In the video below, the ever-popular French commentator Eric Zemmour discusses the recent Italian elections and the decline of traditional democratic processes in the European Union.

When Mr. Zemmour objects to what he calls the “Rule of Law”, the phrase does not mean what we would normally expect, possibly due to the difficulty of finding an exact equivalent in English to the French version. He is talking about the hubris of judges, which is sometimes referred to as “judicial overreach”. “Rule by Judges” might be a meaningful equivalent.

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

Video transcript:

00:00 Let’s go back to the results of the

00:04 Italian election. For you they are proof that there’s no opposition,

00:08 or that there’s no longer opposition, between Eastern Europe, which is hostile

00:12 to immigration, and the more open Western Europe? —Listen, the elections are accumulating

00:16 and the results are always the same: Germany, Italy, Austria.

00:20 After Brexit, all those countries, their elections, are centered

00:24 on immigration, and the people have decided. In the same sense that the eastern leaders did.

00:29 In fact, in the European alliance we were being told that Europe was cut in two: East and West.

00:32 The Eastern societies have no ancient democratic traditions, so it’s for that reason

00:36 that they have such “populist” reaction, as we call it today.

00:40 And then the West, old societies that are democratic, multicultural, and so on.

00:44 All that was already digested in the West. No! The people in the West agree

00:48 with the Eastern leaders. The European reconciliation is here! Except that it’s

00:52 being done at the cost of the Western leaders and the EU leaders. —Because for you

00:57 the key today is the opposition between the people and the nations when they vote democratically,

01:01 and what you are calling “European Values”?

01:05 Well, it’s an inextricable problem:

01:09 since 1945 we have been haunted by the Hitlerian trauma.

01:13 So our Western countries — we can see it in the case of Germany, and also France and Italy —

01:17 created for themselves what we call “Western Values” or “Rule of Law Values”,

01:21 meaning that in reality every norm,

01:25 every political action, has to be supervised by a judge.

01:29 Now, it makes political action impossible, and in particular in the framework

01:33 of the migratory wave that we are undergoing now. —Why? —Well, simply because —

01:37 Let’s talk about Italy: we’ll be concrete. We say that Italy was abandoned by

01:41 Europe, and all those people are flooding her borders. No! She wasn’t abandoned.

01:45 She was prevented by European jurisprudence

01:49 from defending herself. It’s worse. It means that European jurisprudence,

01:54 in its decisions concerning Italy, precisely, forbade to Italians to

01:58 send the migrants back, forbade them to send them back collectively,

02:02 meaning that they have to be sent back one by one. It forced them to go and pick them [migrants] up

02:06 from the moment they were on the Mediterranean Sea, forced them

02:10 from the moment they were in the boats, to the great joy of the smugglers, in short:

02:14 European jurisprudence forbade Italy to stop that migratory wave.

02:18 You have to understand that it’s not the same thing. And why? Because it’s a philosophy.

02:22 It’s a philosophy of the “open society”, it’s a philosophy of the lack of borders

02:26 it’s a philosophy of disposable / interchangeable men, so men do not

02:30 have their roots, their culture, their ethnic group, their skin color, and so on…No!

02:34 They are consumers and producers. That’s all. —You mention the Rule of Law:

02:38 you don’t want to question what we classically call

02:42 the Rule of Law, meaning in fact, democratic rules? — No. It has nothing to do

02:46 It’s a… a… How to explain?… You are, you are…

02:50 You have been fooled by the dominant narrative since

02:54 1945: the Rule of Law and democracy have nothing to do with each other. Democracy

02:59 is the rule of the people, by the people for the people, all right?

03:03 The Rule of Law is a 19th-century theory, from Germany, which

03:07 makes… which — as I explained before — which spread after World War 2

03:11 in Europe, first in Germany, with the famous Habermast, the philosopher —

03:15 and then to all of Europe, which says that every political action has to be

03:18 controlled by a judge. What does it mean? On the one hand

03:21 we have democracy, the rule of the people; on the other hand

03:24 we have the Rule of Law, the rule of judges. They have nothing to do with each other.

03:27 Especially if the judges… — The judge decides based on principles, no? So we can consider

03:31 that they are superior to the democratic vote? —Ah, no. That, is NOT democracy.

03:35 This is called Judicial Aristocracy. The Judicial Oligarchy.

03:39 Democracy means that nothing is above the people. It doesn’t mean that there cannot be law.

03:43 You understand? It doesn’t mean that, but the rights are expressed by the law

03:48 which was voted for by the people’s representatives. And the judge —

03:52 even Montesquieu says it — is only the mouth of the law.

03:56 The Rule of Law is not the same thing. It’s the judge who decides, depending on

04:00 principles which he is interpreting by himself, based on vague texts of Human Rights Declarations,

04:04 with which he does whatever he wants, and he says: “Voilà, we have to do this or that.” No!

04:08 This isn’t democracy. It’s the Rule of Law. I think that this is going to be the true Gordian Knot

04:13 of the future; meaning that we will have to choose between democracy and the Rule of Law.