Skip to content

Because they’re French

From our ever popular series, questions in UnHerd that we can answer

“Why are the French revolting?”

74 thoughts on “Because they’re French”

  1. Because they eat snails and think the fact that they do makes them sophisticated.

    Because they haven’t won a war in 200 years but insist on acting like they’re world leaders.

    Because they think fucking around in an office for 35 hours a week makes them hard-working and productive.

    Because they crowd their Muslims into massive ghettos and then lecture Americans about how to achieve an inclusive, fully integrated society.

  2. Because they don’t take showers?

    Want to know the easiest way to scare a Frenchman?

    Wave a bar of soap at him.

  3. It’s always amusing, the way the Brit middle class enjoy sneering at the French & the Americans. What superiority they think they hold, to do it from, heaven knows. Dennis, of course, proves it’s possible to do likewise from the other direction. The French I’ve known doen’t seem to be too keen on the Brits either. Maybe they’ve tried their food.

  4. BiS

    You’re making the point yourself. It’s a game that works both ways, always has. It’s not specifically the British middle class sneering (they are more likely to be in Provence cooing over the local cheese), more the usual friendly Froggie / Rosbif (pas catholic) stuff…

  5. Why aren’t the Brits revolting? There should be crowds outside Westminster and Downing St protesting the proposed sellout but crickets….

  6. Ljh – Street theatre has never been a strength of the political right/centre in Britain.

    Not that it makes much difference. Did all those Iraq protests stop the war?

    The kicking will be delivered via the ballot box. Labour landslide and the most radical left-wing government since 1945. I hope the CBI likes them apples, because one’s going to be shoved in their mouth before they’re roasted and consumed by McDonnell.

  7. Steve: the Iraq War and the Countryside Alliance were ignored because the participants were restrained, marched then went home in an orderly fashion. The French know how to do revolting in a way that is a threat to their lords and masters and sometimes alters events. If the Tories actually knew we had piano wire and were eyeing up lampposts and had no intention of going home until we drew blood, they might apply themselves a bit more intensely to carrying out the will of the people.

  8. @ Dennis & Gamecock
    If you look at a map of the world (that’s the one where Canada is sitting on top of the USA, not the one where the “world series” is limited to US teams), you will find that the French colonial empire acquired after 1830 was a bit bigger than the USA and its colonies combined.
    Also De Gaulle’s Free French were fighting before Russia and America joined in and were on the winning side in 1945. de Gaulle insisted upon his “Force de frappe” an independent nuclear deterrent because he didn’t trust the Americans to turn up to fight before WW3 finished.Britain lost millions in WWI (a million dead, more wounded, often crippled), France lost even more, and in WWII, British casualties as a %age of population were three times those of the USA and France’s were well over four times.
    If you want to say that the last time France won a war against Britain was at Yorktown in 1781: that is certainly more than 200 years ago, but France has occasionally fought wars against countries other than England.

  9. Bloke in Spain,
    I’ll see your Brit food, but raise you the andouilette – a tripe sausage that looks like a turd (and probably tastes like one for all I know) swimming in a sea of fake (I hope) semen. No wonder most French people eat McDonalds for choice!

  10. Also De Gaulle’s Free French were fighting before Russia and America joined in and were on the winning side in 1945. de Gaulle insisted upon his “Force de frappe” an independent nuclear deterrent because he didn’t trust the Americans to turn up to fight before WW3 finished.

    I see. And the Free French, they fought with French rifles, tanks and planes? Using French ammo and bombs? They rode in French trucks and ships? Eating French food?

  11. “they haven’t won a war in 200 years”: they won in 1918.

    Bwahahahahahaha…

    Got news for ya, son: That ain’t what winning looks like.

  12. Bloke in North Dorset

    OT

    Downing Street responded to the Speccie’s 40 horrors of May’s deal and now the Speccie has rebutted those as well.

    DS rebuttal revolves around “winding down” which as, I commented in a Tweet, looks like being a little bit pregnant. We can’t be in and out, as they claim we will be from 29 March, at the same time.

  13. BIS, the only restaurant that has ever served me a plate of food* literally wriggling with worms, was in France. And the genial (but obviously skanky) patronne didn’t even apologise when I pointed this out to her in French. Maybe she added the worms deliberately when she heard I was a Brit.

    *canard aux pruneaux for the record

  14. If you look at a map of the world (that’s the one where Canada is sitting on top of the USA, not the one where the “world series” is limited to US teams), you will find that the French colonial empire acquired after 1830 was a bit bigger than the USA and its colonies combined.

    Yeah, they ended up with all the bits the British didn’t want.

    Got me on that one.

  15. @dearieme. Only the first leg. They got hammered in the return and had to rely on support from the hated anglosphere to scrape home. They’ve never forgiven us for that.

  16. Britain lost millions in WWI (a million dead, more wounded, often crippled), France lost even more, and in WWII, British casualties as a %age of population were three times those of the USA and France’s were well over four times.

    I hesitate to point out the obvious…

  17. Dearieme

    After the failed Nivelle Offensive in 1917, morale in the French army was rock bottom. Over 35,000 soldiers mutinied with 68 out of 112 divisions affected. The French aim was to hold out until the Americans arrived and while the British did the attacking.

  18. Bloke in North Dorset

    “@dearieme. Only the first leg. They got hammered in the return and had to rely on support from the hated anglosphere to scrape home. They’ve never forgiven us for that.”

    I’ve heard a former UKRep in Brussels make that point. He claimed he was told by a Eurocrat that Brits will never be forgiven for not having been invaded by the Nazis, it it isn’t just the French.

  19. The oddest thing about the French is that they have the world’s highest per capita consumption of anal pessaries.

  20. The oddest thing about the French is that they have the world’s highest per capita consumption of anal pessaries.

    I’m sure living next door to the Germans has something to do with it.

  21. Witchie: It really does taste as bad as you think. Being young and naïve I once chose it off the menu at a restaurant in Le Touquet. That was hard as having forced it down I then had to fly a light aircraft back to Southend. Luckily I didn’t barf over the Channel. On holiday many years later, in a restaurant in Quimper, a little old lady dressed all in black at a nearby table ordered andouillette in a loud voice. My mouth remained firmly shut for a while…

  22. @ Dennis
    The obvious being that Sweden and the USA made fortunes selling armaments while the Poles and the French took most of the damage?
    Franklin Roosevelt was determined to destroy the British Empire, so he co-operated with Stalin to sell Eastern Europe into slavery.

  23. The obvious being that Sweden and the USA made fortunes selling armaments while the Poles and the French took most of the damage?
    Franklin Roosevelt was determined to destroy the British Empire, so he co-operated with Stalin to sell Eastern Europe into slavery.

    I do understand you’re trying to get a rise out of me, but does it have to be that bad? That’s your best? Seriously?

    Trying to bait me is one thing, but when you find yourself offering up conspiracy theories that Richard Murphy would laugh at, you need to take pause, reconsider, and then tamp the stupid back into that foot-thick skull of yours.

  24. I hate to be a pendant but the World Series has been won by a non-USA team, namely the Toronto Blue Jays in 1992 and again in ‘93.

  25. @ Mr Womby
    Apologies – I read the data supplied by Wikipedia which is dominated by US subscribers. My first thought was the WBA which comprised 48 US states, excluding New York which was, at the time, the most important State for boxing, butI know that Nevada is now mre important the New York.

  26. @ Dennis the Peasant
    You are stupid.
    I have not suggested any conspiracy apart from that between George Washington and Louis XVI.
    My Neanderthal skull is only 10″ in diameter so cannot be one foot thick and there is acually a tiny amount of brain in the cavity. Perhaps you have a skull a foot thick so any space for a brain is closeted within a covering 12″ thick back, front and above?

  27. No war worthy of the name properly gets going until the Brits duff up the French. Mers-el-Kebir being the obvious example from WW2. As for WW1, ask yourself this; where did all those millions of shells that the BEF shot off land?

  28. “I’m sure living next door to the Germans has something to do with it.”

    As the little platform inside the bowl of their lavatories indicates, the Germans like to scrutinise their faeces. So, yes, two nations with an anal/excremental obsession.

  29. “That ain’t what winning looks like.”

    Best to prove yourself in battle by taking on some superpower like Grenada. And probably award campaign medals for it. Yee-ha.

  30. Andrew –

    Any bets on how many European countries would have lost against Grenada? Hell, half of the EU would have had to borrow boats to get there and the other half would have had to borrow rifles for the fight.

  31. Hey, the French lost Viet Nam first.

    And as we’re on the subject of small wars against hapless South Americans, let’s not forget the Falklands.

  32. ‘you will find that the French colonial empire acquired after 1830 was a bit bigger than the USA and its colonies combined.’

    And your point is . . . ?

    “Also De Gaulle’s Free French were fighting before Russia and America joined in”

    Russia “joined in” the partitioning of Poland, in 1939. Then Russia fought the Winter War with Finland in 1939. Dumbass.

    The Free French got their butts kicked at Dakar. Before Russia and America joined in.

    de Gaulle supported the Résistance, a criminal organization.

    Why do you give the Vichy French a pass?

    “and were on the winning side in 1945.”

    They made a good choice.

    The French did make significant contributions late in WWII. Probably enough to make up for their fighting the Brits and Americans in North Africa in November, 1942.

    The French had a better equipped army than the Germans in 1940. Their deployments and tactics were anachronistic, and were easily overcome by the Germans. The French government surrendered, as they had to. The Vichy government cooperated with the Germans, as they had to. Declaring that de Gaulle’s Free French make up for all that is ridiculous.

  33. In non-willy waving news, the DUP abstained from the government’s finance bill tonight.

    They’re ready to bring down the government unless it reverses course over selling out Britain and Northern Ireland.

    Thank God for the Ulster Unionists, eh? Can we have big Arlene as PM?

  34. One of my big concerns is that the position this leaves the U.K. in for negotiating a trade deal, really going to be difficult to negotiate when they can just say but you already agreed to this…..0

  35. BniC – the DUP thing? Or the Withdrawal Agreement itself?

    If we ratify the Withdrawal Agreement, we’ll never get a trade deal with the EU. The Withdrawal Agreement will be the trade deal – permanent submission to the EU and our country humiliatingly carved up as if we’d just lost a war, in exchange for a sort of third-class EU membership without most of the perks.

    After we give the EU £40Bn and the legal right to stop us from ever leaving its orbit, why would we expect them to offer us better terms?

    We can still negotiate so long as we have leverage. Doesn’t matter who said what so long as we still have something the EU wants.

    Theresa May and her supporters are trying to give away our leverage, including the ability to withdraw from the “temporary” Withdrawal Agreement. If they succeed, it’s not trade deals we should be worrying about, it’s what happens to a society when peaceful, democratic political change is made illegal.

  36. In non-willy waving news…

    Sorry, but until May is canned and the EU told to fuck off, Brexit is willy waving news.

  37. So much “No True Scotsman”!

    Apparently France winning in 1918 doesn’t count as winning. Because they had a mutiny. Does Germany losing not count because their troops were about to quit when they sued for peace?

    How about beating the Austrians in 1859. How you going to weasel out of that one?

    Here’s a thing. The Germans are apparently great warriors. Yet they’ve got to go back to 1871 for their last win.

  38. The Germans are apparently great warriors. Yet they’ve got to go back to 1871 for their last win.

    But that was against the French? Strictly 2nd Division (or Minor League if you are that way inclined!)

  39. Bloke in North Dorset

    “And as we’re on the subject of small wars against hapless South Americans, let’s not forget the Falklands.”

    What’s your point, Dennis? Last time I checked the Union flag was still flying in Port Stanley.

    Yes, after some weak politicians failed in their duty a dozen marines were beaten by half the Argentine army, but then we went back and fulfilled our moral duty to the Falkland Islanders.

  40. It’s always amusing, the way the Brit middle class enjoy sneering at the French & the Americans

    Well, that’s certainly true about the US, but the British middle classes have a deep, deep inferiority complex regarding France, a credulous belief that if the French do something it’s the right thing to do.

    An example – having to buy winter travel insurance to cover skiing holidays is perfectly normal and sensible of the French to insist on this, but us insisting foreigners are similarly insured when coming to Britain is the most outrageous thing ever and is basically just a Nazi idea to privatise the NHS.

  41. DtP
    ““We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it.” —Marge Simpson

    Ironically, the story’s prompted the post is likely the Yellow Jackets. French people making a hell of a nuisance of themselves in protest at their government increasing road fuel prices. Which is the sort of thing the French do regularly.
    Unlike the Brits who are totally supine under the heel of their own masters.
    I’ve feeling that the end result of Brexit will be a complete betrayal of the Referendum result. The UK’s going to end up exactly where it started. Firmly embedded in the EU. And the Brit public response will amount to some grumbling & not much else. It’s political class will have again won. As it always wins. Because the Brits have no stomach to take it on.

  42. de Gaulle supported the Résistance, a criminal organization

    Criminal according to whom? The occupying German forces?, sure. The collaborators of Vichy? Certainement.

    However, both of those were a bit biased on who the criminals were, given that the first determined whether you became a poster boy or a death statistic based upon old records and some dodgy science with roots in phrenology.

    As for the scum of Vichy they were just collaborators, all of whom should have been executed as traitors as soon as they were caught, Pétain among them rather than just allowed to sit in some glorious ruin of a jail until galloping senility ran away with them.

  43. BiND –

    My point is this: If you’re going to mock the USA for taking on hapless Grenada, make sure you’ve done more than take on hapless Argentina.

  44. @ Gamecock
    The Winter war was not part of WW2: Finland was neutral in WW2 and, at the time so was Russia. Russia did not fight against Poland: it just waited for Hitler to over-run then picked up a few pieces.
    Like the USA, Russia just sat and watched until Germany and Japan attacked.
    Dakar was an Anglo-French force; the Free French won the battle of Gabon and took control of French Equatorial Africa in 1940, and captured Syria in Summer 1941; they also were part of the force that won the East African campaign.
    You really ought to learn a little of the history that you pretend to be talking about before calling someone a “Dumbass” because he knows more than you do.

  45. Hapless Argentina had a very brave and competent airforce, Grenada had peashooters.

    Ah, now we get down to the splitting hairs portion of our program.

  46. Like the USA, Russia just sat and watched until Germany and Japan attacked.

    What was the USA supposed to do, Johnny-boy?

    For that matter, what was Russia supposed to do?

  47. Russia did not fight against Poland: it just waited for Hitler to over-run then picked up a few pieces.

    Well, that makes it OK then.

  48. Yes DtP, never ceases to surprise the total ignorance of the state of play in the world pre 1939.
    America didn’t jump into a European war for, amongst other reasons, it didn’t have the means to fight in one. The US Army was fit for fighting little more than police actions. It didn’t even have a modern airforce. The USAAF was still fielding bi-planes well into the 30s.
    For a very good reason. It didn’t have anyone to fight. It had a strong naval capability, which was what was needed in the world of the 20s & 30s. The US taxpayer was not going to pay for expensive field armies & state of the art fighters & bombers to defend its borders with Canada & Mexico.
    That they were, in fact, developing aircraft like the B17 & the P36 (later to become the P40) back in the mid 30’s shows extraordinary foresight. There were no aircraft with a continental range until the late 40s. So no credible threats to the continental USA.

  49. BiS –

    You are completely correct. Beyond that, one must remember that the 40 year olds in 1938 were 20 year olds in 1918. They weren’t all that keen about sending their own kids off to experience what they’d experienced in WW1. Especially given the obvious wisdom of the surviving wogs who devised the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which virtually guaranteed the events that manifested themselves in 1933.

    But the bottom line is this: Wogs like John simply can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t see Europe as the center of the universe. The fact that ‘Mericans, for the most part, couldn’t give a shit whether Europe blew itself up tomorrow is completely mystifying to them. “Where would the world be without Europe?!” they cry. “Why wouldn’t ‘Mericans want to rush across half the world to save a bunch of dumb-fucks from themselves?!” they moan. Hence the attitude of “Well, the Americans just sat around until they were attacked. Isn’t that awful!”

  50. The US didn’t sit around and wait to be attacked. They knew they’d be attacked or have to intervene. So they prepared as best they could in the political circumstances (public opinion = isolationism). The US had quietly mobilised for total war before they were in total war. Pretty smart.

  51. @Steve, November 20, 2018 at 1:36 am

    NI (excluding the republicans) is the most patriotic part of UK.

    They also have a long history of being lied to by GB politicians and msm and see through it.

  52. There is, of course, the other thing DtP. There’s a great ignorance this side of the pond who Americans are. They think, because you speak english, you’re stray Brits. Not considering that a great many Germans & Italians emigrated across the Atlantic. (Not to mention the Irish, who had no particular reason to like the UK). So entering a European war was, in many cases, declaring war on your own family.

  53. @ DtP
    I was not, *at that point*, making any moral judgements about the USA profiteering from the war. I was merely providing simple facts for Gamecock whose education seems to be somewhat deficient.
    Unfortunately you seem to think that WW2 was a European War until Pearl harbour although there were troops from Canada, Australia, India, the Caribbean, British Guyana in South America, South Africa, French colonies in Asia, Africa and America, fighting in three Continents. It really was a World War. I may be European and so Britain is the centre of my personal universe but I don’t regard Europe as comprising the whole universe or even one-tenth of the planet.

  54. @Gamecock, November 21, 2018 at 11:13 pm

    War in three continents – Europe, Asia, Africa – prior to Pearl Harbour, dumbass

    Even post Pearl Harbour – a raid; no war fought in/on America (N&S), Australia, Antarctica

  55. Paukenschlag. Plus the Japanese attacked the Pacific Northwest with balloon bombs.

    Japan bombed Australian cities and attacked coastal shipping.

    That makes five. The Battle of the River Plate might make a sixth. I cannot determine whether the shooting was in Uraguayan territorial waters or not, so I said 5.

  56. @ Gamecock Moron
    Japan started fighting in Australia and America after Russia joined WW2.
    Graf Spee’s captain scuttled the ship – the Royal Navy did not enter Uruguay;’s teritorial waters.

  57. Japan started fighting in Australia and America after Russia joined WW2.

    First: At that time it was the Soviet Union, not Russia. There is a difference, and the difference is important.

    Second: The Soviet Union did not “join” WW2. It was the subject of an unprovoked declaration of war and invasion. There is a difference, and the difference is important.

    You really, really need to stop talking, John.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *