Eyewitness reveals the REAL reason for the riots in France

France has gone up in flames yet again — this time for protests and riots related to a police shooting of a 17-year-old boy on June 27.

This incident sparked nearly a week of violence, looting, and mass turmoil in many French cities.

Ezra Levant, Rebel News Founder, is currently visiting Marseilles, France, and he phones in to "The Glenn Beck Program” to share his findings.

His news isn’t encouraging.

Levant doesn’t think the upheaval in France is due exclusively to a single, police-related incident, however. He believes there’s a much deeper issue at play–an issue revolving around the ever-growing ethnic divide in France.

Levant reports that in Marseilles, half the city isn’t faring well, particularly the Muslim half of the city, which Levant describes as “a slum with many migrants” from Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, and Turkey.

In this sector of the city, there isn’t much French being spoken. Commerce looks very different than one would expect to see in France’s oldest and second largest city. There are almost no women present, and the few who do roam the streets wear traditional abayas, even though France has banned face-covering veils.

But what Levant finds most unsettling is the fact that many of the immigrants who call Marseilles home openly identify with their country of origin over their new residence in France.

Levant spoke with several individuals and families about this issue.

“The French don’t respect us” and “the French don’t treat us equally” were among the common answers Levant received when he asked how they liked their new lives in France.

“In your heart, are you a French person first or an Algerian first?” he asked several of them.

“Most of them, without hesitating, said, 'Algerian,'” Levant reports.

“How can you be upset that the French don’t welcome you fully as an equal Frenchman when you yourself refuse to give up where you were?” he asks.

Between France’s declining birth rate and continued mass immigration, Levant thinks it’s only a matter of time before Marseilles becomes “more like a Moroccan city than a French city.”

Glenn agrees with Levant and expresses his growing concern about the rejection of assimilation going on not only in France but in other European countries and the United States as well.

Let’s be clear, though, Glenn has a deep appreciation for American immigrants. “They’re the ones who chose America,” he says.

“I want immigrants” who “want to be Americans.”

“I don’t want an Italian coming in and saying, ‘I want an Italian community, and we’re going to have our own rules and our own ways,'” he explains. “No. [Bring] your culture with you but become an American.”

Perhaps the violence and chaos in France has more to do with pent-up frustration related to ethnic tension rather than an isolated injustice.

Listen to Ezra and Glenn’s full conversation here.

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