The Champs-Elysées Attack and the Election

 

I’m sure you’ve heard that last night, a terrorist opened fire on the police on the Champs-Elysées, killing a police officer and wounding three more. The security forces quickly shot him dead. The Champs-Elysées was evacuated, though it’s back to normal now. It seems there’s still a suspect at large, though news of this is only breaking now and sketchy. (Update: It’s being reported that police have detained three of the terrorist’s family members, but I haven’t seen confirmation of this.) The attacker was as usual known to police; he’d been arrested in February on suspicion of plotting to kill officers but released for of lack of evidence.

Although terrorism always takes you a bit by surprise, I’ve never been less surprised by a terrorist attack in any city I’ve ever lived in. We all knew full well this was highly likely to happen before the election on Sunday. It’s been the subject of much grim speculation here and black humor. An attack was just recently thwarted in Marseilles. I’d be equally unsurprised if there’s another one before Sunday.

ISIS claimed credit for it unusually quickly. As Rukmini Callimachi wrote on Twitter, “They claimed this attack in circa 2.5 hours. As far as attacks in West, this may be a record. Only 1 that comes close is Brussels airport. As far as attacks in West, this may be a record. Only 1 that comes close is Brussels airport. Despite popular perception, ISIS does *not* claim everything & they typically take up to 12 hrs.” I’d guess they claimed it quickly to be sure their name would be in the news for as many hours as possible before the election. 

ISIS, it’s fairly clear, wants Marine Le Pen to win; at least, this is what French intelligence officials believe, and it makes sense in the context of what ISIS says about its view of the world. The timing of the attack (obviously) wasn’t random. They’ve made their strategy very clear and they explain it patiently and repeatedly: They’re seeking to eliminate what they call the grey zone. They almost certainly believe Le Pen will make life miserable for ordinary Muslims and so prove to those Muslims who live in this grey zone that they have no future in France. This, ISIS hopes in turn, will inspire them to join the Caliphate’s (diminishing) ranks, sparking civil war on French soil, which they hope to broaden to Europe at large.

Their hope is misplaced. In the first place, the French know very well that this is their strategy — it’s the subject of endless discussion here — and know this is why they attacked when they did. So I expect that for every voter who decides to vote for Le Pen as a result, another who might have considered it, perhaps for unrelated reasons, will now refuse out of determination not to give ISIS the satisfaction or allow them to direct events.

Polling stops today, per electoral law, so we won’t have any clue from that how this is apt to affect the outcome. My instinct is that it won’t. No French voter could have been be surprised by this, nor could it have changed their minds about the gravity of the threat. No one is suddenly going to realize that terrorism is a problem for France; either they knew that already or nothing will persuade them. I don’t see why this attack should change the priority voters assign to the issue, or how it would change their appraisal of the candidates’ plans for addressing the problem, or how it would affect their view of the candidates’ respective abilities to do so. I assume it will reinforce people in what they believe already.

The main risk for the candidates, it seems to me, is that if they put their foot it in it today — if they say or do something stupid; if they appear unpresidential; if they strike the wrong note — they can’t recover, because after midnight tonight, campaigning is banned. Fillon already stupidly repeated a rumor that there had been other attacks in Paris, after which he cancelled campaigning “out of respect for the victims.” I presume he calculated he had more to lose by continuing to speak than by saying nothing. Interestingly, Le Pen likewise cancelled a campaign event. Perhaps she thinks her views on the matter are well known, and that she too has more to lose by aggressively restating them — aggravating those who see her as ISIS’s candidate — than by holding her tongue.

So I expect what we’ll hear today are expressions of sympathy for the victims, resolutions never to give in to terrorism, and — among those still campaigning — a rapid return to other key campaign points. The risk of saying the wrong thing exceeds any possible gain that could be accrued from deviating from the script. Besides, they only have the rest of today to make their case about any of the other issues that distinguish them. They haven’t time to waste.

Still, there’s another actor here to keep in mind. Three of the four candidates are pro-Putin. I’m sure the advance to the next round of any one of those three (and one certainly will advance) would be to Putin’s satisfaction. But best for him would be for two of his preferred candidates to advance. The only candidate whose success on Sunday would displease him is Macron. Putin and his troll farms don’t care about laws against campaigning after midnight tonight, and they certainly don’t care about laws against polling. So I would expect that whatever Macron says or does today, the trolls will be out in force from here on in to crush him, and they may even be working off polling data to which the rest of us aren’t party.

I’m trying to think as Putin would and wondering how the Kremlin is most apt to try to exploit this. The EUObserver has a brief guide to their efforts thus far. The themes that seem to work best for them are “in the French identity, anti-Islam, and anti-globalisation areas, as well as in the areas of ‘confusion’ and ‘conspiratorial/anti-system’ sources shared in the alternative segment.” (The usual, in other words.) 

So if I were Putin, what information would I release this weekend, what rumors could I start, that might so change the way Macron’s supporters think of him as to cause them to vote instead for Fillon, Le Pen, or Mélenchon? Which way would I try to push them — and how — and why?

Frankly, it’s going so well for the Kremlin as it is that perhaps they, too, will decide that they now have more to lose by saying anything then they might gain from just keeping it shut. I wonder if they might think that way. 

Or maybe not. How would you play this if you were a Chekist?

 

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  1. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Matt White (View Comment):
    If there was a caliphate or Islamic empire controlling much of the Islamic world I doubt we would have ISIS. Maybe Erdogan will bring back the Ottoman Empire and we’ll find out.

    There were on occasion competing claimants to the status of caliph; for example, in the Fatimid era there were different dynasties ruling different territories. Disputes could be settled rather kinetically. Once the Ottoman sultans assumed this title, I believe they defended it pretty well.

    • #61
  2. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    I’ll rephrase that:

    Madame. * doffs hat *

    …the French political parties other than Le Pen’s have decided that the historically/ethnically French working class has failed them, and no longer are a useful part of the parties’ constituencies.

    If the ethnically French (white?) working class is just 25% of the voting population in France I would be very surprised.

    I also doubt that those members of the white working class that are voting for the other candidates doing so because they are alienated from their own moral as well as material interests.

    And I absolutely question that the moral and material interests of brown and white Frenchmen (not to speak of Christian, Jewish, Muslim or atheist Frenchmen) are more at odds than they are in concord.

    I agree that the divide between metropole and peripheries is meaningful – and given the history of immigration to France there is some overlap between these and relative density of migrants.  But France has had migrants for a long time.  Here’s a map showing the absolute concentration of migrants in France:

     

    It’s from this source, which links to this – which includes a map showing the source of the migrants in each area. (I tried to upload it but it took too long.)

    Surprisingly (?):

    Portugal provides the highest number of immigrants to France. The British make up the highest number of immigrants in the northern regions of Brittany and Normandy. On the German border the biggest immigrant group is the Turkish. In many southern regions the biggest immigrant groups come from north African countries.

    If you said that 25% is the population of the peripheries, and that this is likely to be whiter than average, then yes – that would make sense to me.

    (Also – the Economist’s crack team has unearthed some ethnic stats for France. Possibly relevant.)

     

     

     

    • #62
  3. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    Matt White (View Comment):
    If there was a caliphate or Islamic empire controlling much of the Islamic world I doubt we would have ISIS. Maybe Erdogan will bring back the Ottoman Empire and we’ll find out.

    There were on occasion competing claimants to the status of caliph; for example, in the Fatimid era there were different dynasties ruling different territories. Disputes could be settled rather kinetically. Once the Ottoman sultans assumed this title, I believe they defended it pretty well.

    The thing is, there’s no Pope so whoever can grab it and keep it has it – that’s all it takes.

    Given that – when has this mattered to enough people for it to be an ISIS like problem, and when has it not mattered enough?  What else was going on? (Economically, politically – who was being colonised – were there wars – scientific discoveries – famines?)

    Just theology doesn’t explain the variation.

    • #63
  4. I Married Pat Sajak In A Civil… Inactive
    I Married Pat Sajak In A Civil…
    @Pseudodionysius

    I’m trying to think as Putin would

    Then that would require being fluent in Russian.

    • #64
  5. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    RamadanBombathon (View Comment):
    Given that – when has this mattered to enough people for it to be an ISIS like problem, and when has it not mattered enough? What else was going on? (Economically, politically – who was being colonised – were there wars – scientific discoveries – famines?)

    Just theology doesn’t explain the variation.

    True. And don’t forget the great man phenomenon. Look at Jan III Sobieski vs Kara Mustafa Pasha. Kara Mustafa was pretty able, though not able enough to keep out the strangler’s cord off his throat, but Jan Sobieski managed the great political feat of getting the Polish nobility all pointed in the same direction and then kept them going, plus being a very capable soldier.

    His victory not only saved Europe, but his victory brought to Europe the first large stocks of an essential ingredient for the scientific revolution: coffee… the use of which (the presence of coffeehouses was also of course widespread in the Muslim world) did not have the same effect on its native soil as in Europe, where thanks to coffee (and tea)

    “…Western Europe began to emerge from an alcoholic haze that had lasted for centuries.”

    As a contributing factor, coffee (and tea) certainly gets credit on physiological grounds.
    Also contributing was the development of European coffee house culture, the coffee houses bringing businessmen, artists, and scientists together for drinking and socializing. The great Lloyd’s of London company, for instance, had its beginning in Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House in London, which dates from (possibly) 1685 or (more likely) 1688, the year of England’s Glorious Revolution and John Locke’s return from exile in Holland.

    Not only is there no Pope in the Muslim world, there was no Reformation. Unless, as some have asserted, ISIS and its competing brands including  Iran’s Islamic Republic are the Muslim Reformation. Considering what the armies of the Christian Reformation was able to accomplish with edged weapons, primitive firearms and primitive artillery, the possibility that we are in the middle of Islam’s reformation is very worrisome.

    Particularly since the Westphalian system, whose establishment established the ground rules that squelched Europe’s internal wars of religion, is on the ropes and Europe’s technocrats have decided try and import a new religious conflict.

    I think that “ISIS like problem” means one thing if you’re a pagan in the path of a Muslim army, another if you’re Jewish, Christian or a couple of other things, and another yet if you’re a Muslim follower of a rival leader. That, the theology influences.

    Some rulers seem, out of real or perceived need, to have been more buyable, or at any rate reliably rentable, which could ameliorate the rules governing dhimmis.

    We in the liberal West tend to underestimate the need of autocratic leaders in a modern or semi-modern economy to balance competing interests, which leads to dictator envy on the part of pundits and Progressive pols.

    • #65
  6. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    The vast majority of humanity craves a life with minimal (and those which they do have, should be trivial) decisions. So they vote for strongmen and/or a superstate.

    • #66
  7. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    I’ll rephrase that:

    Madame. * doffs hat *

    …the French political parties other than Le Pen’s have decided that the historically/ethnically French working class has failed them, and no longer are a useful part of the parties’ constituencies.

    If the ethnically French (white?) working class is just 25% of the voting population in France I would be very surprised.

    I also doubt that those members of the white working class that are voting for the other candidates doing so because they are alienated from their own moral as well as material interests.

    And I absolutely question that the moral and material interests of brown and white Frenchmen (not to speak of Christian, Jewish, Muslim or atheist Frenchmen) are more at odds than they are in concord.

    I agree that the divide between metropole and peripheries is meaningful – and given the history of immigration to France there is some overlap between these and relative density of migrants. But France has had migrants for a long time. Here’s a map showing the absolute concentration of migrants in France:

    It’s from this source, which links to this – which includes a map showing the source of the migrants in each area. (I tried to upload it but it took too long.)

    Surprisingly (?):

    Portugal provides the highest number of immigrants to France. The British make up the highest number of immigrants in the northern regions of Brittany and Normandy. On the German border the biggest immigrant group is the Turkish. In many southern regions the biggest immigrant groups come from north African countries.

    If you said that 25% is the population of the peripheries, and that this is likely to be whiter than average, then yes – that would make sense to me.

    (Also – the Economist’s crack team has unearthed some ethnic stats for France. Possibly relevant.)

    Another fun map (the pinky-brown bits majoirty voted for Le Pen):

     

    • #67
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