TRANSCRIPT: Alexandre Pesey Explains The New French Revolution (And It’s Beautiful)

Read the full transcript of Entrepreneur Alexandre Pesey’s talk at The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) 2025 on Feb 19, 2025.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

ALEXANDRE PESEY: I have great news to share from France. A new wind is blowing, the wall of political correctness is cracking, and free speech is coming back. Don’t get me wrong, we have the same problem that in your countries, and on some we’re even better, we got the gold medal for taxation.

And during the last Olympic Games, you may have seen the creativity of our leadership. You know, our state coffers are near empty, but they were able to find some taxpayer money to get us in the Guinness Book of World Records. Yes, we won the ugliest world record for the worst opening ceremony in history.

So when I told you I had good news, I was not being ironic. The topics, the tone of the debate, the new faces are changing deep and fast in my beloved France. And why is that?

Reasons for Change

First, reality. Our leadership cannot hide it anymore.

Second, a few entrepreneurs joined forces recently to make a difference for our culture.

Third, a totally new media landscape has been designed in the last 10 years.

Fourth, a civil society is blowing, is emerging. New independent schools, new media, new think tanks, new single issue groups, new beautiful cultural projects.

Fifth, and that’s the most hopeful and happy news to share, we have a new leadership, a new generation of young leaders emerging.

And I’m very happy and proud to share with you that 50 of them are here with us today.

The Institut de formation politique (IFP)

So what did we do to participate in our modest way in the awakening happening in France?

You know, we didn’t invite or re-invite the will, we just listened to wise and successful entrepreneurs like Morton Blackwell, the founder of the Leadership Institute, who once told me, “Alex, you want a new leadership from France? Just train today Turmo’s leader.” Genius idea.

So I quit my PhD, left my position at the university, because I think that we don’t need more ideas in France, we needed action.

So with two great friends, and my day and night partner, my dear Kate, wife, we created the Institut de formation politique, the Institute for Political Training, IFP, whose goal is to identify, select, train, connect, and place in key positions any young leaders who want to serve our country, our civilization. We had 16 students in 2004, we have trained today 4,000. At that time, we created two total new model of school for France.

First, a new business model, no public money, only private money, using American technical fundraising, and you know what? It’s working.

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Second, we organized weekend seminars for students, high schoolers, and also young professionals, so they can follow our program on the side of their job or study.

Third, we offer a program that does provide intellectual and technical training, because we all know having good ideas and not being able to defend them is useless, and being a professional in communication without being rooted in strong principles is dangerous.

Fourth, we incubate projects, carried by young civic entrepreneurs. We help them design their business plan, find their teammates, raise their funds.

We advise networking and coalition building. We know in a group, division can be very harmful, and France paid a high price for that in its history.

Historical Context

You know when the Roman, the English, the German came to our souls sometimes thinking they feel a little bit too much at home? They were benefiting the clear division of the inside France. There is another reason why they came to France for a few years. Not many historians will tell you that, but we all know why here.

These guys wanted to know what is the best way of life on earth. They wanted to approach paradise. And I’m not being arrogant, everybody knows it. Benjamin Franklin and others said, you know, every human being has two countries, is horn and France.

IFP’s Impact

So let’s get back on track. You understand that we gather all the force of freedom and mentor them. And last things, we place our young talents in politics, in the media, in civil society, in any key position that a good guy or a good girl with a good brain, with a good heart should be to serve. For what reasons?

So today, we have hundreds of them who are congressmen, staffers, journalists, media guests, think tankers, civic leaders, professors, priests. At least half of the young you see emerging today went through our program.

But let’s be clear about that. We never, ever make these young have talent. They had it. We just help as a catalyst. We give them ideas, techniques, connection, inspiration, and maybe very new at that time, a long-term perspective.

The idea that if they want to serve full-time, they can. And we organize to help them to do so. So when we started 20 years ago, we were a few dozen serving full-time the cause.

Now there are hundreds. And believe me, you can see the direct impact of such a difference in numbers. And I would like to give a special thanks to a man who is here, an economist called Charles Gavre. Not only him and his family are sponsoring ARC, but he’s the first one, one of the first ones who believe and support our project.

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So thank you, Charles.

Journalism and Media

So what about journalism? Wasn’t I supposed to talk to you about how retrieving the fourth power? Yes, and we are precisely on the key question, human resources. I have several media owners or media directors who told me, you know, I have difficulty to find young journalists who want to think out of the box.

And the main reason is they come from schools who are all of them, 100% of them, hold by 68ers. On the other side, you have young journalists who sometimes want to get out of the box, but they’re pretty discouraged by the social pressure of it.

Or people like I was told when I was a young journalist, don’t say anything, wait your time, just follow the train.

And when you’ve been in key position, then you’ll be able to come out. But you know the saying, if you don’t live like you think, you finish to think like you live.

But we have a few exceptions, and they are making the difference. They are called Barring Wives or Tucker Carlson in the US, Charlotte Dornelas or Christine Kelly in France, and they are the one making a huge difference. In 2000, as a young journalist working in the US in a political show in a TV channel called Clinton News Network, sorry, CNN, I had a dream. Yes, me too, I had a dream that we will have diversity and inclusivity in French media, that will offer a safe space to young journalists who want to see the reality the way it is and not the way it should be.

And so, that’s what we did seven years ago with some friends. We gathered and we had one goal, train two days, two more journalists, one motto, look at the fact, the truth of the fact, one model, we can train with only privately-funded projects. We trained 200 of them, more than 100 of them became journalists. It’s so successful that recently we found a courageous businessman. We just bought a few weeks ago the oldest journalism school in the world, and we will be trained now not 40 journalists a year, but 400 a year.

Lessons Learned

To end, I would like to share just a few experiences of these 20 years as civic entrepreneurs training young leaders.

First one, very important, is to have a strong team. Marry a good wife, and I did, have great children, I have six amazing kids, have a great… Thank you. Get surrounded by good friends, good teammates, I do too, they are here, but also always have good lawyers, not too far. Yeah, they closed down our bank account, you know, they do all this kind of things, but we continue the way.

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Second, a civic action creates amazing virtual circle. When you put great people in the same room, you have so many unintended consequences. And really I want to thank Paul, Philippa, Jordan, and Legatum for bringing all us together right now in London. Thank you.

Last but not least, I’d like to share one few things. It’s really that few courageous people can make a difference, and they not necessarily come from the political background. We’re seeing that how in the US, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and whatever you think of them, may change the fate of their country. In France now we have two businessmen that are all the media attention every day, and I think the journalists are right on this one, because they are making a huge difference.

The first one is building with his team, who is at R2, the biggest incubator of amazing projects I think Europe ever experienced. The second one, the second entrepreneur, just decided a few years ago to reestablish open debate in France, to reestablish free speech. What did he do? He bought several media.

And he’s so successful and disturbing that President Macron’s political appointees, a few weeks ago, decided to close down one of his channels. And you know what? It happens to be the most watched channel on the cable.

So I’m not talking about Zimbabwe here, nor Venezuela, I’m talking about France. We have an administrative body of unelected people who are closing a private channel for political reasons watched by millions of French people.

Conclusion

But you know what? They won’t stop us. They won’t stop the deep trend that’s going through all our countries. Truth is on the way back, and we’ll make it.

Many of you here are very invested to revive our principle and civilization. Some may be following the ARC conference wondering what they could do. Please join us. We need each one of you. Each one of you to participate in new projects, to become a leader or support the leader existing, and to participate after the big nap to the great awakening that is taking place.

Our civilization is at stake, so don’t hesitate anymore. Let’s make it happen together.