The John-Henry Westen Show - August 25, 2021


The French people are done with authoritarian COVID restrictions


Summary

We talk to our French correspondent, Jean-Sophie Smits, who is on the ground in France, and finds out what's really going on. We ve seen viral videos of people being thrown out of supermarkets, lineups of security guards throwing them out, and blocking others. Are they all real? How many are there? We re going to find out.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Things are really unbelievable in France right now, as they are in much of the world.
00:00:04.400 But we wanted to take a specific look at France because there we've seen viral videos of people being thrown out of supermarkets and things like that when they're trying to get food because they don't have a COVID passport or something of that nature.
00:00:17.980 We're going to talk to our French correspondent, Jean Smits, who's on the ground in France, and find out what's really going on.
00:00:24.520 We've seen tons of demonstrations, hundreds of them.
00:00:27.720 Are they all real?
00:00:28.680 How many are there?
00:00:29.900 We're going to find out right now.
00:00:31.240 Stay tuned.
00:00:51.260 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:00:54.320 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:00:59.120 Amen.
00:01:00.220 Jean Smits, welcome to the program.
00:01:02.960 Hello, John Henry Weston.
00:01:04.400 I'm so glad to be with you all.
00:01:06.140 It is so good for LifeSite News to have you on the ground in France to be able to bring us all of what's going on there.
00:01:12.680 Just unbelievable things happening.
00:01:14.580 We've seen video of people being thrown out of what looks like supermarkets, lineups of security guards there, tossing them out, some of them blocking others.
00:01:25.280 We're going to get to that in a moment.
00:01:26.420 First of all, I want to hear from you because you were at several of these demonstrations where they've been going on all over France with tons of people.
00:01:35.180 Are they really happening?
00:01:36.260 What's going on there?
00:01:37.020 Well, the demonstrations started after July 12th.
00:01:41.700 On July 12th, President Emmanuel Macron announced that a sanitary pass would be required in many locations, leisure and cultural locations.
00:01:50.880 And also, as of August, restaurants, cafes, long-distance trains, hospitals, visiting people in homes for the elderly, and so on.
00:02:02.920 And also, mandatory vaccines for health workers, and that's in a very large sense because ambulance drivers and so on are also involved.
00:02:11.680 So, this created an enormous unrest, I'd say, and people became very anxious about this because very many people do not want to receive the COVID vaccine.
00:02:22.280 And the way the law is arranged, you hardly have an interesting life, and there's many things you can't do, and you can actually lose your job if you're in one of the involved professions.
00:02:36.560 There's many things you can't do if you don't get the vaccine.
00:02:40.080 So, on the first Saturday after that, that was July 17th, there were, let's say, I think about 160 demonstrations all over France.
00:02:48.080 This is holidays. People are far away from home, often. They're at the beach or they're in the mountains.
00:02:54.180 And in 150 or 160 towns all over France, there were massive demonstrations.
00:02:59.560 And that's something that France has never seen before.
00:03:02.640 I mean, you know in France, when you're a politician and you want to reform something that's very unpopular, you do it in the middle of summer because nothing will happen.
00:03:11.520 Nobody will be paying attention.
00:03:12.880 And this time, there were, from the start, I'd say, I went to Vannes on that first Saturday, and there must have been 5,000 people.
00:03:23.780 I'm not really bad at evaluating a crowd.
00:03:28.140 I'd say 5,000, which was what the organizers said, it was reasonable.
00:03:33.840 And then we returned every Saturday, and the number of demonstrations kept growing.
00:03:39.620 So now, last Saturday, when I was not able to go, there were 250 towns in France, big towns, small towns, with some had, let's say, about 200 people, because they're hardly larger than villages.
00:03:53.500 But in most of those places, you had thousands of people.
00:03:59.860 In Paris, you had every Saturday, four different marches, which were organized by different people, and all very, very, very crowded marches.
00:04:11.620 And I'd say the movement is growing.
00:04:13.480 Of course, the government is putting out numbers that are very low.
00:04:17.780 And for last Saturday, I think they gave something like 167,503 people, you know, 503.
00:04:26.420 They had counted them all.
00:04:28.540 Having seen videos of many of those marches, I can say that this is just absolutely untrue.
00:04:35.360 It cannot be true.
00:04:36.860 I think the government is worried about this.
00:04:39.440 And I don't know how it will end, because when we had the Yellow Vest demonstrations a few years ago, that was in 2019, it ended up with provocations and violence, often police-piloted violence.
00:04:56.920 And this could happen here.
00:04:59.220 But what is true is that in those marches, people are so happy to see each other, because they feel they're not alone.
00:05:05.760 I met one lady, one friend who said, oh, I went to a little march in the town next to where I was, because I'm feeling so alone.
00:05:13.940 And seeing other people who are on the same, who think the same as I do, is very, very important.
00:05:20.580 With regard to the churches, how is the situation there with regard to attendance at church?
00:05:25.120 Are you able to go?
00:05:26.060 Are there still restrictions?
00:05:27.540 There are restrictions insofar as you're, I think you're still obliged to keep one meter distance.
00:05:34.420 In fact, the churches were explicitly excluded from the sanitary pass law by Macron himself.
00:05:44.420 President Macron said, we can't touch that because it's a constitutional right.
00:05:48.980 That's very interesting, because it's been recognized as a constitutional right, because there was a lawsuit after the first confinement,
00:05:57.380 when they wanted to keep attendance very low in churches, and a group of traditional Catholics decided to go before the council of state,
00:06:05.480 which goes over administrative, executive decisions.
00:06:09.380 And that said, no, you can't regulate church attendance in the same way as you regulate other attendants.
00:06:18.600 So we have churches where we can go normally.
00:06:24.440 Attendance in the Novus Ordo parishes has gone down a great deal.
00:06:29.600 I'd say about 30% from what I hear.
00:06:32.580 I happen to go to traditional Latin mass, and those churches are fuller than ever before.
00:06:38.340 And they have been all through the confinements.
00:06:43.740 The churches where I've been are, well, you have a standing room only, and nothing actually happens.
00:06:50.820 Up to now, there's been very little control of social distancing, as they say in churches.
00:06:57.380 So in TLM masses, in any case, it's really, people just go to mass and don't ask any questions.
00:07:05.920 And I know that in some parishes, people don't actually wear masks, as they should do.
00:07:11.300 And, well, there's been no cluster, no COVID cluster there, as far as I go.
00:07:16.440 Wow.
00:07:16.920 Now, very interestingly, this freedom is allowed because someone took the initiative to actually sue for the rights that they have.
00:07:23.920 Very, very interesting indeed.
00:07:25.020 I believe it wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
00:07:27.380 Wow.
00:07:28.040 To go to church now, normally.
00:07:30.140 One of the things I wanted to ask you, there's viral videos going all around the internet about shopping centres in France, kicking people out.
00:07:38.100 It looked like some elderly people trying to enter into what looked like a grocery store and being blocked by a row of security guards.
00:07:46.300 There was another one, one big, huge security guard actually taking a woman and throwing her out because she didn't have the so-called sanitary pass.
00:07:55.860 Tell us about that.
00:07:57.980 Well, the sanitary pass, as you know, it's proof of vaccination or proof that you're COVID negative.
00:08:03.480 But you need to have a test for that, an antigen test or a PCR test that's less than 72 hours old.
00:08:11.080 And many people just don't want to bother with that and have stopped going to restaurants and cafes and whatever.
00:08:17.560 But of course, you have to go and do your shopping for your food.
00:08:22.160 There are a number of departments in France.
00:08:26.060 France is divided into about 100 administrative departments.
00:08:31.400 In some of them, the prefect, that is the representative of the government, has decided that the rate of COVID infections is so high,
00:08:40.680 he needs to close, as the law allows him to do, all very big shopping centers that are larger than 20,000 square meters.
00:08:49.400 And there aren't so very many in France, I'd say about 150, 200, where this law is at present applicable.
00:08:58.740 So, normally, people who go there aren't allowed to come in without a sanitary pass, except if they're going to do food shopping.
00:09:07.740 That's the law.
00:09:09.680 Unfortunately, there has been excessive zeal in some of those places.
00:09:13.800 And people have been, as you said, kicked out quite violently in some cases.
00:09:18.740 And in any case, they feel as if they just can't go and do their ordinary shopping.
00:09:24.240 Of course, there are other supermarkets, even large supermarkets, where you can go.
00:09:28.660 I mean, in most of France, this does not apply.
00:09:31.300 You just go and do your shopping as you want in small shops, big shops, whatever.
00:09:35.460 That's not under the law.
00:09:37.720 But there have been incidents that are really very violent and that give you the impression that people are being stopped from getting their basic needs.
00:09:46.820 And usually, it's the elderly who are used to go shopping there.
00:09:50.760 And then they arrive, they don't really know, and they get sent away.
00:09:56.080 It's very unsettling.
00:09:58.260 One of the things that France is well known for is that culture of going out to restaurants and bars, to cafes, to theater, all sorts of things that are sort of characteristic of France, at least to the rest of the world.
00:10:13.120 We look at France and always have that image of you're in a cafe in Paris somewhere or things like that.
00:10:18.740 And yet, this is restricted for anyone in the population right now who refuses this kind of sanitary dictatorship.
00:10:26.520 Exactly.
00:10:26.940 If you don't have the vaccine or if you don't have a sanitary pass showing your COVID negative, you can't go into the restaurant or the bar.
00:10:35.320 You can't even go and sit on the cafes.
00:10:37.180 You have incredible situations.
00:10:39.800 You walk through a cafe terrace, you have people right and left of you sitting, having their coffee, and not very many because attendance has gone down about 40% or more.
00:10:49.480 So you see them left and right, and you're walking through without a sanitary pass.
00:10:53.160 That's no problem at all.
00:10:54.240 But as soon as you sit down, you need to have a sanitary pass.
00:10:57.960 Or if you're inside and even if you want just coffee at the bar, it's completely surreal, I must say.
00:11:06.500 It's obviously not about health because they're letting you walk through, they're letting you be there anyway, you just can't engage.
00:11:16.020 They'll even let you go through and sit and have no mask on if you've got this so-called sanitary pass, which, by the way, if you're vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still transmit COVID.
00:11:27.900 So, obviously, nothing to do with health.
00:11:30.260 That's what people say.
00:11:31.240 They get crazy about this.
00:11:32.520 And I must say, I can't tell you where, but my daughter was in the south of France and she had nowhere to have lunch.
00:11:40.000 She was with a friend and they stopped at the restaurant.
00:11:43.140 And at the restaurant, they told them, well, go and sit there.
00:11:47.520 And if you see little men in blue, you just run away.
00:11:49.800 No problem.
00:11:50.240 So, people who have, when you see people sitting at a restaurant, terrace or cafe, you're not even sure they have a sanitary pass.
00:12:01.060 But the objective was very clear from the start and it was said privately, but it was leaked into the press.
00:12:08.040 We're going to make life, please excuse the word, so shitty for people who don't have the pass that they will want to get vaccinated.
00:12:15.340 And it's true that we see people who get the vaccine and they don't say they get it not to have COVID.
00:12:22.060 They get it to be able to go to the bar or to go to travel.
00:12:26.500 That's the only reason they get it.
00:12:28.460 These videos with police coming to check COVID sanitary passes of people at restaurants and in cafes.
00:12:36.840 Is that now a sort of frequent occurrence in France?
00:12:40.040 I can't believe that it is because there aren't so many police officers in France.
00:12:45.500 And our experience during the former lockdowns was that there were a few very public probes where they would spend, let's say, two hours on checking all cars coming through a certain point.
00:12:59.220 But we tried to live through the lockdown as if it didn't exist.
00:13:04.220 Well, yes, we broke the law.
00:13:06.380 Let's be very clear about that.
00:13:08.000 And we never saw any control.
00:13:09.560 So what I think is that there are so few policemen, and they have other things to do, that these controls won't be frequent.
00:13:17.360 But there's always the fear of having them.
00:13:19.860 And the fear is very heavy on restaurant owners who will get a large fine if they don't control people.
00:13:27.780 But what's also absurd is that they can control people but not ask for their identity.
00:13:33.000 So they're just controlling a sign on the phone.
00:13:37.580 That's all.
00:13:38.040 One of the other interesting things is the connection to communism.
00:13:43.520 We've found, at least in the West, that there's a lot of people who don't recognize that connection at all.
00:13:49.460 Although immigrants, particularly Polish immigrants and immigrants from Eastern Europe, they say right away, oh, my gosh, this is communism.
00:13:58.600 What are we here for?
00:13:59.520 We came here to escape this.
00:14:00.880 And now it's come here.
00:14:02.280 Are there people in France who also recognize the communist undertones of what's happening?
00:14:06.940 Yes, I think so.
00:14:08.080 Very many are talking about the sanitary dictatorship.
00:14:11.460 And many are noting that the question is not at all a question of health but of control.
00:14:16.840 Just to give an example, now when you don't have a sanitary pass, you're not allowed to take a fast train.
00:14:22.160 But you can't take a succession of slow trains.
00:14:26.180 And this is exactly what's happening in China with social credit.
00:14:30.760 Well, when you don't have enough social credit, you can't take a bullet train, but you can take a slow train.
00:14:36.900 It's the same sort of mechanism.
00:14:38.320 And I think the mechanism here is to make people believe they have a collective responsibility for the good of all and that individual rights don't count.
00:14:49.840 I think that's really what's pushing people into the street.
00:14:55.820 And they're making the parallel not only with communism but also, of course, what's absurd is that you have a communist party which is against the sanitary pass.
00:15:05.580 But, well, that's how it is.
00:15:08.320 They're making the parallel with what happened in 1940 with the German Nazi occupation.
00:15:15.520 They feel it's the same sort of thing with the same sort of squealing on your neighbor if you see he's not complying.
00:15:23.800 And the idea that you're supposed to lay down your rights for the collectivity.
00:15:29.260 And this kind of creation of a well-accepted second-class citizenry is truly striking.
00:15:37.240 I think a lot of people are starting to feel what it's like to be a second-class citizen, a kind of racism extended toward you, which is publicly acceptable.
00:15:49.600 I think a lot of Catholics or strong Christians have felt that for a long time with regard to being against abortion or same-sex marriage or whatnot or the whole transgender agenda.
00:16:02.520 But this is now getting extended far beyond just Christians.
00:16:06.460 A lot of people who are just freedom-loving or don't want their bodily integrity violated still believe in my body, my choice when it comes to the vaccines.
00:16:15.260 All of a sudden now they're finding themselves in these very strange situations themselves.
00:16:19.340 There are people who did get the vaccine, but they are totally opposed to the sanitary pass for exactly that reason.
00:16:26.820 And to come back on communism, there are so many people who are going to lose their jobs.
00:16:32.680 There are so many people who are having difficulty because there's less money coming in.
00:16:37.300 There's less economical, well, of course, the government in a truly 1984 fashion is saying economy is booming.
00:16:45.680 Restaurants have made 5% more than last year in this month.
00:16:51.180 And they say everything's great.
00:16:53.560 But when you see individual restaurant owners, they say, where have the people gone?
00:17:00.440 We have 40% people less.
00:17:02.860 So in a way, this is preparing another kind of communism where people will just be in so much misery that they will turn to the state for their income.
00:17:12.340 And I think that is one of the objectives we're going through.
00:17:15.320 And it was plainly said at the beginning of the crisis in 2020 when they started talking about a universal income in France also.
00:17:26.340 Politicians mentioned that.
00:17:28.080 John, any closing thoughts for us about France?
00:17:30.840 The one thing you mentioned there actually about people who are vaccinated.
00:17:35.400 There was that amazing video of people burning their sanitary passes.
00:17:41.520 Did you see or catch news of that?
00:17:43.680 That was in Italy.
00:17:44.760 It wasn't in France.
00:17:45.700 What I do see in France is the amount of people who are steadfastly going out every week to demonstrate.
00:17:55.300 They're beginning to wonder, should we put parallel systems in place for payment, for exchange of goods?
00:18:05.820 There's a reaction which makes me think of what happened during the Manif pour tous.
00:18:12.900 But it's different this time because it's not just a category, one category, the Catholic, traditional, culturally formed people.
00:18:21.320 It's really everyone from all walks of life.
00:18:25.360 And they're being, of course, ridiculed in the media.
00:18:28.260 And they're sticking to their beliefs and to their opinions.
00:18:32.480 And I think that's rather a good sign.
00:18:34.700 Jean Smits, thank you so much for being with us and for all your coverage at LifeSite News.
00:18:39.560 Thank you, John Henry.
00:18:40.400 God bless you and God bless all of you.
00:18:43.000 We'll see you next time.
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