60 Minutes Transcript: What's driving French protests

Protests are tearing across France. violence has erupted in its romantic boulevards, looters have invaded the chic boutiques, and the scent of warm croissants and fresh baguettes has been overwhelmed by the whiff of tear gas.For many across Europe, particularly the young, conventional, centrist political parties are failing to revive the continent's stagnating economies. Support for extremist politicians has risen dramatically.We spent a week in Paris trying to understand who and what are driving the demonstrations - and we talked to the leader of France's populist anti-immigration party who now, months away from crucial elections, could benefit from the strife in the streets.They used to call Paris La Ville de L'amour - the City of Love. But there hasn't been much amour on show lately.For weeks, France has been in turmoil. 2,500 businesses have been damaged, more than 1,500 police injured, and the bill for damage to property is said to have climbed to more than a billion dollars.This nation is used to street protest. But the French have been jolted by the violence, and bewildered by their government's failure to get the chaos under control. Now more and more voters are turning to a political alternative that for decades past they regarded as beyond the pale.Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) I have a simple rule: if you don't stop criminals, they won't stop. That's it.Marine Le Pen is easily the best known face of right-wing populism in Europe. She's the longtime leader of the National Rally Party and now the favourite - after three failed attempts - to win the keys to France's presidential palace next April. Since the protests began, Le Pen's popularity has risen.Trevor Phillips: What is happening in Europe? Has politics here just become more radical? What is the explanation for that, and your own rising popularity? Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) The extreme left creates chaos. They generate violence against people, against the police, against public property. It's the same phenomenon all over.Le Pen and the protestors may be political opposites, but both agree on one thing: the way that France has done politics for the past few decades has failed.Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) It has to be said that a number of the high school students' demands are perfectly worth listening to, but that does not justify allowing people with violent urges to act out.The turmoil didn't start here in the city, but back in mid-September, in a quiet, working class suburb, home to many immigrant families. The cause here - a dilapidated school, and a shortage of teachers.Malhia Garin: Now, I think a lot of students are angry. But like an example, I want to go to the bathroom, and I see there is no toilet paper anywhere, and I'm-- I'm just pissed off. Can I say it?Trevor Phillips: You can say whatever you like.Malhia Garin: (LAUGH) Okay, I'm sorry. Malhia Garin joined an early morning demonstration at her high school on the edge of Paris. Naturally, the students captured the protest on their phones.Malhia Garin: Some people had the idea--uh like me, to post it on social media, and it came viral. And after we have protests in Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, a lot of big cities in France.The students at Saint-Ex never imagined that they'd become the spark that lit a fire across the nation.Within weeks, the demonstrations were drawing half a million people. Parents came out to back their sons and daughters. Workers to protest the cost of living, and Black and Arab youth frustrated at job discrimination.What started as a campaign for better funding of education has broadened into a wider protest about economic inequality. Trevor Phillips: Jack, tell us in English what they're chanting.Jack: They're saying "There's money in the billionaires' pockets, in the boss's pockets, in big corporations' pockets. Much of the animosity focuses on France's president.Barnaby: The problem is the government. Macron is the worst president we had since a lot of time. Elected nearly 10 years ago, Emmanuel Macron seemed like a fresh face, promising centrist leadership. A decade later, he's a lame duck who voters think has left France with too many bills and too little money.Many of the young activists see France's salvation in this man: Jean-Luc Melenchon, a 75-year-old former communist. He declined our request for an interview. But his supporters say that only he stands between them and what they would call a right-wing tyranny.Emily: I am terribly afraid of fascism.Irène: The people of France are not for fascism.Mia: And I'm here because everything is F—cked up right now. Fascism is here. Trevor Phillips: You said fascism is here in France, but you're going to vote for a new president. That's your democracy.Mia: No, this is not how it work, democracy. Democracy, this is the vote. Because when it's unfair, you have to fight.I was here 20 years ago when young people from the poverty-stricken Paris suburbs were setting cars alight. They were angry about job discrimination, about the treatment of minority communities by the police. These latest demonstrations feel very different to me. But they've become much broader, more political, people are talking about inequality, about the failures of capitalism. And there's even a very small minority that appears to believe that before you can build a better society you need to smash this one apart. And I mean that, literally.Exactly a month after the first school protests, on Oct. 17, all hell broke loose across France. Arsonists in the city of Limoges set fire to its iconic town hall, which first opened its doors on Bastille Day in 1883. The inferno obliterated more than a century of local history in a single night.That same day, 250 miles away in Paris, Jhemima Sheilha's bakery had been ransacked by looters.Jhemima Sheilha: (in French/English Translation) The emotions I felt last Saturday still bring tears to my eyes. Sheilha immigrated to France from the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo as a 9-year-old and created her successful bakery business with her husband. She now employs dozens of people.Trevor Phillips: What has it cost you?Jhemima Sheilha: (in French/English Translation) It has cost me five years of hard work. It has cost me the time I couldn't spend with my children. But what it's costing me today? It's having to ask myself, if I do start again, will it last? How long before it happens again?As always in France, the arguments have been passionate. Sheila clashed with a student activist on primetime TV. The confrontation went viral.Lola-Fleur Whittaker: The system we're in is literally burning our planet, is burning our home, is killing so many people.22-year-old Lola-Fleur Whittaker is half-British, half-French, and hell-bent on ending capitalism. Whittaker was accused of playing down the destruction by the looters.Lola-Fleur Whittaker: I mean, sure, let's just say how bad it is to break a window. But that's just not gonna solve any issue, that's just not gonna help anyone. Trevor Phillips: You met this lady Jhemima. I don't think you attacked her shop. But what would you say to the people who did attack her shop?Lola-Fleur Whittaker: I don't-- I don't think those people would--Trevor Phillips: But you would say they're wrong, wouldn't you?Lola-Fleur Whittaker: Yeah, sure. Let's say they're wrong. But, I mean, we live in a society where we walk past people every day that are just sleeping outside. And that doesn't shock anyone. However, a shop being, you know, looted and stuff, that's really shocking. And I don't think that's really fair.The person most likely to gain from the strife in the streets is Marine Le Pen. Her analysis of France's social and economic problems is very different, and so are her answers.Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) Today, France is facing very serious difficulties. We're at a point where all the bills are coming due at once.In 2011 Le Pen took over leadership of what was then a fringe movement from her father, a tough, army veteran, convicted and fined for Holocaust denial and hate speech. Four years later in a spectacular display of ruthlessness, she ejected him from the party he had founded. The aim was to rid the movement of the stain of bigotry. Trevor Phillips: I talked to many of the young people on these demonstrations And I heard again and again that what they fear is fascism in France. And it's clear to me that when they spoke about facism, they were talking about you. Are you a fascist?Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) No, absolutely not. We support political pluralism. There is no element of fascism in our political program.Her opponents thought le pen's conviction last year for embezzlement would dent her popularity. It has not.Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) I am innocent. That's why I have taken the case to France's highest court. The legal setback has not changed le pen's essential message of the past 20 years about what is wrong with France.Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) When you take in too many immigrants, you create the conditions for destabilizing your society. And that is what has happened in France. And she says too many immigrants are too reliant on welfare. Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) There is another problem: a problem of numbers. The unemployment rate among foreigners in France is twice the unemployment rate among French citizens. We can no longer import unemployed people.Trevor Phillips: If I go and talk to people in those immigrant communities, they will say that is because of discrimination in France.Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) No, that doesn't exist. You're not going to import those ideas here.Trevor Phillips: There is no discrimination in France?Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) No, there is no discrimination in France, sir. It's not true. And I'll go even further: it's the least racist.Trevor Phillips: France is the least racist country in the world?Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) Yes, yes, I'm telling you. Trevor Phillips: The British, the Americans, the Canadians?Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) Yes, yes.Le Pen's finger-pointing at immigrants is echoed by rising populist leaders across Europe: in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Britain, in Sweden and in Italy.Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) Your world approaches immigration through integration. We believe someone who comes to immigrate to our country must blend into the national community. You have something more like a layered cake: each community can live alongside the others while keeping its own customs. That is not how we see things.Trevor Phillips: And would a president Le Pen say to those people that you feel aren't adopting the French way, it's time for you to go back to where you came from? What people now call remigration?Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) If someone comes and says, 'I hate you, I despise your culture, I don't want to respect your laws,' well, we say to him, 'Listen, sir, the door is wide open. And we might even, for that matter, force you to leave.It's a startling proposal which critics will say could amount to deportation of legal immigrants. But, Marine Le Pen wears the smile of a woman within touching distance of the keys to the Elysee Palace, and ironically, they could be handed to her by her harshest opponents. Trevor Phillips: 20 years ago people would talk about you, and your party, as extremist. Something's changed here. And I guess what I'm wondering is, is it the French people? Or is it you have changed, maybe changed away from your original principles?Marine Le Pen: (in French/English Translation) I will not allow people to say that France has become extremist. Over time, French people have got to know me. Has France changed? I think it's the end of a chapter. It's the end of a world, a world built on unrestrained globalization. We've been seeing the great return of nations for several years now. And I think that's a good thing.Produced by Andrew Bast. Associate producer, Luisa Garcia. Edited by Thomas Xenakis. In: Marine Le Pen France