https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-racist-myth-france-descent-into-savagery/
To be sure, the recent attacks should not be dismissed or played down. Nor should the long-standing problem of violent and criminal behavior from gangs of mostly young men in the inner suburbs of French cities. Many of them — though not all — are of North African or African origin, though most are second-, third- or even fourth-generation. In other words, whatever Le Pen may say, they are not migrants; they are French.
But the claim that France is descending into some apocalyptic twilight world of migrant-driven violence is nonsense. Or rather, it is a lie calculated to stir racial prejudice and hatred. The use of the word “savage” is not accidental.
What Le Pen is not so subtly suggesting is that the presence of large numbers of brown and Black people on French soil, whether they are recent migrants or not, is undesirable. Brown and Black people, she implies, are culturally alien to France and prone to violence.
There is, in fact, no evidence that France is becoming more violent. Rather the opposite.
In the last 25 years, the French murder rate has fallen by almost half and is five times lower than in the United States, when you account for population. Violent robbery and acts of personal violence are stable — even falling, if you exclude sexual assaults which, thankfully, are now reported more systematically to the police.
