IS PARIS BURNING? France’s Riots Stem from a Deep Rot.

Rioters carry the flags not of France, but of other nations and terror groups from the Arab world. In Marseille, they were filmed riding motorcycles through the city center, carrying Algerian and Palestinian flags.

For France, it’s been a long way down. Riots and street violence are not new to the French nation. The country’s infamous revolution in 1789 was born amid them. The modern conception of political divisions—right vs. left, secular vs. religious—also traces back to France.

What is unfolding in France is about the continued existence of the French nation itself. It is, to use a French term, existential. It began, fittingly enough, with World War I, the conflict that birthed the modern Middle East and laid the roots for the spread of communism and fascism, and other great ills.

France lost more men than any other nation. An astonishing 1.3 million—nearly 20 percent of all French men aged 18-27—fell in battle. This “deeply scarred its psyche and affected its economy for a generation,” the late historian Alistair Horne observed.

To cover the shortfall, France imported labor from its colonies. The country seemed lost, and poisonous ideologies and divisions crept in. This led to the collapse of the Third Republic and the imposition of Nazi and collaborator rule in 1940.

The Nazi-allied Vichy government that took over was an active collaborator, fighting the Allied Powers and sending thousands of Jews to their death. After the war, the historian Paul Johnson observed that France was “driven by necessity to a fundamental reappraisal.”

Perhaps that “fundamental reappraisal” took things un tout petit peu trop loin: Where Wokism Is a Oui Bit Different.