00:00:00
Speaker 1: 806, the 55KRC talk station. It's Tuesday.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: It's that time every Tuesday for the Inside Scoop from Breitbart News. That's B-R-E-I-T-B-A-R-T dot com. Bookmark it. Be glad you did. And joining us today, the return of Oliver Lane, who's the Breitbart News London Bureau Chief to talk about Marxists running amok all over Europe. Welcome back, Oliver Lane. It's a pleasure to have you back on the show.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: Oliver?
00:00:27
Speaker 2: Oliver?
00:00:29
Speaker 1: Hi, can you hear me?
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Now I can hear you. Oliver, good to have you back on the show.
00:00:33
Speaker 1: That was the perfect moment for the signal to drop. Yeah, I know.
00:00:38
Speaker 2: We've had challenges in the past, usually technologically related, Oliver, which leaves me in a lurch when I'm thinking I'm talking to somebody and I'm like, oh, hurry up and get a subject to talk about because your guest has disappeared. Glad you're there and glad you're here to talk about this. We start out in France. Well, it started out at least purportedly as a protest from students about the conditions in schools. And, uh, I, whether or not that's true, it was that whole thing seemed to have been co-opted. And now there's a whole coalition. You got the red green folks out there, which are the Marxist and the Islamist. You got students still there. You have the yellow vesters, which are the farmers. You've got your global warming fanatics that are out there. It seems to be this, this mixed bag, uh, alliance of convenience that's unfolded there. So France responded. The French government said, OK, OK, OK, I hear your protests to students out there. We're going to cap classes at 28 students and blah, blah, blah. We're going to offer all kinds of relief for these alleged claims about the school system. But that's not going to make this go away, is it, Oliver?
00:01:41
Speaker 1: No, indeed. And you've explained what's going on very succinctly there, which is that we had a organic protest movement, sure, months ago now, which was utterly co-opted by the left. And there's a really fascinating interview that was published in a French newspaper yesterday. with the former head of France's CIA equivalent. And this guy, always very interesting, and because he's now outside of the system, can really speak his mind and his diagnosis of what's going on, and importantly, why this is different to other riots in France, because I think as anybody watching what's going on here knows, Yes, they have riots in France quite a lot. They do it every year. That's kind of part of France's culture in a way, going back to the revolution of the 18th century. But it's different this time. And his, and I say, I think his view is one that's really worth listening to. which is that for the first time we have these disparate groups that you could say are on the left, certainly some of them are, and you have the standard left-wing students, you have the radicals, the black bloc, the antifa, if you like, these organised hard-left groups, Then you have the unassimilated migrant, large numbers of migrants who don't feel French, who don't feel connected to France. And actually, there's not a lot of common ground between these groups. I mean, what does a white middle class French leftist really have with an unassimilated, unemployed migrant group? So there's not a lot of common ground there, actually, other than perhaps a common hatred for the West and that sort of thing. But what's being said here is that actually, basically for the first time, these disparate groups that, as I say, don't have a great deal in common have managed to coordinate. And this is new. And this is why these riots, I mean, okay, they may or may not be more or less intense than other riots that have gone before. You could say, oh, well, these riots in 2020, these were bigger. The fact is this has a great deal of potential to get much worse. And there's a certain pattern that's emerged. And again, I find this is fascinating analysis from this former head of the French CIA homologue. And he says that every day they have one of their protest days. We had one on Saturday just gone. The Saturday before that, it kind of comes in waves. And he described it as being like, you remember those enormous Saturn V booster rockets that took man to space? The huge boosters that took the shuttle into space? And they worked on sort of stages. So like you'd have the first stage that would burn up and then it would get disconnected. It would fall back to earth. Then you'd have the next stage that would burn and so on and so on. So you have three stages and that would finally get you into space. And he compares it to this. So in the morning of a protest day, you have what you might call like the legitimate protesters, people who are out, they've got placards, they march up and down the street. They're not fighting with the police. They're there because they want change. You know, these might be in this case, The students, they go home at lunchtime. Then in the afternoon, running into evening, you move then into the professional protesters. This is your Antifa. This is your black bloc. They take over where the previous group left off. This is violence, clashing with police. These guys are hardcore left-wing radicals. They then give up when midnight rolls around and you have the third act, this third stage in the booster, where taking over from the Antifa or the black bloc radicals are the unassimilated migrants who are out, and they're basically just looting. This is rioting and looting. So you have this sort of three stage and every single one ratchets up the violence, ratchets up the intensity. So you have these three stages of protesters through the day. But guess what? There's only one stage of police. They are thoroughly out of energy by the end of the day, by the time you're rolling through into the next morning. And as it was this Saturday just gone, the French state put everything they had on the front line to avoid a repeat of the previous week. Every single police officer in the country was out. All leave cancelled. All other police duties put aside. The army deployed to hold rear echelon areas so they could have as many cops as they could on the front line. The problem is, once you've reached that maximum possible deployment, if the riots keep getting worse, you're out of options.
00:06:26
Speaker 2: Well, I guess one from the United States of America might point to an armed citizenry in the Second Amendment as maybe providing some support for the overwhelmed forces that are trying to keep the government alive and well. Absolutely. I had to interject that.
00:06:41
Speaker 1: No, no, we've had some reports on this at Breitbart News in recent days. On one hand, we had a report, I think it was on Friday, about French shopkeepers, Parisian shopkeepers, flocking to the city's handful of gun stores, to buy self-defense items. But of course, to own a firearm for the express intent of self-defense in most of Europe, certainly in the UK, is completely illegal. You will definitely go to jail for that. So what are they left to get? They're picking up pepper sprays, like defensive items like that, batons. A lot of this also is illegal, right? So they feel like the police are not necessarily going to be there for them. And I know... It's easy to look at the French and say, they're so passive, they're so reserved. The silent majority remains silent. They're not doing anything to stand up against these rioters. And again, this is, again, back to the words of this former director of the French CIA equivalent. He says, and again, I think this is a great point, don't be too disheartened when you see the French people continuing to rely on the police, even though the police aren't doing a great job. This shows enormous restraint on their behalves. And the moment the silent majority take up arms and start fighting back, you no longer have a state. The state the state monopoly on violence is broken. It's over. There is no longer a French government and the country is in a state of civil war, which I think we all want to avoid.
00:08:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think I agree with you completely on that one, Oliver Lane. But now there are those out there like you look at the the red coalition, the Marxist out there. They want to bring down the system. That is their goal. You know, you know, capitalism, evil. But you've this is they're living in socialism. I mean, isn't it Marx's theory that you have to work through a period of socialism before you can get to communism? Well, socialism has epically failed. So you either go back to what worked before, which was maybe unrestrained capitalism or at least regulated capitalism like we have in here in the United States, or you go full-on communism. This socialism clearly doesn't work. Look at France's finances. They gave the socialists everything they wanted. Retire at age 62, get a fat pension, you know, free this, free that, free health care, which really isn't. And they're underwater, and they have been for years and years. Oliver, you can't right this ship, can you? Absent draconian cuts, which would only make these riots situation worse, I would imagine.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: So what we've identified there is completely right, which is that France has one of the worst debt-to-GDP ratios of any country in the European Union. I think their national debt is about 110%, 120%. of GDP, which is well above what the European Union officially says it should be, which is about 66% or something. So we're well ahead. And I think it's the second or third worst after real basket cases like Greece. So France is in a lot of trouble. It's in hock to the bond markets because they borrowed so much money. And if they want to keep that show on the road, they have to keep borrowing money because their expenditure is greater than their tax receipts. I'm going to cite another contextual expert on this. This is where the real concern comes in. This is Professor David Betts. a professor of War in the Modern World at King's College London. And he is an academic studying civil wars, how civil wars happen, why they happen. And his... thesis, which is fascinating, is that we have this perception in the West that civil wars don't happen here. I mean, okay, the US had a civil war. England had a civil war. These were a very long time ago now. In the modern world, post-Second World War world, wealthy first world countries simply don't have them. This is a third world thing. And he looks at the reasons for this. And one of them is that as long as the state has money, it can keep the wheels on. Right. As long as you can keep buying off special interest groups, you can keep bribing people, you can keep that welfare flowing. That is provides just enough soporific money. Social safety that people aren't taking up arms as long as the welfare keeps coming. So if you look at these two facts we've introduced here, which is on one hand, as long as first world countries have enough money to bribe people into being quiet, everything will be okay. And on the other hand, France is broke. Add those two things together, where does that leave you?
00:11:26
Speaker 2: Chaos, violence in the street, a collapsing system. I mean, the only exacerbated the problem, I don't know what the hell the European Union was thinking with this open borders reality. I mean, France, at least you could argue, had a cultural identity. I have a good friend. Matter of fact, I'm having lunch with him today. He's in from France making a trip here. We're going to have lunch. He married a French citizen years and years ago, and he became a French citizen himself because he mastered the language. They insisted on that, along with knowing the history of France, the culture of France. It was a rigorous thing to become a French citizen, but there's part of the culture. That's the point of having this regulated immigration system. You bring a whole bunch of North African Islamists into that formerly identity-rich French culture, what do they expect to happen? Most notably in a system that is overwhelmed by debt and spending that can't be sustained within its own population. It's like they designed this to collapse.
00:12:24
Speaker 1: And it's also, I've always thought, reasonably ironic because in a world where actually all of our identities and all of our cultures are being slowly eroded as we sort of move towards a homogenous global single culture, I think it's a terribly sad thing because there are so many wonderful cultures on every continent of the world and this globe is richer and more interesting and more varied and more valuable for them. And as they're slowly eroded away, I think that's a great loss. But... the French are quite chauvinistic about their culture. And that's what you describe with your friend, who, as you say, was very rightly forced to become French. If you wanted to hold that French passport, you had to learn the language, you had to learn the culture. And the French are, as I say, quite chauvinistic about that. The irony, as I say, is they're almost running it at two speeds. On one hand, the French are very, very jealous of their culture. They hate speaking English. They love to like every other European. You go to any country in Europe, you find people who speak English anywhere. And even if you tried to speak to them in their own language, like, look, you know, thanks for trying. We appreciate it. But let's do this in English. You go to France. They want to speak French. They want to do their culture. They want to do the things they do. That's good. But at the same time, so that's the front door. The front door is bolted. It's armed against the world. They still speak the French language. They still have this French culture. But then the back door is wide open. So as they maintain this brave face to the world of this, as I say, this Gaul, this Gallic chauvinism, and I mean that in a good way. I'm not saying they're chauvinistic in a bad way. I admire that about them. But while they do it, the foundations are being eroded and the whole edifice is going to come crashing down around them.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: No question about it. And here I can only make the argument on the fly here that I would say that cultural identity is cloaked in freedom, the concept of freedom, the liberty to do what you want, free of government control, to pursue your own interests, to become successful. The entrepreneurial spirit is uniquely American, I would argue, and that is exactly what's being eroded here in our political system. And I would say exacerbated as well by this unchecked, unregulated flow of immigration that we only recently got on top of.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: Well, this is the point I repeatedly make, and I repeatedly make it because it's so important. America, please, God, even if you don't care about us Europeans, and I can't blame you for that, pay attention to what's happening here, because what's happening here, we are months and years ahead of you in the US. What the left does here is what the Democrats want to do to you there. President Trump said himself last week, the spires of Europe are burning, and we will not allow that to happen here. And I think that's too right.
00:15:05
Speaker 2: In bold, underline, exclamation point, Oliver Lane, the London Bureau Chief for Breitbart News. God bless you, sir. Appreciate the time you spent with my listeners and me today, and I'll look forward to having Breitbart on again next week. Keep up the great work, my friend.
Speaker 1: 806, the 55KRC talk station. It's Tuesday.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: It's that time every Tuesday for the Inside Scoop from Breitbart News. That's B-R-E-I-T-B-A-R-T dot com. Bookmark it. Be glad you did. And joining us today, the return of Oliver Lane, who's the Breitbart News London Bureau Chief to talk about Marxists running amok all over Europe. Welcome back, Oliver Lane. It's a pleasure to have you back on the show.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: Oliver?
00:00:27
Speaker 2: Oliver?
00:00:29
Speaker 1: Hi, can you hear me?
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Now I can hear you. Oliver, good to have you back on the show.
00:00:33
Speaker 1: That was the perfect moment for the signal to drop. Yeah, I know.
00:00:38
Speaker 2: We've had challenges in the past, usually technologically related, Oliver, which leaves me in a lurch when I'm thinking I'm talking to somebody and I'm like, oh, hurry up and get a subject to talk about because your guest has disappeared. Glad you're there and glad you're here to talk about this. We start out in France. Well, it started out at least purportedly as a protest from students about the conditions in schools. And, uh, I, whether or not that's true, it was that whole thing seemed to have been co-opted. And now there's a whole coalition. You got the red green folks out there, which are the Marxist and the Islamist. You got students still there. You have the yellow vesters, which are the farmers. You've got your global warming fanatics that are out there. It seems to be this, this mixed bag, uh, alliance of convenience that's unfolded there. So France responded. The French government said, OK, OK, OK, I hear your protests to students out there. We're going to cap classes at 28 students and blah, blah, blah. We're going to offer all kinds of relief for these alleged claims about the school system. But that's not going to make this go away, is it, Oliver?
00:01:41
Speaker 1: No, indeed. And you've explained what's going on very succinctly there, which is that we had a organic protest movement, sure, months ago now, which was utterly co-opted by the left. And there's a really fascinating interview that was published in a French newspaper yesterday. with the former head of France's CIA equivalent. And this guy, always very interesting, and because he's now outside of the system, can really speak his mind and his diagnosis of what's going on, and importantly, why this is different to other riots in France, because I think as anybody watching what's going on here knows, Yes, they have riots in France quite a lot. They do it every year. That's kind of part of France's culture in a way, going back to the revolution of the 18th century. But it's different this time. And his, and I say, I think his view is one that's really worth listening to. which is that for the first time we have these disparate groups that you could say are on the left, certainly some of them are, and you have the standard left-wing students, you have the radicals, the black bloc, the antifa, if you like, these organised hard-left groups, Then you have the unassimilated migrant, large numbers of migrants who don't feel French, who don't feel connected to France. And actually, there's not a lot of common ground between these groups. I mean, what does a white middle class French leftist really have with an unassimilated, unemployed migrant group? So there's not a lot of common ground there, actually, other than perhaps a common hatred for the West and that sort of thing. But what's being said here is that actually, basically for the first time, these disparate groups that, as I say, don't have a great deal in common have managed to coordinate. And this is new. And this is why these riots, I mean, okay, they may or may not be more or less intense than other riots that have gone before. You could say, oh, well, these riots in 2020, these were bigger. The fact is this has a great deal of potential to get much worse. And there's a certain pattern that's emerged. And again, I find this is fascinating analysis from this former head of the French CIA homologue. And he says that every day they have one of their protest days. We had one on Saturday just gone. The Saturday before that, it kind of comes in waves. And he described it as being like, you remember those enormous Saturn V booster rockets that took man to space? The huge boosters that took the shuttle into space? And they worked on sort of stages. So like you'd have the first stage that would burn up and then it would get disconnected. It would fall back to earth. Then you'd have the next stage that would burn and so on and so on. So you have three stages and that would finally get you into space. And he compares it to this. So in the morning of a protest day, you have what you might call like the legitimate protesters, people who are out, they've got placards, they march up and down the street. They're not fighting with the police. They're there because they want change. You know, these might be in this case, The students, they go home at lunchtime. Then in the afternoon, running into evening, you move then into the professional protesters. This is your Antifa. This is your black bloc. They take over where the previous group left off. This is violence, clashing with police. These guys are hardcore left-wing radicals. They then give up when midnight rolls around and you have the third act, this third stage in the booster, where taking over from the Antifa or the black bloc radicals are the unassimilated migrants who are out, and they're basically just looting. This is rioting and looting. So you have this sort of three stage and every single one ratchets up the violence, ratchets up the intensity. So you have these three stages of protesters through the day. But guess what? There's only one stage of police. They are thoroughly out of energy by the end of the day, by the time you're rolling through into the next morning. And as it was this Saturday just gone, the French state put everything they had on the front line to avoid a repeat of the previous week. Every single police officer in the country was out. All leave cancelled. All other police duties put aside. The army deployed to hold rear echelon areas so they could have as many cops as they could on the front line. The problem is, once you've reached that maximum possible deployment, if the riots keep getting worse, you're out of options.
00:06:26
Speaker 2: Well, I guess one from the United States of America might point to an armed citizenry in the Second Amendment as maybe providing some support for the overwhelmed forces that are trying to keep the government alive and well. Absolutely. I had to interject that.
00:06:41
Speaker 1: No, no, we've had some reports on this at Breitbart News in recent days. On one hand, we had a report, I think it was on Friday, about French shopkeepers, Parisian shopkeepers, flocking to the city's handful of gun stores, to buy self-defense items. But of course, to own a firearm for the express intent of self-defense in most of Europe, certainly in the UK, is completely illegal. You will definitely go to jail for that. So what are they left to get? They're picking up pepper sprays, like defensive items like that, batons. A lot of this also is illegal, right? So they feel like the police are not necessarily going to be there for them. And I know... It's easy to look at the French and say, they're so passive, they're so reserved. The silent majority remains silent. They're not doing anything to stand up against these rioters. And again, this is, again, back to the words of this former director of the French CIA equivalent. He says, and again, I think this is a great point, don't be too disheartened when you see the French people continuing to rely on the police, even though the police aren't doing a great job. This shows enormous restraint on their behalves. And the moment the silent majority take up arms and start fighting back, you no longer have a state. The state the state monopoly on violence is broken. It's over. There is no longer a French government and the country is in a state of civil war, which I think we all want to avoid.
00:08:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think I agree with you completely on that one, Oliver Lane. But now there are those out there like you look at the the red coalition, the Marxist out there. They want to bring down the system. That is their goal. You know, you know, capitalism, evil. But you've this is they're living in socialism. I mean, isn't it Marx's theory that you have to work through a period of socialism before you can get to communism? Well, socialism has epically failed. So you either go back to what worked before, which was maybe unrestrained capitalism or at least regulated capitalism like we have in here in the United States, or you go full-on communism. This socialism clearly doesn't work. Look at France's finances. They gave the socialists everything they wanted. Retire at age 62, get a fat pension, you know, free this, free that, free health care, which really isn't. And they're underwater, and they have been for years and years. Oliver, you can't right this ship, can you? Absent draconian cuts, which would only make these riots situation worse, I would imagine.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: So what we've identified there is completely right, which is that France has one of the worst debt-to-GDP ratios of any country in the European Union. I think their national debt is about 110%, 120%. of GDP, which is well above what the European Union officially says it should be, which is about 66% or something. So we're well ahead. And I think it's the second or third worst after real basket cases like Greece. So France is in a lot of trouble. It's in hock to the bond markets because they borrowed so much money. And if they want to keep that show on the road, they have to keep borrowing money because their expenditure is greater than their tax receipts. I'm going to cite another contextual expert on this. This is where the real concern comes in. This is Professor David Betts. a professor of War in the Modern World at King's College London. And he is an academic studying civil wars, how civil wars happen, why they happen. And his... thesis, which is fascinating, is that we have this perception in the West that civil wars don't happen here. I mean, okay, the US had a civil war. England had a civil war. These were a very long time ago now. In the modern world, post-Second World War world, wealthy first world countries simply don't have them. This is a third world thing. And he looks at the reasons for this. And one of them is that as long as the state has money, it can keep the wheels on. Right. As long as you can keep buying off special interest groups, you can keep bribing people, you can keep that welfare flowing. That is provides just enough soporific money. Social safety that people aren't taking up arms as long as the welfare keeps coming. So if you look at these two facts we've introduced here, which is on one hand, as long as first world countries have enough money to bribe people into being quiet, everything will be okay. And on the other hand, France is broke. Add those two things together, where does that leave you?
00:11:26
Speaker 2: Chaos, violence in the street, a collapsing system. I mean, the only exacerbated the problem, I don't know what the hell the European Union was thinking with this open borders reality. I mean, France, at least you could argue, had a cultural identity. I have a good friend. Matter of fact, I'm having lunch with him today. He's in from France making a trip here. We're going to have lunch. He married a French citizen years and years ago, and he became a French citizen himself because he mastered the language. They insisted on that, along with knowing the history of France, the culture of France. It was a rigorous thing to become a French citizen, but there's part of the culture. That's the point of having this regulated immigration system. You bring a whole bunch of North African Islamists into that formerly identity-rich French culture, what do they expect to happen? Most notably in a system that is overwhelmed by debt and spending that can't be sustained within its own population. It's like they designed this to collapse.
00:12:24
Speaker 1: And it's also, I've always thought, reasonably ironic because in a world where actually all of our identities and all of our cultures are being slowly eroded as we sort of move towards a homogenous global single culture, I think it's a terribly sad thing because there are so many wonderful cultures on every continent of the world and this globe is richer and more interesting and more varied and more valuable for them. And as they're slowly eroded away, I think that's a great loss. But... the French are quite chauvinistic about their culture. And that's what you describe with your friend, who, as you say, was very rightly forced to become French. If you wanted to hold that French passport, you had to learn the language, you had to learn the culture. And the French are, as I say, quite chauvinistic about that. The irony, as I say, is they're almost running it at two speeds. On one hand, the French are very, very jealous of their culture. They hate speaking English. They love to like every other European. You go to any country in Europe, you find people who speak English anywhere. And even if you tried to speak to them in their own language, like, look, you know, thanks for trying. We appreciate it. But let's do this in English. You go to France. They want to speak French. They want to do their culture. They want to do the things they do. That's good. But at the same time, so that's the front door. The front door is bolted. It's armed against the world. They still speak the French language. They still have this French culture. But then the back door is wide open. So as they maintain this brave face to the world of this, as I say, this Gaul, this Gallic chauvinism, and I mean that in a good way. I'm not saying they're chauvinistic in a bad way. I admire that about them. But while they do it, the foundations are being eroded and the whole edifice is going to come crashing down around them.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: No question about it. And here I can only make the argument on the fly here that I would say that cultural identity is cloaked in freedom, the concept of freedom, the liberty to do what you want, free of government control, to pursue your own interests, to become successful. The entrepreneurial spirit is uniquely American, I would argue, and that is exactly what's being eroded here in our political system. And I would say exacerbated as well by this unchecked, unregulated flow of immigration that we only recently got on top of.
00:14:38
Speaker 1: Well, this is the point I repeatedly make, and I repeatedly make it because it's so important. America, please, God, even if you don't care about us Europeans, and I can't blame you for that, pay attention to what's happening here, because what's happening here, we are months and years ahead of you in the US. What the left does here is what the Democrats want to do to you there. President Trump said himself last week, the spires of Europe are burning, and we will not allow that to happen here. And I think that's too right.
00:15:05
Speaker 2: In bold, underline, exclamation point, Oliver Lane, the London Bureau Chief for Breitbart News. God bless you, sir. Appreciate the time you spent with my listeners and me today, and I'll look forward to having Breitbart on again next week. Keep up the great work, my friend.
