Florian Philippot, formerly the #2 leader of the Front National, is the founder and leader of the French party The Patriots. In the following television interview he discusses the Yellow Vests, President Emmanuel Macron, and the need to get France out of the European Union.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00 In order to talk about Act 20 of the Yellow Vests movement, we are hosting in this studio

00:04 Florian Philippot, an MEP and the president of the party The Patriots.

00:08 Good day, Florian Philippot. —Good evening. —Thank you for being with us

00:12 in this studio. Act 20 of the Yellow Vests, which took place today everywhere in France

00:16 calmly at the beginning, in Paris there were a couple of clashes

00:20 at the [unintelligible] late afternoon. Clashes also in Avignon

00:24 and in Bordeaux. What is the assessment of this 20th Act of the Yellow Vests movement?

00:28 I think that the first assessment is that it’s the number 20. This should already alarm you.

00:32 Well, I hope that one day it will alarm the Macronist power, which sees

00:36 tens of thousands — probably even more, for that matter — of French people, who mobilize

00:41 every Saturday and who [Macron & co.] bring [to them] no answers whatsoever.

00:45 Neither a social [answer] nor a democratic one, which is rather extraordinary.

00:49 We ask ourselves what will have to be done, but we will have to shake the coconut palm.

00:53 And I think that it will be done now in a political way, more precisely during the

00:56 European elections, when we’ll have to signal the revolt against Macron, but it’s not enough.

01:01 It’s the oligarchic, financial banking system behind Macron that we have to revolt against,

01:05 and which is clearly using the EU as an armed political arm. You know that

01:09 The Patriots are for France leaving the EU, because we are consequent and logical till the end.

01:13 And I salute those protesters; I’m always amazed to see pictures

01:17 of the logistics, the forbidden places,

01:21 forbidden towns, huge police resources, security checks;

01:25 I think that in Paris there were 11,900 security checks announced. 11,900 security checks!

01:30 In the Paris area? —Yes! Against allegedly 400 protesters in Paris!

01:34 Well. There were many more than 400 protesters. This is ridiculous.

01:38 33,700 protesters — in all of France — according to the Inferior…, I mean: Interior Ministry.

01:42 Yes, the INFERIOR Ministry, I think that it was a adequate slip of the tongue. Meaning that you always

01:46 have to give numbers INFERIOR to the reality. I think there were more than 100,000 according to

01:50 the Police Union. But there, the French people aren’t buying it anyway. See, I was at the rally

01:54 yesterday with Nigel Farage: our friend, our ally, the Brexit hero.

01:58 Nigel Farage, we were with Mireille d’Ornano, MEP for The Patriots, in London. There was a big rally.

02:03 There were tens of thousands of people in front of Parliament. There were police —

02:07 it’s normal, the security — but there was no atmosphere that was created now,

02:11 here in France for many years now, meaning a sort of a police state, where

02:15 you are under the impression that you cannot move any more, breathe any more, you cannot

02:19 do anything any more. —Don’t you think that, precisely, those police mean you were talking about

02:23 were able to help avoid that apocalyptic day we’re afraid of?

02:27 Well, yes, I saw that in Bordeaux.

02:32 The mayor was telling people: stay at home, curfew; merchants were supposed to

02:36 close the curtains, well… all that. We are under impression that

02:40 the government is ALMOST waiting for something to go wrong.

02:44 They stir up fears in order to discredit the Yellow Vests and their cause and

02:48 their demands to raise wages, pensions, the demands of RIC — the Referendum

02:52 by Citizen Initiative. I’m not afraid of the French people. Yes, there are professional vandals.

02:56 Yes, there are Black Blocks. We know them. They have their files, they are… but they

03:00 are rarely charged, because they serve the cause of the government, and they serve their

03:04 communication. —You have talked about the demands of the Yellow Vests. The only answer,

03:09 for now, from the government, was to organize that Big National Debate, which was supposed to end

03:13 in mid-March, which has played a little overtime, now at the end of the month.

03:17 If there were conclusions reached by this big national debate, what would they be,

03:21 in your opinion? —A huge communication operation. It allowed Mr. Macron

03:25 to make his campaign, and En Marche [Macron’s party] can have a free campaign with free TV time:

03:29 given [to them] and paid for by the taxpayer, rather than being paid for

03:33 by his campaign, as is normally the case, according to the electoral rules. So we are here

03:37 in a sort of democratic usurpation, which will bring nothing,

03:41 absolutely nothing; which tired everybody at the end,

03:46 and the communication became increasingly cynical, since

03:50 I saw that Mr. Macron was now debating eight-year-old children. All right. Listen:

03:54 I thought that we used to see in some dictatorships or regimes,

03:58 where they wanted to present us the Father of the Nation, the Gentle Father of the People,

04:02 but no, we manage that in France as well in a so-called democracy

04:06 and so-called republic. No: the true answer, you know, is to give the power back to the people.

04:11 Either by the dissolution of the National Assembly — but that’s not sufficient — but also

04:14 by a referendum and by creating the Referendum by Citizen Initiative. And all that

04:18 will be efficient, if we aren’t any more under the yoke, or a stranglehold called

04:22 the European Union, and then we really may have this possibility of regaining

04:26 our freedom, the independence of the people, meaning to take France out