In the following interview Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National in France, talks about the new Italian government, Interior Minister Matteo Salvino, and the dictatorial methods of the European Union.
This interview was conducted by an Italian TV outfit. Ms. Le Pen responded to the questions in French, but her answers were dubbed in Italian. Many thanks to FouseSquawk for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Note: A translation error has been included in the subtitles of the video (at 0:12), but it has been corrected in the transcript.
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | First part | |
| 00:03 | Have you talked on the phone recently with Matteo Salvini? —Yes. | |
| 00:06 | I talked with him after the results of the elections. | |
| 00:09 | I congratulated him on the excellent result, | |
| 00:12 | for the fact that he is more and more winning the trust of the Italian people. | |
| 00:15 | I wish him good luck for the negotiations that are in progress | |
| 00:18 | I hope they will go better. —If you were in Salvini’s position, | |
| 00:22 | would you leave the coalition with Berlusconi? | |
| 00:25 | I think that Matteo Salvini, as I know him, is a man of honor who keeps his word. | |
| 00:31 | He has joined with a political, electoral coalition, | |
| 00:34 | and today he respects that coalition, but if Berlusconi | |
| 00:38 | turns out to be an obstacle for the coalition, | |
| 00:41 | and if he were to decide to take a step back, | |
| 00:44 | then Salvini would have his hands free. A Europe of cooperation | |
| 00:48 | will gain from the victories of people like Orbán in Hungary, | |
| 00:51 | Strache in Austria and Salvini in Italy, | |
| 00:54 | and the growth of movements that refuse to live under the anti-democratic failure | |
| 00:58 | that is the European Union. We want to decide for ourselves. | |
| 01:02 | We no longer want the non-elected technocrats | |
| 01:06 | to impose upon us a number of immigrants to accept, | |
| 01:09 | or free trade agreements that ruin our economy. | |
| 01:12 | Macron and Merkel are on the wrong side of history. | |
| 01:16 | The history of the world is built on nations that want to preserve their own identity, | |
| 01:20 | that want a force of intelligent protectionism, | |
| 01:23 | that no longer want savage globalization. | |
| 01:26 | The French president Macron has talked about a European civil war. | |
| 01:30 | What do you think? When you arrive at the point of such arguments, | |
| 01:36 | it means all the other [arguments] have been exhausted. | |
| 01:39 | One more time, [they] throw in the specter of war and play on the word. | |
| 01:43 | Why do we have to make war on each other? Why would I have to make war on Matteo Salvini? | |
| 01:49 | Why would our nations have to make war on each other? It is really the European Union that is | |
| 01:53 | germinating the seeds of war and [unintelligible] violence, condemning and threatening the people | |
| 01:58 | who don’t vote as they would like. |
The phrase at 01:53 marked as [unintelligible] is “fa sfoggia”. Google translates it as “give vent to”. Other literal translations would be “wave about”, “make a show of” or demonstrate”. My Italian contact suggests a good colloquial translation for the line in question could be “germinating the seeds of war and raising the spectre of violence, condemning and threatening the people”.
So Macron is talking about civil war is he? I didn’t know. Good, that makes a lot of us though for different reasons and citing different causes. Things will have to come to a head one way or another before they get better.
“Macron and Merkel are on the wrong side of history” says Marine Le Pen. She might have added Rutte, May, and that ridiculous dummy who is PM in Sweden. And the PMs of Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
Somewhat, but only somewhat, off topic: maybe the Baron hasn’t seen this, but Southwark Cathedral is celebrating the first anniversary of the London Bridge jihad massacre thusly:
“Later in the day, Southwark Cathedral will host its second Grand Iftar which, this year, will also mark the anniversary of the London Bridge attacks [*] and will bring all communities together to celebrate Ramadan, to promote resilience and to share the common values of hope, peace and unity and celebrate the diversity of those who live and work in the Bankside area.”
*Attacks by whom upon whom? I forget what happened a year ago on London Bridge: was it Sikhs attacking Jews? Or vice versa? Hindus attacking Buddhists? Or vice versa? White “Neo-Nazis” attacking Blacks? Or vice versa? Because all six of the forenamed groups attack each and all of the other five groups so often, in every Western country, I get weary of trying to remember each and every instance. Oh, now I remember! It was some mentally ill people, “Asians” by ethnic origin I recall them being described as (and thinking at the time: “Those damned Chinese are at it yet again! It’s a good thing for that the mentally healthy Chinese usually pursue careers in medicine, accountancy, IT, retail and hospitality”), randomly attacking other people. Religion was not a factor in any way, as I recall every media outlet, the Mayor of London and Great Britain’s Prime Minister assuring me.
Good grief! Common values of hope, peace and unity! Does the PR guy for Southwark Cathedral really believe this guff? Well, we all know that Islam has a very specific notion of how the term “peace” is used: there will be peace when the Dar al Harb is conquered and the world is Dar al Islam. And that is also their hope. Unity? Jeeper creepers there isn’t any unity even within Islam. The student cohort at Hurstville Boys High School in Sydney, Australia, is divided into strict and deeply hostile Sunni and Shi’ite factions a teacher there assures me. In the mid-1970’s, the presence at that high school of a single Indian or Chinese student amongst its student body of the descendants of (or actual) Britons, the descendants of the Irish and a few Italians, Greeks and Maltese would have been a novelty.
Britain’s Islamic community must be laughing all the way to their local welfare office when they go there to collect their ‘Jihad Seekers Allowance’ (copyright Anjem Choudary), thinking:
“This is unbelievable! We’ve got one of us as Mayor of London, one of us as Home Secretary [the first time a Muslim has held one of the four “Great Offices of State”, the other three being Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer] and these IDIOT dhimmis are now CELEBRATING one of our murderous attacks upon them!? What is wrong with these people? They not only allowed Sayid Javid to be sworn into office on the Koran in Westminster, they forbade the infidel official [who handed all the other Cabinet members the Bible] from taking the Koran from the table and handing it to Javid, in deference to our belief that infidels touching a Koran defiles it, and instead arranged it so that Javid reached over and picked it up himself!
My own opinion is that the plan was, prior to November 2016, to integrate NATO troops in support of the EU, and to cook up some incident in Hungary to give an excuse for an actual military invasion by NATO troops. Trump is not a reliable ally of the EU dictators, and cannot be counted on to approve this use of troops.
Bill Clinton initiated the use of massive force in Bosnia and Kosovo against Serbia, with the strong support of the same neocon fascists now supporting continued US military presence in every sinkhole region in the ME and Africa. Hillary would have been a reliable ally of military force, her natural inclinations cemented by the implied promise of more billions donated to the Clinton Foundation and to trusts with more direct financial links to the Clintons.
The window of opportunity is open, but precarious. Instead of sucking up to NATO to tweak the Russian bear, the small countries of Europe should develop the skill of learning to live with a very dangerous, but very clumsy and inefficient neighbor, and how to make it unprofitable to actually invade them.