The riots in France last week stand as a warning to the United States and all western countries: mass immigration will split your country in two, and the two sides will eventually go to war.
The unrest, which quickly spread from the suburbs of Paris to encompass much of the country, stood in stark contrast to the scenes just a few days earlier when Pope Leo XIV drew massive crowds at every stop on his four-day papal visit. Some 800,000 people lined the Avenue des Champs-Élysées for an open-air Mass in Paris, catching the media and civil authorities by surprise. France is supposed to be a secular country, after all.
But the pope’s popularity on the one hand, and the riots that erupted across France a few days after his departure, on the other, illustrate the extent to which France today is not a single country or nation. It is not one people. There is ancient France, the true France, which despite the French Revolution and state-enforced secularism is still deeply Catholic, “the eldest daughter of the Church.” That is the France that showed up for Pope Leo.
The other France is the one we saw rioting in the streets last week. News reports said the unrest began in Créteil, a suburb of Paris, over the poor condition of the public schools. Disaffected high schoolers, fed up with overcrowded classes and dilapidated buildings, took to the streets spontaneously, so we’re told. From there, the rioting supposedly spread organically across the entire country in a matter of days.
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