Riots in France are a gift to Le Pen and prove that Gaddafi was right

The huge riots underway in France right now bespeak a society on the brink. The killing of 17-year-old French-Algerian, Nahel Merzouk, by a French police officer during a traffic stop has triggered the most serious domestic crisis the French state, not just government, has faced since the student and workers’ unrest of 1968.

Unlike back then, however, when the unrest was underpinned by a cohesive revolutionary ideology pushing radical demands, the riots underway today appear to be underpinned by the rage of alienated second and third generation migrant youth, marginalised in the country’s impoverished suburbs, whose hatred for the French police and authorities is elemental. Add to the mix the ingredient of religion, Islam to be precise, and the result is a political gift for Marine Le Pen’s strident brand of far right nationalism.

Le Pen has established herself in France as the champion of law and order, a rigid defender of the police, unafraid to declaim against Islam, refugees and mass immigration, which across Europe has become the wedge issue of all wedge issues. The centre ground in France is falling in front of our eyes, and either the ideologically driven right of left will take advantage. Le Pen is poised to ensure that it is the right not the left that will step into the ensuing breach, given…