Marine Le Pen blames "Decades of anarchic immigration" and decades of rioters walking away without paying for what they burned.
She calls Macron a "ghostly" president who "has lost all contact with reality."
She says the destruction came from an alliance of politicized vandals, antifa groups, and thugs from the suburbs. “Violence is not an opinion,” she says.
Her fix is simple. If you break it, you pay for it.
TRANSCRIPT
Marine Le Pen: Dear compatriots, Yesterday, you saw on your screens, our cities, our streets, our country, badly-run, badly-treated, destroyed.
You saw the destruction and looting perpetrated by an alliance between groups of politicised vandals and delinquents from the suburbs. You saw public buildings set on fire, shops looted, police stations attacked, the home of a mayor who was targeted.
You saw the most sacred symbols of our Republic profaned, mayors attacked, the statue of Marianne broken, the authority of the state defied. You saw these terrible images of public buildings set on fire, the magnificent city hall of Limoges on fire, and its countryside that collapsed.
They awaken in our national memory and our heart the painful memory of the Notre-Dame fire. These images hurt us, they hurt us. Because behind every destroyed building there is a part of our history, there are symbols, references, and buildings that, whatever our opinions, bring us together. Behind every looted shop, there is the work of entire lifetimes. Behind every attacked police officer, behind every public servant threatened, it is the Republic, itself that is affected.
And I want to say it with the greatest solemnity: France cannot, must not, will never get used to such scenes. Today, I call on all French people to dignity, and to republican restraint.
All those who serve the state, and at this time the police, the gendarmes, the firefighters, the mayors, must be assured of my support in their delicate and perilous function. I ask that the state provide them with the means and to guarantee them the necessary support for their mission.
What is at stake today goes beyond the question of public order. We live in a deep crisis of trust, of authority, which poses a threat to democracy. The situation must alert us. Our country is caught in a stalemate – or even hostage – between violence and impotence.
On the one hand, the forces of destruction banalize violence, encourage clashes, target police officers, institutions, and representatives of the state as enemies to be defeated.
This current mob, with its political branch, the LFI, and its armed branch, the Antifa groups, which are absurdly referring to the bloody South American revolution, or more seriously, to the conflict in the Middle East, would make us believe that violence has become a legitimate means of political expression and a solution to the problems of the French.
In reality, these social pyromaniacs aggravate the situation. On the contrary, by the brutal conflictuality and the abject intolerance that they stupidly hear spreading throughout society, they compound the problem.
As each of you knows, violence is not an opinion. Destruction is not a mode of expression. And chaos cannot be a project for France.
On the other hand, we have a Macronist power exhausted, disoriented, which now seems unable to do anything other than comment on its own impotence, its own decay, I would even say. We have a government that deplores events without being able to prevent them or control them, or even to manage them.
A minority and disqualified power, whose only concern is less to govern France than to cling to the last bits of its finishing power. We have an interior minister who is content with a satisfied and soft fatalism, who mechanically goes on TV, counting the destruction recorded in the country during the day. A president without credibility or authority, ghostly, and, until just now, mute, who in reality has lost all contact with reality and who lets the events be decided in his place.
These violent events are not born of nothing. They occur in a deleterious context that the government, itself created by never being heard and not even being able to listen to the concerns, the sufferings, the complaints of French people have turned into exasperation and sometimes even anger. This anger is often legitimate, as long as the crises occurred without any decision being made.
But let things be clear, very clear. There are millions of French people who are angry, but who do not break anything, do not plunder anything, do not burn anything. I firmly condemn the instrumentalization of this anger by political forces that encourage violence, as well as the recovery of this anger by scoundrels who sow chaos in the cities of France.
To govern, and even more to preside, is not to plunder, but to hear and understand in order to act. No power can be forgotten when living in a republic, a democracy. It is the people who are sovereign and it is necessary to know how to listen to the people and to accept its will. There is no other way, there is no other choice.
This principle is violated every day. Even recently, the President of the Constitutional Council, in violation of his rank, of his mission and of the ethics imposed by his function, believed he could express himself as a partisan and even as a Macronist in the electoral debate. He came to clamor on the platforms without anyone asking him anything, that the people would not decide by referendum.
This…was the latest provocation of a power dramatically cut off from the people. To these tragic events for the country, this situation and its image in the world, we owe decades of renouncement, decades of anarchic immigration, of which everyone sees the consequences today in all areas. Decades during which the idea that one could attack, burn, destroy without a response to these acts; that the vandals, often perfectly identified by the police, could disappear because behind them there would always be someone to pay – the taxpayer, that is – you.
Faced with this situation, I offer you a clear path, a path based on three principles.
The first principle I will apply is that of responsibility with the rule of the “Breaker-Payer”, the one who violates the law, the one who breaks must pay. The one who attacks public goods, commerce or representatives of the State must know that the Republic will not back down. Justice must be fast, effective and the penal and financial sanctions truly applied. The French people should expect the greatest firmness for the authors of crimes and crimes such as yesterday’s.
The second principle is the restoration of the republican order. There is no freedom without security. There is no justice without authority. And there is no Republic when fear wants to replace the legitimate law. Rioters disturb the democratic debate and threaten the freedom of citizens.
The third principle is the return of a state that listens, understands and decides. A power that respects the French people instead of despising them. A power that consults instead of suffocates. A power that decides instead of falling.
France is bigger than those who govern it. It is stronger than those who divide it. It is more resilient than those who want to destroy it.
In six months, the French will be able to choose another path, that of authority and restored security. That of sovereignty and respected democracy. That is what I propose to you.
It will be, no doubt for France, the path of hope. The path of rebirth.
Long live the Republic and long live France.