June 10, 2026

PARIS IS BURNING:

Another recurring controversy in French classrooms concerns the teaching of the Holocaust. A 2020 survey of young French people between the ages of 15 and 24 by the Institut français d’opinion publique (IFOP) found that 21% of students criticize Holocaust education for excessive emphasis and question aspects of the genocide, and 13% of students outright reject it being taught because they find it offensive to their cultural or religious identity. Moreover, 70% of those surveyed agreed that teachers experience “real difficulties teaching about the Holocaust in schools located in the banlieues.” Already in 2004, the Obin report, authored by then national schools inspector Jean-Pierre Obin for the Ministry of Education, revealed growing tensions in several French schools regarding the teaching of topics such as the Holocaust, the history of religions, and evolution. These tensions included cases of student resistance, Holocaust denial, teacher self-censorship, and, in general, serious difficulties in delivering the curriculum within a framework of secular neutrality.

All these fundamental flaws in the system, which have been in place for years and which President Emmanuel Macron carries on today, are also what have allowed the existence in France of so-called no-go zones: neighborhoods where the gendarmerie either cannot or will not enter and where, in some cases, Sharia law is enforced unofficially. This failure of integration is the first dimension of the collapse of Europe’s multicultural experiment. The second is poverty and crime, since isolation cuts many immigrants off from the institutions and opportunities that could help them improve their education or find employment.

Does this explain the gratuitous violence that accompanies these celebrations? In theory, no. In practice, perhaps it does. There is a large population of French citizens of Arab and African origin who have grown up in cultural and religious bubbles where hostility toward the West is commonplace and, by extension, hostility toward France and what it represents in Europe. Among the most disadvantaged—nearly 40% of African immigrants in France live in poverty—that resentment is often compounded by frustration at having failed to achieve the aspirations that motivated migration in the first place. Life in the banlieues also exposes these communities to particular social problems such as unemployment, educational failure, drug trafficking, and the influence of radical Islamist movements.

Meanwhile in Belfast, the same authorities who cheered on 2020’s mostly peaceful but rather fiery protests in Minneapolis are breaking out the water cannons on their own citizens:

Related: After Single Night of Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests, Two-Tier Keir Starmer, Who Did Not Mention Henry Nowak Until the Video of His Police-Assisted Murder Was Released, Is Johnny-on-the-Spot in Condemning Riots.

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:44 pm by Ed Driscoll