LONDON -- How can sense be made out of the senseless? How are the prolonged outbursts of mindless street violence and car-burning in town after town throughout France to be explained?
French commentators are clearly having a tough time answering these questions. A dozen different causes or reasons for the rioting and unrest have been advanced. The rioters are unemployed; they are the immigrants banished to ghetto-like suburbs of French towns (the so-called banlieues); they are Muslim extremists (or they are being led by them); they are resentful nonwhites; they are being manipulated and urged on by international terrorist groups; they are new colonies or states within the state -- and many other labels as well.
All have some truth in them, yet they overlook an even more fundamental explanation, which may apply not just to French car-burners but to restless minorities and ethnic groups worldwide: Simply that the information revolution, and the rise of the age of almost total intercommunication, has empowered minorities everywhere as never before. The mobile telephone and the Internet, with their enormous powers to challenge and disrupt every established institution and pattern of customs in a society, have become instruments of copycat violence.