Inside Europe's Immigrant Communities, The Embers Of Revenge Still Glow Bright

If it wants to maintain its future, Europe must confront its disastrous integration policies before it's too late.

On the 27th of June, 2023, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of North African descent, was shot dead by the French police. As footage of Merzouk’s death began to circulate on social media, protests soon swelled in most French cities. But what began as a backlash to the brutal murder of a teenage boy, quickly manifested itself into a storm of anarchy. Cities burned, stores were robbed and innocent bystanders were assaulted. In street interviews, rioters, most of whom came from France’s rapidly growing immigrant communities, claimed that their anger was bigger than Merzouk’s death, directed towards a system they viewed as racially discriminate by its very nature, one that favoured the indigenous population over themselves. Many hoped that the movement would result in the complete destruction of the modern French institutions, and their replacement with a system more to their liking.

Listening to many of these first hand reports, one hears the unmistakable call for revenge. Dialogue or negotiation is neglected, replaced by the full-burning hatred of a culture and its people. Merzouk’s unjust murder was quickly forgotten. Instead, anger and derision that had been simmering under the surface for decades emerged on full display.

This isn’t the first time racial unrest has gripped a European nation, and it almost certainly will not be the last time. Which begs the question - when will it be enough? When will it be enough for Europe’s politicians to come to terms with the fact that their integration policies have failed abysmally? Any chance of absorbing these new migrants into the European continent shows no sign of progress, and hasn’t done for the last few decades since mass immigration started.

You cannot tolerate the intolerable. Those from a completely different culture will resist integration passionately, especially if they refuse to be exposed to the culture of their new home. We’ve seen this play out in French suburbs, where immigrant communities have formed ghettos, living amongst their kin and forming their own enclaves, smaller versions of Morocco, Nigeria, and Ghana, making it close to impossible for French culture to penetrate these regions.

It doesn’t help matters that, broadly speaking, the Left and other progressive forces in most Western countries have either turned a blind eye to the chaos unfolding in French and European streets or actively encourage it. This shouldn’t be a surprise. The intellectual Left, which dominate most institutions across Europe and the Western world, fetishes anarchy because they see it as a path towards ending the current economic and political order. Many progressive intellectuals actively fan the flames of racial unrest in the hope it will spark a rebuke of the capitalist system. But what ends up happening is the people they pretend to represent - the poor and the working class - end up suffering the direct consequences. It is, after all, their shops and communities that are burnt down.

A different approach is needed. Western governments need to substantially reduce immigration numbers back down to sustainable levels, force new immigrants to integrate into the local culture through school programs and language courses, clamp down on the formations of ghettos and foster an inclusive but stringent atmosphere for children of immigrants to fully assimilate into their new communities.

Failing to act on this issue will only exacerbate the crisis. If European politicians continue to turn a blind eye to this burgeoning social alienation and the formation of parallel societies, then race relations will, in all likelihood, deteriorate further, perhaps manifesting in civil wars akin to Lebanon’s.