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France is still burning. More than 2,500 people are in custody, almost 1,000 members of the security forces were injured, and the roof of the 19th-century city hall in Limoges collapsed after rioters set it on fire. Interior Minister Laurent Núñez conceded that police had lost control. Saturday’s marches still brought 1,314 arrests and 53 injured officers. Budapest and Warsaw wasted no time turning the footage into a campaign ad. Before anyone here does the same, let’s get the facts straight, because the facts make a better case than the slogans do.
The violence began under the auspices of anti-austerity marches over school funding and the cost of living that masked groups then hijacked. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu blamed far-left fringe groups for what he called an “insurrectionary plan,” and on October 20 French police arrested a man linked to ultra-left movements over the Limoges fire. Most of the thousands detained were minors, IBTimes reports, and I haven’t seen a breakdown by origin. Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar says the scenes vindicate his migration policy, yet Euronews noted his post offered no evidence linking the riots to migration. Similar weekend demonstrations turned violent in Belgium, Italy, and Portugal, suggesting a continent-wide mood conducive to rioting and looting rather than a single-cause uprising. To his credit, Magyar drew a line between lawful protest and violence in his own post. None of this makes immigration irrelevant. Politically correct networks won’t say the word, but in my view the cultural shift Western Europe is experiencing is a direct result of it.
If the riots don’t prove Magyar’s point, Europe’s own statistics make a stronger one. Countries that admit large numbers of people without insisting on work, assimilation, and the removal of those ordered to leave end up with problems that compound.
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