Paris can no longer hold outdoor celebrations — too much violence. By James Tidmarsh in The Spectator.
The New Year’s Eve concert on the Champs Élysées has been cancelled for security reasons. Paris was supposed to host its usual spectacle. A free open-air concert at the Arc de Triomphe, video projections on the monument and the midnight festivities that once drew close to a million people.
Instead, the concert has been scrapped. It will be replaced on national television with a prerecorded concert filmed weeks ago with a handpicked crowd to mimic a celebration Paris no longer believes it can safely host. A capital once famed for its public life now performs it under studio conditions.
It marks the collapse of what used to be one of the simplest pleasures of Parisian life. For decades families and friends would spill out onto the streets on New Year’s Eve. Families, couples carrying a bottle of champagne, tourists wrapped in scarves, all drifting towards the Champs Élysées to count down the final seconds of the year. It was spontaneous and cheerful and open to everyone. That Paris no longer exists.
Over recent years ordinary Parisians quietly stopped going. The Champs Élysées on any holiday weekend has become a no-go zone. The crowds have changed. The atmosphere’s changed. …
The city that staged the Olympics cannot handle a national holiday. Paris, a capital that used to defy threats, can no longer manage its crowds.
Immigration has brought trouble:
In recent years the avenue has become the predictable destination for trouble. Large groups stream in from the suburbs on major nights and the pattern repeats itself. Burning scooters. Smash and grab attacks on luxury shops. Running fights with police. Dozens of arrests. Last year there were more than two hundred in Paris alone. Television networks keep a running tally of the number of cars torched across the country. During the Champions League celebrations this summer there were hundreds. …
The city knows where the pressure lies. It knows who floods into the avenue on nights like these. It knows how quickly things can turn. …
The reverse-Midas touch of the New Class:
Paris has spent two decades in the grip of an ideological project that ignores reality. The city promised to be greener, cleaner and more progressive. What it’s become is brittle and dangerous. A capital that survives its major events only by cancelling them or surrounding them with police barriers. The Olympics briefly concealed the problem. They didn’t solve it.