The Social World

Tag: Paris

  • Yes, Europe’s civilization is being erased

    Yes, Europe’s civilization is being erased

    Last week the Trump administration expressed its fear that Europe faces “civilizational erasure.” Its concern was articulated in a 33-page National Security Strategy that outlined Donald Trump’s world view and how America will respond economically and militarily.

    The sentence that caused the most reaction on the other side of the pond was the assertion that, if current trends continue, Europe will be “unrecognizable in 20 years or less.” Those trends are mass immigration and what conservative French commentators call the “Islamification” of Europe. If Europe doesn’t address these trends, the Trump administration predicts the continent’s “civilizational erasure.”

    Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul issued a tetchy response to the Security Strategy report, claiming his country does not need “outside advice.” Is he sure about that? Last year the chief of police in Berlin, Barbara Slowik, warned Jews and gays to hide their identity in the city’s “Arab neighborhoods.” In France, Jews have been leaving the country in large numbers: 60,000 between 2000 and 2020, which is more than ten percent of the French Jewish community. Since 2023, acts of anti-Semitism have soared by 300 percent, including the burning of synagogues and the beatings of rabbis.

    The “civilizational erasure” is also to a large extent self-inflicted, and it is particularly noticeable at this time of year. One of the most famous Christmas markets in Paris is in La Défense, which this year is offering Halal meat in its festive delicacies. For the left, this is celebrating diversity. They take a different view, however, about those right-run towns which have the cheek to display a nativity scene in their town hall. In these cases such overt signs of Christianity are a breach of France’s laïcité or secularism.

    Similarly, the left in France support the wearing of Islamic garments, such as the hijab or the full-length abaya, as liberating. Those who object on the grounds of laïcité are labeled “Islamophobic.”

    Arguably, nothing symbolizes the “Islamification” of Europe more than the hijab. In Iran young women risk their lives for the right not to wear one. In western Europe it is almost de rigueur. The hijab is becoming more and more popular among young French Muslims: in 2003, just 16 percent of under-25s wore the Islamic headscarf, a figure that today is 45 percent. Last week one police force in England proudly displayed its new “quick-release” hijab for female officers.

    For the moment, British people can still question the wisdom of allowing its police officers to wear hijabs, but the Labour government is expected to soon introduce new “Islamophobia” laws that will criminalize criticism of Islam.

    In Brussels, a Muslim city councilor recently declared that Belgians who object to women wearing the hijab should go and live somewhere else. The same city last week unveiled its traditional nativity scene in its historic market square. There is a difference this year: the Holy family have no faces and it’s been suggested this is not to offend followers of Islam where it is not permitted to show the faces of the prophets. Fifty-two percent of Brussels’ schoolchildren are Muslim, 15 percent more than in London.

    The two main drivers of Europe’s Islamification are mass immigration and the Muslim Brotherhood, the nebulous Islamist organization that President Trump intends to ban. One of Europe’s leading experts on the Muslim Brotherhood is the French academic Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who requires police protection as a result of her research. She explained in a 2023 book that “their goal isn’t to adapt Islam to Europe but to adapt Europe to Islam.” To adapt to Islam, Europe must first erase its own civilization. Which it is doing.

  • Are America’s women heading for the exit?

    Life is apparently so disagreeable in Donald Trump’s America that 40 percent of women aged between 15 and 44 want to leave. That is four times higher than the 10 percent who wanted to quit the US in 2014. According to Gallup, which conducted the poll, nearly half the nation’s younger women have “lost faith in America’s institutions.” This disenchantment accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which enshrined the constitutional right to abortion.

    Younger American men are bearing up better. Only 19 percent share women’s distaste for the Donald, a 21 percent differential which is the largest recorded by Gallup since it began asking the question in 2007.

    As they point out, the question is about the “desire” to relocate, so probably only a minority of the 40 percent will leave. Nonetheless, concludes Gallup, “the data indicate that millions of younger American women are increasingly imagining their futures elsewhere.”

    And where might that be? Canada is the first choice (11 percent) while 5 percent dream of a new life in New Zealand, Italy or Japan. Canada has that nice Mark Carney as its Prime Minister but be warned, women of America: our northern neighbor isn’t the same country that it was a decade ago.

    A report last year in the National Post was headlined “Sexual assaults, robberies surging in Canada’s cities.” The Trudeau administration had tried to blame soaring crime on the aftermath of the harsh Covid restrictions, but the Macdonald Laurier Institute’s “urban violent crime report” rubbished that theory.

    Crime of all types had been on the rise since 2016, particularly sexual assault, which had increased by 77 percent between 2013 and 2023. The Canadian media is curiously reticent to examine what is behind this surge, which has coincided with record levels of immigration. A clue perhaps might be found in the response to a parliamentary question asked earlier this year by Canadian Conservative MP Blaine Calkins. Troubled by the 31 percent increase in foreigners incarcerated in Canadian prisons, he wanted to know where they came from and what crimes they’d committed. The majority had been convicted of violent and sexual crimes, and the two countries most represented among felons were Jamaica and India.

    Something else that has increased in Canada in recent years is the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood. A report in June by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy warned that Canada was facing a “rising national security risk” from the shadowy Islamist organization. Its goal is to establish a global caliphate, and the institute expressed its concern that Canada has allowed the Brotherhood to “grow and spread radical Islamist ideology, often benefiting from federal funding.”

    With this in mind, if some American women find themselves going cold on Canada, what about Japan? In 2023, Japan was ranked 125th out of 146 countries in terms of gender equality (the US was 43rd and Italy 79th). The World Economic Forum report noted the low female representation in Japanese politics and industry.

    Furthermore, cases of sexual harassment on public transport have risen sharply in recent years — what the Japanese call “chikan,” or groping. Most incidents are committed by Japanese men against foreigners.

    So if not Japan, what about the dolce vita of Italy? Unfortunately, Italy is also experiencing a wave of sexual violence. Incidences have increased by 50 percent in the past five years, with crimes peaking in 2024.

    Some 43 percent of men convicted of sexual crimes were foreigners, prompting Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to state that, “I will be called a racist, but there is a greater incidence, unfortunately, in cases of sexual violence, by immigrants.” She added that this was particularly true of those “who arrived illegally.”

    There are other options in Europe for American women. What about Paris, the City of Love? The smell of fresh croissants, the sight of Gallic heartthrobs. Oh la la! Alas, the real Paris bears no resemblance to Emily in Paris.

    Earlier this year, a French government report revealed that seven in ten women in the greater Paris region have suffered some form of abuse while traveling on public transport. Recently, an Egyptian man allegedly tried to rape a young woman on a train just outside the French capital and, as a result, a petition has been launched demanding women-only train cars.

    One could always try London, but women there are also demanding greater security on the city’s Tube network. Another phenomenon on the rise in both Britain and France is the segregation of the sexes as the Muslim population grows. In October, a Mosque in London organized a fundraising run that was open to everyone except women and girls over the age of 12. In November, a poll was published in France that revealed that 45 percent of French Muslim men and 57 percent of women under 35 practice some form of segregation, such as the refusal to shake hands or receive medical treatment from a person of the opposite sex, or to visit a mixed-gender swimming pool.

    In December 2015, Trump lamented what had become of Paris, making his remarks a few weeks after Islamist terrorists had slaughtered 130 people during the Bataclan attack. “Look at what happened in Paris, the horrible carnage, and frankly… Paris is no longer the same city it was.”

    He was right. Paris is no longer the city it was, and nor is London or some Italian cities, such as Milan, where, according to city councillor Daniele Nahum, “the antisemitic situation is becoming unmanageable.”

    The 40 percent of American women who dream of starting a new life elsewhere should take note. The grass in Trumpland might actually be greener.

  • Reconciling dreams with reality

    Reconciling dreams with reality

    Should you be waiting in line at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the exhibition Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100, don’t be put off by “Tête” (1974), a sculpture by Joan Miró that is big and ugly and plopped down directly at the entrance. Be aware that Miró’s true métier was painting; “Tête” was cranked out long past his prime. You can’t blame an old man for cashing in on his reputation, particularly when his formative years were burdened by poverty. You can blame a curator for including a flagrant piece of product as a how-do-you-do to a centennial celebration.

    Then again, one shouldn’t be too hard on Matthew Affron, the museum’s Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art, or his assistant Danielle Cooke: they’ve put together an otherwise exemplary accounting of an inherently vexing school of art. Working in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Affron and Cooke do right by a movement that sought to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality” – or so the poet, propagandist and cultural arbiter André Breton stated in his 1924 Manifeste du surréalisme.

    The critic and writer Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term “surrealism” to describe Léonide Massine’s 1917 ballet Parade, but its tenets had already been filtering through advanced artistic circles of the time. The devastation caused by World War One and the theories of Sigmund Freud had a profound effect on a creative class that sought escape from the disappointments of a world that once presumed to be civilized. Dreams, hallucinations and the indulgences of desire – that is to say, interiority – were subsequently explored in ways that could be skittish, daring, sexy and puerile.

    ‘I stopped sharing intelligence with him.’

    Add to that list of adjectives putrefact – a term employed by Salvador Dalí to describe the soft, squishy, decaying objects dotting his compositions. There are myriad such unpleasantnesses throughout Dreamworld, particularly in Dalí’s magnum opus “Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)” (1936). Avida Dollars – the anagrammatic name Breton bestowed upon the avaricious Dalí – is seen in some abundance at “Dreamworld,” as are such mainstays of the unconscious as Miró, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy and André Masson. Marcel Duchamp is on hand as “one of surrealism’s most influential guiding spirits,” which is something of a stretch, but, hey, what do you expect from an institution that’s the main repository of the man’s oeuvre?

    Social-justice warriors will be doing the requisite bean-counting to determine just how ideologically on-the-beam our curators have been in shaping this blockbuster effort. Truth to tell, surrealism lent itself to individuals who were inherently off-the-beam and who took pride in their outlaw status. Among them is the artist born Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob who, working under the pseudonym Claude Cahun, was a gender-bending photographer without whom post-modern doyenne Cindy Sherman is unimaginable. “Openly gay” Pavel Tchelitchew is seen to discomfiting effect in “Leopard Boy” (1935), a painting that imbues its own kind of putrefaction within the milky, electric light for which he is known.

    That is, anyway, to the extent that Tchelitchew is known at all. Affron and Cooke have done yeoman-like work in globalizing the reach of surrealism by unearthing figures who are worthy of a seat at the table. Among the best of these discoveries are Suzanne van Damme, Wilhelm Freddie, Raoul Ubac, Gordon Onslow Ford and Maria Martins, all of whom distinguish themselves more forthrightly than Frida Kahlo, whose diminutive and desultory “My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree)” (1936) does her ubiquity no favors.

    Dreamworld ends on a one-two gambit that is adroitly calculated, stemming, as it does, from the prerogatives of feminism and succeeding, in the end, as a display of technical prowess. Leonora Carrington will need little introduction to fans of surrealism, but Remedios Varo may. Both painters were of European descent – Carrington was born in the United Kingdom, Varo in Spain – and they found in Mexico a haven from the vicissitudes of World War Two. The two women became fast friends, sharing a fascination with cooking, casting spells and pranking their pals.

    Carrington’s standing has increased significantly in the last few decades. A recent exhibition at the Katonah Museum of Art, Leonora Carrington: Dreamweaver, confirmed her idiosyncrasies as an image-maker and expanded our knowledge of her abilities as a paint-handler, which are considerable. Possessed of a delicate manner that is nonetheless scruffy at the core, Carrington built up her pictures through a patient accretion of tone and color that differentiates even the stickiest of her fantasies from the slick, licked surfaces of Dalí or Magritte’s workmanlike facture. “Pictures of Dagobert” (1945) will be a bit arch for those who prefer their fantasies cut-and-dried, but a tender strain of magic can be divined within its nooks and crannies.

    Varo is represented by a handful of pictures in the same gallery and, at first glance, they could be mistaken for Carrington’s. Great minds may think alike, but touch tells: Varo is more linear in approach, more clarified and sharper in focus. Claiming that the “dream world and the real world are the same,” Varo spent a significant amount of time and effort honing the former, working from preparatory drawings that were almost as exacting as the resulting canvases.

    How true a souvenir of the unconscious might be when it is consciously configured is a complaint that has invariably dogged Surrealist painting, but what Varo’s work lacks in spontaneity or relish is recompensed by intensity and intricacy. “Papilla Estelar” (1958), with its maidservant spoon-feeding a caged crescent moon, is a cosmological origin story that could be viewed as some kind of biographical metaphor. The interpretative wiggle-room allowed by Varo is of a piece with an exhibition that makes a vivifying case for the “waking dream” without which 20th-century culture would be poorer. Dreamworld is a must-see.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.

  • Monet’s Venetian moment

    If you crave art that will envelop you, book a ticket, pronto, to Monet and Venice at the Brooklyn Museum. Enveloppe was the term the French impressionist artist Claude Monet (1840-1926) used to describe the “beauty of the air around” the objects and landscapes he painted. “Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat… I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, and the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible,” he said.

    And yet on his 1908 trip to Venice he succeeded in capturing the atmospheric mix of air, water, light and shadow that suffused the floating city of islands known for its distinctive bridges and canals and singular mélange of Byzantine domes, Gothic churches, Moorish-style balconies and Renaissance arches and arcades. Equally significant, the exhibition argues, it was this visit that rescued the 68-year-old artist from the depressive block that took hold of him after his long-time art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel voiced doubts that a market existed for the cycle of water-lily paintings in which he had been so deeply immersed.

    With what lame irony Durand-Ruel’s critique resounds today. But the exhibition wisely focuses on the additional masterworks that Monet created in the wake of his impasse. This perspective allows the curators – Lisa Small of the Brooklyn Museum and Melissa Buron of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum – to document the artist’s emotional mindset and creative focus before, during and after his stay in Venice.

    The story of how the Venetian sojourn itself came to be also provides a glimpse into the workings of the Monets’ marriage. After Monet angrily vowed to abandon the water-lily project altogether, his glum and listless demeanor so distressed his then-wife Alice Hoschedé that she persuaded him, despite his grumbling, to accept the invitation of the art patron and society hostess Mary Hunter to stay with her in Venice at the exquisitely appointed 15th-century Palazzo Barbaro, situated on the Grand Canal.

    Alice’s plan may have begun as a caring (and perhaps exasperated) gesture to divert her husband’s mood, but her resolute insistence led to his creative restoration. Monet begrudgingly assented to a two-week stay, but the trip eventually sparked his mood so greatly that the journey was extended to a two-month working vacation. During that time, the revitalized Monet produced 37 paintings, some of which were exhibited to acclaim in 1912. Nineteen of those canvases appear here, as do several paintings from the water-lily series.

    Those lily-pond paintings benefited greatly from the artist’s journey. “My time in Venice has had the advantage of making me see my canvases with a better eye,” he said. “There’s only one step, there and back, from the water-lily pond to the lagoon where the colorful palaces bloom.” For evidence, look to “Water Lilies” (c. 1914-17), a canvas aglow with pink flowers accompanied by shadows cast by foliage and hints of watery vegetation below.

    Monet’s reinvigorated Venetian palette announces itself in the joltingly vivid red brushstrokes of “The Red House” (1908, see p41) It is also seen in the more precise daubs used to capture the dappled waves that transform from blue to green to rose and gold and cream and back again, as the water washes against the stony facades of the distant palazzi. Monet painted these scenes en plein air, as was his custom – but in this case from a floating gondola, an adaptation of the floating “studio boat” he’d once used on the Seine. Édouard Manet depicted this practice of Monet’s in “Claude Monet Painting in His Studio Boat” (1874). The scene endearingly shows Monet accompanied on board by his first wife, Camille. Monet’s attention in this painting is focused not on her but the canvas in progress. We see its finished version “Sailboats on the Seine,” painted the same year, mounted nearby. 

    In Venice, as he had in both London and Paris, Monet also captured another element of the open air: smog, produced by the coal-burning engines of the world’s increasingly industrialized cities. The advent of pollution almost certainly contributed to the hazy blend of colors Monet observed and depicted in such paintings as the 1903 canvas shown here, “Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect.” These are the same kinds of atmospheric enveloppes that nearly enshroud in shadow Venetian views such as the alluringly mysterious “The Palazzo Contarini” (1908).

    Gallery by gallery, visitors also get to see the storied city as viewed over the centuries through the eyes of myriad artists, photographers and visitors. Seeing historic sights through the differing artistic sensibilities of Canaletto, J.M.W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler and Pierre-Auguste Renoir is a discourse itself on creative perception, demonstrating the wide array of angles, styles and personal slants each artist brought along on their travels – and subsequently shared with us.

    Unfortunately, as you enter the exhibition – before you see a single Monet or even a postcard – you enter an introductory gallery filled with giant videos of Venice in an immersive montage that may please some but struck me as superfluous.

    Far more relevant are the exhibition’s archival reels, recorded by the Lumière brothers and others in the 1890s and early 1900s. These snippets show canals bursting with gondolas and piazzas crowded with tourists. Numerous prints, postcards and other works on view also attest to the sightseeing throngs abroad throughout the city. Canaletto’s precisely rendered scenes similarly capture the commotion of the harbor, where sailors and workmen busily ply their trades. In a subtler vein, Sargent’s series of evocative watercolors from 1903-04 (standouts include “La Riva” and “The Bridge of Sighs”) present scenes that suggest calm and beauty can be found even amid the bustle.

    But in contrast to the buzz and the busyness portrayed by others, Monet’s Venice is nearly devoid of human presence. His is a floating world enlivened instead by radiant colors and shimmering brush strokes and yet marked by emptiness. One striking example is his “Palazzo Dario” (1908) in which a darkly shadowed empty gondola rests in place on the rippling water just outside a monumental marble structure.

    This emptiness was no accident. When the Monets came home from Venice, they were already hoping to plan a return to the city. It was not to be. Alice became ill and died in 1911. Monet’s grief was great, his melancholy expressed in the motif he returned to several times, seen here as well in “Le Palais da Mula,” of a lone and empty gondola, a poignant commemoration of the loss of the companion with whom he had shared so many days together in his floating studio.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.

  • The tragedy of France’s palm oil croissants

    The tragedy of France’s palm oil croissants

    Occasionally, a French person reveals – without any malice or superciliousness – that they run on an alternative operating system from us Brits. And on an entirely different motherboard from our American cousins.

    Over the years of gathering supporting anecdotes, a surprising theme has emerged: butter. Take my first visit to Paris, more than 30 years ago. I innocently asked for butter with my croissant. Simple answer: “Non.” Naturally, I remonstrated. The waiter retorted: “A croissant eeez butter!”

    And, in fairness, he had a point. Upon biting into said viennoiserie, I had to concede: it was nothing like the dry grocery store versions I was used to. Moments later, a small pot of raspberry confiture was graciously placed on my table. (To this day, it remains the best service I’ve ever received in Paris.)

    Fast-forward 20 years. I’m in rural Brittany, ordering a ham and cheese baguette. This time, the young woman behind the counter asked if I’d like butter. “Mais bien sûr!” Clearly irritated by my overconfidence, she spread it thinly, added the fillings, and was about to wrap when I piped up with a final request. Mayonnaise? “But you already ’av butter!” Her revulsion was palpable.

    Still smarting from my Paris humiliation decades earlier, I instinctively dug in. After all, I knew what I wanted. Butter and mayonnaise are hardly strangers in a sandwich – and I happen to be an expert in my own taste. She resentfully slopped some on, gratis. I asked for mayo on my wife’s sandwich too, if only to normalize it.

    When we moved to France permanently, we rented a tiny house in the center of a small Catalan town. Our British landlord drew our attention to the croissantière just around the corner. Assuming this was a veritable French term for “croissant specialist” (it isn’t), I investigated the next morning. The croissants did not disappoint – still warm, they transported me back to that Parisian revelation. So naturally, I returned the next day. And the next…

    “You’ll get fat,” the croissant-maker’s wife warned, deadpan, as she handed over the bag. I looked up, expecting a smile. There was none. I tried to hide my offense, but her comment bounced around my head for days. It wasn’t just the bluntness – it was the complete lack of commercial instinct. In the UK or US, such patronage would earn you loyalty points and a branded tote bag. In France, you receive an aesthetic warning.

    Ashamed but still addicted, I tried to ration myself. Mercifully, a few years later, we moved to a nearby village with its own boulangerie. A fresh start. The next morning, brimming with anticipation, I bit into my new dealer’s wares. Gone was the delicate shatter of buttery lamination. Absent was the fragrant plume of warm dairy. What I tasted was more like… wax. Hydrogenated, seed-oil-infused wax. It stopped me mid-bite.

    I soon learned the truth. Many bakeries, faced with high butter prices and early mornings, have outsourced croissant production to industrial suppliers. These “croissants in waiting” arrive frozen and full of margarine. A croissant pur beurre can contain up to 30 percent real butter by weight. The industrial kind? Next to nothing. But thanks to the slippery language of au beurre versus pur beurre, no one’s technically lying. Roquefort has a charter. Camembert has a lawyer. The croissant? No such protection.

    I now conduct covert pastry runs to our neighboring town. I smuggle them home in unmarked bags, slipping them past my own boulangerie like a man hiding dinner receipts from his wife – except the mistress is covered in egg wash.

    It’s tragic, considering the way the French can deify food, to witness them quietly debase it. The croissant, that most sacred of breakfast icons, is now often a margarine-infused counterfeit.

    Frédéric Roy, a Nice-based baker, has tried to sound the alarm. His campaign to label industrial pastries has gained traction, but little legal weight. Meanwhile, “butter blend” croissants made with palm oil and diacetyl are increasingly sold as au beurre – just without the taste or conscience.

    Healthwise, it’s a grim spectrum. On one end, the artisanal croissant – a golden coronary wrapped in charm. On the other, the industrial version: trans fat-free, yes, but with all the digestibility of a scented candle.

    If you want to evaluate the prosperity of any French neighborhood, buy the most expensive croissant you can find. It will tell you the real story.

    And perhaps that’s the truest measure of where France now finds itself: a country still wrapped in the golden flake of tradition, but filled more and more with something else entirely. The croissant was once a luxury. Then it became a daily pleasure. Now it’s a performance – ersatz, over-rehearsed and mostly margarine.

    A rich pastry for a country that can no longer afford the substance, but insists on maintaining the form.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Did the Louvre robbers want to get caught?

    Did the Louvre robbers want to get caught?

    It is more than a month since thieves stole the crown jewels from the Louvre and the chances of recovering the loot, worth an estimated €88 million, diminish with every passing day.

    The robbery was initially dubbed the “heist of the century,” a brazen theft in broad daylight as visitors strolled through the world’s most famous museum. There were up and down the ladder and in out of the museum in seven minutes, giving the impression that this was the work of villains well-versed in daring robberies.

    But soon details emerged that suggested the gang of four weren’t quite of the caliber of the thieves immortalized in the Hollywood movie Ocean’s Eleven. They left behind a trail of clues: the two disc cutters used to open the display cabinets, a blowtorch, gloves, a walkie-talkie, a yellow vest, a blanket and the truck with extendable ladder. In their haste to escape, the thieves dropped Empress Eugénie’s crown, festooned with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds. In total, explained Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, the police found “more than 150 DNA, fingerprint and other traces” at the scene.

    Within a week two men were in custody, who swiftly admitted “partial” responsibility; for their role in the heist. A third was arrested a few days later. All were petty criminals from the Paris suburbs. “It is a type of delinquency that we do not generally associate with the upper echelons of organized crime,” said Beccuau.

    One of the suspects is allegedly a former YouTube star famous for his motorbike stunts that he showed off on social media. According to media reports, his real name is Abdoulaye N, a 39-year-old with a rap sheet for petty crime stretching back two decades. Friends and associates claim that since he became a father he had settled down, and one told the New York Times: “He’s really the last guy I would have thought of for something like that.”

    One of the three men in custody – not identified – was described at the weekend as a “good Samaritan.” Apparently he once came to the aid of a stranded motorist on the Paris ring road in September, offering a “calm and reassuring” presence to the distressed driver.

    The fourth member of the gang has not been caught. Is he the one with the brains, as well as the booty? The thieves certainly knew what they were after. Rayan Ferrarotto, the commercial director of the French diamond merchant Celinni, says the jewels were stolen to order. “When you look at major art thefts, it is almost always the case that private collectors or enthusiasts commission the thefts to own a unique piece… it’s all about prestige and exclusivity.”

    Beccuau says she is keeping an open mind about the theft. “We are examining all the possibilities on the parallel market for selling this jewellery… it could be used for money laundering, it could be used for trade; all leads are being explored.”

    Is one possibility that getting caught quickly was part of the thieves’ plan? It subsequently emerged that the truck used in the robbery was stolen nine days earlier by two men who threatened the driver. Furthermore, that incident took place in Louvres, a town north-east of Paris. Perhaps the thieves had a good sense of humor. Or did they want to draw attention to themselves?

    Knowing they had left behind so much incriminating evidence, why didn’t they flee France immediately instead of returning to their stamping ground in the suburbs of Paris?

    Unless their bungling was all part of the plan. The maximum sentence in France for theft without violence is three years in prison and a €45,000 fine. In the case of aggravating circumstances, such as a gang robbery, the maximum sentence is five years in prison and a €75,000 fine. This increases to seven years when the theft involves “cultural property that is part of the public domain.”

    With good behavior, and a willingness to “demonstrate efforts towards reintegration,” a prisoner can have six months per full year of incarceration reduced. In other words, even with a seven-year sentence, a well-behaved prisoner would be released after half that time.

    In 2009, an armored cash van and its driver disappeared as it made a drop at a bank in Lyon. Initially it was feared the vehicle and its €11.6 million in deposit boxes had been hijacked. Eleven days later the driver, Tony Musulin, gave himself up and police retrieved €9 million of the money. Unfortunately, he said, €2.5 million had been stolen from him. He was sentenced to three years in prison. The missing money has never been found. In 2019, Musulin was briefly arrested in London when he tried to convert £75,000 into Euros at a bureau de change. He was released without charge after explaining that the money came from the sale of his Ferrari.

    Musulin became something of a cult hero in France. Mugs and T-shirts were sold online emblazoned with “Tony Musulin, Best Driver 2009.” The Louvre thieves have also been feted in some quarters; a German company has used the robbery to promote its trucks with extendable ladders, telling customers they’re perfect for “when you need to move fast.”

    Are the alleged perpetrators of the Louvre heist happy to go to prison for a few years knowing that when they get out they’ll get some of the proceeds? Or perhaps they are just opportunistic thieves who got lucky because the Louvre security was even more amateur than they were.

  • Is DEI to blame for the Louvre heist?

    Is DEI to blame for the Louvre heist?

    Police in Paris have arrested two men after the “heist of the century” at the Louvre museum. According to the French press, the pair were arrested separately as they prepared to leave the country on Saturday evening; both are in their 30s and from Seine-Saint-Denis, the sprawling suburb north of Paris. As yet there is no indication that police have recovered any of the crown jewels that were stolen from the museum in seven sensational minutes last Sunday. The search for them and the two other gang members goes on.

    The 88 million euros ($102m) heist has been deeply embarrassing for France, and the fact that those responsible appear to be local villains as opposed to the international criminal masterminds that some had suggested will only further redden the Republic’s face.

    Jordan Bardella, the right-hand man of Marine Le Pen, called the robbery a “national humiliation”, as did Marion Marechal, the niece of Le Pen and a former MP in her National Rally party

    Marechal demanded that the Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, and the head of security, Dominique Buffin, be relieved of their duties. Marechal claimed they had been appointed to their positions as “part of a policy to promote women… at the cost of sacrificing competence and jeopardizing our nation’s cultural heritage.”

    There was much fanfare when Buffin was named last year as the first woman to head up the Louvre’s security. Profiling Buffin, the left-wing Le Monde claimed that she was sometimes mistaken by visitors for a gallery attendant as she went about her work in the museum. Tourists apparently couldn’t conceive that a woman was in charge of security with a staff of 1,100 under her command.

    Laurence des Cars was appointed to her post in 2021, the first woman in the 230-year history of the Louvre. Her competency has come under scrutiny this week. It was reported in the press that des Cars has invested five times less money in security than was the case between 2006 and 2008. On the other hand she has splashed out nearly half a million euros on a new dining room.

    Des Cars offered to resign in the wake of the heist but this was refused by the government. This is no surprise. Emmanuel Macron handpicked des Cars for the post of director and he has to stick by her or else his judgement might be called into question.

    Macron has been a fervent supporter of DEI, or what is known in France as the “feminization” of society. Upon his election as president of the Republic in 2017 he appointed Florence Parly the minister of the armed forces. A socialist and career civil servant, Parly had no military background.

    In March 2022, a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, France’s top brass warned that they had enough ammunition for four days of high intensity combat. Parly left her post a few weeks later without much to show for her five years in office other than the “feminization” of the military.

    In 2019 Parly launched an initiative to increase the number of women in the armed forces and she boasted that she would “double the proportion of women among generals by 2025”.
    Her zeal encountered resistance among several senior military figures, who criticized her “political impatience”. In 2020 Parly blocked the publication of a promotion list because she was unhappy at the number of women on it.

    France’s civil service has also been subjected to similar social engineering. In 2023 a law was passed that increased the quota for female appointments to senior and executive positions from 40 percent to 50 percent. As of 2027 there will be financial penalties for non-compliance.

    This quota also applies, from January 2026, for appointments to ministerial cabinets and the cabinet of the President of the Republic.

    Earlier this week a collective called Women of the Interior bemoaned the fact in their view there aren’t enough women employed in France’s Ministry of the Interior. They also regretted that female police numbers have slightly decreased.

    Policing is not much fun in France, what with violence from Islamists, Antifa, anarchists, rioters and radical environmentalists. In 2023, there were 5,492 police officers injured in the line of duty, an average of 15 a day. Perhaps that is why numbers are down.

    France’s “feminization” has been inspired by America’s DEI, but while the Trump administration has started dismantling the dogma, France is doubling down. There was a furious response earlier this year when the US Embassy in Paris sent letters to companies requesting they drop DEI programs.

    The Ministry of Foreign Trade denounced the letters as “US interference” and proclaimed that France “will defend their companies, their consumers, but also their values”.

    One wonders if France can defend its companies better than it can its crown jewels.

  • France has failed its daughters

    France has failed its daughters

    It is just over three years since a 12-year-old Parisian girl called Lola was raped and murdered in a crime that shocked France. The woman accused of the murder, 27-year-old Dahbia Benkired, is now on trial and on Monday the court heard chilling evidence from a man who encountered the defendant shortly after the death of Lola.

    Karim Bellazoug told the court that Benkired was carrying a large trunk and told him she had items to sell. When he glanced inside he saw what looked like a body. “I thought she was crazy, that she was a psychopath,” Bellazoug declared.

    The motivation as well as the mental state of Benkired will be examined as the trial continues, but the overarching question is beyond the court’s remit. It is a political question: why was Dahbia Benkired in France?

    She arrived in the country in 2016 on a student visa and took a course in catering. She was a poor student with a reputation for lateness and lying. By 2022, Benkired was a regular cannabis user with no regular employment and no fixed abode. She had also been served with a deportation order, what the French call an OQTF – obligation de quitter le territoire français.

    An OQTF was introduced in 2006; the order is issued by a prefect and requires the recipient to leave France by their own means within 30 days. The initiative took time to get off the ground; in 2007 only 3.9 percent of OQTFs were enforced, a figure that rose to 22.4 percent by 2012, the year that Nicolas Sarkozy left office. He had cultivated an image of being a president tough on crime, which can’t be said of his successors, Francois Hollande and Emmanuel Macron.

    In an interview in 2019, Macron admitted that the current execution rate for OQTF of under 10 percent was not good enough, and he promised that it would soon be 100 per cent.

    His boast was greeted with skepticism by Christian Jacobs, at the time the president of the center-right Republican party. He accused Macron of being “all talk and no action,” reminding the French that when he had come to power in 2017 the president promised to reduce public spending. “But the reality is that spending is increasing much faster than it did under Hollande. We have accumulated an additional €170 billion in debt in two years, and on immigration, it’s the same problem”.

    Jacobs’s cynicism was well placed. France’s debt and immigration have soared in the last six years. In 2024, a record 430,000 legal migrants arrived in France, the same number as the three previous years combined. As for the number of illegal immigrants in France, when asked for a figure on Tuesday the new interior minister Laurent Nunez refused to divulge the number. Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, has since written to Nunez demanding “transparency” on how many illegal immigrants are in France.

    As for the number of OQTF orders that have been enforced, they have fallen to 7 percent. In a report published last year by the independent authority for monitoring the conditions of detention, this low rate is attributable to “the structural obstacles (both material and administrative) that have long hindered the implementation of forced removals.” The report added that the situation “does not appear likely to change in the coming years.”

    A few weeks after that report was issued, a student called Philippine was raped and murdered in Paris by a Moroccan, who had recently been released from prison after serving a short sentence for rape. “Philippine’s life was stolen from her by a Moroccan migrant under an OQTF,” posted Bardella on social media. “This migrant therefore had no place on our soil… Our justice system is lax, our state is dysfunctional, our leaders let the French live with human bombs.”

    A similar message was heard in a Paris court last month during the trial of an African man accused of raping two women at knifepoint on a Saturday afternoon in 2023. The man, who was found guilty, had ignored OQTFs in 2020, 2021 and 2023 and during that time committed several other crimes.

    One of the women, Claire Geronimi, waived her right to anonymity, to declare: “We’re talking about a brutal rape, something that shouldn’t happen in the middle of the afternoon, in the heart of Paris… It’s something that’s very difficult, especially since my attacker was subject to three OQTF orders.”

    Claire has raised a support group for victims of sexual crimes. “I am lucky to be able to testify, I am lucky to be alive,” she said. “I think we could have been Lola, we could have been Philippine.”

    A poll last month found that 86 per cent of French people are in favor of imprisoning foreign criminals issued with a OQTF while they await deportation. It seems logical, but there is little logical about the French political class in this era of chaos. The new coalition government leans to the left and there is little chance that anything will be done to rein in the rampant lawlessness before the 2027 presidential election.

    On Monday, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin admitted that the Louvre heist was a “terrible” reflection on France, adding that the country had “failed” to protect its national treasures. The same can be said of how the country fails to protect its girls and its women.

  • Why I hate Paris

    Why I hate Paris

    It smells, very badly. And even after decades of complaints, it seems Parisians still consider themselves too chic to pick up after their dogs. Taxis are a nightmare. The traffic makes central London seem like a village in Ireland. Uber drivers park as far away as possible from the designated pick-up point, fail to answer messages or calls, then charge a fortune in waiting time.

    The expense is phenomenal. For three coffees, one mint tea and a croissant that had the texture of a carpet slipper, I was charged more than £30 ($40). And don’t get me started on the coffee: if Paris is the home of café culture, shouldn’t it also be that of good coffee? Wrong! It usually tastes like recycled dishwater, or as if it’s been dredged from the bottom of the Seine. It must be bad if it leaves me hankering after a Nespresso. I asked a Parisian (who I know, and who is less defensive than many of his compatriots) why it is so bad. He replied, “Because Parisians don’t go to cafes to drink coffee, but to socialize, read the paper and watch the world go by.”

    Oh, I see! Because in other capital cities, we go into windowless booths, are served the good stuff, and leave after slugging it back without speaking a word to another soul? This arrogance about the unique, cultured “Parisian experience” drives me mad. Another example of this refusal to take criticism can be found in many travel guides: “When people hate Paris, it’s usually that they want to travel, but they want everything to be just like home at the same time,” goes the excuse.

    When visitors to London say they hate the city, most Londoners will respond with a sympathetic “I don’t blame you” or “I can see why.” I am a huge fan of my city, but this doesn’t blind me to its faults.

    This is more than can be said of Parisians. Mention the rude waiters and bartenders, and you will be told in no uncertain terms that this is “just their style.” Really? When I ask for something very simple, in straightforwardly accurate French – say, a glass of red wine – why do I have to be met with a blank look before the waiter switches to English in an unfriendly and dismissive manner, leaving me feeling embarrassed and reluctant to speak French again?

    Despite being recommended up the wazoo in food guides, and by locals, most of the restaurants are mediocre or bad. They often give the impression that you, the customer, are bothersome, and should be very grateful to have a table, despite the ridiculous prices. If you don’t believe me, try asking for a second napkin – then resist the temptation, following the response from the waiter, to get up, cross the room and find one yourself.

    God knows, Italians can be rude, too. But it seems they do it for their own amusement, and it doesn’t feel malevolent at all. However, even the French hate Parisians – possibly because of how dangerous and scary some of the central areas have become in the past decade or so. As I stepped off the train last week, I felt surrounded by groups and pairs of men, all hanging around looking for tourists, and – given that they weren’t offering cab rides or accommodation – I can only assume they were there for the pickpocketing.

    The streets stink of urine, and the place is absolutely filthy, including the Métro – way worse than anything you’ve seen on the Underground in London, which is an achievement in and of itself. Locals must drop rubbish, because I have never seen as much trash on the pavement, despite the proliferation of rubbish bins in the city. I asked about this at my hotel, only to be told petulantly: “London has trash too!”

    Feted in the movies and in literature, Paris has a reputation for being the most romantic city on the planet. I think this only adds to the bitter disappointment many experience when they visit. It’s high time that reputation, built on sand, was finally demolished.

    Yes, there are some impressive sights, such as Montmartre and the panoramic views from the Sacré-Cœur – but up close many of those tall, impressive-at-a-distance buildings are grubby, held up by decaying cement and stone. Mildew oozes from cracks, there’s rust on the banisters and used condoms everywhere, from all the prostitution sex that happens in grubby alleyways across the city. In short, there are far nicer cities in Europe, where you will very likely get a far better cup of coffee.

  • What is Charles Kushner doing in Paris?

    What is Charles Kushner doing in Paris?

    When Charles Kushner took up his appointment as American ambassador to France this summer, his first official visit was to the Shoah Memorial in Paris. As a child of Holocaust survivors, he tweeted, “fighting anti-Semitism will be at the heart of my mission.” So it has proved. Last month, Kushner published a letter in the Wall Street Journal in which he accused Emmanuel Macron of insufficient action in the face of soaring anti-Semitism in the Republic.

    The ambassador was summoned for a dressing down. He didn’t attend as he was on vacation

    Kushner also castigated the French President for his imminent recognition of Palestinian statehood. “Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence and endanger Jewish life in France,” wrote Kushner. “In today’s world, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism – plain and simple.”

    The American criticism of Macron mirrors that of Benjamin Netanyahu. Last month, the Israeli Prime Minister claimed the decision to recognize Palestine “pours fuel on this anti-Semitism fire.” Macron described Netanyahu’s remarks as “abject.”

    Macron didn’t respond personally to Kushner’s criticism, but the ambassador was summoned to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a dressing down. Kushner didn’t attend, as he was on vacation. In his place he sent his chargé d’affaires. The magazine Paris Match described the move as “a deliberate diplomatic affront.”

    Paris said it regarded Kushner’s remarks as not only inaccurate but also undiplomatic, not being “commensurate with the quality of the transatlantic link between France and the United States and the trust that must result from it, between allies.” The ambassador’s criticism, it said, also contravened the 1961 Vienna Convention, which stipulates that diplomats are duty bound “not to interfere in the internal affairs of the state.”

    This convention was ignored in 2016 by France’s ambassador in Washington. In responding to Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, Gérard Araud tweeted: “After Brexit and this election, anything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes. Dizziness.” He later deleted the post.

    Araud returned to the attack in 2019 when he left Washington, declaring that Trump was a “whimsical, unpredictable, uninformed” President. The passage of time has not mellowed Araud. On learning last November that a re-elected Trump had nominated Kushner as ambassador to France, Araud tweeted: “I recommend reading his CV. ‘Juicy,’ as the Americans would say… Needless to say, he doesn’t know the first thing about our country… we console ourselves as best we can.”

    Araud was not alone in objecting to the appointment of Kushner, whose son Jared is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. The French media expressed surprise that a man who had spent a year in a federal prison for tax fraud (and was pardoned by Trump during his first term as President) was considered suitable for the post.

    The left-wing newspaper Le Monde wondered what exactly qualified Kushner to the post of ambassador, noting his response to the Senate when asked a similar question: “I don’t know much about French art or wine, but I understand business.”

    Democrats in America were also unimpressed by Kushner’s appointment. Severin Beliveau, a stalwart of the party in Maine and an honorary consul of France, penned a furious op-ed earlier this year explaining why Kushner should not be Uncle Sam’s man in Paris. “It is hard to find anything that qualifies Mr. Kushner for the appointment,” wrote Beliveau. “He is a convicted felon, has no diplomatic experience and can be expected to personalize the existing tensions between President Trump and the President of France.”

    Kushner, 71, does indeed have little to recommend him for the role. But the same applied to some of his predecessors in Paris. George W. Bush appointed Howard H. Leach as ambassador to France in 2001, a man whose area of expertise was food-processing. And in 2009, Barack Obama gave the job to Charles Rivkin, who had made his name as a producer of The Muppet Show. The appointment raised eyebrows in France, although it was noted that he had been one of Obama’s principal financial supporters during his presidential campaign.

    Despite his lack of diplomatic experience, Rivkin’s appointment was welcomed by the Paris elite, as mesmerized by Obama as the rest of Europe’s movers and shakers. “We couldn’t have dreamed of a better choice,” simpered Jean-David Levitte, the diplomatic advisor of president Nicolas Sarkozy. “Charlie Rivkin is the epitome of American professional success.”

    In attacking Charles Kushner, France is shooting the messenger. His criticism is not unfounded

    Once in Paris it became evident that Rivkin had one particular mission, which was to spread American-style identity politics into the suburbs. This soon came to the attention of the French press. Le Monde published an article in the summer of 2010 entitled “Washington conquers the 93” (93 is the administrative designation of the turbulent Seine-Saint-Denis département north of Paris).The paper described how Rivkin liked to visit these suburbs, sometimes with a famous face in tow, such as actor Samuel L. Jackson. According to Le Monde, “these symbolic and media junkets conceal the extent of the networking that has taken place in France in recent years to identify the elites of the neighborhoods and ethnic minorities.” Once they’d been identified, the American embassy invited these “elites” to Washington in order to “deepen their reflections on their subjects of interest.”

    The extent to which Rivkin was importing identity politics into France was exposed by WikiLeaks in 2010. On January 19 of that year, Rivkin sent a confidential report to Washington entitled “Minority Engagement Strategy.” “French institutions have not proven themselves flexible enough to adjust to an increasingly heterodox demography,” wrote Rivkin. One initiative was to work “with French museums and educators to reform the history curriculum taught in French schools, so that it takes into account the role and perspectives of minorities in French history.”

    This was clear interference, yet it raised barely a murmur in Paris. Not so the intervention of Kushner, which has caused outrage among the French elite. Jean-Noël Barrot, the minister of foreign affairs, described his criticism as “unjustifiable and unjustified… because it is not the place of a foreign representative to come and lecture France on how to govern its own country.”

    Someone has to, because Kushner is right: France is taking insufficient action to protect its 500,000 Jews. Macron’s political adversaries accuse him of abandoning the country’s Jewish population in order to pacify the violent minority within France’s large “Algerian diaspora.”

    In November 2023, Macron declined an invitation to attend a rally in solidarity with France’s Jews, who were already experiencing a surge in anti-Semitism. Allegedly he made his decision after he was warned from a Muslim advisor that his attendance might “give the neighborhoods cause to catch fire.”

    The following year, Macron vowed that France would be relentless in combating anti-Semitism, which he admitted had increased “in an absolutely inexplicable, inexcusable, and unacceptable manner.”

    In reality, the rise is eminently explicable. Once the preserve of the far right, French anti-Semitism is today most commonly found among the far left and their Islamist allies. Among the many recent anti-Semitic acts in France are the assault of a teenage boy as he left a synagogue in Lyon and the refusal of an adventure park to admit a party of Israeli children. There was also the chainsaw attack on an olive tree planted in memory of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who was tortured to death in 2006 by an inner-city gang. Two Tunisian brothers have been charged with the desecration.

    Halimi’s sister says “no lessons have been learned” from her brother’s death. Increasingly she fears for her children’s safety in France and says she is thinking of emigrating to Israel. Macron, she says, is “doing nothing” to protect France’s Jews.

    In attacking Kushner, France is shooting the messenger. His criticism – supported by Washington – is not unfounded.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.