What is at present being enacted on our laptops, websites, and television screens is another French Revolution. It is possible — indeed, greatly to be desired — that this revolution will be contained, halted, and reversed, but that possibility seems remote at the moment. Rather, the contagion is spreading throughout France with minimal resistance from the authorities and currently leaping over borders to northern Italian cities with almost identical slogans — Gaza! No longer an actual place but a Myth — that has little to do with either French or Italian life or serious politics.
This current Revolution also borrows from terrorism the doctrine of recognizing none of the usual distinctions between innocent and guilty, participant and bystander, soldier and civilian, foreign and domestic. Anyone who is not tearing down French institutions or is self-evidently prosperous or merely respectable is suspect and thus deserving of brutal punishment, not excluding rape. Such terrible confusions often happen in revolution as in war. But this Revolution has introduced some new and significant distinctions in its fragile and temporary blend of Islamo-Gauchisme — Muslim-owned stores are protected by some rioters and their advisors.
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