France is ready?
Translated from French
I think France is speedrunning the game. And I think it's ready to wrap it up.
Today, I'm going to explain how Bukele pulled it off in El Salvador.
At first, people were skeptical.
You have to understand where this country was starting from. In 2015, El Salvador is the murder capital of the world: over 100 homicides per 100,000 people. A country of 6 million people held hostage by two gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, with tens of thousands of members. They control entire neighborhoods. You cross the wrong invisible border between two territories, you die. Every business pays the "renta." Bus drivers who refuse to pay are executed at the wheel, right in front of the passengers. In 2010 in Mejicanos, gang members douse a bus with gasoline and set it on fire with the people locked inside. Kids recruited at 12 years old. Teens killed because they refused to join a gang. Entire families fleeing to the United States because staying means burying their children.
Bukele comes to power in 2019. In March 2022, the gangs put on a show of strength: 62 murders in a single day, 87 in one weekend.
His response comes the next day: state of emergency. And he's never lifted it.
The army and police move into neighborhoods the state had abandoned for 20 years. Entire cities are cordoned off and searched house by house. Over 80,000 arrests. A gang tattoo is enough. In just a few months, he builds CECOT, a mega-prison with 40,000 spots. The leaders are isolated, communications cut off, no more orders coming out of the cells. Sentences for mere gang affiliation skyrocket.
NGOs scream bloody murder. The international press calls him a dictator. He puts "the coolest dictator in the world" in his bio and keeps going.
Result: the homicide rate drops below 2 per 100,000. Less than the United States. The most dangerous country in the world becomes one of the safest on the continent in three years.
And the people have spoken. Reelected in 2024 with about 85% of the vote, popularity around 90%. Today, people go out at night, the terraces are packed, surfers are pouring in from all over the world, tourism is booming, the diaspora is coming back. El Salvador has become a little paradise.
Me, I'm very optimistic about France. We have the best culture in the world. The best infrastructure. The most beautiful landscapes. An education system that just needs a refresh. And we have huge intelligence, especially in our elites. They just need to stop being leftists. But that'll come.
France is ready.
https://x.com/brivael/status/2106433925547733053?s=20
Translated from French
Every time I talk about insecurity, I get the same response: "It's impossible in France. Too complicated. Too late."
That's wrong. El Salvador did it. Colombia did it. Countries that started from much further behind than we did.
So here, concretely, is what I would do if I were in power.
First, we align the parents.
A minor who breaks, loots, burns a car or a school—he has parents. Today, those parents face no consequences. Tomorrow, that changes, immediately: loss of social housing, suspension of benefits, end of aid. Not in six months, not after ten years of proceedings. Right away.
The goal is simple: so every family understands that their kid can no longer, by design, cause chaos without the whole family paying the price. Responsibility goes back home.
Next, for those who keep going: prison. For real.
Heavy mandatory minimum sentences, enforced, without automatic adjustments. End to repeated stays of execution and the fifteenth summons to the law. And we build the necessary cells. Bukele built a 40,000-place prison in a few months. We know how to put on the Olympics in seven years; we know how to build prisons.
Third, justice.
A law is worthless if it's not enforced. Today, part of the judiciary is in suicidal empathy: it sees the delinquent as a victim and the victim as collateral damage. Activist judges, red judges, those who judge with their ideology rather than the law, must be inspected and removed when necessary.
And there's a very simple way to align the whole system: accountability. If a judge releases a dangerous person and that individual commits another serious act, that judge answers for it, up to dismissal. A surgeon answers for his errors. A pilot answers for his errors. Why not the one who decides to put a dangerous individual back on the street?
A judge's job is to protect victims and society. Not to offer a fifth, sixth, seventh chance at reintegration to people who keep reoffending again and again.
Fourth, the lost territories of the Republic.
The looting, the riots, the everyday violence—it's all backed by an economy: the drug trade. Dealing finances, recruits, protects, terrorizes. As long as we don't break the networks, we're bailing the sea with a teaspoon.
So we declare a local state of emergency in each of those zones. The military in support of the police. Block by block, we dislodge the dealers and the ringleaders, one by one. The maps already exist; the police and intelligence know exactly where the dealing points are and who runs them. The leaders are totally isolated—no orders come out of the cells anymore. What's missing isn't information. It's will.
Fifth, a clear contract with immigration.
France welcomes. But welcoming is a contract, not an entitlement. In exchange: respect for our laws, our language, our culture. A convicted foreigner is expelled. The slightest deviation is no longer tolerated. It's not up to French victims to pay for the second chance of those who spat on the first.
And finally, we measure everything.
Last time, I made a dashboard of public spending. We'll do exactly the same for insecurity. I'd call it Zero Line: a public platform that tracks in real time every offense, every crime, every assault, every demonstration that turns violent, every recidivism, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.
We need to see the curves go down. As long as they don't, as long as we're not at near-zero levels, we keep going. We reason from first principles: where does insecurity come from, what produces it, how do we cut it off at the root. We measure, we act, we iterate. Like a tech company that doesn't let go of a bug until it's fixed.
It's not a question of resources. It's not a question of feasibility. It's a question of will.
France is ready.
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