‘There are two Frances, those are the Frances which have been clashing the past five days’: Ezra

Start your free trial

Access exclusive members only RebelNews+ shows, event footage, and documentaries

Subscribe

E-transfer (Canada):
[email protected] - password RebelNews if required

Cheques made out to Rebel News:
Rebel News Network Ltd.
PO Box 61056 Eglinton/Dufferin RO
Toronto, ON M6E 5B2

Crypto

This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on July 4, 2023.

Last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show was filmed on July 2 in the French city of Marseille on the Mediterranean coast, which has recently experienced a wave of violent riots and protests following the killing by police of a 17-year-old Algerian boy.

Ezra explained that the video of the boy being accosted and shot by police was enough evidence for many in France that the country's entire system, especially the police, was racist.

He pointed out the demographic difference between the old-school French parts of the city and the areas where Muslim immigrants resided:

Again in Paris, you may know it as where women come in their high fashion and men go in their fashion and maybe it's romantic. And there's some of that here in Marseille, right down by the old port, but a couple of blocks away and as you're starting to get, I mean, like I'm just looking at some shops right here. You have Babylon Palace, it's Iraqi food. You have Turkish. So many of these different coffee shops are Tunisian or Algerian or Moroccan or Turkish or whatever. As you get more and more into the Muslim neighbourhood, you'll notice a demographic change. Some of these patios will have 30 to 40 people sitting in front of them without a single woman there.

He spoke about some of the interesting conversations he had with Muslim Marseille locals:

But in my absolutely atrocious French, I asked some of them, ‘In your heart, are you an Algerian first or a Frenchman first?’ And almost all of them said Algerian first. And I said to some of them in my atrocious French, ‘How can you say that the French don't include you on equal terms when you yourself do not identify or express yourself as a Frenchman? If you say you're an Algerian first, how can you then have the same at the same time, a complaint that the old stock French don't regard you as true French.’

Ezra talked about how these riots are a result of the two very different cultures clashing in France:

There is not a cohesion in France. I'm not the first to say it, but there are two Frances, and those are the two Frances that have been clashing over the last five days.