Patrice Ayme's Thoughts

Abstract: This essay posits that Europe’s political and economic decay is rooted in a categorical confusion between the État de Loi (State of Law), where a sovereign people dictates legislation, and the État de Droit (State of Right; German: Recht), a neo-medieval framework where unelected judiciaries impose “universal” values tied to elite privilege and divine authority to override popular will.

The confusion is dramatically illustrated by the fact that hurting the book of a 14 centuries old religion will send you to prison in 2026 neo-Medieval France.  

Indeed, using France as a case study, the essay critiques how unelected judges, exemplified by figures like super star celebrity judge Magali Lafourcade, weaponize legal institutions to suppress opposition (e.g., the disqualification of Marine Le Pen’s three times presidential candidate, and by far the main opponent to the establishment in polls and Parliament)…. while shielding leftist factions, some of them murderous, mirroring authoritarian tactics generally associated to dictatorships. 

The plutocratic capture of the state is insidious, weaponizing the judiciary to disqualify political opposition under the guise of protecting “rights”… Which are generally rights of the plutocratic-ownership class .

The text contrasts Europe’s stagnation—fueled by regulatory overreach, anti-democratic judicial activism, and a plutocracy hostile to popular agency—with the U.S. and China’s dynamic, innovation-driven models. It traces Europe’s decline to a deliberate dismantling of democratic participation, likening it to historical collapses like Rome’s, and warns that without restoring people power over elite-controlled “state of right” structures, Europe’s irrelevance will deepen. The core tension: democracy as majority rule vs. democracy as elite-guarded legalism.

Plutocracy wants to remove agency from its subjects. One way to do that is by paralyzing We The People by regulations and overzealous judges, the midges sucking the free dry.

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Europe is extremely sick politically, and the arrogance of the greedy elite, so-called judges and entrenched interests is colossal. There is evidence that this disease and the arrogance are related. To the point of gangrenous economic indigence. Powerful individuals like the corrupt Norwegian leaders professing human rights while getting Epstein advantage, are legions. It has had an impact for example on the energy capability of Europe.

In France the leading opponent politicians have been prevented from running for office by judges who outright claim “voting is episodic” it’s mostly not what democracy is about, as a top judge named Magali Lafourcade, super star of TV and podcasts, pointed out repeatedly recently in a frantic campaign to sell her own latest book, repeating at nauseam the same flawed and fake arguments.

The litany: France is no more an État de Droit (State of Right; German: Recht)… Instead the People are rising ever more…

• The Risk: When a judge defends the État de Droit, they aren’t just defending a statute; they are defending an abstract “Right” that they themselves, or the establsihment which molded them, define.

• The Result: This allows the judiciary to strike down laws passed by a majority because those laws conflict with the judge’s interpretation of “Right,” effectively reviving a form of “Natural Law” that the Enlightenment sought to place in the hands of the people, not the priesthood. Actually the judges act as a new priesthood, as when they interpret that human liberty is less important than the Qur’an.

Lafourcade is 47 years old and is extremely powerful in the murky French and European state of decay. She wears half a dozen hats:”Science Po” professor, “surveillance counsel” of Le Monde, principal of a mysterious UN agency on human rights, member of the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l’homme (CNCDH). “Senior Expert” of the European Agency for Human Rights…

Lafourcade sieges at Le Monde, where Daniel Kretinsky, a Czech billionaire, is one of the most prominent figures among the plutocratic owners. No jokes on Cretinism, please. Kretinsky is part owner of the French and Czech states… He started with coal, privatizing gifts of property from the Soviet state, the old fashion way… You know these times when Slavic mafiosi ended up owning a large part of Eurasia as the best of the greediest stole whatever they could… 

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Lafourcade is trying to ride the anti-Trump wave. She claimed that US government diplomats tried to gather facts to “give credit” to the thesis that the prosecution of Marine Le Pen was “purely political”….as she put it herself. She is all indignant about the “Purely political label”. Instead apparently it’s something somewhat less, according to her, like… not purely “POLITICAL”, just a notch below. 

That means actually that the magistrate recognizes the case as simply “political”. But she may be apparently not smart enough, or too arrogant, to pay attention to that fact. She is trying to steer democracy in France for charges nobody can understand (the case is presented as “stealing public funds”… But that’s actually very close to a complete lie, besides the fact it was in 2009 in the European Parliament and brought by SPD Putin collaborators, supreme irony..) .

It’s as if Trump arrested Gavin Newsom for something some of Newsom’s father’s subordinates did 17 years ago, and he should have known, you know… Actually Newsom is much less important for the USA than Le Pen for France, as she is the main presidential candidate with an enormous advance in the polls and she leads the main poosition party in Parliament. 

The same Magali judge by the grace of God and TV celebritism, claims that France is not a state of law anymore, nor, of course, the USA… And it’s all the fault of right wing politicians: Le Pen, Sarkozy, Darmanin, Dati and Retailleau in France, Trump in the USA. Actually the subtitle of her latest book that she advertizes is “Les populistes a l’assaut de l’Etat de Droit” (“Populists assaulting the state of law”).

Let’s go back to the nice confusion in France (and Germany, and satellites) between state of law and state of “droit”… Which literally means state of “Right”. An old notion from the ancient regime. For example the Chamber of Lords and the Monarchy in Britain are part of “Droit”… But the state of Right it is not democratic.

“DIEU EST MON DROIT“ is the motto of the French monarchy, traditionally associated with the kings of France. Surely Magali, Macron and their admirers know very well that the notion of “DROIT” comes straight from the monarchy. Mitterand, a fasicst extremist of the worst type (he served under Petain and was decorated personally by Petain) posed as a “socialist” (so did Hitler) and was talking all the time of “State of Righht”.

“DIEU EST MON DROIT” translates to “God is my right” in English. This motto reflects the divine right of kings—the belief that a monarch’s authority to rule comes directly from God, not from the will of the people or any earthly authority.

“STATE OF RIGHT” (ÉTAT DE DROIT): This is the classical liberal democratic concept, elite-friendly, where power is constrained by constitutional rules, independent judiciary, and respect for fundamental rights (following Montesquieu). It’s the idea that no one—not even a majority—can act outside the predetermined law and its predetermined institutions (Saint Louis, Louis IX talked about it incessantly, in the Thirteenth Century…).

The notion of “ÉTAT DE DROIT“ contradicts PEOPLE POWER (DEMOS KRATIA) as it’s the majority which writes laws. Of course the majority can’t rewrite all laws overnight, so there is colossal inertia in the legislative system. But if the majority votes to have Lafourcade wear a bonnet d’ane in public, and said law passes the Senate and is signed by the French president, so it must be.

Now the European plutocracy is hiding behind the pseudo-left… The famous “gauche caviar”, the “caviar left” which is busy removing agency for the plebs… derisively called “populists”. .

This is not an anecdote anymore: three topmost leading French right wing politicians have been condemned and politically impeached in a terminal manner by judges who have a theory that voting is not what democracy is about. No politician from the leftist or Islamo-left has been indicted so far… Although now we have one case of homicide connected to it.

Such a level of interference with the political opposition is starting to be reminiscent of what happened with Putin in Russia when he got started. As it is a coverup for the plutocratic elite, it has a direct impact on European innovation.

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France’s tax-to-GDP ratio and regulation ratio is the highest in the world. Both are so by design, the fruit of a crafty conspiracy towhich judges like Lafourcade provide cover. We will come back to it. ,

Some Europeans instead sneer that the USA’s engineering of Bretton Woods in 1945 over Keynes’ objections is the source of US power (I myself made that argument a very long time ago; however, it goes only so far… China used to make it before realizing it was futile and it would be more profitable to go for science and tech rather than industrial whining…)

Instead I believe that God provided the American people with a wealthy continent… Just kidding: who needs God when a genocide can make do? More seriously, US democracy right now is superior because it is more… democratic.. 

I see how judges are demolishing European democracy, but I don’t see how investment by foreign Central Banks explains the domination of the USA in the highest technology. How do foreign Central Banks “invest”?

When foreign central banks buy Treasuries in massive quantities, as they have to, because of massive trade surplus with the USA, they suppress US interest rates and keep borrowing cheap across the entire US economy. This cheap capital environment benefits American tech companies enormously — it makes it easier to raise venture capital, issue corporate bonds, fund acquisitions, and sustain years of cash-burning growth before profitability. The whole Silicon Valley model of “grow fast, profit later” depends on cheap, patient capital.

Additionally, by absorbing dollars and recycling them into Treasuries rather than into their own domestic tech ecosystems, these countries are in a sense subsidizing US capital markets rather than building competing ones.

The more direct drivers of US tech dominance, though, are probably things like DARPA and federal research funding, elite university research, deep venture capital networks, immigration of global talent, and strong IP protection — none of which involve foreign central banks at all.

So if someone argues that foreign central bank purchases explain US tech dominance, that’s a significant overstatement. It might be a contributing background condition that keeps US capital cheap, but it’s far down the list of explanations.

The real mystery is why foreign countries do not develop their own tech dominance. The answer to that, in turn, has to do with the nature of local plutocracies. In China, the plutocracy, the Communist Party, feels safe in arming China to the teeth with weapons and capability: it relishes agency, because it has the Chinese population on a tight leash. Also China made a huge effort in education.

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The NO AGENCY CONSPIRACY:

France’s tax-to-GDP ratio consistently hovers around 45-47%, but when factoring in the total “compulsory levies” and the redistribution complexity, plus the added value tax (AVT, a French invention, of course, now mandatory in Europe around 20%……) the burden on productivity and liberty becomes a deterrent to “agency.”

If the goal of a plutocracy is stability and the preservation of status, then innovation is a threat. Innovation creates new wealth and new power centers. By favoring “associations” over “research” and “regulation” over “experimentation,” the European elite ensures that no “populist” entrepreneur can disrupt the established order

Europe is not like China or the USA. In France, the plutocracy wants to deprive the population of agency. And education has been allowed to deperish. For example France’s budget for “associations”, a sort of clientele of the government (whatever it says) is superior to the research and high education budgets, combined (it’s around 35 billion Euros, 40 billion dollars). If one starts a start-up in France, one will be taxed before the first profit (it’s rather the opposite in the USA). France has actually the highest tax burden in the world with an average of 65% or so (once one has added the Added Value Tax). Also Europe has a regulation tax: so many regulations that small businesses can’t operate.

All of this makes sense when one realizes that the aim of European plutocracy is to kill the European economy at the level of the plebs, so that, never again will the plebs be able to rise again. This sort of mood ruled Europe many times in the past. For example during the Fall of the Roman Republic, and again during the Fall of the Roman imperial state. Then, too, it killed innovation.

US plutocracy is a mix of old money, clinging to its privileges, and new engineering, backed up by an enormous investment in research and science. For example, Europe has no equivalent of DARPA.

Both the USA and China are now going full speed ahead to provide gigantic investments in energy. They need that for AI. Europe? Europe still can sell herself to the wealthy foreigners who want to enjoy her charms…

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Socrates whined that total democracy was a disaster as it elected incompetents. That earned him a single exception to the general amnesty law. He lamented that his shoemaker was more qualified, etc. He had a point in the sense that the military should be left to military men (an argument made contemporaneously by the Spartans). The solution was to create what I call DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS (which are part of the “State of Right”… for example Guilds, Medical and other professional Associations, etc.)

But that’s it.

When the likes of Magali come out to distinguish “populists” as a sort of race who ought never to come to power, a line has been crossed against PEOPLE POWER. The people are a “crisis” to be managed, rather than the source of authority.

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I asked AIs what a “populist was. Ais answered: A populist is a political figure or movement that claims to represent the interests and will of “the people” against a corrupt, out-of-touch, or self-serving “elite.”

So, for example, by that (corrupt) definition, anybody who sits in Russia and is against Putin, being against  “a corrupt, out-of-touch, or self-serving “elite.” is a “populist”.

Fortunately, confronted by a possible Trump, Vladimir Putin was fortunate enough that Amazonian poison dart frogs travelled all the way to the Arctic, in an act of God, and put an end to the populist Alexei Navalny… 

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ISLAMIC JUSTICE, Neo-French Style:

Magali Lafourcade worries about the People grabbing power from the telegenic elite she belongs to. She does not worry about a man, under psychiatric supervision by the state since the age of 14, being sentenced to one year in prison for burning a Quran, with the French court ruling that the act incited religious hatred.

France is in contempt of her own civilization… And much of Europe has followed.

However, the latest indications are that many countries are starting to pull away from the long ruling erroneous ideas of the ridiculous French state…Italy is going to organize in Spring a referendum to reorganize the judiciary…

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Recapitulating: the US and Chinese government (and to a more or less greater extent the governments of many other countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Korea, India, etc.) have been busy augmenting the agency of their populations.

However Europe has been doing the exact opposite.

This is why it is naive to believe that Europe can get out of its death spiral: it needs first to see that there is a problem… And then change its philosophical outlook, before making judges understand that a democracy is a state of laws voted by the people, not Dieu est mon droit of the Middle Ages, when an arrogant elite serving the plutocracy behaved as if no fork would ever be within reach: much of their arrogance rested, and rests on not knowing what happened in history.

Patrice Ayme

Too many judges who claim to represent the secular, “progressive” elite of modern Europe have essentially adopted the mantle of the Capetian kings. Instead of “Divine Right,” they claim “Human Right,” but the outcome is identical—a power that is unaccountable to the voter. The solution exists: as the US government points out we must have common values in what I call the Empire of the West, Civilization, to defend said civilization. The hour is extremely grave: a few hundred nuclear bombs could annihilate civilization.

By weakening civilization with their divine right of imagined human rights at la Jagland (the great pope of human rights and promoters of women to whom Epstein provided girls while actingas a Putin agent)… such judges are traitors not just to civilization, but to humanity and could cause megadeath (billions killed). So their system of thought have to be neutralized. They are generally obsessed by power and rank, so to reduced them to a lower status could be very effective as Magali Lafourcade herself pointed out.

Fundamentally judges promoting the divine “RIght” of plutocracy want money and could not stand to be left without (whereas someone like me is happy tracking a bear in the mountainous forest while listening to howling wolves and barking elks…) It will be interesting to see if the US adminstration (DAD!) will take the hint…

Patrice Ayme

Note: Demos (people) and the Judicature (elite-guarded legalism)—finds its most concrete battleground in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

When these courts override national referendums or primary legislation, they effectively signal that certain “Rights” are untouchable by “Law,” regardless of the democratic mandate

education and agency are being “dismantled.” In legal terms, this happens through a doctrine called the “Living Instrument.”

The ECHR treats the Convention not as a fixed text (the Law), but as a “living instrument” to be interpreted in light of “present-day conditions.”

• The Flaw: “Present-day conditions” are defined by the judges and the telegenic elite (like the Lafourcade archetype), not by the voters.
• The Conflict: If the people vote for a policy (e.g., stricter migration or traditional symbols) that the judges deem “not in line with present-day values,” the vote is neutralized.