Long-time readers will remember Philippe de Villiers, an old-school conservative French entrepreneur, politician and novelist who comments frequently on political issues. In the following television interview, Mr. De Villiers discusses populism, Viktor Orbán, Emmanuel Macron, and the current crisis in Europe.
Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | Are you joining, Monsieur de Villiers, the camp of those whom Emmanuel Macron | |
| 00:03 | designates “populists lepers”? —I think that he is mistaken concerning our time period. | |
| 00:12 | I think that the old world, it’s him. | |
| 00:16 | Oh, you really became very tough, there, against Emmanuel Macron. —No, no, there, | |
| 00:20 | what he just said, and I was told that he said yesterday: | |
| 00:24 | “Caution: nationalism! It’s coming back again!” | |
| 00:28 | Wait, it’s very serious, to say that people like me | |
| 00:32 | who voted ‘no’ to Maastricht, people who were saying | |
| 00:36 | for the last thirty years: “Careful, Europe will fall apart, | |
| 00:40 | if you continue, if you create an anti-democratic Europe, | |
| 00:44 | if you remove sovereignty, countries, borders, it will come back | |
| 00:48 | and bite you!” Voilà. And what is going on? Europe is in the process | |
| 00:53 | of falling apart. And they attack Orbán. What do they accuse Orbán of? | |
| 00:57 | Defending the Christian roots of Europe, wanting the family made up of | |
| 01:01 | a father and a mother, and wanting to fight | |
| 01:05 | illegal immigration. I researched Orbán. | |
| 01:09 | There wasn’t an anti-Semitic attack in Hungary. Not a single one! And Jews are staying in Hungary. | |
| 01:14 | It’s not like Seine-Saint Denis [enriched Paris suburb]! So therefore we have fired | |
| 01:18 | our ambassador, because he told the truth [about Orbán not being a Nazi], and this Magyaro-phobe | |
| 01:21 | seems extremely dangerous to me. The “populist leprosy”, | |
| 01:25 | well, the populists, I’ll give you the definition of populists: | |
| 01:30 | “Populism is the cry of distress of peoples who don’t want to die.” | |
| 01:34 | ’Populist’ is beautiful! I am a populist, | |
| 01:38 | so, therefore, if it’s leprosy, then I’m a leper. | |
| 01:42 | In the Middle Ages lepers had a rattle to warn: ‘I have pustules and I’m not being treated.’ | |
| 01:46 | And I find myself normal, though, and what I don’t understand, | |
| 01:50 | is when he [Macron] came to Puy-du-Fou, when we had this conversation, he told me: “Europe isn’t | |
| 01:53 | doing well at all.” —So he didn’t see you as a leper at that point? —Not at all. He needed me. | |
| 01:58 | So I’m not very happy about that, because I’m telling myself: Well, where is he? | |
| 02:02 | What does he really think? Isn’t it marketing, all that? |
Europe will never fall apart.
The EU on the other hand is a different matter.
Europe has never been united. If it hadn’t been for its divisions and animosity, the young U.S. would never have been able to grab the Louisiana Purchase from France, which needed the money to launch Napoleon against Britain again. Never mind that France had promised Spain first dibs on buying it back when Spain sold that area to the French initially.
Not that Europe is any more acrimonious than the several “United” States have been in playing their own version of King of the Hill.
At any rate, Europe has “fallen apart” repeatedly over the eons it has existed as a continent.