Gavin McInnes Goes Toe-to-Toe With Piers Morgan and Andrew Neil Over the France Riots
On Piers Morgan Uncensored, McInnes argued that France’s unrest is rooted in mass migration and Islamism. Andrew Neil rejected that framing — while conceding Europe lost control of migration.
Gavin McInnes squared off with broadcaster Andrew Neil and host Piers Morgan on Piers Morgan Uncensored over the unrest in France, in an episode titled “France Has FALLEN!” Riots Debate.
Morgan opened by noting that several major French cities, including Paris, Lille and Nice, were under curfew, and that the interior minister had admitted police were unprepared.
McInnes said the riots had “nothing to do with student protests.” “This is the Crusades all over again,” he said, arguing that far-left activists and young people taught to reject their own culture are being used by Islamists, and comparing the dynamic to Iran in 1979. He pointed to demographics: “I think 5% of Catholics go to Mass now and France is 10% Muslim.”
Neil rejected the idea of an Islamic uprising. He said politics in France is decided on the streets “every generation or so,” long before Muslim migration, and identified two main violent forces: the hard left, which sought to exploit the protests, and criminal and youth gangs from the suburbs. He said reports that Jewish shops and institutions in Marseille were targeted were untrue, citing statements from local Jewish organizations.
But Neil also conceded ground. Asked whether large-scale migration puts pressure on public services, he said, “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” adding that the British and French governments and Germany under Angela Merkel “lost control of mass migration.” He noted that France has about 8 million residents born abroad, about 4 million of them from Africa, and predicted the political beneficiary of the unrest would be Marine Le Pen, whom he called, “as things stand at the moment, unstoppable as the next President of France.”
The exchange grew heated as McInnes and Morgan clashed over grooming gangs, the 2015 Bataclan attack and American gun violence. Neil closed by calling McInnes’s arguments “bigoted bollocks.” McInnes held his position to the end: “Muslims hit different.”
The episode was released Oct. 22 on the show’s YouTube channel and podcast feed.
