Paris is burning.
Hundreds of migrants first stormed the Panthéon in Paris, where writers Émile Zola, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas are buried, and demanded the right to remain in the country. The protesters, who were mainly from West Africa, surged into the building. The group called themselves the “black vests” in a reference to the yellow vest protest movement.
A day earlier, two stores near Paris' Champs-Elysees were looted following Algeria's quarter-final win over Ivory Coast in the African Cup of Nations. Protesters from the yellow vests then hurled objects at the police and set bins on fire.
France is looking at the of beginnings of an internal civil war. The causes are multiple: social, cultural, religious and economic.
Thus ends a glittering society, in which the élites live in their fenced castles, with no more social cohesion and no moral force to hold it together. The homeland of equality, freedom and brotherhood has become a mess of disorder and chaos where once was civilization.
“Carola Rackete, Notre Dame de l'Europe”. And behind the banner affixed to the bridge of the Archbishopric of Paris is the cathedral of Notre Dame destroyed by the fire. The reference behind the slogan is the German captain of the rescue ship, Sea-Watch 3, which defied the Italian government ban and docked at Lampedusa with dozens of African migrants on board.
Here encapsulated is all the French stupidity and misery of the European psychological framework that is called humanitarianism, the force that drives these activists to compare the devastation of the immense Christian heritage to those who work to destroy the cohesion of European countries.
It's pure entropy. It is a profanation that embodies the impetuous and suicidal race for mediocrity, egocentrism, futility, infantilism and the decadence of the West.
Paris burns. The images coming from the French capital indicate that the West is self destructing.
Paris burns. The images coming from the French capital indicate that the West is self destructing.
The fire that destroyed part of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in the heart of Paris is a tragedy. The spire that rose to the sky was a unique work of art by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who had based his work on documents from the 12th century.
Notre-Dame is almost a thousand years old. For eight centuries, Notre-Dame was the house of Catholicism in France, the place of coronations and royal marriages, state funerals and great national celebrations, surviving five royal houses, two empires, five republics and some foreign powers.
Notre-Dame was one of the few symbols of continuity in a history of France marked by violent pauses. The deep emotion that public opinion faced before that fire is the illusion that there were still cultural reference points - that we have increasingly tried to relativize and break down. A fragility that indicates the bases on which our civilization rests. Its wood is soaked.
Notre Dame had escaped the Middle Ages, the terror of the French Revolution, two world wars and the Nazi occupation. But it almost did not survive what France had become in 2019.
Notre Dame still burns