The best analysis I've read of Emmanuel Macron's victory in the French presidential election yesterday comes from Helen Lewis in the New Statesman. The satire is subtle, however, unless you're well versed in the mainstream media's habit of parachuting into small town diners looking for "real Americans." But give it a look regardless.
UPDATE: This is from five years ago. Sorry. But the 2022 election was pretty much identical to 2017, so it holds up.
C'est superb!
Le Traitor was Putin's lapdog. Should have run the Basque descended guy. Putin would hate him with his Unabomber ideas. Capitalism would hate him because he would give workers more control including keeping our scabs.
I never forgave old man Le Pen going neoliberal elitist in the 1980.
I know this is a satirical take, given how both ends of the spectrum have steadily moved towards the polar ends. Nonetheless, in 2017 there was a noticeable shift to the illiberal far-right -- or at least they were a hell of a lot more vocal. And also, the complaint of centrism is mainly targeted at the complacency of climate change.
Illiberal far right is a oxymoron. When those debt markets go, adios "far right".
There are two types of far-right. Illiberal far-right refers to Fascism. Liberal far-right is the old school Republican.
Fascism isn't far right. Fascism is the conservative side of the left. Before ww1, they were called conservative revolutionaries, against the conservative reactionaries. Women being collective property would be one vein. They generally didn't like Chartists, which you are. Saw as wimps.
🤦
It gets less satirical with each passing election in France. There's an undeniable logic, in a French context, to being willing to give the far-right a chance. Last time out, MLP had the absolute worst, most disastrous start of any candidate for elected office in history. But she's learned from her mistakes: She shows a human face, she's the velvet glove that hides her cray cray supporters iron fist, and her economic policies are practically a carbon copy of Paul Krugman's prescriptions.
I think if you look at what Mélenchon’s voters and also PS voters ended up doing in the second round, it does seem clear that there are very dark forces at work. I think the rise of militant centrists like Macron has paradoxically fueled the rise of the far right, particularly in France. There’s an ever increasing disillusionment and disconnection with politics, particularly of the young people. Disengagement is the thing: we see more people abstaining or casting null or white ballots.
All but the very rich and well connected no longer have hope that government’s going to function well for them. People feel like they’re making sacrifices to keep MLP out of power and they don’t really believe that she’s basically going to implement Paul Krugman’s preferred economic policies but they're will to pay an economic price, at least for the moment.
But I think that, in terms of center-left economics, she’s also the only one who’s ever expressed any serious interest in them. I think MLP's lying and will be even more right-wing in her economics than even Macron but she's the only game in town.
Even for me, a person who has previously held a very high opinion of JLM, he isn’t really functions to keep the PS as a center-left party—he’s just in la-la land and a Putin supporter to boot. And the PS—that’s the party of the majority of people, or it was until the radical centrists like Hollande and Macron obliterated it. They just burned the entire party to the ground. There's no longer a major party of the center-left in France.
What’s increasingly clear is that this radical centrism— which is only able to gain and keep office under very special circumstances and then only when the choice is a binary one between it and the extreme right — has diminishing power in elections, even against the extreme right. Yes, given a choice between MLP and a centrist with an approval rating in the low 30’s the French will choose the unpopular and unhelpful but with each election fewer people participate, fewer are willing to sacrifice economically, and more are inclined to give the far-right a chance. For me, that's terrifying. But I also think that centrism is the problem, not the solution.
Dude, MLP' is a neoliberal globalist that sold old front national, a solid conservative revolutionary group up until 1979 to globalist forces. All Macron does is merge neoliberals in France together. Whaa whaa. The
Guthman, you still don't get the red sea conspiracy.
Lispstick on a pig. MLP cleverly added a laundry list of measures to her program that would please anyone concerned by his purchasing power.
No surprised, it worked. I would add that her program is not different from Melanchon, who itself added a large slice of Green to attract the Ecolos.
Will it works one day for MLP... maybe.
Macron government already implemented a unheard revolution, that no one before him dared dream of, by updating the "work laws" Code du Travail. Allowing for more local discussion rather than the national directives. This already had good success with employment being at the highest level and introducing successfully "apprenticeship" for younger people (they love it). Macron still has a lot of work, notably with retirement reform. Once it is done, MLP or Melanchon can win all they want, the reality of power will overwhelm them.
C'est magnifique!
You guys ran off Rational Thought. Why. Even if verbose, he spent a lot of time thinking through the topics.
Too bad he didn't research them first.
Too much. Rational Thought should spend more time looking at data. Yes, that’s hard; data on topics that interest KD and we, his readers, is noisy and multifactor, and one has to look at a lot of it. Because human beings are complicated.
When are liberals going to understand the red sea conspiracy???? I mean ignorant retards get it better than you morons: Let's get a reminder:
It's Russian/Putin lead coalition of countries and individuals(of frankly diverse backgrounds) of fossil fuel countries to set up a oligarchy to replace dollar imperialism and assure fossil fuel and a new reserve currency likely lead by China . It's not fascism dip shits. It's frankly globalism anti-indo European in thought.
The old left is dead. The new left has completely Unabomber driven belief of a environmental calamity. It's degrowth and depopulation. They want a complete removal of industrial toxins destroying the body(lead for example, was a early one).4-5 billion nonwhites will need to die and the end of fossil fuel nations. Got it yet????? Liberals are total retards. Nobody cares about useless culture wars for niggers or christards and their fake religion. Stop using colored boys like Desantis or Black lives matter dykes to push that very anti-planet agenda. Kill them. Jesus never existed and deal with that.
“My father was in the maquis.”
Well there's your satire giveaway.
Pourquoi ?
sometimes it rhymes...
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev , one of Putin’s most loyal serfs , recently stated that the ultimate goal for Russia was to lead the EuroAsian coalition. A new nation stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
LePen is a key person in Putin’s plan to implement this dream.
(EuroAsianism is an idea that started to develop in the 1920s)
That said, I must comment on US mainstream media’s reporting on Europe. They are obsessed with the narrative of right wing extremists taking over. In election after election are they predicting the victory of far right groups or at least predicting a close election. Before the EU election back in 2019 had US media Mateo Salvini as the winner of a new coalition , some kind of new Il Duce leading EU . The surge of right wingers didn’t happen and Salvini is now sitting on the back benches in the Italian parliament. US media has done the same with elections in the Netherlands, Spain … you name it . When Germany had their latest election was focus on AfD , a fringe group that is totally out of interest if we are talking about governing , not much interest for the new government consisting of three other parties. A new German government is of much interest to all but still more articles on AfD .
These last years have we had a lot of new governments lead by Social Democrats installed all over Europe but Americans are not aware of that fact because it’s not reported, reporting is focusing on Hungary, a country that has failed in converting to democracy. Hungary is hardly the most important country in Europe
LePen had no chance in this election.
By the way I wonder where are the articles in US media about that Slovenian right-wing Putin friend who was kicked out of office the other day can be found?
He was replaced by a green EU friendly party
Somehow, I must have missed it
Or didn’t that election make great headlines?
Right wing extremists lost election in Europe!
…nah, doesn’t fit the narrative
Some information from a Swede
I must admit, it was nice to finally read a comment on this page that made some sense. Thank you, Swedish person.
Yes, I was surprised to learn that there was also an election in Slovenia which went badly for the far right. This is the second place I heard it, the first was in a newsletter by Heather Cox Richardson.
As far as the ubiquitous comments by Spades, I am thinking he is really a cleverly programmed bot. Just enough relevance to give us pause, but otherwise completely random nonsense. The "Spades" programmer is playing us.
Only if you read those posts...
The Swede reads well.
Best Wishes, Traveller