France Riots - Are We Next? - Off The Fence

arms and then just elsewhere just scenes of absolute carnage and looting the one particular image that has done the rounds on social media is this shopkeeper trying to defend his video game shop in nice and getting a fly kick to the back as we'll see in just one moment for his trouble um what we're seeing here is a sort of confluence are coming together of various different malign forces and constituencies within france so first and foremost there's the ultra left faction the black bloc the anarchists it's actually a 34 year old anarchist leftist who's been arrested on suspicion of burning down the town hall in limoges he seems to have been part of a family of sort of basque separatist arsonists so that's clearly a clear faction here there's also the sort of adventurist would-be radical young people and students who are sort of joining the carnage out of a mix of just delight in the violence and the chaos but also repeating islamist slogans as we've talked about in the show before kind of taking on very anti-french sort of islamic politics as a kind of rebel posture and of course you've got the the migrants the kind of unintegrated sections of the suburbs from the housing estates who are doing the lion's share of the looting and

amongst those as well a pretty firm islamist component as well if anything if the slogans and what people have been shouting on the streets is anything to go by so what we're seeing here is young people have been brought up to hate france migrants who have never really joined france and And then a mix of Islamists and leftists. Who are quite willing to burn it all down, and certainly have the wherewithal to do so. Naturally, the media, and I think it's to a certain extent important, is focused on just like the broader economic and cultural context. That's not unimportant. I mean, France is a bit of an economic basket case, has been for some time.

It's debt, it's eye-watering, it's at something like 119% of GDP. Politically, it's been in complete deadlock, certainly since Emmanuel Macron called these snap elections back in 2022. and it's just basically been ungovernable but I think if we were to focus purely on that we would miss the tinder for the spark if you like because even when society is going through quite tough times and there's always a potential for disorder and violence something that keeps a check on that or stops it getting out of control is just that there's a kind of baseline there's a sort of social civilizational ballast that everyone feels like they are bought into the society that they are part of its future even if the present is not particularly good I think what we've seen both in terms of the scale of the violence the symbolism the people who are doing it is that that ballast is sort of rotten and we'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't see like echoes of our own country in the midst of what's been going on there so we'll see what happens there are more demonstrations quote-unquote call for this weekend maybe some opportune rain will douse those down but um the the facts on the ground aren't changing and I don't think it'll be long

until something like this flares up again but I was wondering given Winston has actually been the only one of us who's been in France recently what he's been making of this since it's developed from those kind of school protests slash riots to this kind of more full-blown and broader base conflagration that we see yeah I'm extremely pessimistic about what's going on in France

us talking to people um and uh it's amazing they all walk in chipper and happy and very american and smiling and they walk out of the room absolutely do nourish and depressed after after asking us questions about what what we think is going on um the interesting thing for me is

I feel like despite the conversation we had on Off the Fence, despite the media coverage, I mean, you saw in that BBC report, the thing that I was most struck by is actually not them saying it was mostly peaceful, because there is a defensible version of that claim in that factually, that's probably true, right? The violent people are always a minority of a protest movement. But what I found fascinating is in that report, they said they're protesting about the future of their country, which is a catch-all phrase that means nothing, that informs you about nothing. And we ultimately have no idea what it is that is causing all of this, right?

And I feel like I still am not certain that I can say it's this or that. Now, would we be accurate to say that, as you describe it, Palestinianism, Winston, is a contributing factor? Well, it's very clear that people who hate this country and who are from a foreign background, whether that's in the UK or in France or elsewhere, I mean, the first thing I was struck by when I went to the pro-Palestine marches in London, and I also went to the pro-Israel marches in London, and I did both with a completely open mind at the time, the thing that struck me, and I remember saying it on camera, was, and I think Douglas Murray's made a similar point, there isn't a single british flag or a single trickle or at a pro-palestine protest while the pro-israel protest it was israeli and british flags or jewish symbolism and british flags intertwined throughout so there is a portion of this movement that is people who whose solidarity is with elsewhere and who have zero interest or love for the country in which they live But I also am struck by, Winston, I'll definitely let you jump in. I'm keen to hear your opinion. But I was also struck by that clip from the French TV show in which you've got this woke, wealthy, privileged white girl mocking people whose shops have been looted and burnt while having a woman from an immigrant-descended background explaining to her that actually working hard and creating businesses.

and all of this is probably a good thing and destroying those things is terrible so i think there's so much um like univariate framing this thing has caused this and i feel like there's a lot going on i mean we talked about uh you can I think economics is part of it. We also, you know, AI and Russia and all of this stuff. But I think it's true. I think Russia and China are demonstrably trying to amplify protest movements in the West. There's plenty of evidence of this. I mean, there's a whole warehouse in St. Petersburg where all these guys get on the Internet and try and manipulate public opinion in Western countries through social media.

I mean, that is happening. Foreign bots are influencing a lot of this, right? Yeah, but that's not the primary. No, no, no. I'm not saying any of these things are the primary. This is what I'm saying is I think I am still in a position where I don't feel that I can say the primary cause of this is X, Y, Z.

because response there's just a couple of small details just a small no absolutely not let me talk sorry corianne so small details is just that it is the case that in some of these french rights

there have been people with the tricolor and there are some people singing the marseillaise but it it is uh overwhelmingly anti-western it is over you know there are it's not just palestine flags there's argenian flags there's moroccan flags it is the acab it is the uh hammer and sickle it's the it's the deliberate talking of um french monuments that so there is an anti-french overwhelming anti-french attitude to uh about it it's just a small detail that because i know of any any lefties not actually actually we have loads of lefties listening and i think it's a helpful correction um and um i think it's a it's a useful point for you to make because that's exactly what i was saying what i was saying is there are clearly different factions And different causes for each of these factions to be activated in this way. So I imagine if you are a far leftist agitator, well, you just see this as an opportunity to loo and riot and cause trouble. If you're an Islamist, you see this as an opportunity to raise the Palestine flag in a profound way. If you're a student who's upset about the situation in schools, then that's what you're there for.

And often when these things come together, it's this smorgasbord of frustration or agendas, which is why you get the report on the BBC that you get, which says these people are protesting about the future of the country, as if that means anything.

for slightly different reasons. One of the things that we haven't yet spoken about but I think is very very interesting is the effect that this is going to have on French politics but also politics across Europe more generally because what it's actually going to do is it's going to give credence to populists on the right because what they're going to say and they have a real point in this is the elites that you currently have do not have the answers to the problems that you are facing.

Your elites are weak, which we all know they are. People on the left, the right. The centre would probably agree with that, unless you're fed a diet of BBC News and Channel 4, in which case you're the proverbial dodo with the political forces that are coming down the pipeline. But we can see that our elites are no longer fit for purpose. That's where we are. And to a certain extent, they're more fit for purpose in some countries and less fit for purpose in others. And what Winston said and the thing that he pointed out about them saying that effectively they won't be able to protect French businesses, French citizens, French individuals shows they've lost. They have given up. They have admitted publicly that they are no longer able to do the most important thing, which is to keep citizens safe, which leaves a vacuum.

and as we've said and as we all know nature abhors a vacuum so it's going to be filled and what that means is this it leaves personally for me if nothing changes and it might this leaves the way for Marine Le Pen to come in and to make a very simple but very effective point they cannot keep you safe they cannot do what is necessary for France not only can they not do what is necessary not only can they not implement the correct policies they can't even be honest about what is actually happening they are literally philosophically metaphorically bankrupt it is bankrupt the entire establishment and i think what you're seeing and maybe france is the test case for this is the the collapse of the elite and actually it's a marine le pen and populist government all the way from here maybe because if this spreads all the way through if it spreads god forbid to our country and i really don't want this to happen then i think we are going to see less faith in labor look i mean the conservatives are already there's less faith in the conservatives and it's going to be more support for Nigel Farage and reform potentially I'm so triggered by what you just said there I'm going to start by saying firstly it's already in our country

this idea that this is unique to France and its people in Britain in fact in Americans as well kind of smirking and looking across sorry in America you had this in 2020 it's the same exactly the same ideology that's by the BLM riots in which significant more damage was done significantly more people were killed and it was absolutely heinous as for britain we've had it the same with the palestine marches it's the same ideology behind that and but what's actually trigger me sorry francis what you've done is you've basically taken the new york times wall street journal establishment line which is yeah they're happening but the real the real headline here is that marine le pen's gonna win the next election oh no marine le pen's gonna win i'm not This isn't the bloody problem. What's going on now? Can you imagine it being worse than this? I mean, really? This is we are a total carnage and anarchy across.

when hold on hold on hold on you're misrepresenting what francis said he wasn't saying it in the way that the mainstream say which is you do what the riots are a problem but the worst problem is the marine le pen will get elected i think he's just saying what will happen as a result of this is marine le pen will be elected in france and by the way in this respect uh i am kind of i've said this for some time now i'm kind of an accelerationist sadly you know i was on coleman hughes podcast earlier this week and he asked me about he said well you know how do you stop this sort of thing happening in britain and no one's asked me that question before so i had to think about it and i just sat and thought about it for a few seconds and then i went And I don't think you can. Right. And I don't want this to happen in Britain, but I honestly don't think you can stop it from happening in Britain for the very reasons that you so beautifully laid out, which is this is about anti-Western hatred.

This is about people, children who've been taught for two generations now to hate their own society. Why wouldn't they be burning it down at a time of economic and technological upheaval when the future is up in the air? No one knows what's going to happen. And our economies have stagnated for 20 years. It's the most logical thing in the world. And I would actually tragically say, I suspect, given where the country is at the moment, The only way you get a right-wing correction to all of this, particularly on immigration and the economy, is if this kind of stuff happens. Now, I am not remotely advocating for any violence or anyone to go out in the streets and burn down our country, obviously.

I just think the entire Western world, other than perhaps portions of the American political elite and electorate, is locked in this thing.

i always can't see it any anymore and also the election of the election of a le pen would also no doubt spark a new round of rioting as well which is something that even before we had this present spate of protests to riots to the full-blown sort of insurrection we saw over the past weekend

you had again our old friend John McMillan strong kind of openly talking that there should be some kind of uprising in the event of the fascists coming to power so this is something that does depressingly feel baked in at this point finding a way out of that is very difficult i i do think it is worth underlying what francis was saying that was just the complete failure of the political class and emmanuel macron is very significant in all of this because he was elected in 2017 so a year after brexit a year after donald trump he the way in which he ascended to the french presidency under his own party um and obviously saw off a le pen presidency was hailed across the western world in the establishment classes as the hammer blow to populism he was literally depicted on the front cover of the economist magazine walking on water so convinced were they that he was going to essentially refashion the third way technocratic politics for the 21st century that he was going to arrest that sense of french decline and disintegration and france was going to be this wonderful sort of startup nation where everything was fine fast forward to today and he was at a Celine Dion concert the night before everything kicked off and as soon as it did kick off he

gave an insipid speech and then buggered off to the gulf to pose on the international stage and again the the haughtiness of Macron the fact that he's always presented himself as a bit of a princeling taken to sort of lecturing unemployed young people in the streets saying you know I could go across the road and get you a job right now makes him a perfect foil for all of this like an establishment that has completely failed to the point as you say winston that is essentially suggesting that people should handle their own security when we all know he's in the elize he's probably absolutely fine and worse comes to worse he's got brigitte to handle things if things get physical so this is you know it is one of those things where it's so clear the establishment has not just failed it's unraveled it's disappeared it can't command any authority on the streets that cannot even support the organs of the state which are supposed to be there to maintain order i don't know how you move back from that and he certainly well well actually on that note i think we should try and have a little bit of a conversation about what we think some of the solutions are here because i am actually simultaneously as pessimistic as you guys but

also also i feel that the solutions to all of this are available right and i actually don't think it's that complicated. It's not easy, but it is pretty simple. And the things that I would put on the table are you've got to scrap all this net zero bollocks and make sure that you are using that. You basically look at where all the wealth creation of the future is going to happen. The wealth creation of the future is going to happen through AI and other innovative technology in that field. So you have to make sure that you are competitive on that and you have to grow your economy, number one. Number two, we have attracted the wrong kind of immigration for decades because of our generous welfare systems. So we've got to scrap welfare for foreign nationals. And that will eliminate, self-eliminate a lot of the unwanted immigration that we have, where people are festering in these enclaves, where they're not necessarily engaging with the full British experience of working with other people and getting to know other people and embedding themselves in the culture um and uh then you have to look at what's happening in our schools and this is this is the hard one and this one is both not simple and not easy but i come back to what i

said and you know we've got an episode with katherine verbalsing coming out on this and we put a clip out last week our schools have been indoctrinating all our children black brown white you know green pink everything with the hatred of their own society its history and its values And until you change that, that's really not something that you can turn around because it's about what's in people's minds and it's about in people's heads. So that's why having these terrible events happen, in my view, is the only way this will change because it's the only way the sort of bovine mass of the British and the French public will finally go, well, I actually can't.

I have a situation where my president or my prime minister is telling me I've got to defend myself in a country. I'm supposed to see off looters with a cricket bat. No, no, I'm going to vote for someone who's actually against this. Right. So how do we solve this? If we were actually looking at how to solve this, how do we solve this? OK, as a face and voice for The New York Times, can I please make my point? you're gonna wait for us to laugh uh okay there you go i'm just glad i'm in america and winnie's all the way over the other over the pond because i think he'd lynch me at this point but anyway yeah i i think part of it get on with it frankie i'm gonna say something and you're gonna look at me like i'm a bit odd

okay i'll go through some possible solutions because constant you want us to be positive but i'm also going to tell you the problems of those right one mass deportations you need to get rid of all the illegal immigrants in britain it's between one and two million uh and not only that i would say that you need to remove welfare as you suggested constantin we have something like 1.9 million people taking 23 billion pounds of welfare every year in Britain. If you get rid of that, they'd be disincentivized. I think that you could also offer people something to leave. Trump tried that a little bit. And I think you could bring in more drastic measures like we know there are 40,000 jihadis on MI5 watch lists. I don't know

how you would do it technically, but I think there's a pretty good argument to trial them and strip them of citizenship, remove them. The problem with this is that even when Trump was trying to deport illegals and is trying to deport illegals in America so it's morally right for him to deport them because they're criminals for breaking into the country illegal even when he's doing that he has had political pushback from even some of the kind of more centrist part of his supporters and so there's this kind of the way it's done affects people and so the to do it politically is so unbelievably difficult even though it's the morally right thing to do but he has succeeded but he has succeeded in that not entirely i mean he he's done a lot but if you think that between what is it 10 and 15 million illegals came in under biden or so i forget the exact numbers i mean he's not it's what is it was trump deported dean look it up with venicei dean look it up with venicei how many illegal immigrants came in under the last Biden administration. Okay, so then as for education, for Francis's point, Francis, you're absolutely correct that we could do something about education. You could bring in statutory curriculum, and we actually do have a statutory curriculum, but we don't actually

know if teachers are properly teaching it. It's not well overseen. You could bring that in, but even that scenario, and I think we've discussed this in a previous episode, as I said earlier, 80% of British teachers are Labour supporters, sorry, are left wing, 25% are green. I mean, green, it's 24%. Green are far left. I mean, these guys are Islamo-communist nut jobs. And they're the ones teaching our children. So even if you had a statutory change up, how are you going to get all of these teachers on side who are going to come against it? Also, they're always protesting these guys. So that's going to be a fight in itself. Sorry to be negative. Then, there's the demographic change right so it hungary so this is the really pessimistic angle actually which we haven't mentioned is that in britain the i'm glad we're solving problems here win the white indigenous population are having fewer and fewer babies they're shagging less yeah and the the um uh immigrant heritage particularly muslim communities are having more and maybe it's because they're more religious maybe there's other reasons they're having more children And as demographic trends, if they continue at this rate, it won't just be Manchester, London and Birmingham where the white British are a minority, albeit the biggest minority.

It'll be more and more of the country. Now, where has this been turned around? In Hungary, they were able to have some impact in turning around demographics, encouraging Hungarians to have more children. and they did it all through incentives and but really ended up being if the economy was working plus these incentives it sort of went in in that direction the problem though with this is that how do you do that at one demographic how do you encourage one demographic and not give other demographics the same option now that's the singapore did that but singapore is not a liberal country and it's not authoritarian country in the tradition of sort of european liberal enlightenment how do we how do we target that kind of of government measures in a way that wouldn't be deemed unfair politically i don't think i mean maybe it could be done maybe it can be done and the other thing is dealing with islamism and again singapore have been able to do this they monitor every single mosque with without exception they make sure that muslims are spread out so there are no enclaves around the country so but again we're a liberal country like are we going to give up on liberalism.

to deal with this problem. Maybe not. But let me actually do something hopeful. Let me add you some hope. I'm a Christian. I believe in prayer. And I think that that's where hope is. And I think we should be praying about it. And I think this is a Christian project, England and Britain. And without God, it can't be turned around. So always have faith. And that's where, if you want me to be hopeful, that's where I'll be hopeful. It's in Jesus Christ. Well, fuck me now. I really am I'm depressed, Jesus Christ. Tom, any thoughts on what some of the steps might be for constructively getting out of the situation we find ourselves in before we move on to the next story?

Yeah, quickly. I mean, there's not a lot that I disagree with. And I also agree that many of these steps, whether it's anything as seemingly small as getting rid of net zero or anything as large as just getting the teachers to stop propagandising to the youth, It's going to generate this almighty pushback. You're going to see this kind of counter-radicalisation on the left and on the various kind of lumpen parts of society who are willing to kick off at any one time. I think that still can't be an argument not for doing it. The project has to be to construct a stable sort of democratic majority in any nation's parliament and a genuine mandate for these policies and then to pick a fight with the sections of society, the institutions the vested interest who do not want it to happen it's going to be a it could be a bit rough in certain circumstances but providing it has the country behind it provided it has that kind of silent majority we're increasingly not so silent as we've seen in many places across europe recently that's a sturdy enough basis on which to do it doesn't mean it's going to be easy but none of these things are and i i do think that the one thing there is hope in apart from uh deliverance

and faith is the point about so much of this stuff common sense kind of never has been tried in the in such a long time now we've had uh 10 years of emmanuel macron we've had a succession of uni party rulers in this country who even when they were encouraged to pretend that they cared about the public's concerns about migration or any other issue just said one thing and did another there is a lot of sort of low hanging fruit in all of this which could at least get us closer towards a sane settlement um and if if some of that means sections of society who always want to kick off are going to kick off that has to be confronted as well but these issues are too big to just either get into a kind of council of despair and resignation which would be a absolute disaster certainly electorally or to just assume that as you sometimes hear as a sort of meme on the right that there is sort of no democratic way out of this um i think there it's clear that the stakes are sufficiently high that people are persuadable people are willing to behave and vote in ways that they previously wouldn't and therefore i think whilst uh before we do succumb to um despair or drastic measures there's a hell of a lot to be done in convincing people this the

the hour is sufficiently late that um change actually has to take place this time so i don't think we should lose faith in democracy yet well before we uh before we move on winston uh there is no according to venice i know specific confirmed figure for the number of illegal immigrants who entered but uh 10.4 million recorded border encounters during the biden administration 12.4 million those encounters plus estimated got away so you you were pretty much on the money although the number of illegals specifically is not uh not confirmed there uh the one thing i would say is we We touched on it briefly before we move on, but the debt crisis is really a lot of where this could continue to go in the direction that, Tom, you were talking about because French bond yields are going up and up and up.

I mean, if you are some, I mean, people, Francis and I were talking about this other day. It's like most people don't understand what the bond market is. All the bond market is, is people you've borrowed money from, right? so The people that France borrows money from, and it's already at 120% debt to GDP, if you were one of them, or if you were someone who was considering lending money to France, I don't think you'd be looking at it now going, oh, what a great opportunity here. And so if that carries on, if the same thing happens in our country where yields are very, very high already as well, you will probably very quickly get to a situation where the fiscal crisis that people have been predicting happens.

you are then forced the government is then forced to cut spending at which point this whole thing gets undone very quickly because it's one thing to sort of be a centrist dad while everything is great or while you're you're sort of doing okay when your mortgage interest rate goes to 17 you might feel a little bit more more inclined to go uh in either direction and by the way some of them will go to the far left too but i just i think that your point is exactly right the hour is late enough and there will be more things that happen that will persuade people that the hour is very late indeed that you may get a correction through the democratic process that should be very troubling to all of us but that's the best way out of this as far as we can tell anywho let's move on to the united states uh very briefly uh we've talked about uh france for most of this episode, but we want to cover a couple of other stories. One of them is in the U.S., which is, of course, the midterms. The Democrats are looking like they're very likely to have their Senate candidate win in Texas. This is James Talarico. And according to Kalshi, he is now 66% likely.

Now, we don't know exactly whether this is something that will happen, obviously, because it's a prediction thing, but also the impact on the broader midterms as well. The Democrats look set to take the House. They may also take the Senate. And if that happens, you know, thanks to Winston's and Trump's war in Iran, what you're likely to end up with is a situation that he spends the next two years effectively being unable to do anything other than through executive orders. So it's a complete paralysis. It's a completely lame duck situation, which will not only tarnish Trump's legacy, which, you know, something probably he cares about more than the rest of us, but it will be something that paralyzes his power to do anything over the next two years to continue to implement the things that he was elected to do. And of course, you will likely see a massive snapback in terms of the culture and all the stuff that we always talk about uh winston what do you make of the consequences of the disastrous war you advocated how much are the ayatollers paying trigonometry for this flagrant bias unbelievable unbelievable um you you uh you've got to make a defense here i mean do you really want to have an iran argument i mean we can have an iran no no there's no

argument to be had the gas prices went up and americans vote on gas prices and they're what they're gonna so much looking like very very certainly they'll take the house and maybe also And by the way, this is something that Ted Cruz predicted when we interviewed him in March. And Iran are massively military degraded. They've lost their missile shield defense system and they are massively on the back foot. It's definitely the case that America have mown the lawn and protected the world from Iran. There are negative consequences as a result, but that's the fault of the. That's the fault of Iran. But look, we don't necessarily need to have that argument. You are right that that's having an impact on the mid-term. I basically otherwise largely agree with your analysis. I just don't love speculating on polls because you just don't know. And we've seen so many polls get it wrong. And yes, you know, people will be motivated to sort of punish Trump and come out. They might come out and punish him if they feel like they're unhappy with it more than they're motivated to support him.

but you never know he's got a pretty pretty strong core base it might be that he loses the house as we discussed last week over ukraine his actions suggest to me that it is actually the midterms he's motivated by uh not uh interest in the war or what might be beneficial for ukraine or the us so uh i i say i my my feeling is that trump is worried about the midterms and i even think the ilhan omar story that's coming out again it's an old story it might be the attempted october surprise you know did she marry her brother and sort of this coming up trying to sort of degrade uh uh the democrats kind of make them look silly i'd also note that the democrats they are they can for the first time talk about economy but they've been going on culture stuff for so long but now they can actually talk about the economy which they hadn't been they always feels always focus on trans and race right uh you know racial uh whatever not you know woke stuff it seems now that they can they can focus on this stuff they are still doing some of the woke stuff but this is a economy stuff but yeah that's i i'm not sure i don't know what's going to happen i think what's going to be very interesting is the rise of the democratic

socialists and what we can see now is this is a real litmus test for them do they actually have genuine cut through with the Americans? Let's just call them maybe unfairly, but let's just say the real Americans, the Americans outside of New York, outside of LA, outside of those big metropolises. Do they actually have genuine cut through? Does economic populism, whatever you may think about it, talks about the billionaires, et cetera, et cetera. Will ordinary Americans vote for this or will they think it's just a load of nonsense that people in the cities bang on about, but doesn't have relevance to them? Or will they see it as socialism 2.0 and therefore fundamentally untrustworthy? I think that's going to be the really interesting moment in this election. Is economic populism something that is a potential vote winner? Or is it something that ordinary Americans are going to see through and think, no, this isn't for me. I want centrist,

trepidation actually anticipating what we'll be talking about next week because i suspect france may be back on the menu given that uh the the official estimates from french intelligence are there are at least half a million people will be on the streets of france this weekend uh hopefully that doesn't happen hopefully the tensions uh simmer down but we will see and we will see you all next week on off the fence oh by the way please can i just plug something please follow my articles on the new york times and the guardian thank you very much he's doing good work and i occasionally uh write for the socialist workers party as well and you can follow me there

thank you I love that piece you did about the Ayatollah you know because it gets a lot of negative press and I know I've been hard on him but to see that perspective on him I thought Francis you know it was interesting at least yeah quasi-erotic in places but still you know it was yeah peace be upon him see you guys