France Laid Waste
Rémi Tremblay, American Renaissance, March 15, 2013
Immigration and crime in la belle France.
Laurent Obertone, La France Orange Mécanique, Ring, 2013, 350 pp., €18 (in French only)
La France Orange Mécanique (Clockwork Orange France) became an instant best seller in France, finding itself in the top-ten list on Amazon.fr despite no advertising and a virtually unknown author. Even in a climate of reduced book sales, the publisher, Ring, has recently had an additional 18,000 copies printed. Some reviewers note that if this book—which describes the true face of crime in France—had been published before last year’s presidential elections, it might have had an impact on the outcome, swaying votes towards the Right.
The book, whose title refers to the 1962 Anthony Burgess novel about “ultra-violence,” begins with an all-too-common event: a white woman is savagely beaten and raped almost to death by a foreigner. This gruesome rape is presented from the victim’s perspective, allowing the reader to grasp the horror of the situation—a horror that can be washed away in a sea of statistics: 7 percent of French women are raped at some point in their lives, and there are 13,000 thefts, 2,000 assaults and 200 rapes every day in France. Behind these statistics, there are personal dramas and shattered lives. For each crime, there is a life that will never be the same. This is what Laurent Obertone wants us to remember: Crime is not a matter of numbers; it is devastating trauma.
Beyond the crime statistics, many lives are ruined by daily harassment from immigrants, but victims get no support from society and resign themselves to their fate. They suffer from depression, fear, and even suicide, but they never appear in official reports: They will be forgotten and ignored. ...
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