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French Presidential elections

Smokeandsteam said:
I'm surprised you are surprised. Young people see absolutely no future for themselves and their friends under the current system. Given Macron is the candidate of the current system and Le Pen the change candidate it was inevitable that the FN would be popular amongst young people.

People of all ages - trapped in the deindustrialised areas, in dying towns and villages, where no-one they know has ever had a decent job, where they are ejected from the political economy, where their lives are firmly and always going downward - feel absolute rage and despair. Voting for the FN in those circumstances is an absolutely logical act for them.
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It's an absolutely logical act and pretty much inevitable that young people who are feeling economic despair and see no hope for the future will be drawn to neo-fascism and rampant xenophobia, is that really where we're at?
 
teqniq said:
People on Twitter are of the opinion that he's just trying to blag his way out of it

(read tweets below this one)

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yeah posted it up yesterday In here page or so back, had about 1000 notifications yesterday, my twitter was lit up as they say.
 
bimble said:
It's an absolutely logical act and pretty much inevitable that young people who are feeling economic despair and see no hope for the future will be drawn to neo-fascism and rampant xenophobia, is that really where we're at?
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Well if what your life's shit with what's currently being offered, looking for an alternative seems a reasonable idea. And the alternative to the status quo is at the moment, unfortunately, the FN.

However much Macron's being presented as some alternative candidate, he's really not -- ex-banker, ex-minister, more of the same.
 
On Bloomberg Why Macron Won and Clinton Lost
...
Months of postmortems of Clinton’s loss to Trump overshadow one of the simplest explanations: It’s important to convince voters that you are not corrupt. Macron also benefited from voters who refused to give Le Pen a free pass on her party's history of racism and xenophobia the way Americans let Trump get away with his inflammatory statements.

Clinton rejoiced at Macron's victory and what she called a "defeat to those interfering with democracy." Democracy, however, includes a long history of dirty campaigning. The internet toolkit -- call it Russian, alt-right or by any other name -- is far from a superweapon. It's merely a collection of dirty techniques based on modern delivery methods. These methods are not a silver bullet. A country with a healthy political culture and engaged voters can reject them. It's not for nothing that in France, Sunday's turnout of 74.56 percent counted as relatively low, while in the U.S. it would have been the highest since 1896.
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Macron being a young, perky relative clean skin compared to the weary staleness of la Clinton might have a lot to do with it.

The comparison with Trump to Macron may finally be more apt. The Donald borrowing progressive sound bites as Marine has turns out to be a mountebank peddling the same old refried Reaganism of elite tax cuts and hiked military spending once he'd blagged his way into the Oval Office. Trump is an empty political vessel that others fill. Really not the Le Pen radical authoritarian nationalist concealed by the FN's shiny PR but something rather conventional if incompetent. That may be how Macron turns out. France just shrugged in the usual cynical manner.

Will Macron actually be able to do anything new and will it work? That remains a pretty long shot with German dominance advancing and decades of structural problems in the French economy. The cynical French failed so far to buy Marine's Trumpian new brand of snake oil. The old FN poison their hard working spin doctors now say just needs a new label before enough of the French will reach for it in desperation. That self administered coup de grâce to The Republic can still happen in 22.
 
Sue said:
Well if what your life's shit with what's currently being offered, looking for an alternative seems a reasonable idea. And the alternative to the status quo is at the moment, unfortunately, the FN.

However much Macron's being presented as some alternative candidate, he's really not -- ex-banker, ex-minister, more of the same.
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I was going to reply to bimble but this pretty much covers it.

The only point I would add is this. Imagine if these youth had an offer from the left. One that recognised their economic and social situation, one that relentlessly emphasised and promoted what we share in common rather than what divides us.

A political analysis that understands that they were never consulted about globalisation and immigration which has made jobs harder to come by, has forced pay down and has made scare resources even more scarce. Imagine that analysis reflected their lives back to them and their life experiences rather than preached at them. Consider the impact of a left politics that understood how hemmed in, desperate, angry and controlled you felt. Imagine an absence in those politics of middle class liberalism that extols personal freedom and choice - things which are utterly denied to you.

What if the left focussed solely on economic justice, equality and functional communities.

My own view is that if such a thing existed not only would support for the FN melt away but you could also begin a conversation in those communities about the real reason for their plight rather than the imagined one.
 
^ Absolutely yes.
But also, "A political analysis that understands that they were never consulted about globalisation and immigration which has made jobs harder to come by, has forced pay down and has made scare resources even more scarce".

What might be the proposed solution which might be offered for this, if this is an essential part of any alternative attractive proposition?
 
bimble said:
^ Absolutely yes.
But also, "A political analysis that understands that they were never consulted about globalisation and immigration which has made jobs harder to come by, has forced pay down and has made scare resources even more scarce".

What might be the proposed solution which might be offered for this, if this is an essential part of any alternative attractive proposition?
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The starting would have to be to move beyond perceived differences and to give people the confidence to enter the political field based on demands that emphasies sameness and not difference and towards identifying the common enemy - capitalism. Nothing can work when communities/towns etc are an agglomeration of competititve individuals and dsitinct micro communities.

The left currently empasises - in face celebrates - those differences.
 
Valls had announced he's going to stand for En Marche in the elections. The PS is dead apparently.
 
Sue said:
Quote from Valls according to the R4 news.
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OIC. Looks like the only response from Macron's people so far is a one-line statement saying that he has not been given a nomination. Wonder if this is a promise Macron isn't sure he wants to keep. Beware the Ides of En Marche.
 
AEP's always worth a read ( paywalled on site) . The FN are emerging as something of a necessary prop - first to coral the electorate towards Macron & now - presumably - to extract concessions from Germany

AP01.JPG AP02.JPG
 
bimble said:
It's an absolutely logical act and pretty much inevitable that young people who are feeling economic despair and see no hope for the future will be drawn to neo-fascism and rampant xenophobia, is that really where we're at?
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I'm not sure anyone said it was logical to vote that way. It is however logical to point out that such votes can often arise as a result of economic despair. Just as some people feeling alienated from mainstream society are attracted to religious extremism, others feeling alienated are drawn to the far right.

eta: This isn't to say we should deny that people have agency to chose their worldview, of course, but societal conditions play a significant role in how easy it is a given ideological position to spread.
 
gentlegreen said:
They've presumably run out of family members now with names similar to Marie ...
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Marine's sister is called Marie Caroline Le Pen. I don't know of any others in particular, but I don't think it would be surprising if there are hundreds of them in the Front National headquarters, all milling about like Oompa Loompas.
 
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