Macron: Censorship Is the Answer to Riots

Well, you have to hand it to the Europeans. They are nothing if not consistent. 

No matter the problem, the solution is always the same: bigger government, more concentrated power, and clamping down on speech are the only true path to political nirvana. 

There are no mirrors in government. The enemy is always external, and as they lose control, governments will become more authoritarian.

— Martin A. Armstrong (@ArmstrongEcon) October 26, 2026

Admittedly, Macron has a point that social media has been used to organize rioters and spread their message, but he misses the point by blaming the tools rather than the people who use them. The muscle behind the riots comes from already-identified sources, and a substantial fraction of the Brownshirts on the ground are migrants that Macron and the European elite have been importing, who collaborate with a radical, communist left that the French elite have treated as a legitimate opposition to placate. 

But rather than go after the people destroying things — given the scale of the destruction, the number of arrests is minuscule, and the punishments have been very modest — Macron is going for the brass ring of seizing control of the internet, a long-held dream of the globalists. 

His focus is on destroying Marine Le Pen and her populist movement, because they are a political threat, while the rioters only threaten the destruction of property and ruin the lives of the plebs. Who cares about them? Remember when they barred Le Pen from politics? They tried and failed to destroy her, and are now scared to death that she will win the next election, which is months away. 

One tell that Macron is not primarily worried about the organizing activity taking place in social media is that he and his government are coordinating a counter-propaganda campaign using the same social media tools that he is blaming the riots on. The message matters most, and they are countering the message that the political class's policies have been a disaster. 

🚨 EUROPE ON FIRE: France is back in CHAOS. Riot police hit Paris with tear gas and water cannons. More than 1,300 arrested. About 50 officers hurt this weekend alone. Harris Faulkner says officer injuries are now north of 700 since this started rocking France. It is spreading. Albania. Belgium. Barcelona with fires in the streets. In Rome, rioters waving Palestinian flags stormed the COLOSSEUM. Fox says those “student” protests in France were stacked with adult-led communist groups, labor unions, and far-left revolutionaries. President Trump said it straight: the people causing this hate Spain, France, and Italy, and they are not from there. He told Macron he was DESTROYING France by letting them in. Europe is learning the hard way. AMERICA FIRST.

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 26, 2026

🚨 EUROPE ON FIRE:

France is back in CHAOS. Riot police hit Paris with tear gas and water cannons. More than 1,300 arrested. About 50 officers hurt this weekend alone.

Harris Faulkner says officer injuries are now north of 700 since this started rocking France.

It is spreading. Albania. Belgium. Barcelona with fires in the streets. In Rome, rioters waving Palestinian flags stormed the COLOSSEUM.

Fox says those “student” protests in France were stacked with adult-led communist groups, labor unions, and far-left revolutionaries.

President Trump said it straight: the people causing this hate Spain, France, and Italy, and they are not from there. He told Macron he was DESTROYING France by letting them in.

Macron rightly points to the Far Left as the worst actors, but in that he is only half right. He needs to downplay the role that migrants and their descendants play. Macron can't be held responsible for what communists do, but he most certainly can be for the problems that migrants bring along with them. 

I did Nazi that coming

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) September 16, 2026

BREAKING NEWS: Chancellor Friedrich Merz wants to massively restrict social media and says: "Don't anyone come to me with free speech!" We must "still be able to protect citizens from false information."

Against men like Merz, we have the fundamental right to freedom of expression as a right of defense. His view of the citizens is dangerous and borders on a case of suspicion hostile to the constitution.

Narrative control is the most powerful tool at the disposal of the European elites, and they keep pushing for ever-greater crackdowns on speech. Kids in the United Kingdom are now getting arrested for insulting politicians; Germany's Chancellor sends the police after his opponents, and the European Union is fining X for allowing posts in America that offend the elite. 

Emmanuel Macron says American free speech is "the opposite of free speech." In his view, freedom only exists inside a "common framework" set by the state. He compared posting an insult online to hitting someone in the street. Those are different things, because one is speech and the other is violence. He wants people punished for posting "nonsense," with state-backed fact-checkers deciding what qualifies. He wants a verified identity behind every social media account. He has written to Ursula von der Leyen demanding the DSA be enforced "much faster, much more forcefully." https://t.co/hpzXKuQne3

— Reclaim The Net (@ReclaimTheNetHQ) October 4, 2026

Emmanuel Macron says American free speech is "the opposite of free speech." In his view, freedom only exists inside a "common framework" set by the state.

He compared posting an insult online to hitting someone in the street. Those are different things, because one is speech and the other is violence.

He wants people punished for posting "nonsense," with state-backed fact-checkers deciding what qualifies. He wants a verified identity behind every social media account. He has written to Ursula von der Leyen demanding the DSA be enforced "much faster, much more forcefully."

The joke that keeps popping up is that 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual, and there is more truth to that than you'd like. But that is only half the equation; the powerful's real goal is to recreate Brave New World, where people are anesthetized by wealth and pleasure and willing to give up their freedoms. 

It's more like "you will own nothing and be happy" as you live in 15-minute cities. They need speech control because people want to own things, and they aren't happy. It's the same path every left-wing movement goes down. 

I will grant that the revolt in the streets is not the populists standing up to the elites; it's the radical communists and the Muslims trying to bring down the government. The populists, though, are watching, and Macron is right: they are the bigger political threat because they want to preserve the old social contract and political order that once made Europe great. 

Marine Le Pen was already up in the polls, and Macron knows that his side is toast if the riots continue and the Narrative™ doesn't change. His solution is the same technocratic one that led to the riots in the first place: top-down rule by technocrats. 

It won't work. At best, the populists win; at worst, you get civil war. 

Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote. It's common sense, yet Democrats are spreading lies about the impact of such a measure. 

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