Macron made an irresponsible gamble, at the worst possible timing, without taking in account his current lack of popularity. To no one surprise it blown up in his face.
Basically, his party got beaten so badly at the European elections (barely got half of the far-right votes, and almost got the third position after the Socialist), that he decided to trigger a “Dissolution”, which literally stop the current assembly mandate and call for flash-election. His gamble was to make himself the only alternative to the far-right by counting on the left division and the fear of the far right…
Which blown up to his face since the left kinda united itself and the far right still got a good advance. Even worse, this time its party got third by a long shot, and may loose a lot of its seats at the National Assembly.
Isn’t “turning right” the main political theme across the world now? It’s not just France.
But I will still put a disclaimer here that I am not French, just sharing my view since it seemed to be that most countries including mine are, ultimately, having the same problem. Feel free to correct me! Here goes:
I think, the general reason for this right-wing surge ultimately boils down to economics. People are obviously not satisfied with their current quality of life - see e.g. housing prices. Many blame it on things such as outside migrations or the geopolitical enemy of their country, etc etc. This is a hotbed for conservative-leaning mindsets.
Those factors I mentioned could have played a hand in this problem, but my opinion is that the biggest issue lies in unequal wealth distribution across the globe. That’s why the GDP is growing, but people’s standard of living (except for a minor few) is not. People directed their unhappiness at the wrong thing.
Right, I see your point. I also wonder sometimes if the excess of social media consumption and the battle to gobble more eye balls has somehow influenced people making them more susceptible to manipulation via charisma and populist opinions, I’m not sure how different it is nowadays than a couple of decades back. I might be wrong about this anyways
All of the western democracies are telling their people the reason their quality of life is declining is due to immigrants and the disabled and poor. A lot of people seem to believe them. I agree its about inequality and bringing the far right in will only accelerate the process.
I think a quick look overseas will show you it’s migrants, the queer community, women, and to a certain extent any intellectual. Now where have I seen this before.
Yeah but s lot of those are self serving right wing ideals, for some reason everyone ignored this and just assumed the old revolution was ongoing. I guess like people who still talk about Russia as communist
We went to the streets for months against the new retirement system and they’ve beaten the shit ouf of us. We couldn’t make us heard by a so called democratic and moderate government. Not a big surprise that a lot of people are trying another way. No excuse for them to be fascists assholes. But Macron is carrying an heavy responsibility for the current situation.
Because people are dumb. A lot of them don’t even realize these people are really fascists, because for them fascism was an ideology that did evil things for the sake of evil, and the moment they had a semi-reasonable explanation why they hated minorities, people believed them. Also they’re avoiding classic signifiers of fascism, like swastikas, fasceses, and calling themselves fascists.
They are not even trying to overturn the decision. The far right has consistently walked back on every social mesure they had in the past 2 weeks to the surprise of noone who knows what right means.
I hope they really don’t like the ruzzians. That way, when the time comes, they can be properly utilized and disposed of…“guys why are there so many seeds in our uniforms? I don’t get it”…
Alongside policies for giving French citizens “national preference” for jobs and housing, they want to cut VAT on energy and allow under-30s to escape income tax.
existing promises on immigration, crime and insecurity as well as tax cuts to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
plans to abolish droit du sol, the right to automatic French citizenship for children born to foreign parents
Sounds like some good policies no wonder they are getting loads of votes. The reduction in taxes always comes back to bite you and that’s probably a mistake but the lower tax for the youth allowing them to get started in life instead of being in debt is a great idea. I haven’t heard anyone have such a progressive idea.
Unfortunately that’s exactly what Nationalism Socialism was all about. Great socialist policies to support and bolster the in crowd. Unfortunately those policies aren’t extended to the out crowd. And the out crowd is pretty easily defined when you’ve got “Nationalism” in your political party’s name.
It’s called populism for a reason. Trump ran on a populist platform in 2016. Populism can be Democratic or authoritarian, meaning it can be genuine concern about capitalism and the imbalance between the ownership class and the working class or it can be the sugar coating on a bitter, authoritarian pill—or, in other words, a fuckin lie.
Yea. You hope that the more centrist parties look at what the population are desperate for and will do anything for. And then you hope democracy works and people get to vote for that they believe is right. Hopefully that happens in conjunction with sane and stable leaders listen to the demands of the people.
Currently large amount of the people feel ignored or certain issues and feel only the fair right is listening to them. If they had anyone else to vote for I’m sure they would.
Right, but the lower tax burden isnt worth the authoritarianism. The assholes who can stomach sacrificing poor minorities and immigrants for a few gimme policies are not doing something noble. These are politicians we’re talking about. They’re not here for us. They’re here for themselves, and they are lying and antagonizing in order to get power because they know what people want and what certain people are afraid of. Their goal is to bait people with fear, entice them with populism and then…what? You catch more flies with honey and a hatred of honeybees.
Poland’s a great country. I went there and loved it way more than I thought I would. Lovely people, lovely culture, lovely country. Wages going up every year. They seem on a good path.
Glad to know people taking on 30 year long loans pay slightly lower taxes for a few years, that’s certainly helping a lot. Few because no one’s giving a 20 years old a loan for a house/flat lol so you’re probably closer to 30 when you actually can and do want to settle.
You might be financially literate, but you’re not human literate if you think this tax reform is anything but catering to the young and non-politicised.
Because it’s populist crap, obviously. We don’t need MBAs and business school grads to pay lower taxes, quite the opposite. There’s one party proposing to smoothen tax brackets across the board, which would also have a huge impact on the younger, and it’s not Bardella’s.
This tax cut is also a drop in the ocean compared to what they want to do to the retirement reform, but young people think they will never be old, and the old one sacrifices the youth at every turn so not many actually care this stuff despite the impact.
Lastly, I’m not sure there’s even a plan for financing such tax cut. That’s why people call it far right populist bullshit. The man did his entire campaign on tiktok and is only where he is because he married into the Le Pen family.
They are their policies. People vote for policies. Um that’s how politics works.
Those policies seem to me something that would attract people. They currently have the largest amount of votes. So if people are voting for the parties policies what are they voting on? Their favourite party colour?
In case you’re seriously asking, they vote based on how nice looking the head of the party is, not on policies. Democracy is dead when you see rednecks telling journalists they vote for the man because they like his tiktok channel.
I think helping everyday working class people is a good thing
Just cut taxes bro. Just one more time dawg. I promise it’ll work this time, dude. Just one more tax cut. One more time bro I promise. It’s going to stimulate the economy homey. This time we swear.
There is a big difference between tax cuts in general and tax cuts on the poorest people in society.
But I agree. Tax cuts across the board are a bad thing usually but I can see why people vote for that. People feel they need more money and it’s not coming from wage increase.
Are functionally no different than higher wages. But without public infrastructure - housing, education, health care, etc - what does an extra couple grand actually buy?
We’ve seen this in the US for decades. A pittance of tax cuts pitched as a percentage of income is presented as this enormous boon. But then wages stagnate, prices skyrocket, and debts soar in the face of new privatization.
And then we’re worse of than when we started.
The tax cut doesn’t buy anything in an inflationary economy
Yes so we agree. Wages need to be increased and the best way to do that is to stop businesses undercutting wages by hiring cheap foreign labour. Demand for labour goes up and with it wages.
Wages need to be increased and the best way to do that is to stop businesses undercutting wages by hiring cheap foreign labour.
Urban density increases the efficiency of public services. Wage rates do not.
Trying to keep populations small and fragmented does nothing to improve domestic quality of life. And rising domestic populations don’t hurt overall household incomes. Cartelized labor markets are what do that.
Inflation is largely a global issue.
Prices vary enormously by local regions. And price gouging is increasingly difficult over large distances.
Inflation is most commonly a consequence of local commodity monopolization, not global price trends.
They dont want to help working class people though. They say they want to help working class people whö they consider french enough. Just like the NSDAP said they wanted to help working class people they considered german enough. It’s a lie to get votes. Their actual policies would hurt working class people.
You clearly do not know how things work in France. We have tons of things fiscally in place that make it so that in practice, you have to earn much more than that to truly pay taxes.
I don’t have time currenty to enumerate all of that, but I’ll come back to you later if I don’t forget.
It’s not fear mongering if it is already happened and people can see first hand the impacts. That’s why people vote the way they do they see the reality of the situation and the current parties are telling them things that are lies.
The thing with being in Schengen area is you literally just let people in LMAO. If you don’t check passports of anyone coming in by the Italian border, you don’t get to find out who is an EU citizen and who isn’t.
Do you even live in EU buddy? Life isn’t as simple as you think it is.
The stats I’ve seen have shown that immigrants from Schengen contribute more than average and commit less crime than locals.
As such on a purely data driven view there is nothing wrong with Schengen. For most people the issues isn’t with movement within the people that have lived in Europe for generations. You know they are European, they have European values and there is a back and forth movement/ different perks. In a way Schengen works the way it was designed and works well.
Thanks to social media, youth unemployment, an uptick in asylum seekers, ballooning energy prices and oodles of nationalist right-wing cash, Macron is no longer the only politician with the regal ability to play Jupiter on TV. There are now a record 4,005 candidates running in the first round, with many fabled divinities to choose from.
It’s also the fault of neoliberal governments around the world for actively looking down on middle class people for not caring as much about the climate, refugees and other matters that you can care about when you actually have enough money to have the time to care about those things.
Indeed, the polls indicate Le Pen’s awkward and aggrieved racist coalition—along with the inventively loony left-wing anti-Israel alliance dubbed the New Popular Front—is positioned to form a government that could defenestrate Macron’s Ensemble! coalition in the 2027 presidential election.
Whatever the result, what cause the rise of far right will be still there. We have to continue to mobilize after the election this time. Organized for your interest fellows
Ah yes, right-wing authoritarianism that helped cause mass immigration from regional instability thanks to ignoring climate change and sowing global conflicts… Let’s just give the fox the keys to the henhouse.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I’m sure that you can find media here in the US that is going to provide useful political coverage of France, but I don’t think that this article is gonna be it.
Yeah, I know all about that, they use the " brown immigrants are terrorists" in my country too in order to exploit people’s latent racism.
To have a point you’d have to compare those instances to violence by Europeans against eachother, by being selective you’re feeding a narrative that brown immigrants are more violent than Europeans. That’s already been demonstrated to be false. You’re being manipulated by fascists.
You know, you could be less racist. Not all “brown” immigrants are muslims. Remember, Islam is an ideology, like fascism. Its not about the color of your skin.
So, even if we assume those 122 attacks were committed by immigrants, how does that compare to violent crimes committed by Europeans themselves? 122 incidents over 9 years is remarkably low for a single demographic. How many bad actors is that per event? How many immigrants are there total and how many committed these crimes?
No ones moving goal posts. Give a ballpark of how many immigrants were involved in those 122 attacks.
You’re making the argument that brown immigrants are more dangerous than Europeans and you’re then trying to exclude all types of violent crime except that labeled terror attacks to obfuscate the reality that immigrants are statistically no more dangerous than Europeans themselves. It’s dishonest.
Even in terms of terrorism, the majority has historically been committed by domestic groups (ex. nationalists, political extremists, separatists etc.), not immigrants. Again, this is very similar to my own country where domestic terrorism is actually the greater threat than that from immigrants.
Rhetorically because this conversation is going to go nowhere. What would need to happen for immigration to actually be an issue?
Because people that tell us low wages (not GDP increase but working class wages for locals), high house prices, and other things people mention like losing culture and crime increasing isn’t an issue. So what would it take for it to be an issue.
A lot of people, usually the rich that own businesses and land and can make money off immigration, say it’s not a problem. I think rather than choosing a side and ignoring the issues people should wonder what would be a bad outcome then looking at things after.
The rich making money off immigration isn’t an issue with the immigrants, it’s that we don’t force companies to pay all their workers the same wage, regardless of status. That’s a regulatory problem, not an immigration problem.
Because people that tell us low wages (not GDP increase but working class wages for locals), high house prices, and other things people mention like losing culture and crime increasing isn’t an issue. So what would it take for it to be an issue.
None of this is related to immigration. Immigrants aren’t raising housing prices. With crime you have to actually prove that that’s immigrants committing more crimes than Europeans and what kind of crime. They call brown immigrants criminals and rapists here too, and it’s simply not true, they commit crimes at the same rate as citizens.
You have to understand that this is a pattern we see over, and over throughout history; when fascists want to seize control they blame immigrants for all of socieyies woes. And they do so only with rhetoric or twisted facts, not the truth.
You never really answered the question though. What would have to happen for immigration to be a problem in your eyes? I’m just trying to get you to open you mind rather than sitting on your team. Look at the situation objectively first.
No its basic supply and demand for both wages and for housing. If you have a limited supply and demand increases prices can only increase. Is supply increases and demand the same wages go down.
Denmark has run the numbers for crime by country of origin which is direct proof. But then places like Sweden also have indirect proof like now having to keep a record of grenade attacks when they didn’t 20+ years ago.
It’s a real wonder why people with less possibilities can become influenced by crime, regardless of birthplace, and still countries push new residents into those situations
Not bring who in? What’s the deciding factor, precogs evaluating if someone does crime in the future? Not bring people who are born there and already stuck in lower classes. The problems don’t care about immigration, it’s the bourgeoisie waging class warfare.
So you are moving to a new street, but suddenly it’s not allowed because someone else maybe did something. You don’t know why, what, who, but your rights have been lessened. That’s how
There’s plenty of houses. Street or city or country, it doesn’t matter. There’s no valid reason to prevent innocent individuals from choosing any of them. Sounds like a right, why wouldn’t it be
Canadians cant even find a house anymore, much less buy one. The UK is paving the country side. House supply is down, they literally cant build quick enough to handle the influx.
I think you and I have fundementally different ideas about immigration and what a country is.
The matve population of canada is shrinking. The only reason its growing is immigration, and they literally cant build enough houses to keep up. Theres not enough construction workers and not enough hours in a day.
Well lots of countries have immigration requirements or points based systems. So it is obvious that countries already use means to choose which immigrants it wants.
This just needs expansion. You look at immigrants or children of immigrants that commit more crime than locals or contribute less than locals and you don’t bring them in. Because bringing them in makes the country worse.
It’s obviously an average but that is all immigration requirements are.
Politics aren’t a game with winners and losers. When fascists rise to power, it’s not like in a soccer game where you say “well, better luck next year”.
People’s lives are on the line, and people might literally die fighting this shit soon. The idea that politics are a gentleman’s gentle verbal jousting club is pretty ridiculous.
About your enlightened centrist take about immigration… It’s never going to appease racists. What you suggest is exactly what France’s UMP and what Macron have done. Look where we are now.
There are illegal migrants in every country. Why should the far right be voted on one issue alone. It’s not like their other policies are good (and i’ll put my hand on fire to say that I’m pretty sure it’s inmigration policy will be bad too)