Marine Le Pen: Projev k národu: Naše země je sevřená v kleštích, mezi násilím a bezmocí 18.10.2026

French men and women, my dear compatriots, yesterday you saw with dismay on your screens our cities, our streets, and our country mistreated, abused, and ransacked. You saw destruction and looting perpetrated by an alliance between groups of politicized rioters and delinquents from the suburbs. You saw public buildings set on fire, businesses looted, police stations attacked, and the home of a prefect targeted. You saw the most sacred symbols of our Republic profaned, town halls attacked, the Marianne statue shattered, and the authority of the State defied. You saw those terrible images of buildings in flames, the magnificent Limoges City Hall on fire and its bell tower collapsing. It awakens in our national memory and in our hearts the painful recollection of the Notre-Dame fire. These images hurt us; they wound us because behind every destroyed building lies a piece of our history. There are symbols, references, and structures that, regardless of our opinions, bring us together. Behind every looted business, there is the work of an entire lifetime. Behind every attacked police officer, behind every threatened public servant, it is the Republic itself that is being struck. And I want to say this with the utmost solemnity: France cannot, must not, and will never get used to such scenes. I call today on all French people for calm, dignity, and republican restraint. All those who serve the State—and in these hours, the police, the gendarmes, the firefighters, the prefects—must be assured of my support in their delicate and perilous duties. I urgently request that the State provide them with the resources and guarantee the support necessary for their mission. What is at stake today goes beyond the sole issue of public order. We are experiencing a profound crisis of confidence and authority that poses a threat to democracy. This situation must alert us . Our country is held in a state, or even as a hostage, between violence and powerlessness. On one side, the forces of destruction that trivialize violence , encourage confrontation, and target police, institutions, and representatives of the State as enemies to be struck down. This movement, with its political branch, LFI, and its militant wing, the antifa groups—who absurdly refer to bloody South American revolutions or, more seriously, to the Middle East conflict—would have us believe that violence has become a legitimate means of political expression and a solution to the problems of the French people. In reality, these social arsonists are only making the situation worse. Quite the contrary, in fact, through the brutal conflict and abject intolerance they stupidly intend to spread throughout society, they are adding one problem to another. Each one of you knows this. Violence is not an opinion. Destruction is not a mode of expression , and chaos cannot serve as a vision for France. On the other side, we have a Macronist power that is breathless, exhausted, and disoriented, which now seems incapable of doing anything other than commenting on its own powerlessness, or even its own decay, I might say. We have a government that deplores events without managing to prevent, control, or even handle them. A minority and discredited power whose sole concern is less about governing France than clinging to the last shreds of its waning authority. We have an Interior Minister who is content, with a satisfied and limp fatalism, to mechanically tally up on television each evening the destruction recorded in the country during the day. A president without credit or authority, ghostly and until just recently silent, who has in reality lost all contact with reality and who lets events decide in his place. These violent events did not arise from nothing. They occur in a deleterious context that the government itself has created. Having never been heard and perhaps not even listened to, the concerns, suffering, and grievances of the French people have turned into exasperation and sometimes even anger. These grievances are often legitimate, given how many crises have followed one another without any real decisions being taken. But let things be clear, very clear. There are millions of French people who are angry but who do not break anything, do not loot anything, and do not burn anything. I therefore firmly condemn the exploitation of this anger by political forces that encourage violence, just as I condemn the hijacking of this anger by thugs who sow chaos in the cities of France. Governing, and even more so presiding, is not about pontificating, but about listening and understanding in order to act. No power can forget that in a Republic, in a living democracy, the people are sovereign and one must know how to listen to them and accept their will. There is no other path, there is no other choice. This principle is violated every day. Again recently, the President of the Constitutional Council, in violation of his rank, his mission, and the ethics imposed by his office, saw fit to express himself as a partisan and even a Macronist activist in the electoral debate. He came to proclaim on television sets, without anyone asking him anything, that he would not let the people decide by referendum. This misplaced and inappropriate intervention opposing democracy was another provocation from a government decisively and dramatically cut off from the people. But with these riots, which are tragic for the country, its situation, and its image in the world, we are also paying for decades of surrender, decades of chaotic immigration whose consequences everyone can see today in every field. Decades during which the idea took hold that one could attack, burn, and destroy without being held accountable for those acts. That rioters, often perfectly identified by the police, could simply vanish because behind them , there would always be someone to pay —the taxpayer, that is to say, you. Faced with this situation, I offer you a clear voice, a voice based on three principles. The first principle I will apply is that of responsibility, with the rule: the rioter pays. He who violates the law must answer for his actions. He who damages must reimburse. He who attacks public property, businesses, or state representatives must know that the Republic will not back down. Justice must be swift, effective, and criminal and financial sanctions must be intentionally deterrent and truly enforced. The French people, in whose name justice is rendered, expect from tomorrow the greatest firmness for the perpetrators of the crimes and offenses of yesterday . The second principle is the restoration of republican order. There is no liberty without security. There is no justice without authority. And there is no Republic either when fear seeks to replace legitimate law, when shouting disrupts democratic debate, or when threats infringe upon the freedom of citizens. The third principle is the return of a state that listens, understands, and decides. A government that respects the French people instead of despising them. A government that consults instead of stifling. A government that decides instead of shirking its duties. France is greater than those who govern it. It is stronger than those who divide it. It is more resilient than those who would wish to destroy it. In six months, the French people will be able to choose another path: that of restored authority and security, that of sovereignty and respected democracy. It is the one that I offer you. It will be , have no doubt, the path of hope for France, the path of rebirth. Long live the Republic and long live France.