Responding to social decomposition without resorting to the State
Reaction 1:
How many cars burned? The question agitates the French political class after an eventful December 31. The Ministry of the Interior announces 372 vehicles, the socialist opposition fears a much higher toll. The heart of Paris was affected: for example, two charred wrecks were found at the foot of the St-Augustin church, in the 8th arrondissement. Tourists were caught in the jets of bottles and tear gas that were fired on the Champs-Elysées. In the suburbs, it was sometimes worse: in Grigny, “four people who were driving in a car with a sword and a can of gasoline were arrested,” reports “Le Parisien”. Faced with the repetition of unrest, some experts are calling on the army. Its intervention in the event of serious incidents will be “an operational and civic necessity”, estimates a strategist cited by the very right-wing magazine “Valeurs Actuelles”. This author, Georges-Henri Bricet des Vallons, advocates the use of drones (unmanned aircraft), chemicals to “mark” rioters and non-lethal FN 303 rifles. In 2003, in Geneva, a weapon of this type had broken the face of an anti-globalization activist who was demonstrating against the WTO. Even if it does not kill, FN 303 can therefore hurt. But it is not certain that this will be enough to bring calm to New Year’s evenings (L’Air de Paris Blog, 01/02/2008).
Reaction 2:
It’s playtime at the Karl-Weise primary school in Neukölln, a working-class Berlin neighborhood with a large population of foreign origin. The children rush into the playground, shouting with joy. Among the crowd of schoolchildren, we can see two men dressed in dark blue uniforms. These are two security agents employed by the Germania company and responsible for a surveillance mission in the school since December 10, 2007. This project is being tested by twelve other schools in the neighborhood and should last until in the summer of 2008. The town hall of Neukölln imposed this measure despite opposition from the town Senate. In the 2006-2007 school year, schools in Neukölln reported 139 cases of physical violence. The police only intervene after the facts, we wanted these agents to act preventively,” explains Klaus Hartung, the 63-year-old director of this school. In March 2006, the teachers of Karl-Weise launched a desperate appeal to the town hall in the face of to the increase in violence within the school Even if the teaching staff finally gave their agreement, opinions remain divided in the teachers’ meeting room “It should be up to the State to protect the schools. not to a private company”, comments one of them, responsible for a sixth grade class. For her colleague Catherine, a 46-year-old teacher who refuses to give her name, “we have nothing to lose to try this experiment”. Before arriving at the school, the two agents, who refuse to comment on their mission, underwent a week’s training to manage conflicts. Their role still needs to be clarified. According to the principal, they must intervene in the event of a fight in the school or ensure that a stranger has not slipped under the playground. At the same time, according to him, the teaching staff should not transfer their supervisory responsibility to the agents. “We are still in a gray area,” recognizes Klaus Hartung. According to Catherine, “the agents are so far professional and discreet” (Le Monde, 06/01/08).
In both cases (Germany and France), we are witnessing social decomposition. In one case, cars burn amid ethnic unrest. In the other case, according to a study published by the Berlin Senate in December 2006, acts of violence declared by establishments with high ethnic attendance jumped by 76% during the 2005-2006 school year.
Faced with this type of increasingly obvious and extreme situation, the easiest path for citizens is to accept the strengthening of state authority by all means, including calling into question civil liberties. Even if it means that violence, terrorist or not, is used as a pretext for this questioning. People resign themselves to, or even turn to, the false security of the surveillance society or the confused responses of populo-Bonapartism.
The second reaction is more interesting. It shows that even in a context of advanced social decomposition, it is possible to limit the use of state intervention to make way for the self-regulation of organized actors. The lesson is even strong, because one might think at first glance that such self-regulation is only possible in a context of social harmony and economic prosperity. It is not so. Here we call on an independent company which intervenes preventively, on the basis of training in conflict management, in one of the most sovereign areas of state intervention: police regulation of violence and delinquency.
A path to follow, explore, research, evaluate, and extend if it proves effective.
