Roman Bernard joins Richard to relay his experience in Paris during the recent terrorist attacks and discuss the symbolism of violence and potential for a European awakening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe
Actually, it was even more personal than last time.
The Charlie Hebdo shooting was a bit abstract because it happened in the morning and I just learned about it like everyone else actually on the web.
This time it was different because as I explained in my piece, I decided to To go home by foot and then I walked by this concert facility where the main shooting happened and then I went home and actually one of the places we could say a minor shooting But
I think it was something like 18 people who were killed.
It was actually four blocks from where I live.
It's only 500 meters.
And the blocks are big in Paris.
I think the blocks are larger in Paris, but you mentioned that you didn't hear anything.
No, actually, I didn't say that in my piece because...
It didn't look very serious, but I was actually watching something, an episode of Utopia.
It's a British series that I recommend, especially if you're interested in conspiracy theories.
But I didn't hear anything, but I don't think I would have heard anything, because even if it was closed, you know...
The buildings are very dense in Paris so it really creates a buffer to sounds and you don't hear that much actually.
I'm very close to a huge boulevard where actually one of the shootings happened and I don't hear the traffic from here.
The only thing that you hear now and I'm going to turn Enough is a dehumidifier.
So now you hear nothing and we are very close to a quite hectic boulevard actually.
So I don't think I would have heard the shootings and the screams as you joked when I told you about it.
But it's true that after a while I heard motorbikes with sirens, you know, wailing and...
But by then I was already aware that there was something.
Because the way I discovered that, so I finished my episode and it was about the time when the football or soccer, as you say, game between France and Germany ended.
So I went just to check the result and I was surprised because the result was only the second entry on the website.
And so I checked the results, but just above I saw that Hollande had been evacuated from the stadium.
And so I read an explosion and then there were very few details.
I went on Google News and then I discovered, of course, that it was much more than a few explosions at the stadium.
It was huge, but it's really where I learned about it.
And actually, as I mentioned in my piece, what's quite puzzling is that when I went home and I walked by this concert room complex, there were many people queuing.
And among these people, it's obvious that...
There were people who were about to be killed.
Because I think there were 1,500 people and close to 100 were killed.
It's hard to say that, but Putin said that when there was a huge terrorist attack in an opera years ago, but it could have been worse, actually.
Yeah, it could have been much worse.
Much worse because it's only because I think I usually don't like law enforcement but I have to say they did their job well because they managed to save maybe 90% of the people there.
I'm just curious, what is the atmosphere like afterward?
I might have mentioned this on a podcast before.
I was actually in New York City during 9-11, shortly after I graduated from college, actually.
And I was in Brooklyn, to be exact.
I was actually working at this very large, very famous old building on Atlantic Avenue where I was doing an internship.
It was a surreal environment because everyone was shocked and stunned and kind of numb.
And so it wasn't like everyone was running around screaming and shouting like a chicken with its head cut off or something, which I would have expected, actually, after something that dramatic happened within sight of where I was working.
But it wasn't.
It was kind of a certain kind of numbness and certainly a kind of heightened awareness.
A lot of people in big cities are always, you know, they're either staring at their smartphone or they're staring down at their feet.
They're walking in a kind of pod where they're not connected.
But I felt like everyone was in a way more aware.
But is it a similar situation in Paris, a kind of surreal situation where everyone's going about their everyday lives, but then everything's changed?
You know, it...
In a way, so of course it reminded me of the day after Charlie Hebdo, but it reminded me much more of something very different.
It's the day after Jean-Marie Le Pen managed to make it to the second round of the presidential election in 2002.
The day after, you could see people staring at each other, you know, the way, did they vote for him or things like that.
I could see the same, you know, faces were really closed and you could really see tension.
Actually, this morning I had to run an errand, so I went.
Actually, it made me closer to one of the shootings, one of the places where it happened.
I went to this shop and everyone was extra polite and something very unnatural, especially in Paris.
Paris has a deserved reputation of being very annoying to people like waitresses.
Don't say hello or things like that.
And people were too polite for it to be true.
It was really a kind of surreal experiment.
And actually, the only community that was untouched by the event was the Chinese, as usual.
Maybe the comparison will sound harsh, but they're like cockroaches after a nuclear meltdown.
Nothing touches them.
They're just always the same.
So, of course, the white population...
They're just selling cheap plastic shit to each other and to tourists, basically, still.
Like in Chinatown in New York City, I would imagine.
They also sell shitty food, actually.
But, no, I'm kidding.
Sometimes it's good when you don't ask what's inside.
They've got to control the cat population in Paris.
It would get out of hand.
A little more seriously, the white population was...
Quite moved, predictably.
But actually, I could witness a few women crying on the street.
But even for Muslims, so Arabs and Blacks, you know, they were really, you know, Elatis.
Because I don't want to sound pissy, but most of them don't agree with that.
That's not a reason for us to welcome them all, of course.
It's not a sufficient reason, but they don't want to be associated with that, but at the same time, they don't want to look like traders.
And so, yeah, it was really...
I didn't like that.
You know, when I think of my countrymen, I always think, maybe it's pretentious, but when I get on a bus, sometimes I think I'm the only person having my ideas inside this bus, on this bus.
And for example, a few years ago, I was commuting to a city actually one hour from Paris.
When I was reading Madison Grant or Lothrop Stoddard on the train, I knew that I was the only person reading that.
So it was even more surreal for me to imagine that from a point of view that is different from most people, actually, just because I don't have the same outlook.
So, yeah, actually, in a way, I was...
I'm glad I didn't have to have too much social interactions today because it's actually, you know, it's really annoyed me after Charlie Hebdo, you know, this kind of false emotion.
But this time I have the feeling it's a bit different and it's, I think, related to the nature of the victims.
So I'm not saying that last time they deserved what happened to them, but at the very least they had it coming.
They knew that it could happen and actually they stood by it.
And that's why even if they were people who were not on the same side as us...
They could be respected for that reason.
Yeah, they did show, they showed a certain kind of bravery and they stood by their convictions, courage of their convictions.
Much more than conservatives, by the way.
And this time it was, you know, just passers-by and, you know, people in restaurants or just listening to a concert.
So it touches people more and it's less symbolic, but much more, you know.
Well, I thought it was symbolic.
It fosters more anxiety.
I thought it was perhaps more symbolic.
And I was thinking about this when you think about the symbolism of violence.
And certainly the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9-11, that clearly had a message to it.
And it wasn't just that they hate our freedoms, but it was a symbol.
It was an attack on global capitalism, and it was an attack on the United States' overseas empire.
Basically, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were metaphors for those two things.
And then that had certain ramifications.
You could think about, you know, an attack in the London tube was also scary about, you know, around four or five years later, of being kind of this everyday thing that people take for granted, and then it became dangerous.
And that's, in a way, some of the most frightening thing you can imagine.
What I found interesting about this is that they were almost attacking Westerners who were being passive and entertained.
I was reminded, and again, I don't...
I'm certainly not trying to make light of what happened, but I think we should always just talk about these things seriously, and I think there's often a kind of artistic quality to terrorism, if that's the right word.
I mean, they want to send a message.
It's not simply about killing people.
It's about shocking people and sending a message.
It reminded me in a way of the scene from The Dark Knight Rises where Bane blows up a football match, American football this time.
And so it's a kind of amazing scene where this person is running back and kicked off, and the field is collapsing as he's running, and everyone there, it's like they're destroying the spectacle of...
of entertainment and, and maybe vulgarity, but also of community, you know, they're, they're attacking the hometown team and it was a deeply symbolic, uh, scene in that film.
And it seems like this was the same way they were attacking a rock concert.
They were attacking a, uh, although they, they more or less failed to do this.
They were attacking a football match, European football, They completely failed, actually.
They did.
That could have been the worst.
The stadium, I don't know if you have been there, but it's a very symbolic one because it's the one where France organized the World Cup in 1998 and the only time that France won, actually.
It was very, you know, for maybe six months, it was a kind of a national holiday because, of course, there was an ideological reason to that.
It was, we said...
There was a term, the phrase black-blanc-beur, which means basically black, white, and Arab.
And actually, the team was two-thirds white, so it was a lie, and there was only one Arab out of 22 players, but he was the best one, so it's Zidane, maybe the name rings a bell.
He's the one who scored the two first goals in the final against Brazil.
And so it was a symbolic one.
It was this stadium, which was a symbol of post-racial and post-cultural France that was attacked.
But the security system there, it's like an airport.
And so they didn't manage to do it.
And the difference between the Dark Knight Rises scene and this one, the main one is that...
In the movie, the mayor is actually killed in an explosion.
And this time, they managed to evacuate the president, who actually, I noted that in my piece, and I think it's really important.
You know, he was not threatened in any way, but he left the stadium.
And he's a commander-in-chief.
A real commander wouldn't do that.
I don't think the goal would have left, for example.
I know, I think that's a symbolism as well.
It probably wasn't his decision.
I'm sure at this point there's a protocol where he's effectively snatched.
But nevertheless, I think it's still symbolic that he was evacuated and he didn't stay there as a commander.
I think that is significant.
Was there any symbolism to the attack on the restaurant?
That one struck me as a little bit curious.
Actually, it's just because, you know, it's different in America.
You don't really, except maybe in Brooklyn, for that matter.
You know, these kind of big terraces.
Actually, the weather is very mild now.
It's like last weekend, it was like spring.
And it's very convenient because there's a climate conference upcoming.
So you have these big terraces in Paris where people are eating and drinking and so it's very easy first to kill many people just because you pass by with a scooter or a car and it's very easy to do that much more than in North America where restaurants are usually closed and you can't do that that easily.
But it's also symbolic because it's the Parisian way of life where you have all these hipsters or these bourgeois bohèmes who are eating lavishly until maybe 2 or 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.
And that's also what they were attacking.
And of course, the rock band, the rock concert.
It was actually a metal concert, wasn't it?
Actually, the band name refers to Middle, but then I'm not an expert, so I asked friends who are, and they say, no, it's more a rock band, even if the name is related to Middle.
And of course, most of the fans were white.
Another very symbolic thing, I'm sure the terrorists were aware of that.
And another symbolic thing is that when they stormed the place, the band was playing a song called Kiss the Devil.
You know, and that's why one of my first impressions when we started, you and I, you know, text messaging...
Is Videodrome, you know, the movie from the 80s where, you know, there's a kind of a sideration produced by ultraviolence, which also exists, of course, in A Clockwork Orange, where its violence is so shocking that it almost becomes funny, you know, when they...
When they beat this bum in the street at the very beginning of Clockwork Orange, it's horrible, but it's a very funny scene.
That's why I cracked some jokes, just because the sorority of it was almost funny in a kind of...
You know, manic way.
I think it's important.
I mean, obviously, it's good to strike a balance.
I think it's important to actually crack a few jokes.
I think that's how we get through these things.
I felt guilty this morning when I looked at my Facebook profile.
Oh, did I really post that?
You know, I made jokes about...
And of course, my feeling this morning was very different.
And then it was more anger and actually, you know, after emotion, you start questioning.
When your brain is well balanced, you start questioning why did it happen?
And of course, we know why it happened.
It's related to...
To our foreign policy and our immigration policy, which are related to each other.
Let's talk a little bit about that.
I think it is worth...
I was actually traveling myself while this happened.
I was actually in a hotel room this morning and I was watching CNN for the first time in quite some time.
I usually don't watch these things.
It seems like these channels flourish around emergencies where people are huddled around getting updated information.
One thing that I noticed, among other things, was that there was this just muddled, very confused nature of the foreign policy causes, or at least the way that foreign policy has informed things.
And they seemed to be almost blaming Assad or something, which is about as close to being...
I mean, sensitive also.
Yeah, it's stupid.
I don't want to sound like a liberal journalist talking about sensitivity, but every day in Syria, things like that happen.
And not because of Assad, but more in spite of Assad.
He protects his people and is blamed for that.
I'm really, this morning I was really angry about that too.
And Assad said that.
He said, France just lived what we've been living for five years now.
One thing I noticed, I even saw a tweet from this horrible woman named Anne-Marie Slaughter, who's, I believe the last time I paid attention to her was a while ago during the whole neocon wars.
I believe she was at Princeton at the time.
Despite her name, she's of a certain ethnicity.
But she was saying that...
She's Polish.
She was saying that...
She goes, Assad who created ISIS.
And I was just kind of thinking like, wow, that is about as close to the reverse as you can get.
But I think her interpretation effectively is that he radicalized moderate rebels who were trying to overthrow him by opposing rebels who were attempting to overthrow his regime, which I think is pretty understandable for just about everyone else on Earth.
But anyway, so he's kind of to blame.
It's almost like...
Imagining racism as the cause of black poverty and then saying things like, you know, white crime in Detroit is getting out of control.
It's just a weird interpretation of an interpretation.
And, you know, I don't know.
These people, they must be aware of it.
I don't know, maybe they're not aware of it.
I don't think so.
The greatest con men believe their own con.
No, really, because the French media, one of their very first reflexes was to actually say, of course, we shouldn't blame Muslims.
And not only the media, actually, the politicians, too.
So, you know, the corpses are still warm and they are already saying that, which is really, you know, there should be trials in a healthy country against that.
So they say that and then they are, you know, compiling all the reactions by right-wing or far-right, as they say, politicians, you know, against Islam or for immigration restrictions.
That was, you know, this morning they were already publishing articles like that.
I really think that...
You know, they think that when they say that, of course, it's Assad who is to blame and that this kind of event urges us to fight racism even more because it's the root cause of all that.
They really mean it, and that's why they...
They will have to be dealt with.
I won't say more, but they will have to be dealt with at some point.
Yeah, I agree.
I'm reminded of at least stories that I hear of Marxist intellectuals, both in the Soviet Union and in the West or in America, who at the very end of the regime were talking about, there are these residual capitalist elements within the Soviet sphere.
and that's the reason why it looks like it's failing.
It's this kind of, you know, we need to double down on socialism.
You know, it's just this very, I guess, a very predictable human mentality that when something is obviously failing, you double down Like in a relationship.
Yeah, like in a relationship, sadly.
It is kind of like the abused spouse, either male or female, who loves his or her partner even more after being drug through the mud.
Yeah, that is definitely what's happening.
Let's go into that, because I think there's a couple things happening.
I think this is different than Charlie Hebdo.
I think that was almost a...
There was an easy response to that, and that was, we need to embrace free speech.
And all these people, like Angela Merkel, who does not embrace free speech, she has actually imprisoned people for writing things that she feels should not be written, on effectively revisions of the Second World War.
Whether these are right or wrong, the fact is she imprisons people for writing things.
So the notion that Angela Merkel was going to march on behalf of free speech is grotesque.
With Jacob Zuma and Netanyahu.
Right.
Which was even more grotesque.
Yeah, right.
When you know their policies.
Yeah.
So that was the message.
And the establishment was very, very good at doing that.
I think it's going to be a little bit harder this time.
I think everyone is on edge.
No meme so far.
Yeah, that's true.
You don't have a Je suis Charlie or something like that.
It's not quite spontaneous because the media is...
Maybe not created these memes, but, you know, the candles.
But candles is universal, almost universal.
But this time it's more bottom-up.
I don't want to sound like a libertarian, but there's a healthy element in the fact that, you know, people on the basis are...
Taking over these kind of things and it's less like a colored revolution or something that is obviously manufactured to the masses.
It's more, you know, the masses were attacked yesterday evening and it's just that there's no response to their pain.
I mean, you know, Hollande said something like he said we are going to close the border.
And so I posted on Facebook, you know, a table with figures of legal immigration since the 90s.
And I said, OK, so the 200,000 immigrants coming each year are going to stop.
And you know, 200,000 immigrants in France is about the equivalent of 1 million in the US, which I believe is a figure.
Yes, it is.
Every year from Mexico and neighboring countries.
So this time, it's different because it's really harder for them to...
To manage it and the other thing also is that it's the second time this year and not only the second actually because there was a failed attack on the train between Holland and France last summer and there were also minor attacks with a few persons killed so it's harder and harder for them to say okay.
Let's not blame anyone and let's fight racism, which is the obvious enemy.
I mean, I think it's Lincoln who said that you can lie one time to a thousand persons and a thousand times to one person, but you can't lie a thousand times to a thousand persons.
And that's what they are attempting to do.
But it won't work.
And I think we should also mention the elections, which are upcoming, because it's very relevant to the issue.
Yeah, I'm just going to mention...
It seems like whenever these kinds of disasters occur, they often do benefit the establishment.
And also, I would also mention that whenever these occur, there are a lot of people who think, oh, it's a false flag.
I'm kind of doing an Alex Jones impression there.
When I was thinking about this, I've just looked on Infowars.
Alex Jones is almost disappointing me over the last few years.
He's become like a...
Conservative, basically.
And he doesn't do all that wild nonsense that used to be so entertaining.
It's kind of boring now.
He's just taking it anyway.
But Alex Jones, of yesteryear, I guarantee you would have declared that this was a false flag and it can't be believed and whatever.
And, okay, sure, that's a possibility.
Within five minutes.
Right.
That's possible.
That's within the realm of possibilities.
Okay.
But I don't think it was because I think this is actually, this is kind of getting out of hand.
I don't think you can easily just say this is why we support, you know, vulgar cartoonists and their free speech.
I think this kind of attack, particularly after everyone is on edge due to the refugee crisis and all these just images from that and just everything that's going on, I don't think this supports the establishment at all.
I think this is something very different.
And I think, I don't know, maybe I am being optimistic, so to speak.
But I don't, you know, which is it's difficult to be optimistic when you have something this terrible happen.
But nevertheless.
I don't think so.
I think this is actually going to be understood very differently from a lot of people.
I think it has a potential to be a real awakening.
I'll just kind of leave it at that.
I don't know how else it could be.
Because it's just...
It is like...
Yeah.
It doesn't fit any other script outside of, this just isn't going to work.
We can't do this.
We can't have these refugees.
We can't have these legal immigrants who are citizens.
It's just not going to work.
It's going to end in blood and tears.
And I don't know how you can interpret it in some other way.
I think for a lot of normal people, that's going to be the message.
Even if you have a lot of people doubling down.
And it does support the establishment, because the establishment gets to act tough.
Because I remember on CNN, you'll hear a lot of talk from even Hollande and Sarkozy who is supporting him from the right, so to speak, quote unquote, scare quotes.
But they'll say like, we will be ruthless.
I think that's probably true.
I think they're going to go after anyone involved really hard.
And so they can seem tough in a way.
But I don't think that's going to fully work.
I think this narrative is going to get out of hand with this one.
Yeah, I agree.
Actually, propaganda is just a branch of communication and marketing.
And there's a law of diminishing returns.
When you always broadcast the same ad, eventually you don't get any sales.
And it's the same thing here.
And they lack in imagination because their software, their intellectual and ideological software is just outdated.
You know, the mayor of Paris, the she-mare, or the maires, said that it was a diverse Paris that was attacked.
And when you look at the pictures, it's...
Okay, maybe there are a few black tokens.
There always is like in a sitcom, you know.
Maybe at the rock concert there was a black homosexual and an Arab lesbian.
Okay, granted.
But, you know, the propaganda doesn't work because it's just, you know, people have been hearing that and maybe to...
Maybe to balance what I've just said, it's true that people have a very short memory, especially today with all the solicitation from the media and the social media.
But still, of course, I love these interviews done by these libertarians who go to people and say, you know, and ask against whom did we fight in 1776, you know, in America.
And it's very funny.
Yeah, exactly.
And actually there was, you know, in 2012 there was...
A series of shootings in France with a Muslim again, shooting French soldiers and Jews, actually.
And, you know, after Charlie Hebdo, I asked a question on Facebook.
And my Facebook friends are most of the time right-wing or far-right.
And they are very politicized.
But I just asked the month and the year when it occurred.
And actually, many people had to look up the web to answer me.
And they were not representative of the people.
It's true that people tend to be amnesiac and propaganda works on them, but not every month.
Because now it's not going to stop, actually.
Because what was discovered yesterday is that...
One of the shooters was a so-called Syrian refugee.
So the millions that Merkel has just accepted, okay, most of them are not terrorists.
Nobody ever said that because, you know, the left is always attacking the right.
Oh, you say that.
No, nobody says that, not even the far right.
Nobody says that, but maybe out of the million.
It's very likely that there are maybe 1,000 and it's enough to really bring turmoil and strife to a whole continent, actually, especially with open borders.
It's another topic.
So I don't think the propaganda will work.
And why I wanted to bring the election is that next month there are regional elections.
And it's very likely that Marine Le Pen will win the northern region and Marion Maréchal Le Pen, sorry, her niece, is going to win the southeast.
It's very likely, actually.
And even in the other regions, they are going to win a lot of seats.
A lot of seats.
And, of course...
The establishment is very concerned about it and they have no real answer, not even the mainstream rights.
Because usually that was Sarkozy, you know, his role was to counter the far right with a few race bait jokes and that was it.
But it doesn't work again.
Propaganda doesn't work and the National Front is going to win regions.
And one of the first reactions this morning of a left-leaning newspaper was to say the worst thing that could happen is that it would give more regions to the National Front.
I'm sure now you're reminded of a book that was published the same day as the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
Submission by Michel Welbeck because it's exactly what happens.
Well, you know, as it happens, I sketched out a quick blog.
I'll post this the next day or so.
But as it happened, I just got the Kindle version.
So like a good Western decadent, I was on a plane with my iPad reading submission quite literally while the attacks were occurring.
So there's something going on.
But yeah, go ahead.
Actually, I would mention it's a very intriguing book.
It's not his best one.
It's not his best one, especially the style.
There's never really a style with Welbeck because his style is supposed to illustrate the emptiness of the West.
But it's a kind of style in itself, like Celine wrote.
Allegedly like a working class guy, but everybody who tried to imitate him failed.
So Welbeck has a style, but this time it was quite disappointing in that field.
But it was really the visionary aspect, because he wrote, and some people on the right, on the respectable right, said that it was nonsense.
The mainstream right would support a Muslim from the Muslim Brotherhood against Marine Le Pen.
But when you look at the actual reactions, when something important like what happened yesterday occurs, you see that Welbeck is completely spot on because their first reactions say, OK, no racism.
No xenophobia and, of course, no National Front.
They're really concerned about that.
For them, it's more important that the National Front doesn't win three or four regions instead of two than the 150 odd bodies that are rotting away in a morgue.
I mean, it's obvious between us to say that because we've been...
I'm used to it, but for many people, I think they're really, like Howard Bill, they're really gonna get mad on the election day.
And so before I stop speaking, you know, I've been very critical of this party.
I won't be able to vote because I'm still registered in Montreal and I didn't do the paperwork when I had to, so I will have to wait one more year to vote in Paris.
But my vote will be cancelled by the guy afflicted with Down syndrome, so I've never been a great fan of democracy.
I think this election, you know, I don't like this party and I don't like its leadership, especially since what, you know, she did to her own father and she expelled him, you know, from the party he founded.
He gave her everything and she thanked him by expelling him.
So I don't like them, but I think it's important this time that people vote for them.
Because this party is useless in itself, but it will send a message.
It's similar to Trump.
I think both you and I, again, Trump I think probably would be a better leader, but I think it is, his movement is a little, it's a backward looking movement, and I think also just this kind of over-promising of he's going to negotiate the West out of its nihilistic spiral is a bit much, but...
Nevertheless, I think it does send a message, and I think its symbolic value is, in Donald's words, huge.
So, yes, vote Trump.
Vote for Marine Le Pen.
That said, it's a kind of emergency measure that I agree with, but...
What oftentimes alternative rights writers or activists or speakers forget is that we are supposed to pull the politicians to our side.
And that doesn't mean we don't have to be supportive when they, like Orban, when he does something which is sound and right and good.
But if we are always clapping when they do...
Most of the time they say something that is supposedly good, it won't work and we just have to look at the far left, how they operate.
I mean, the Trotskyites, you can't imagine a smaller movement achieving such a big success.
You know, they managed to overturn many social democratic parties in Europe, especially in France, actually.
And in Britain, of course.
With maybe, you know, sometimes it was just 10 people in a room.
But they were so dedicated to pulling the center-left to the far-left that...
You know, they were always criticizing the left for not being left-wing enough.
And oftentimes on the right, you know, because we were mentioning game and sex relationships, but it's like, you know, right-wing people are like guys who say, oh, I don't care about this girl, but the minute, or the second rather.
When the girl calls them, you know, they will rush to their phone and say, it's you.
It's exactly the way they react.
You know, it's, oh, so in 2014, it was, oh, we don't care about elections.
You know, we are riding the tiger and, you know, going beyond the Kali Yuga and such things.
And then Trump appeared and...
Suddenly, elections matter and democracy is good, etc.
The same thing, of course, with the loud stockbroker I was mentioning in Britain and, of course, with Marine Le Pen in France.
But the result of that is that they are not pulling these politicians in the right direction.
It's less true for Trump, but for UKIP and Marine Le Pen, it's certainly the case.
They've been drifting leftward instead of rightward.
We have to be insanely critical because that's how you force people over to a side.
You're not really going to force them by clapping your hands and being, oh, good job.
I know you're trying hard.
You didn't achieve anything, but you're trying hard.
I give you the benefit of the doubt.
No, we're not going to get them that way.
You have to be attacking them.
So, I totally agree.
Even Orban, actually.
Oh, especially Orban.
I'm not talking about the conference, of course, but you know, there's a blog, you know, Ted Salis?
Oh, yeah, sure.
EGI is oftentimes very critical of the movement, sometimes a bit...
He's too critical sometimes.
But I'm glad he's doing it.
Because sometimes when you go overboard, you get something.
It's sometimes necessary.
And he nicknamed Orban Chicken Way Offense Orban or something like that because there were all these videos on Facebook of so-called migrants.
you know escalating the wire.
Eventually Orban managed to put a real border fence and now there are no entries in Hungary, illegal ones.
So, but it's also because, you know, the Hungarians have been Expecting something from him and not just speeches.
And that's why it worked.
Because I don't think...
Orban is less bad, obviously, than all the European politicians.
Oh, yeah.
But he looks a bit cynical to me and is a kind...
If no one had forced him...
He would have gone with the flow, like many other ones.
I think that's probably true.
And I think also he's just, in a way, kind of...
He's, in a way, a kind of tragic figure.
Like, he's caught in a system where he can't actually stand for Europe.
Because he's, unlike Javek, who's made totally insane statements and horrible statements, he's actually...
When you listen to what Orban says...
Ideologically, it's actually quite sound.
He'll say things like, what is Europe?
Does Europe even exist?
If we're going to be Europe, we must do this.
He seems to have a sense, it reminds me kind of of Donald Trump saying, is this a nation?
He asked that question in his immigration policy paper, which is, you know, these are all great things.
To even ask that question, he's asking the right question.
And that's half the battle.
He's not asking some little tactical thing.
Did they fill out all their paperwork correctly before entering this boundary space that is known as Europe on a map?
He didn't ask that question.
He asked a real question.
What is Europe?
Does it have a history and a meaning and a being?
So I think in terms of a lot of what he says, Victor Orban sounds quite sound to me.
We should have invited him to become who we are.
Explicitly.
We have a beer summit.
I will probably forgive the man.
I know he really wants that.
But anyway, I think he is clearly the best European politician.
There's not much competition.
We're talking about people who are...
Not only are they bad, they're like...
Even worse than I would imagine.
They've, like, drunk the poison of nihilism and they like it.
Like, you know, Angela Merkel.
But, so he is a lot better.
But I think he's kind of caught in a system where he can't really do anything.
I mean, the fact that he built a corridor into Germany, I think, just expresses this problem where it's kind of like, okay, I get it.
I understand.
You don't want your country that you are ruling.
Hypothetically, to be overrun, and therefore you create this corridor.
But in some ways, just the fact that he does that expresses the tragedy of the whole thing.
I would say, sometimes I'll say things like this to conservatives, and they'll be like, well, but don't you support him?
It's like they have to support.
It's like, you have to be on a team.
It's like, it's the Cowboys versus the Redskins.
We're Cowboys fans.
It's like, no.
It's not...
It's not what it is.
So, yeah, I get that a lot.
But, yeah, it's just, again, just to bring this back, because we're kind of on a digression, as we often get on.
Again, I think this event might actually be a terrible thing that gives birth to something good.
And that is, it seems like this is just going to wake up people.
It's not going to be okay.
You can't go to your discotheque and forget about it all.
You can't go to your rock concert.
You can't go watch mass...
And it's all going to be okay.
It's all, you know, this is going to work out.
It might seem bad now.
It's all going to work out.
You can't really think that.
I mean, I think you see this and you just, you grasp it.
No, this is not going to work out.
This is going to become terrible.
And we're now kind of drowning in entertainment and mindless spectacle.
But, you know, that's a kind of...
Calm before the storm of really serious racial and, to a degree, religious conflict.
But it's really a kind of racial and civilizational conflict, I think, more than anything.
It's not doctrinal.
It really is a sense of invaders wanting to tell people who's boss.
And I think most Westerners have gotten to a point where we don't, we all, like, there is no boss.
Like, we're just all, you know, we're all, everyone's the boss or no one is or something, you know, whatever kind of liberal fantasies we have.
But I think they're kind of used to that idea of telling someone who's boss, and sometimes they have to use spectacular violence to show that they're boss.
And so I think this is, you know, again, I think this kind of thing has the potential to really awaken people.
But, you know, many people on the far right, you know, they make fun of...
You know, I'm not accusing anyone.
It's more things that I see on the web and on the French web.
For this case, especially after Charlie Hebdo, you know, they made fun and I was part of it.
I made, you know, with a friend, with Photoshop, we made, "Je suis Charlie Mim" with, you know, the bears with hearts and with all the colors.
I forgot the name.
I forget the name, but...
Care Bears?
Yeah, the Care Bears.
I did this kind of thing and of course it was very funny to do that.
Popular reaction is quite healthy, actually.
And I've been pleasantly surprised.
And usually, you know, I'm on the short term, at least.
I'm pessimistic.
I'm more optimistic on the long run.
But even on the short run, you know, if you compare to the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, the reaction here now is much more healthy.
I mean...
Maybe it's just on Facebook or Twitter or just on the street for now, but people say ISIS is not both here.
And what happened after the Madrid bombing 11 years ago, they blamed first the Basques, which was really...
You know, it's even more stupid than blaming Assad, actually.
It's like if you were blaming, I don't know, I don't have an American, maybe Quebec, you know, blaming Quebec for, you know, it doesn't make sense.
So that was the first reaction of the elite.
And then they blamed the conservative government.
But the demonstrations were for peace.
Yeah, and I don't buy conspiracy theories for a very simple reason.
For 14 centuries, Islam didn't need Mossad and CIA and Bilderberg to invade Europe.
It's just in Islam's nature.
And actually, it's in every civilization's nature to be expensive.
I try to dominate others.
It's natural.
What's not natural is our elites' reaction to it.
So you don't need a kind of a Rothschild Illuminati shadow meeting to do that.
It's just Islam wants to...
Take over Europe, not only Spain and the parts that used to be Muslim, but all of it.
And all the shadow arrangements are just going to be consequences of that.
With politicians selling their countries and continents just for short-term gains, but it's a consequence.
It's not the moving factor here.
The moving factor is Islam's awakening that was prophesied by Lothrop Stoddard maybe one century ago, which has, of course, demographic and economic consequences.
So that's why it's a very primal conflict.
Maybe it will all fade away, but I don't think it will because there will be other attacks.
But I think on a very basic level, even simple people get that.
It's a primal and existential conflict and not just, okay, free Gaza and we'll leave you alone.
No, I'm not going to do that.
Even if we give them what they want in the Middle East.
Actually, they will ask more because it will wreak with weakness and they will sense it and try to get more of the bargain.
So I think people get it and maybe I will be proven wrong in the months to come.
Many experts in France have said that it's going to be like every month now.
Something like that.
I think there's a question.
I don't think...
Either you or I have an answer to this, but clearly there's a kind of coordination that's going on that is beyond my imagination previously.
To pull off attacks like this, you don't just call up people and say, let's go do this tomorrow or something.
This was highly coordinated.
There might have been a significance to Friday the 13th.
So, you know, it's planned well in advance, but this is highly coordinated.
There has to be logistics, there has to be someone in charge, and so on and so forth.
And so I kind of agree with Olan saying this is an act of war.
I mean, this might be something that does.
Every month there's going to be some new attack.
It is kind of questionable.
I mean, it gets back to this foreign policy question.
What is it?
Is it purely civilizational?
Is it kind of a way to teach you, you know, we're top dog here?
I don't think you can really explain it fully with foreign policy.
I think that's a necessary...
No, it's just a part of it.
Yeah, it's a necessary but insufficient.
Exactly.
You know, or it might even be a catalyst and not a cause.
But, you know, anyway, I don't want to get into the weeds of that.
It's more the justification.
Yeah, it might be a justification.
They don't bring Palestine that much now because they've never really cared about it, actually.
If they had cared about it.
And I know when I say such things that people are going to yell Zionists.
But, you know, the neighboring Arab countries have done everything they could to leave Palestinians in misery.
And actually, Europe and America help Palestinians more than the Arab countries, which is quite surprising, to say the least.
So they are not going to bring this case that much.
And it's more, you know, like an old left.
topic, Palestine.
It's more about the more recent Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and Libya wars.
It's a mere justification because at first they were helped by the West and we haven't mentioned that and we should.
Most of the guys who come to the West to do these things have been armed and funded Oh, absolutely.
And so, it's a mere justification to make it more acceptable, but...
You know, people less and less bait.
You know, when there was two years and a half ago in London, these British soldiers, soldiers that was beheaded by two Nigerian converts, they said, you know, in front of smartphones, things like, leave our country and you will be left alone.
Maybe that could work a few years ago, but now that you have hundreds of people who are shot like chicken in the street, I don't think, you know, this justification will fade and they're just going to say, okay, we just want to dominate you.
And ISIS is more honest about it than previous Muslim groups, actually.
Because there was still Marxist rhetorics, maybe not in Al-Qaeda, but in all the former, you know, Hamas and Hezbollah and all these movements.
You know, there was a kind of anti-colonial and maybe egalitarian on the world level.
That doesn't exist now.
I mean, ISIS trade slaves, they don't even pretend they care about equality and human rights.
They just say, okay, we are going to apply the Sharia law and that's it.
And in a way, I prefer that because it's much easier to show people what they really are than...
You know, the Palestine movement was more able to tap in Western sensibilities, like, you know, pictures of children.
It still exists today, of course, but when you see images of ISIS, it's more, okay, we are going to take your wives and trade them like slaves and treat them like...
comebacks so it's more honest and it's going to be more easy to counter it I agree.
I think we need a different establishment and a different elite to counter it.
But, Romain, let's put a bookmark in this.
I think we could probably go for another hour, but let's just save it.
Actually, why don't we...
Actually, maybe revisit this soon.
Because the thing is, I'm going to work and edit this really quickly and get it up.