find me a school shooter who didn’t obsessively play FPS. It’s nearly impossible.

so what. that is by no means ANY weight to the argument. This is a utterly ludicrous argument and a facile way to present an argument.

it's a complete non sequitur. even if there's a non-zero effect of FPS games radicalizing young people, the causality is absolutely suspect.

and you know, there's also airsoft, paintball, and ... watching actual combat footage.

oh, and ... who knows, maybe the effect is actually negative, as in FPS is a way to let the steam off.

> FPS is a way to let the steam off

We would all be horrified if it were suggested that say, rape simulators functioned as a release valve to divert energy away from real life sexual assaults.

>FPS are mass shooting training simulators. Full stop.

Full bullshit. So, when I'm playing an RPG I'm simulating witchcraft?

Also, I'm from Spain. Both Franco's regime and ETA predate video games, even microcomputers, by decades.

They're not modeling video games.

If anything, they're modeling the BLM protests and riots in the United States. Mirrored circumstances, mirrored activities.

And good on them. The comfortable should be uncomfortable in a society where the police can just shoot an unarmed young man in the face without consequence.

Do you really claim that it’s good for people to feel unsafe in their own society?

I find this comment particularly intriguing given that your username is ‘shadowgovt’

I claim a society where the cops can shoot an unarmed young man in the face with no repercussions is an unsafe society, and if people have convinced themselves that it couldn't happen to them, or that oppression of their neighbors is not oppression they need concern themselves with, they need to understand otherwise.

When framed as such I’m in agreement with you. A police state is mostly beneficial only to those who fund the police.

That being said, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the riots are a good thing

Agreed. Society's checks and balances breaking down so far that people feel compelled to start fires and wreck cars because they doubt the system can be changed is generally not a good thing.

I'm less familiar with the situation in France, but in the US at least I'm low on alternative approaches that are likely to succeed.

> I claim a society where the cops can shoot an unarmed young man in the face with no repercussions is an unsafe society

Then you aren't talking about this case. This man was driving his weapon and had already risked the lives of pedestrians and other drivers before he was stopped.

> Society's checks and balances breaking down so far

The breakdown of society is that the driver, a known criminal, was out on the street. If he'd been arrested, charged, and jailed as he should have been he wouldn't have been able to risk his and other lives.

He was literally a danger to himself and others.

Children are able to distinguish between video games and reality.

Social media influence comes from real people(Or at least appears to come from real people), so children learn behavior.

Children playing violent games is not new in the slightest. Instead of playing with branches they now play with joysticks

Most kids yes, but for the generation who are living in their echo chamber, without anyone telling them to stop, without authority reference or brainwashed that is a different god, they consider life is a big GTA or secular laws don't apply to them. You can see that on YT, TikTok, Reddit etc, and this anywhere in the World. Hell, 5-6y old were playing squid games last year during recess.

I think you're basically right; to a substantial degree, people are what they eat. All the media people consume effects the people that consume it, nobody is left untouched by what they watch, read, play, etc. This is true of all video games, all books, all movies, all hobbies and recreations, all school lessons and life experiences.. everything that people experience has an impact on them. The dogmatic insistence that video games cannot effect kids is a sort of internet meme that formed in reaction to people like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton trying to regulate video games in a way that a lot of people, particularly young people on the internet, didn't agree with. That's an understandable reaction and I also think those would-be censors were going too far, but the counter-reaction meme of video games having no effect on players has also been going too far. Human minds are not inviolable bastions of individuality, we're all constantly being changed by what we experience.

Regardless, Macron blaming these riots on video games is farcical. It's obvious that isn't what's going on here but Macron isn't going to say the quiet part outloud, so he'll latch onto any other excuse no matter how inane.

>That’s why so many laws are written to moderate advertising (eg not show a camel smoking a cigarette), moderate content (tv and movie ratings) etc.

It's a good argument, and perhaps once we started down that path we were always going to get to this point. I've had the same thought about gambling being banned on twitch so minors can't be influenced by it. But then they can click on one of the many GTA RPers role playing as a gang member.

I actually do agree gambling is bad, but I think this all just proves the slippery slope is real. As soon as you draw even a single line, you provide arguments for drawing another.

Obviously Macron is right, because violence and destruction have never occurred in human history until video games were created.

This is correct. It’s either video games or the electric car.

Especially when there was a restless underclass that doesn't tend to share your religion, education level, and culture that gets beat down by your media used as political gasoline.

Everyone knows the French never rioted before the advent of video games, so this makes perfect sense. /s

Nobody ever talks about the influence of the popular Grand Theft Head on the French revolutionaries.

So all the violence is being committed by 14 - 16 year olds?

Or is it those who were 14-16 in the late 80's / early 90's when this particular pearl-clutch was popularised?

Also "a mimicking of violence, which for the youngest leads to a kind of disconnect from reality."

Seems there's a bit of that going around.

"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Marcus Brigstocke

If GTA would be affecting kids, then I should be out beating up hookers with a baseball bat to steal their cash, and shredding cop cars with a minigun.

Not hookers per se but baseball bats…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12268529/Baton-wiel...

Lest we forget about the “Kia boys”

https://www.theverge.com/23742425/kia-boys-car-theft-steal-t...

And in the US, kids bring guns to school? What's your point?

There are always bad actors in every society. There is zero link to vieogames being a driving factor in 99.9% of volient acts.

> There are always bad actors in every society. There is zero link to vieogames being a driving factor in 99.9% of volient acts.

Do you have any data to back up your wild claim of “99.9%” if so I’d love to read it.

The US was already sick-level violent without any need of videogames.

Also, movies like The Orange Clockwork predate non-academic video games.

Between the phrasing and when people usually pull out that quote, it seems like it's supposed to be on the side of "video games don't affect us".

But uh... isn't that a pretty accurate description of raves?

I believe that was the joke, yes.

(Marcus Brigstocke is a comedian).

> Marcus Brigstocke is a comedian

Ah k, that makes sense - I didn't know the name, and based on when I usually see that quote I'm guessing most others don't either.

>So all the violence is being committed by 14 - 16 year olds?

Close.

"According to France's Interior Ministry, the average age of those arrested is 17."

> So all the violence is being committed by 14 - 16 year olds

Yes. 12 to 20 I'd say. It's a 17 yo who was murdered, and external cameras caught it.

What's 'funny' is that a week prior, a 19 yo who worked with one of my d&d player was murdered in worst circumstances. Also, a way less divising profile. He was going to work, it was 5.30 Am, he worked his ass of to get out of the 'FJT' (basically a cheap hostel for poor, young workers w/o family support), and wanted to take evening classes in sales to not work as a temp all his life.

Doing the same drive for a month or two, he was stopped by the police one morning. Then, like Nahel, killed from a bullet in the thorax. But since no camera were present, nothing will happen.

France is like the US. If a cop stop you, start recording ASAP, it might save your life.

If it's not too much to ask, what was his name?

Almost all of the rioting was actually from teenagers and early twenties, that can't really be denied. They are restless youth and their hormones and brains react by breaking stuff instead of processing and communicating about it which a trait adults take a while to glom onto.

You might expect politicians from previous generations to be clueless and paranopid about this, but Macron must surely have played video games himself as a youth.

I'm sure thorough research would show that violent video games are like porn, and actually reduce the incidence of real-world aggression.

I don't think this is a Hanlon's razor, not on Macron's part at least. Some other commenter said that Macron said people were chasing a rush found in video games, and not that the people wanted to reenact or imitate them.

If that is true, then incompetence is on reporters, and not Macron himself.

A study about this from researchers based in Netherlands was recently linked to on HN. They found a correlation between a drop in juvenile crimes following a GTA release.

France's leisure class is totally disconnected from its ppl. I don't know how that's going to change.

Not so much that they wouldn't know that this is a lie.

I know how it changed in the past...

This is signaling. Macron can't blame "the migrants" because that's not socially acceptable (without giving credit to his political rivals), but most of them are disgruntled younger (compared to native Frenchmen) men. This is how he can point the finger at their demographic without having to actually do so. Perhaps ironically, this IS a racist dog whistle.

The big question: what can he say? Can you be honest when thousands are in rage?

1. The kid was killed for no good reason, period. This is easy to say and most people will agree. He committed a crime, but the cop overreacted.

2. Cops in France target people of African origin in a different way. Whatever the French government says, that's the truth.

3. Why do they do that? Because crime is more prevalent among these people. This is already a touchy subject and some people will flatly deny that flexing stats in all possible ways.

4. Why is crime among that groups so high? Here we start to deal with the real problem and some solutions to it. But the truth is, nobody has a good solution. If someone came up with that, it would have been implemented a long time ago. But nothing works. And it doesn't even seem like it's going to be better at all.

So what can he say? He comes up with some crap about video games that everybody knows is bullshit, but this neither hurts his electorate nor the people on the streets.

So they've learned nothing. So be it. Sometimes lessons take a few goes before they settle in.

Oof.

When young people are clearly lashing out because they are seeing a disconnect between their needs as citizens and the tools the establishment has to satisfy those needs, coming across as woefully out of touch is the last thing the leadership should be doing.

Good luck France.

Robert F. Kennedy has also been making statements against videogames. Quite disconcerting that we still have to listen to this after the mountain of data proving the opposite. And also that these are coming from supposedly progressive politicians.

That dude is a certified idiot.

RFK is a controversist loon. If he tells you the sky is blue you should double check.

Weird, I'm pretty sure Macron worked for the last CS:GO major to be held in Paris. Also pretty sure he made some announcement for it... I know his gov't had some involvement in the "last CS:GO Major" being in Paris...

https://www.talkesport.com/news/csgo/2023-major-emmanuel-mac...

Just saying, while we're blaming... violent video games? Or just video games?

Video games? They've always taken to the streets in France, it's one of their more endearing qualities! Macron is such a twat

They must be playing Ubisoft games, their loader is such a rage starter, just read some comments on Steam.

I wonder how our society would look like if instead of importing a cheap workforce, we'd raise the minimum wage to a point where the shitty jobs would be paid enough for them to feel respectable. You know, like in a healthy capitalistic society of supply and demand. Instead we're manipulating the workforce supply for the sole benefit of the employers.

And now we're talking about video games. Sigh.

I think Japan might be the best example of this. I don't know about minimum wage laws, but their immigration system is famously draconian and obviously they're an island.

Minimum wage is around $6.75/hour

That number is nominally pretty close the US which is interesting, but I don’t really know what it means in terms of purchasing power parity. I wonder how able a minimum wage worker is to afford their health insurance and rent. And it’s probably relevant what percentage of workers make that wage. I’m really not all that knowledgeable about Japan other than a little bit from talking to people who’ve been and catching the odd online talk/documentary, but it does seem like an I interesting place.

In the US for instance, it seems like minimum wage is a dead letter law since it was never indexed to inflation and had been left to wither away.

inflation and untethered minimum wage is a class warfare tool. it was purposely untethered from inflation from the start.

Interesting. It seems Japan is subsidizing jobs that are paid too little and no one wants to take at those wages, while employers cannot afford higher rates. That does indeed seem like a great idea, considering they seem to have a rather fair progressive income tax system (5% - 45%).

Or using political policies to keep a dignified standard of living attainable within lower incomes.

Contrary to the headline, Macron didn't blame video games. Macron said that social media encouraged rioters to riot, and that while doing so they felt the rush that they had felt while playing video games.

Politician always point elsewhere, and change the focus. Why folks fall for the shallow reasoning I will never understand. Calibrate on behaviour, not words.

Someone need to ask him which games in particular

If any game is capable of inciting violence then it's this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Wc11ErqmA

The French never guillotined the elite until video games? Give me a break.

Now I understand how revolutions happened in the past.

video games are a symptom and not the cause. If you're angry and want to break something, you're likely to get a game that does that and not one that calms you down.

A big wtf statement

But what about chess? We should ban that too. Maybe checkers and monopoly too just to be sure /s

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