It's something else when a former member of the equivalent of the Supreme Court of France (technically, the Conseil constitutionnel) argues that the French government has, for all intents and purposes, fallen and that the only thing that stands between France and authoritarian rule is the freedom of speech that remains on X. 

Noëlle Lenoir was the first woman (back when there was a real definition) appointed to the Constitutional Court, and in an interview with Michael Shellenberger, she pulled no punches about France's sorry state, the government's paralysis, and the dangers to the constitutional order and democratic rule. 

We no longer have a government. [President Emmanuel] Macron is totally disconnected and, in my view, afraid. He is afraid because he wants to remain in office until the very end. He wants another life, and he has already said he wants to come back in five years and run again, which is not forbidden. He does not know what to do.

He spoke twice, and both times it was a disaster. The first time was when these riots began, with so-called young people from the schools and universities. In fact, they were militants of the far left, and also immigrants. As you may know, official statistics show that 34% of immigrants come to France to study at university. Then 25% come to join their families, which is called family reunification (le regroupement familial). Then around 15% are supposed to come to work. So you can imagine that there is an overrepresentation of young people who are supposed to be at university but do nothing. They are there because they want to leave their country.

Macron spoke at the very beginning, not on October 17 but two or three days before, when the riots started with young students, Palestine militants, and Palestinian flags. He asked the police to show empathy with the demonstrators. For the police who were beaten and attacked, with around one thousand of them wounded, the fact that he asked them to show sympathy with these young people, some of whom are not young at all, was felt by all the security forces in France as an insult. I don’t think anyone still supports Macron and the government.

It's striking how Lenoir says the quiet parts out loud: there is a growing divide between the French state and the French political leaders, society is split between French elites, ordinary French people, the Black Bloc, and the immigrants, and the political leaders are telling the police and security services to go easy on the very people destroying France. 

And that's what we see with our eyes. The police are being held back and victimized; the Black Bloc and migrants have run riot, and the political system is paralyzed, with ordinary French people in the middle. 

Much of the problem is that the state itself, in addition to the political class, has been infiltrated by the left; in other words, there is a Deep State that works against the French people. 

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He just said, “I want the judges to be very tough.” But as you know, in France a large part of the judiciary is very politicized on the far left. They are organized in trade unions. One of the main judges’ unions, the Magistrates’ Union (Le Syndicat de la Magistrature), published a guide years ago, revised and republished in 2024, in which they explain to demonstrators how to escape from the police and how to make it harder for the police to prevent them from stealing, looting, and rioting. It is absolutely amazing.

So when Macron says, “I want the judges to be very tough and to inflict very severe sanctions on the rioters, the looters, all those who attacked the police,” it is null and void, because he has never said anything against this union, and neither has the hierarchy of the judiciary itself. In my view, this union is a political party. They are militants, and they should not exist.

In that speech, he also said he doesn't understand. He said, “How is it possible for these people to do what they have done? How is it possible? I do not understand. There is no reason.” Can you imagine? He is the head of state, and he does not understand. And he pretended, which I thought was very mean, that the intelligence services did not sufficiently anticipate the riots. I can assure you, and I am not that well informed, that I was not at all surprised by what is happening, because it is not finished at all.

The political leaders attack the security services, the judiciary attacks both the leaders and the organs of the state, and the result is that enemies of France are the inmates running the asylum. 

The amazing thing is that the French political elite is scared to death of Marine Le Pen, while the left political party most associated with the riots is the communist LFI, which explicitly calls for an insurrection. It's the same dynamic as we see here, where the establishment sees center-right Republicans as the enemy, and tolerates or even celebrates actual communists who openly talk of revolution. 

LFI, France Unbowed (La France Insoumise), Mélenchon’s party. They wrote many papers, and even a book in 2007, saying, “We need an insurrection.” They want to end the Fifth Republic. They are revolutionaries. They are Trotskyists, definitely Trotskyists, and some of them have said quite often that you do not need a majority to gain power. You can conquer power even with a minority of votes. They are not interested in elections. They want to seize power through an insurrection, which is what is happening.

Because the powers that be fear the right, they work hard to suppress information about what is really going on. 

The situation on the ground is entirely a result of the transnationalist policies that are failing, and it's undeniable that it is the right that has been warning about this for years. They simply cannot admit that Le Pen was right, so they suppress the truth. 

Michael: How important has X been as a source of news about the riots and other information for French people? Has it become more important or less important?

Noëlle: Very important. I was told, and I do not know if it is true, by a friend who called me this afternoon, a high-level man in the Paris region, in the state apparatus, and you must not say this, that rioters went inside people’s apartments in Paris and raped women. Nobody has said this publicly. I never saw that on the networks. What I saw was the looting, and the images of teachers, local officials, firefighters and police attacked violently by the rioters. Without X, we would not have a democracy. Without X or another social network, I think we would not have a real democracy. In the case law of France’s Constitutional Council (Conseil constitutionnel), it says that freedom of speech and expression and freedom of communication are, I quote, “a condition of democracy.” There is no democracy without access to information. That is what it means. Without X, we wouldn’t know so much. It is not because it is Elon Musk or anyone else, but I consider that it has become as important for France as it was for the Ukrainians. That is my view.

The riots are, in the end, not the greatest threat to the French people, as awful as they are. No insurrection will succeed because Macron will unleash the security services before he allows the state to fall. The state is his power base, and the security services are pretty badass in France if Macron unleashes them instead of allowing them to be beaten up by rioters. 

You can see that in today's action, which is far more restrained on the rioters' part, as 70,000 security-service folks flood the streets. 

The real long-term threat comes from within. As the political elite feel their power slipping away, they will tighten their grip on the levers of power. X will be an even bigger target. Speech will be more restricted. Legal attacks on Le Pen will increase. 

The messaging is already out there, calling Le Pen the real danger. As France's cultural heritage burns, the elites wring their hands, worried about the one person arguing that order must be restored. 

I am not a fan of Le Pen, not because she is wrong on migrants, but because she is economically left-wing and would expand the welfare state even more. 

As I have said before, what France and Europe as a whole need is their own version of Milei. I don't foresee any on the horizon.