France is entering a new threat era as two groups with relatively little in common — middle-class European leftists on one hand and unassimilated migrants on the other — have successfully coordinated in recent rioting, which will only become more frequent and violent in coming years, warns a top spy.
Only those blinded by incompetence or ideology could have been surprised by recent violence in France, yet even so the new ability of disparate leftist and disaffected groups to coordinate to cause chaos has been impressive, the former head of French CIA or MI6 homologue Pierre Brochand has said.
Brochand, a career diplomat who has been French ambassador to Israel, Hungary, and Portugal, was a junior diplomat in Vietnam in the 1970s including being present for the Fall of Saigon, and led the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) between 2002 and 2008. Speaking to French newspaper of record Le Figaro last week, the veteran intelligence chief warned that “public order is now constantly challenged by… perpetrators who are in a state of cultural alienation and national disloyalty.”
Noting the emerging dynamic between indigenous French hard-left activists and dispossessed migrants, Brochand said he was among those who had underestimated “the potential for impetus, coordination, and action” on the “extreme and ultra-left” such as “black bloc” Antifa. Such groups have now “emerged as a credible force of subversion in major cities”, he said, noting they had taken on something of a leadership role, coordinating action by other groups that may have little in common otherwise.
The “shock troops” of the left are protesting students and experienced rioters, he said, who remain “for the most part, of middle-class European origin”. Added to that, further, are “young people from the suburbs” — French euphemistic language for unintegrated migrant communities — said Brochand, who noted the “endlessly” repeated, near-ubiquitous emergence of phrases like “wallah” [“I swear by Allah”] in crowd and riot footage of recent weeks.
These groups “travel together while displaying a rather limited degree of interaction” said Brochand, noting: ” To paraphrase Zhou Enlai, ‘they sleep in the same bed, but don’t share the same dreams’.”
Under the coordination of the hard left, relatively peaceful protests can be parlayed into ultra-violent riots by deploying these groups in times stages, in a tactic seemingly bespoke-made to exhaust police.
Brochand likened the tactic to a multistage space rocket, which launches on stacked boosters, discarding each as it becomes exhausted in turn. In this model, each subsequent stage may have less mass or be less powerful than the last, but building on the momentum it can fly ever-higher. The marches, the spy chief said, start with “peaceful marches by locals; in the afternoon, followed by “political” acts of vandalism by the far left in the evening, and then looting by “young people from the suburbs” by night.
For the veteran spymaster, mass migration to France and demographic change is playing a massive and undeniable part in the present unrest, and as that change accelerates violence will only grow. He told the paper:
…for the same demographic reason, a non-European component will gradually gain the upper hand, effectively merging the two branches of the protest movement… A majority of non-European births (in 2040) and population (in 2070) inevitably define our future.
What I know of the world allows me to assert that such a scenario will not be a benevolent one… These [violent] eruptions have already occurred. They are likely to recur, with increased frequency and intensity, in an increasingly hostile climate, as the relentless steamroller of demographics takes its toll.
In my view, this is less a prediction than a certainty.
In the meantime, general violence and looting by protesters is poisonous to civilisation, Brochand said, because it undermines trust in the majority in the capacity of the state — which they fund through taxes to protect them — to keep the peace. Comparing the change in public trust towards institutons to the aftermath of a “run on the banks”, the spy warned growing violence is like a “weapon of mass destruction against social trust, the foundation of everyone’s well-being” and becomes “very difficult, if not impossible, to stop when the number of victims exceeds a certain threshold.”
Given the police have struggled to keep control at times in the past month, Brochand signalled his congratulations to regular French people for their reserve so far. Noting they are not cowards but rather have been commendably restrained, the former spoy boss said the main population has not generally taken the law into their own hands, yet.
Warning that a widespread feeling that self-defence was necessary in the face of a failing state, Brochand stated this brings “apocalyptic, irreparable consequences”.