The French

Ally -- would your opinion of the French change if I told you that when I was over there (Summer '95), they had big "Laughing Cow" billboards all over the place? (or, in French, "la vâche qui rire")

I love French vintage ads though. I have 8 of them in my apartment right now.

http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/coppertone.jpeg

Still, great philosophers, pouty actresses, St.Etienne footie club in the 70s, Air & Daft Punk clinch it. They rule.

Hard men of Europe standing up to the Islamic Empire or cheese eating surrender monkeys kowtowing to terrorist threats?

more contrarian than either tbh

Kind of like flag-burning in the U.S., this is really a bullshit issue. How many women in France actually wear burkas?

367.

Great. One more thread I have to stay out of when I'm drunk and cranky.

let's see.. forbidding arab women to cover their faces in public buildings = they stay at home almost entirely! what a great leap forward for modernisation and equality!

(and yes i know muslim =/ arab and also that most muslim women don't cover their faces at all, i.e. what M White said)

tracer kind of otm 'forbidding' them to do this doesn't really seem the way forward.

whatever happened to the liberté part of the equation?? seriously i wonder if french politicians have lost their goddamn minds

laicité in schools is one thing - uniforms promote discipline and minimize class difference, plus they're minors and the whole thing is paid for and run by the state - but full grown adults?? picking their kids up from school or whatever?? what the shitting fuck

fwiw i think kids should be allowed to wear the veil and/or headscarf in school. it's the difference between positive and negative freedom - the freedom FROM religion - or even seeing the ornamental manifestation of religious belief - and freedom FOR religion, i.e. having those ornaments if you want.

i've actually heard that kids basically didn't start giving a shit until it became forbidden - that's when the headscarf started really catching on in school

Tracer, the ruling against the niqab is "in places where ID is required to be shown/personal identification is important". Examples such as post offices and banks, I'm leaning toward "you might have a case".

Examples such as public transportation are pretty ridiculous -- first of all it's no other Joe Citizen's fucking business who you are on PT, and second, that's the time I would MOST want to be hidden from view. Fuck, *I* am tempted to wear a burqua on the subway, it would stop a bunch of sleazy fuckers being sleazy. Plus you don't have to demurely cross legs as no one can see up skirt anyway.

I wonder if any of those women drive. I'm guessing not, but maybe I'm getting my prescriptive rulings confused.

how often is it the case that schoolkids are wearing such items in non-faith schools (or schools where they are in a distinct minority for doing so, which is really a situation to avoid i think) tho? there must be far fewer cases of this than burka wearers - supposedly only around 2000

how often is it the case that schoolkids are wearing such items in non-faith schools

Do you mean, how many girls from Muslim families are enrolled in public schools who have personally chosen or whose families have chosen for them to wear the veil? Seems like that number probably changes every day, tbh.

I happen to think the school ban is BS, tbh.

Sorry, I should specify: schools prohibit any kind of headscarf at all, even if it leaves the face uncovered.

The current French ruling for public places is against the niqab, a veil that covers the lower half of face (everything except the eyes).

laurel is correct (muslim girls don't wear veils anyway i don't think?) so blueski the number of girls that wear the headscarf in school is theoretically nil, since they're forbidden to do so by national law

I am also thinking that I saw a drop-dead gorgeous and extremely stylish Muslim woman on the subway the other day in wide-legged jeans, a long belted coat, and a silk scarf wrapped around head in classic Hepburn/starlet-in-a-convertible style. Make-up and eyebrows were impeccable, personal style was impeccable, obv she had money. Totally gorgeous and modern and still modestly dressed & scarved.

Do not understand who could find the time to object to that, she was a pleasure to behold.

pic or it didn't happen

i just hope they don't ban fever ray from french award shows

That women should be liberated from exaggerated modesty (I don't think there's much modesty in ostentatious modesty, really) and patriarchal control is praiseworthy but to do so by diktat of law is merely to exchange the petty tyranny of enforced social codes for the petty tyranny of the State and the underpinning of this move in France stems pretty transparently (to me, at least) from not only hypocritical (as Tracer points out above) but also racist/nationalist prejudice. It's easy to be tolerant to people who are just like you, less so, apparently, if they're not.

One of my kids' classmates, a student from Algeria, wears a headband rather than a headscarf, and that's considered acceptable by the school (this is just outside Paris).

I've only seen one woman in anything like a full-body covering here in France.

At my kids' school last month, they sang Christmas carols in class, religious ones, not just your "happy holidays" stuff (although they did that too). This is an ordinary public school. I have some Jewish friends who find this offensive. I don't know what the Muslim kids think. I think the French consider this acculturation, since they don't generally profess the faith anymore.

ime lapsed catholicism is the official religion of france

And Marxism

I've only seen one woman in anything like a full-body covering here in France

seriously? this is common enough in ruralish ireland tbh

That women should be liberated from exaggerated modesty (I don't think there's much modesty in ostentatious modesty, really) and patriarchal control is praiseworthy but to do so by diktat of law is merely to exchange the petty tyranny of enforced social codes for the petty tyranny of the State and the underpinning of this move in France stems pretty transparently (to me, at least) from not only hypocritical (as Tracer points out above) but also racist/nationalist prejudice. It's easy to be tolerant to people who are just like you, less so, apparently, if they're not.

― Mit der Kattzheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens (Michael White), Tuesday, January 26, 2010 6:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i basically agree with this, but don't find a conclusion that easy to reach. it's a difficult dilemma for a liberal secularist, because this is a very strange kind of "freedom to". (i think it's evasive to characterize it as such, really -- we're talking about children.)

(i don't agree with all of it. i don't think the state is enforcing a "tyranny" by doing this ffs.)

I read this the other day:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953382,00.html

Now the French Must Prove They're French:

"What a lot of people don't realize is that with the increasingly strict obligation to prove your citizenship, you can walk into a state administration today to have your ID or passport renewed, and walk out virtually a stateless person," says Naulleau, 48, whose family had been posted to Baden-Baden, Germany — about 30 miles from the French border — when he was born in 1961. "The situation is creating a two-class system of citizenship in which French nationals born abroad or to foreign parents are treated as inferior, and forced to prove their worthiness of being French more than others."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953382,00.html#ixzz0do5jbogZ

history mayne you don't think this decision is tyrannical? then what is it?

what do you think of this?

Others will opine that one cannot be a true citizen if one hides one's face, because one is thus refusing human interaction. Yet some people wear dark glasses out of shyness or pure ­obnoxiousness, and nobody would think of denying them their right to humanity. The security-based objection, requiring one to bare one's face in order to have the right to pick up one's children from school, for instance, or if so required by a police patrol, is legitimate in the abstract, but only if one conveniently forgets the fact that in practice, the new generation of women – among the many we have surveyed – do not in fact refuse to comply.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/26/proposed-veil-ban-in-france

from that above link: "Pseudo-feminist rhetoric cannot conceal the fact that it is indeed the voluntary veil which is being fought, and not the imposed article."

yep

as an atheist liberal i still think that believing in whatever wacky comfort blanket gets you thru shd be a basic right, really

and any and all actions arising from that belief? Cos that's the edge that we're treading with this, even if in this case it's a bit of a silly example?

xpost: no, its a case of the French old guard and "intelligentsia" unable to deal with the difference

and any and all actions arising from that belief?

Nah, course not. "Rights" is a tenuous and wobbly notion that is purely metaphysical outside of the realm of enforceable law imo but actions that don't actively harm others ought to be outside of the state's power I think. The chain of logic that would make wearing religious symbols an act of harm is a lot longer than the chain that you could create to argue for lots of other acts that states don't see fit to legislate for.

e.g. "don't indoctrinate kids into religions they can't possibly understand" well yeah I don't disagree on the level of personal ethics but how the fuck are you gonna make a law to stop all the other stupid indoctrinations that all adults enact on kids and which are notably worse/more life-unenhancing?

I like a government trying to strongarm women's rights in one clearly racial/cultural arena tho when governments are so notably awesome at stamping out all the other abuses against women

actions that don't actively harm others

U&K, and kinda tough to see where it occurs in this case, apart from a nastily bruised nationalism.

how the fuck are you gonna make a law to stop all the other stupid indoctrinations that all adults enact on kids

starting with religion not a bad step imo, but not just one aspect of one religion

I seriously don't see any difference between raising your kids to fear imaginary deity and raising your kids to be law-abiding passive consumers tbh and think in many respects the former is preferable.

apart from a nastily bruised nationalism

there's the rub. this is just a really big deal for an enormous amount of people.

Several of them not racist assholes.

I seriously don't see any difference between raising your kids to fear imaginary deity and raising your kids to be law-abiding passive consumers tbh and think in many respects the former is preferable.

new thread pls, because whatever about statement one, the 'preferable' part is challops go leór and we could definitely get good mileage out of it for a wednesday.

Outside

I seriously don't see any difference between raising your kids to fear imaginary deity and raising your kids to be law-abiding passive consumers tbh and think in many respects the former is preferable

And now Brits must start wringing our hands also as the BBC asks Should the UK ban the Muslim face veil?

Complete with handy list for more info.

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Muslim Women's Network UK
British Muslims for Secular Democracy
Independent
British National Party
UK Independence Party

I hate the way the BBC covers stuff like this, like the only people with an interest are veil-wearers and racists.

link to the guardian cover the rest of it maybe?

The Guardian article linked upthread makes a lot of sense (although I'm amazed at the responses it gets). I can't see how anyone could construe this ridiculous proposed "ban" as anything but straight-out racism.

calling it racism is more problematic then just calling it fascism imo

Easier to say that it's racist in its consequences than in intention but easier still to say that racists will support it because it's a fit with their beliefs.

history mayne you don't think this decision is tyrannical? then what is it?

hmmm, i don't know, perhaps some kind of vigorously sexist code of behaviour, rigorously enforced.

just don't get why single out the racism aspect when it's more directly sexist, xenophobic, culturalist etc. xp

Well, it's sexist, xenophobic and culturalist, but it's also racist because it's singling out a practice associated (in French people's minds) with Arabs. Never mind that I can go weeks in Paris without seeing a single niqab, making this a central issue reinforces those associations of Arabs = religious nutcases = danger to society, etc etc.

yeah it only applies to one ethnicity of people. unless you've turned muslim, had a sex change and moved to france steve, which i wouldn't put past you

yeah it only applies to one ethnicity of people.

is it ethnicity, is it race, or is it a particular interpretation of a religious creed? im pretty sure it applies to more than one ethnicity.

Arabs and Cat Stevens.

Yeah you are right obv but let's not pretend this is high-minded melting pot shite pls.

which i wouldn't put past you

er, thanks? ps don't you live in france

It does apply objectively to other ethnicities, but subjectively in France, veiled women = North African Arabs.

This is mere quibbling. Veils are associated with brown-skinned foreign Muslim women. Point, finale. Thre is a desperate strain in French national culture which wishes everyone could be like the Portuguese, Polish, Spanish, German or Russian Jews, Italian, etc.. immigrants of years past and just be fuckin' grateful to become French. Black Africans and Arabs and Asians who have suffered under the boot of the French Empire and its notorious hypocrisy are sufficently wide-eyed not to worship French culture unquestioningly and sufficiently disabused of any naivete to recognize the racist strain in French culture.

(i don't agree with all of it. i don't think the state is enforcing a "tyranny" by doing this ffs.)

Excuse me for being an old fashioned liberal, but anything that doesn't stem from the individual woman's agency is nontheless an imposition; perhaps a welcome one but still an act of immensely patronizing "We know better than you do."

I went to school with a very clever Pakistani woman who felt very liberated by her veil since it was a very overt negation of her status as a sex-object. I didn't always agree with her take on things but I did have to concede to her her right to dress and think as she wished and the French mania for banning all Arab/Muslim traditional female clothing makes me very uneasy for those French (white) women who might wish to convert to Islam not to mention, say, women undergoing chemo, who think the veil might be good cover, not to mention mere provocatrices or nuns.

anything that doesn't stem from the individual woman's agency is nontheless an imposition

yes. i agree with this 100%.

(which is why i think this is a thornier question than a lot of yall are taking it for.) (i worked with a clever enough (why does it matter?) afghan woman who felt very liberated by not wearing a veil, since it was an overt symbol of patriarchy.)

(why does it matter?)

'Cause she wasn't an idiot. I rather treasure that in people.

I acknowledge the thorniness which is why I wish that demogogic politicians wouldn't turn this into an opportunity to score cheap points.

I don't see it as solely a question of individual liberty, because it effectively removes the possibility of any communication between the individual wearing the veil and everyone else. I think the State has a legitimate interest in not allowing such walls between its inhabitants.

We've done this back when Jack Straw wanted to burn down mosques but tbh if "removing a barrier to communication" is the best the State's got then it needs to be thinking up better pretend reasons for doing something.

it effectively removes the possibility of any communication between the individual wearing the veil and everyone else

er, except it doesn't

Women in niqabs can still communicate! My four year old son went up to one the other day and she was perfectly happy to talk to me & my son.

The public transport ban on covered ladies, though? I am surprised for various reasons that nobody's mentioned HOODIES or TERRISM.

back when Jack Straw wanted to burn down mosques

you might as well write for the Mail if your left knee is gonna jerk as badly as their right one

An important point is that most of the younger women in France wearing niqabs are a) French-born and b) doing it entirely of their own volition, to the point that sometimes their parents don't even want them doing it. So here it's less a patriarchal thing and more a way of marking themselves out as different and that's why the French establishment doesn't like it, because multiculturalism is not very républicain.

Already got a gig at the Mail under my real name Peter HCONTROVERSIAL MODERATOR EDIT

does france even have a court system?? wouldn't the pols pushing this policy worry that it would be found illegal or whatever?

It's my understanding that there are Muslim women from France to Turkey to India who are rebelliously wearing the veil as a kind of generational fuck-you to 'well-meaning' secularist liberals who wish to liberate them without even bothering to confer with them, first.

Tracer, my understadning is that is why they're only talking about State-run public spaces like public transport and govmt buildings.

the french! cant live with em, cant live without em. am i right?

dunno how Grace Jones got away with her act on the Eiffel Tower in A View To A Kill

MW i think in the US at least you'd still run into constitutional trouble

Probably but not at airports, etc... We don't allow women to wear a veil for ID photos, for example.

Well yes, and if someone asks for your ID at a store or while you're driving or anything, you have to remove any kind of facial covering so they can confirm that it is you. Regardless of whether the person asking is a man or a women! Has there been a legal case in which a US police officer has had to ask a veil-wearing woman to show her face?

as noted above the cases of women refusing to remove their veils for police officers are entirely imaginary afaik

Well I meant in the US specifically, and also I didn't imagine that a woman would refuse, more that she would have to comply but then possibly sue for damages (not sure how that would work -- can you sue for being forced to comply with the law?).

Not usually, Laurel. One does have the option of staying at home after all.

If only more foreign women who dress funny and make us uncomfortable just stayed home.

http://msnbcmedia2.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/070627/070627_thatcher_vmed_12p.widec.jpg

Perfectly willing to see the Baroness stay at home.

Btw, Laurel, you reminded me yesterday that I know a Lebanese woman in my neighborhood, the wife of a liquor store owner, who is very pious and always veiled and yet quite dashing in her own way and very personable.

lol at pious Muslims operating a liquor store. Clearly this is a new and blessed land of opportunity!

Islam and alcohol is a bit more complicated than the old total abstinence thing tho.

Read some Imams talking about the injunction being on drunkenness rather than booze per se for example.

see also monks selling booze. or not idk.

Thanks, NV. I don't know anything about that stuff, but in any case that's a pleasantly nuanced reading and more than any absolutist would be able to stand, so it's a plus either way.

xpost

Yeah I was gonna say, there is a maybe urban myth(?) that Trusthouse Forte hotels used to have cheap bars because the company was owned by Quakers who wd sell booze but not at a profit.

can you sue for being forced to comply with the law?

^ you can sue, but you would probably get bounced out of court so fast it would make your head spin. Plus they would probably make you pay court costs for a frivolous filing.

Read some Imams talking about the injunction being on drunkenness rather than booze per se for example.

The Koran actually refers to wine as being a divine gift (kinda like Franklin saying beer is proof that God loves us) but also warns against intoxication.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6053380.stm

kind of interesting

"symbols which could strengthen the country's outlawed Islamic opposition"

indeed

2006 though. I don't recall having seen headscarves when I was there in about 1997, but I doubt I was paying particular attention. I understand that there had been no strong tradition of that kind of thing in North Africa, but that it's now pretty common in places like Morocco. Treating it as purely a question of personal choice kind of ignores the fact that it's part of an agenda being pushed pretty hard, and which doesn't necessarily have much time for personal choice itself.

^^^surely just as bad as the taliban running around telling women to cover up? And exactly what I would fear if we had a ban here. And not even face covering veils, but headscarfs?

xps

^^^surely just as bad as the taliban running around telling women to cover up?

fucking hell. yeah sure, just as bad as the taliban "telling women to cover up". similarly, making girls go to school is a bit like banning them from going to school and physically attacking them for trying to.

it's part of an agenda being pushed pretty hard

so are Kit Kats

i.e. yes politics exists and it affects how people behave

xp haha - yeah, I think you know what I meant, obviously not AS BAD as the tabeban...um, what I meant was forcing people to sign something saying they were not going to wear scarfs again was pretty bloody petty minded. OK?

well it would appear that ben ali doesn't like scarves because they suggest affiliation with his political enemies - it's a pragmatic thing and perhaps less petty than it looks (though almost certainly a loser wrt his long-term goals)

not sure why history mayne doesn't like them..

xp And anyway how is telling people not wear a scarf comparable to making them go to school?

btw happy Chandeleur everyone! My children are eating crêpes in school today with their Muslim classmates, in celebration of the presentation of Christ at the temple.

lol

they should adopt the story of the magical intelligent groundhog

xp And anyway how is telling people not wear a scarf comparable to making them go to school?

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

not sure why history mayne doesn't like them..

haven't said that. i've said that calling the move racist or "islamophobic" is wrong, given that in a number of "muslim states" there are either similar laws, or similar attitudes, in play.

I don't know how that counts as secular, but I do wish I was eating crêpes right now

we are going to slam some crêpes tonight. plus cider. It's the tradition here!

re. secularity: I think it's b/c pretty much no one professes Christianity here, at least not in a "metaphysical" way, that they can sing religious songs in school and it's not supposed to be threatening to anyone. But of course haha yeah right.

Just because they ban or frown on scarves in some Muslim countries doesn't mean that it's not racist/islamophobic when they do it in France. The motivations in the two cases are very different.

xp And anyway how is telling people not wear a scarf comparable to making them go to school?

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

Well, now I'm just confused because that's exactly what it appears you were saying.

i've said that calling the move racist or "islamophobic" is wrong, given that in a number of "muslim states" there are either similar laws...

I think it could still be those things though, as well?

Anyone opening this thread and hoping for a discussion on camembert is going to be v. disappointed.

Oops xp - what zelda said, then.

Headscarfs, burqas, chadors - Have Your Say

xp And anyway how is telling people not wear a scarf comparable to making them go to school?

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

Well, now I'm just confused because that's exactly what it appears you were saying.

for some people -- like the taliban, in this instance -- who are pro-covering and anti-school, they are comparable.

but i don't think i was comparing them, though i would say that in the terms of the debate conducted upthread, making children go to school is "tyranny", isn't it? i was saying that comparing the french anti-scarf law with the taliban's pro-burqua law was a bad case of relativism.

I was comparing the Tunisian anti-scarf ban with the taleban's reaction to women not wearing burqas - but yeah, bit over the top I admit.

My understanding is that there's a certain 'rebellious' fashion for ostentatious Muslim modesty that's partly propelled by the pushy secularist injunctions against headscarves etc... I'm not particularly a fan but hten, I'm not a fan of people self-righteously telling other people what to wear. That doesn't make me blind or indifferent to the possibility that people may be socially or familialy coerced it's just that too broad and pat a response legally seems too facile and too categorical. It reminds me of what I think when I see, say, Sarah Palin on the cover of amagazine repping 'for life': 'Great. Good for you. Now why to you want to take the choice away from women instead of trying to persuade them?'

Allez les Bleus imo

It was funny today to hear about how the French are busting up everything in sight to avoid working two more years before retirement and the Brit govmt are promising to get rid of a half million public sector jobs over five years.

I would love UK/Ire to rise up and start blocking fuel depots and airports but its just not us, is it?

xp yeah lol - always funny to see 16 yo high school kids rebelling for their pension rights

The French romance w/revolution/revolt would be merely risible if it weren't so pathetic.

harsh

I would love UK/Ire to rise up and start blocking fuel depots and airports but its just not us, is it?

― cant believe you sb'd me for that (darraghmac), Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

happened in the uk in 2000

It's so superficial, baaderonixx, this glamour of uprising and it betrays an undemocratic spirit one finds at either end of the political spectrum in France. It's also mostly feckless; diverting progressive goals into passionate but irrational demonstrations of what amounts to an essentially impotent tantrum may make people feel empowered but it doesn't really empower them.

I agree that it's undemocratic inasmuch as it eschews the ballot box, but I disagree that that's all democracy boils down to. A precondition of healthy democracy is rational deliberation by would-be voters. In my relations with activism in France (largely amongst academics involved in last year's strikes, but also with less "exalted" people), the people involved spend a lot of time discussing things, & this is what allows for political organization. & political organization through rational deliberation leads to a democracy in which it's not just voting for your team, but because you know the candidate, or have participated in an organization in which she's involved.

have no opinion on this particular fight, but for all the revolt and car-tippings, it seems a much more rule-bound society than the uk

its the scale of it that astounds

yeah, I was blown away when I learned that they have laws regard transport strikes, so that usually when they happen (i.e. every other week) there are limits on how they can go.

holding out for this since I gotta fly to France in 10-ish days.

people involved spend a lot of time discussing things, & this is what allows for political organization. & political organization through rational deliberation leads to a democracy in which it's not just voting for your team, but because you know the candidate, or have participated in an organization in which she's involved.

I agree except for the rational part. My expereince of the French is that they like to think of themselves as so cartesian but they're pretty much like human beings everywhere.

it was funny today to hear about how the French are busting up everything in sight to avoid working two more years before retirement and the Brit govmt are promising to get rid of a half million public sector jobs over five years.

I'm a pretty pro-union, left-leaning guy but I had a similar thought. The French population is aging like the rest of us, right? And they have a comparable life expectancy and health outcomes? Do people really see it as oppressive to have to work past 60? Is there some other context I'm missing? Are they anticipating a whole wave of anti-labour legislation?

To be fair, as is often the case, the majority of the demos are now directed against sarkozy rather than the actual pension reform

I can't think of a single person, off the top of my head, whom I would wish to be President.

*ahem*

slock1, you'd really want to be Presdient of France?!

Eleven people, including several children, were injured when they jumped from the third-story window of a suburban Paris apartment building, an official said.

It wasn't known if they jumped on purpose or were forced, the judicial official said. There was no emergency in the building at the time, such as a fire.

The victims are of African origin, possibly from Angola, and an initial investigation suggested they jumped after one of the women involved became hysterical and started shouting she'd seen the devil, the official said.

Two members of the group - a 30-year-old man and a man with a criminal record who jumped out of the window holding a two-year-old child - have been taken into police custody, the official said.

All 11 victims were taken to hospital with multiple traumas. No life-threatening injuries were reported, although a four-month-old baby has been admitted to a Paris children's hospital in a serious condition, the official said.

The apartment building is located in the Paris suburb of La Verriere.

There's, as the kids say, a LOT going on with this french anti-smoking ad pic.twitter.com/bXddZcH3zN

— 🌎🌵the 🚀🌌cosmist 💣✊insurrection 🏴🚩 (@yungneocon) December 26, 2019

UH

Phenomenal

Been watching some French films lately and I wondered aloud where the directors find these strikingly weird-looking guys to star in their movies, and my partner said that’s just how French guys look. Do French guys really all look like that? Really puts their penchant for caricaturing Jews and Arabs and North Africans in a fresh light.

Never particularly noticed that the French have strikingly weird-looking guys starring in their movies. I think it might be more that Americans have strikingly conventional-looking guys starring in theirs.

^^^ truth bomb

Yup, was gonna say

You'll also have noticed they don't have strikingly weird-looking women starring in their movies. I think the ugly guy/beautiful woman thing is a longstanding cliche of French cinema.

But is it so different from anywhere else? Men are allowed to have 'character'. Lucky men!

An excellent discussion, in English, on laïcité in the wake of Samuel Paty's murder.

Macron wants the children of France’s largest minority to be given ID numbers, he’s dissolved Muslim civil rights groups and wants loyalty vows from religious figures. If you’re silent on this don’t pretend you’re serious about our society learning anything from the last century

— Marcus Barnett (@marcusbarnett_) November 20, 2020

Marshall Petain would be proud of this lad, but at least he defeated Le Pen

this is the point where Fishhook Theory is now an incontrovertible fact

Just so you know, that's a made up 'fact'. See also:

I do unequivocally apologize for the error I made in saying that Macron's bill targets Muslim children.

I do have a responsibility to facts. And I do not want to make anything harder for my colleagues who are doing an amazing job with a difficult story.

— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) November 22, 2020

Doesn’t mean the law will be equally applied, something something rich and poor men sleeping under bridges.

Everyone has a national ID number from birth in France.

Furthermore, collecting ethnic/racial data is illegal since 1978

You don’t have to collect ethnic or racial data to know which neighbourhoods or populations you want to monitor. Nor is the aim of ensuring all children go to school entirely separate from the context previously discussed on the threads.

The worst new policy is the one making it illegal to film police, assuming that’s accurate reporting.

The point is Muslim children aren't being specifically assigned ID numbers. The bill itself provides enough grist for the mill, no need to focus on nonexistent issues.

As for the other policy, it makes it illegal to film police if and only if the video is accompanied by targeted death threats. Sounds like a front.

Thanks for further clearing up/exchanges on this. It's not been that well reported on so I wanted anyone to comment (I do think posting tweets is useful even when inaccurate).

Any time. It's worth remembering that stuff like this does often get lost in translation.

Btw, re: the police bill, I forgot to add that it also prohibits citizens from circulating such material if it is accompanied by death threats. If I were an MC, I'd make a video featuring salient examples of filmed police brutality and rap pointed threats over it. I'd get taken to court, where the case would likely fizzle out as an instance of artistic licence but it would help underscore just how absurd this proposal is in the first place. Oh, and the 'intention of causing harm' clause – whatever the fuck that means from a legal standpoint – was added later, which tells you all you need to know about their intentions.

It's also ridiculous to assume that this bill could in any way shape or form have prevented, say, the 2016 Magnanville stabbing attack.

In other news, Sarkozy's on trial for corruption.

🤞

While it is currently legal to film cops they have no problem pretending otherwise and threaten you or break/steal your gear if you do, so regardless of what this new bill really does I wish good luck to anyone trying to document police misdemeanings after that.

This Onion-like ultimatum from Macron would be hilarious if it didn't convey so much violence pic.twitter.com/Kvwl5Mbucw

— Tarek Younis (@Tarek_Younis_) November 23, 2020

37!

🇨🇵El Ministerio de Interior francés anuncia un balance de 46 detenidos de París, así como 37 policías heridos.pic.twitter.com/bPQDXDaXxR

— Descifrando la Guerra (@descifraguerra) November 28, 2020

French presidential election poll, second round scenario

Macron vs Le Pen

Macron: 52%
Le Pen: 48%

Harris / Jan 19-20th pic.twitter.com/JeMFC3HVli

— Politics For All (@PoliticsForAlI) January 27, 2021

christ

u ok hon hon hon?

Les Républicains are dead and buried since François Fillon's humiliating defeat, and while some of them have become full-blown macronistes in the interim, the others have openly embraced Marine Le Pen, greatly boosting her score in the process. She herself has toned down her anti-EU statements, focusing instead on curbing immigration, which is a far more popular stance, including on the so-called left. Moreover, a year prior to the election is usually when she does best, in no small part because the French get sick of whoever's in power after four years, but also because Le Pen likes to make herself scarce throughout most of the quinquennat, as this has proven to be a winning strategy. Basically you shut up and allow the xenophobic media to do your dirty job, until you're forced to open your mouth once the campaign proper begins, at which point people suddenly claim to be shocked by your statements. Anyhow, I think Marion Maréchal has a much better shot in 2027. Keep in mind that Macron's approval rating is currently 40% and on the upswing, which may not seem like much, but from a French perspective it's not bad at all. The biggest problem here is that the left is typically divided, and doesn't stand a fighting chance at the moment, although that may yet change in the coming months depending on how well the new contenders do, starting with Anne Hidalgo, the current mayor of Paris.

Hidalgo is a terrible mayor. She’s polling at 5% in the presidential at the moment.

I got some news yesterday that means I may already be eligible to vote in that election, though I don’t have the final word yet. I won’t be voting for Macron or Le Pen or Mélenchon in the first round, that much I know.

What I do worry about are voters such as my MIL's partner. Lifelong PS (Parti socialiste) supporter, hates Macron because he's too right-wing and a traitor to his party. I suspect he wouldn't vote at all in the event of another run-off involving Macron and Le Pen. Alternatively, he might vote for the latter out of dégagisme… Or so he would claim. The reality is that he's a jingoistic/openly racist asshole and has only nominally voted on the left his whole life because that's his 'team'. I once asked him to consider the effects a Le Pen presidency would have on French people of colour and immigrants in general and he gave me a horrified look, not because he hadn't thought of the implications but because he felt found out.

Speaking of Mélenchon, he should've stepped down a long time ago – La France insoumise needs new blood or it'll perish altogether. I'd love to see someone like Clémentine Autain leading the charge.

that's a great question to put. straight up. 'aren't you worried about what a le pen presidency would do to immigrants and minorities? it would be terrible for them. aren't you concerned about that?'

Mélenchon can get to fuck, and so can Macron tbf. He’s come out with more racist stuff, again, obviously as appalled by these opinion polls by the rest of us, and I cannot tell you how great it feels to be blackmailed into voting for the only viable candidate to keep the fascists out when the only viable candidate is not-so-subtly pitching for their votes again. Democracy, eh? No wonder people don’t vote.

I don’t know anything about the ranks of LFI, JLM is silly enough that I expect very little of them. But I should look deeper.

lol fuck Manu though

“There will be no repentance, there will be no apologies,” an adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday ahead of the release of a much-anticipated report on the history of colonization and the Algerian War.https://t.co/3pdIvKgxfm

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) January 23, 2021

sir, this is a flunch

Mélenchon has been flirting with anti-vaxx discourse lately to rack up a few extra votes. His approach is quite interesting, as a matter of fact, and something that other left-wing parties need to reflect upon the world over: basically, he came away from the last election feeling like the only way to defeat Le Pen and Macron was to become a proper populist but from a left-wing perspective, which is a fair hypothesis. Except he got tripped up in the process and started saying and doing shit that is uncomfortably close to what the other, more successful right-wing populists were saying and doing. If it was all a strategic ploy on his part, I actually feel bad for him because it hasn't paid off at all so far. The Gilets jaunes episode was a good example of this.

2xp yeah I mean only about 10% of the population wants that. Talking about that stuff is a fucking minefield over there and ironically enough, Macron has actually done a better job of it so far than his predecessors, which goes to show the sheer scale of the problem.

Flunch might be going bankrupt lol. Sixty of their locations are closing due to covid. RIP.

Lol flunch I have eaten there once because I wanted the all you can eat fries, such shame

My wife would often eat there when she was a teenager because at the time it was one of the few restaurants in France where you could actually have a varied and balanced meal as a vegetarian.

Macron’s handling of education has been total garbage. Blanquet and Vidal are bolos.

Yeah, it's been pretty bad. When was the last time the government (I'm tempted to say: *any* Western government) has viewed it as a priority?

A priority to blow things up, and then fail to deal with the mess. See: the bac during the rona. Or soon, the LPR (glad I’m not on the cnu this year!)

Mélenchon seems like the living embodiment of what all the centrist/right wing commentariat in the UK lied out of their arses and said Corbyn was. He seems like a terrible waste of space.

the only way to defeat Le Pen and Macron was to become a proper populist but from a left-wing perspective, which is a fair hypothesis. Except he got tripped up in the process and started saying and doing shit that is uncomfortably close to what the other, more successful right-wing populists were saying and doing.

isn't it strange how this keeps happening

just saw the algeria thing. death to france

I once asked him to consider the effects a Le Pen presidency would have on French people of colour and immigrants in general and he gave me a horrified look, not because he hadn't thought of the implications but because he felt found out.

― pomenitul, Thursday, 28 January 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Wild what people will pretend not to know.

Guarantee père-in-law doesn’t think of pom as one of them either.

Wild what people will pretend not to know.

Tbc my faux-naïve question was in the context of him saying that a Le Pen presidency wouldn't be that bad, all things considered.

As to whether he doesn't think of me as 'one of them', that's probably true now, but we did have a long falling out almost a decade ago after he told me that I couldn't possibly be a true Canadian if I wasn't ready to die on the battlefield for my host country. He has LeGiTiMaTe CoNcErNs about the loyalty and reliability of immigrants when the shit hits the fan, you see. He's not a xenophobe, he's a patriot! And, to reiterate, he has always voted left, which, when I first met him 10+ years ago, really opened my eyes to how incoherent most voters are, including those who follow politics very closely like he does.

Btw this beau-père is my MIL's current partner. The one I usually describe as my FIL, i.e. my wife's father, is now a full-blown anti-vaxx, anti-medicine chemtrail covidiot, but I've never heard him make any xenophobic comments – quite the opposite, really. I do worry about the influence his antisemitic conspiracy theorist 'shaman'/healer of a brother has had on him lately, though, but I already talked about that in the brainworms thread.

And in case it wasn't clear, I strive to avoid interacting with my in-laws as much as possible. Being on a different continent certainly helps.

Being on a different continent sounds like a great idea when it comes to in-laws.

Aha! So this is how we can get you to make peace with North America.

XP parents too if at all possible at times ime

My previous médecin traitant retired at the end of 2020, and I'm glad because when I asked him to prescribe Gardasil for my kids, he said he'd do it but that I should come back later after I'd looked into it more because he didn't advise it. He also didn't want to prescribe vitamin D for us. My new one was happy to do both. Anti-vax views here go deep.

Note that the anti-rona vaccine being developed by the Institut Pasteur was canned this week because it wasn't going to be up to snuff.

Maybe you've come across this French joke that's been making the rounds. A doctor is charged with vaccinating an Englishman, a German, an American and a Frenchman against Covid-19 – all of them are unwilling subjects. The Englishman ultimately relents when he's told it's ungentlemanly to refuse, the German caves in upon hearing 'it's an order!' and the American decides to get the vaccine because his neighbour did. The Frenchman fends off every single medical argument that gets thrown his way until the doctor tells him he is in fact ineligible for it, being French. Indignant, he rails against this injustice and gets the jab.

The only part I find a bit confusing is the American, whose logic is oddly similar to that of the Frenchman.

Is the American one about Keeping With The Joneses? Is that considered an American trait?

Or, I suppose, it's my right to one if he's getting one.

ha I have not seen that.

Véran making it look like it's palace intrigue as to whether we're locking down again, but it may just be decision theater to put pressure on MEDEF and to buy time to figure out how to handle the public unrest they're anticipating.

I guess, but it still falls a bit flat imo. The joke would work better without the American.

xp another full lockdown (minus schools) seems likely due to the British variant.

whether to close schools is one of the sticking points, since Blanquer wants them open. But maybe they're why we can't get below 20k a day?

Blanquer is LREM's candidate for the presidency of the Conseil régional d'Île-de-France, against Pécresse. Ugh.

Worth a read (I seem to recall you being a Monde subscriber too):

https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2021/01/27/vittoria-colizza-avec-le-variant-britannique-le-nombre-de-cas-peut-augmenter-tres-vite-malgre-les-mesures-de-distanciation-sociale_6067715_3244.html

thanks! yes, I subscribe to Le Monde (& Le Parisien for local news)

Young people will save us.

🇫🇷#France, presidential election poll (1st round) :

Among 25-34 years old :#LePen (RN) : 37 %#Macron (LREM) : 18 %#Mélenchon (FI) : 14 %#Bertrand (LR) : 7 %#Jadot (EELV) : 7 %#Hidalgo (PS) : 6 %#DupontAignan (DLF) : 3 %
...

Elabe, 14/04/21 pic.twitter.com/jtYR217Ocf

— World Elects (@ElectsWorld) April 15, 2021

jesus christ.

I saw 29% among voters aged 25-34 according to IFOP & IPSOS, which tend to be more reliable than Elabe. Still a disturbingly high percentage, obv.

According to IFOP / IPSOS (source), those aged 18-24 plan to vote as follows:

29% – LRM (Macron)
20% – RN (Le Pen)
19% – LFI (Mélenchon)

(They don't provide figures for the other parties, which is telling.)

So zoomers are less drawn to Le Pen than millennials.

The biggest takeaway is how utterly disappointing Mélenchon and the PS have been since Macron got elected (in 2017, 18-24ers oscillated between 29% and 31% for LFI). The French left has done precious little to stem the tide, alas – there is no question that 'la lepénisation des esprits' continues apace in France.

One day the centre will work out that you need to offer something to people besides the fact that you’re not the fascists (whose language and policies you keep ripping off).

scampus milne (gyac)
Posted: 25 October 2020 at 17:45:32
They might do a better job of peeling off some of those FN votes if they weren’t so coy about peddling this shit. Ofc all the fascists approvingly qting it will never vote for them when they can vote for the real deal, but as long as they can hide behind the values of the republic then there’s no problem. 🙃

One day the centre will work out that you need to offer something to people besides the fact that you’re not the fascists (whose language and policies you keep ripping off).

This works for the PS (and only by French standards, since they'd be called commies in the UK or the US) but not so much for Mélenchon, who cannot be described as a centrist. His biggest issue is his authoritarian streak and his countless gaffes. He did remarkably well in 2016 and 2017 and then he squandered it all after he didn't make it to the second round.

I’m talking about Macron.

speaking of authoritarian streaks

Ah, nm.

xp

French Politics pic.twitter.com/7eB6kNvkCq

— Axe🗿🇵🇸 (@westernunion2k) December 16, 2021

"Le wokisme, c'est le contraire de la République" https://t.co/yhollPdeKC

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) February 13, 2022

What were you expecting from the right wing candidate?

Admittedly, French politics is more depressing than it's ever been: a couple of fascists battling it out with a proto-fascist and a neo-liberal, plus a ragbag of left candidates polling in the single digits.

ahhh the french

Who cares what Pecresse has to say about "le wokisme", what's a lot more worrying is that she referenced fascist conspiracy theory "le grand remplacement" in the same speech. So I guess we've actually got three fascists vs a neo-liberal now.

https://www.bfmtv.com/politique/elections/presidentielle/presidentielle-pour-hidalgo-pecresse-a-franchi-un-rubicon-de-plus-en-evoquant-le-grand-remplacement_AD-202202130293.html

A poll suggesting Le Pen could win the run-off.

After Macron won, I suggested his victory would pave the way for a Le Pen victory in 2022 because he would not be able to fix the structural crises that are pushing French voters to back authoritarianism. I was bombarded with abuse and called an apologist for fascism. pic.twitter.com/meyazYmLVv

— Ellie Mae O'Hagan (@elliemaeohagan) April 7, 2022

I don't think Let Pen will win the runoff but it's pretty disturbing that nearly half of French voters (and probably the majority of white voters) will be voting fascist. Something will give eventually.

Melenchon seems to be having a similar teflonic bounce - could even overtake her in the first round?

Zemmour doing a pretty bad job of splitting the fash vote

French Millennials vote Marine Le Pen?"Class-party polarization is higher among Millennials than older generations.Professional class kids are more left wing & working class kids are more right wing than their parents"-@policytensor https://t.co/0d5dcE7W9Chttps://t.co/WqCMx2PQLO

— Albert Pinto (@70sBachchan) April 8, 2022

see if you can find when Macron announced he was going to raise the retirement age https://t.co/sJyiezKPJ9 pic.twitter.com/bz3MUpZiPh

— accidental larouchite (@lib_crusher) April 8, 2022

New Ipsos projection:

Macron: 27.6%
Le Pen: 23.0%
Mélenchon: 22.2%
Zemmour: 7.2%
Pécresse: 4.8%
Jadot: 4.7%

Only 0.8pt between Le Pen and Mélenchon. That's the vote share of minnow candidate Poutou. We were so, so close to an evening with a completely different narrative.

— Leonardo Carella 🇺🇦 (@leonardocarella) April 10, 2022

One exit poll has it 28.1 | 23.3 | 20.1

Oh it's the same Ipsos projection but older - so Melenchon's gained a little in the last three hours huh. Throw him in the run off too, what's the worst that can happen...

Macron should win but the problem of a quarter of French ppl voting for the sewer remains. As with a lot of politics in the UK/US/elsewhere it's where this all ends. En Marche won't go beyond Macron and climate's impacts on borders will only increase.

Macron calls to vote against Marine Le Pen. But his whole strategy over the last 2 years was to legitimate all the topics of the extreme right and hoping for a second round against her. The result of his strategy is that she is totally normalized and could now win.

— Daniel Zamora Vargas (@DanielZamoraV) April 10, 2022

OTM

Trying to use the far right to leverage themselves into power is what all French leaders have done for decades though, on the left and on the right. Mitterrand did it to try and split the right vote, Sarkozy sucked up to the far right to get elected etc etc

Muttering to myself “le wokisme”

Still uncomfortable but a little bit better.

One poll was circulating the other day showing Le Pen doing well in the subsample of youngest French people, but that’s absolutely not what today’s exit poll found. She was a distant third among voters under 25, with the left candidate well ahead. She led among middle-age folks. https://t.co/66kLqWPkvZ

— Taniel (@Taniel) April 11, 2022

Is there any good writing on the French election?

Haven't seen any, just the usual liberal-style vomit.

This is pretty good.

https://www.ft.com/content/5bd5e791-9561-42a0-ac8c-f5bdeeb81309?shareType=nongift

I don't know what the big deal about Le Pen is, she couldn't be any more far right than the current UK government.

Turnout at 5pm stands at 63.2%, accoring to the interior ministry - that’s 1.8% lower than during the first round, and 2.1% down on the second round five years ago.

For the time being, this doesn’t look like the surge in abstentions that some had feared.

bodes well?

Macron projected at 58.2%

Only 40% for the fascist, vive 👏🏻le 👏🏻 France 👏🏻

better to have a golem than a fascist

We've got both in charge here.

It’s good if everyone just goes “phew that was close” without considering the reasons why

just read earlier that Blair is proposing to put together a Macron tribute band, a "British version of En Marche" 🤮🤮🤮. The problem or even the silver lining is every UK attempt at establishing a centrist party as a "🤡home for hopeful politics🤡" has been a combination of failure and farce.

LOL @ Macron being considered a centrist.

I think that’s really unfair, Tom, he’s not just a centrist, but so much more!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRIRrp9XIAEAC4W?format=jpg&name=large

incoherence at least has the minor advantage of not being purposeful evil

all sensible centrists in France like to take a more "nuanced" position on Marshall Petain, unlike those lefty reactionaries with their niave student politics!

Scores du Front National / Rassemblement national au second tour de la présidentielle :
- 2002 : 17, 7%
- 2017 : 33,9%
- 2022 : 41,8%

On va éviter de se réjouir ce soir, hein.

— Guillaume Champeau (@gchampeau) April 24, 2022

Ipsos poll: Mélenchon's voters were 41% various forms of choosing neither candidate, 42% Macron, 17% Le Pen. So it probably wasn't worth the moral panic about infantile radical leftists making red-brown alliances https://t.co/j9bZiDVfWA

— David Broder (@broderly) April 24, 2022

also Le Pen only got 29% of the 70+ age group votes in the 2nd round, the oldies haven't got much enthusiasm for the real fascists.

Centrists love fascists tbf so a good night for all concerned

Now they can concentrate on fighting the real enemy, muslims

Pretty concerning to see the high numbers for Le Pen among working age people

My understanding - v limited - was that Le Pen's economic proposals were solidly to the left of Macron's, and yknow, the racial policies are pretty similar so

incoherence at least has the minor advantage of not being purposeful evil

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Sunday, 24 April 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Good and evil now is it.

Would have been shocking to see a major European country elect a racist anti-immigrant party dedicated to exiting the EU... errrrrr.

who said anything about good?

(bastani content warning)

Democracies only run like this for so long. pic.twitter.com/uhCZKzmk78

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) April 24, 2022

Melenchon can go fuck himself imo, but (and this is an argument fellow ukpol despairers have heard me mane again and again) it’s 100% bullshit that voting against someone you hate is seen as preferable in most democracies than voting for someone you actually want. Assuming left French voters have several more years of being blamed for Macron’s failures while he desperately panders to the right in an attempt to set things up for…whoever he wants to succeed him, I guess?

Could see Macron trying to change the constitution to go for a 3rd term tbh.

Seems like a bad idea but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was surprised to see that Le Pen's best results anywhere were in Outre-Mer constituencies like Guadeloupe and Martinique, and hugely up on 2017:

Marine Le Pen have a LARGE LEAD Overseas:

Guadeloupe: +39.2%
Martinique: +21.8%
French Guiana: +21.4%

Results not representative for the rest of the country, but still...#Presidentielles2022 pic.twitter.com/yIQvKxoe5z

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 24, 2022

Only analysis I found was an interview with a local pro-independence politician: apparently they really really don't like Macron there. Still I might have expected abstention rather than a huge vote for Le Pen, esp given that Melenchon won big in the first round.

Would be interesting to see the racial make-up of the votes in those constituencies? Not much of a surprise that white ppl living in those areas would enjoy fascism.

(just remembered that French policy means these numbers will never be tallied)

who said anything about good?

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Sunday, 24 April 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Effectively that is what you were doing with that post. The politicians that say they occupy the centre will do a version of fascism without the rhetoric and you will tell yourself it's incompetent but not
capital evil. Just inventing justifications for your vote next time.

don't think aimless has a vote in the French elections

either way tho plenty of incoherent thinkers present in most totalitarian movements

Lol I know Aimless doesn't vote in this election but its a rehearsal for the ones he'll vote in.

Xpost White people are very much in the minority in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyane so that's not going to explain the massive Le Pen vote there. These are departements, ie fully integrated politically into metropolitan France, unlike say New Caledonia, which also has a strong independence movement. These departements don't have serious independence movements, most people there consider themselves completely French but forgotten by the Paris elites, I think that's the core of the Le Pen vote, and the Melenchon vote in the first round. And Le Pen is keen on these leftovers of French Empire and has been courting them assiduously. Tldr French racism is a complicated thing

"vote for the crook not the fascist" has been the equivalent slogan since at least 2002, when jacques chirac face off against marine's dad

as a one-off it was what it was (chirac was a massive crook (who wd be convicted after he stepped down); as a now-persistent multi-reality it's an emblem of the perma-crisis that the centre has no way to resolve (and one has to assume no plan or intention to resolve = you maintain said threat primarily to discipline yr foes on the left… and normalising the framework w/o sating the beast, by goading the far right with promises you will never quite deliver on, into a weaponised presence that isn't going away

(i tried googling to find if the slogan goes back any earlier than 2002 but its massive use in 2002 stymied the search)

I was living in France at that time and I don't think that phrase had antecedents.

Although everyone is like "phew, dodged a bullet" at the moment, 41% of French voters voted fascist. That's huge. God only knows what will happen after another five years of macronisme.

I did make that point yesterday, yeah. Not great that the demographics of working age people went for Le Pen.

"vote for the crook not the fascist" has been the equivalent slogan since at least 2002, when jacques chirac face off against marine's dad

Reminds me of Anthony Crosland's comment on the Labour Party leadership contest between Harold Wilson and George Brown, "A choice between a crook and a drunk."

he was just tired and emotional tom

le pen’s signature policies are not tremendously different from the tories or the republicans afaict?

Not sure she was arguing for French soldiers to be exonerated from shooting civilians was she?

Or for shipping asylum seekers to the middle of Africa?

Indeed and ffs

She wanted a referendum to amend the constitution to allow discriminating against non-nationals for access to jobs and welfare. A fascist move that the Tories and Republicans might like in theory, but are not actually proposing.

non-residents already have to pay for healthcare in the UK, it’s not a huge psychological next step

Huge news in France, that just two weeks ago seemed unthinkable: the four major left and center-left parties have struck a left-wide coalition deal, the first of its kind in decades, that gives them a shot to wrestle power from Macron in the June parliamentary elections.

— Taniel (@Taniel) May 4, 2022

Interesting development but colour me sceptical. There are a lot of people in the Socialist Party that hate Melenchon more than Macron. Even if such an alliance succeeds in the legislatives, the chances of it all falling apart within weeks, to Macron's ultimate benefit, are high.

Yeah the last tweet of that thread is watch this space.

On Melenchon's evolution.

Mélenchon 2017-2022: from tribune of the people to radical socialdemocrat. A short 🧵

— Paolo Gerbaudo (@paologerbaudo) June 13, 2022

It's that Jeremie Le Quorbyn again.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/06/14/support-jeremy-corbyn-shows-danger-french-left-claims-emmanuel/

yes. yes. YES https://t.co/sox6oaeiWS pic.twitter.com/aOIK4zYgoj

— 「𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮」 (@tara_chara) June 15, 2022

qu'en est-il des dimensions relatives dans l'espace?

The footage and the applause is so good.

‘Whereas capital works to dominate the long term through the short term… our own model seeks to harmonise the rhythms of production with those of nature… We are going to nationalise time’ — Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Amazing that any national-level political leader can talk like this https://t.co/Yb5wkepwUd

— David Broder (@broderly) June 14, 2022

Macron just lost his parliamentary majority, and Mélenchon's left-green alliance is set to win 150 to 180 seats. Gonna be hard to be Jupiter nowhttps://t.co/iwmafa1CfJ

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) June 19, 2022

This is a more thorough assessment.

Some thoughts (to be continued as the night goes on):

1) Biggest news by far is that France's far-right finally has a bloc in parliament that matches its electoral strength. This is the logical conclusion of institutional normalisation, but 80+ députés for the RN is still huge.

— Emile Chabal (@emile_chabal) June 19, 2022

Henri Bergson to thread!

Or even just
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKcwJD3ky38

Rachel Kéké, a hotel chambermaid who led a 22-month strike, was elected as an MP with France Insoumise. Her first comments were to women cleaning workers at the National Assembly: ‘I’m going to be taking a look at their working conditions!’ https://t.co/kCxp2dgRSZ

— David Broder (@broderly) June 19, 2022

54% of people stayed away, and that's how the far-right win.

Can't say I love the analysis but it's a neat summary.

"There is, finally, a resource of another order: hatred of the police – insofar as it is a driving force. When power lets loose its henchmen, two radically different results can follow: intimidation, or the tenfold multiplication of rage."https://t.co/IlZfsPp4Qm

— Yukon Cornelius 🔥🇨🇦🔥 (@NeeedlesEye) March 30, 2023

incredible optics by a master politician.. jam through legislation to rip two years of retired life away from elderly workers with one hand then push for legalizing euthanasia of the aged with the other https://t.co/FXqQByKL9L

— yung🛠walken (@as_a_worker) April 3, 2023

Looks good.

Video summarizing last night's riot in Lyon. (not mine, I only added filters) pic.twitter.com/bcjG2NE35V

— ⛛ Anarchia! 🏴‍☠️🏳️‍⚧️🦜 (@ThCollierPerles) April 18, 2023

Guess what happened next. You won't believe!

The prosecutor is asking for 8 months imprisonment. For picking up €20 in front of a Sephora.

— meerie jesuthasan (@durianist) July 4, 2023

the night courts

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/20/france-immigration-bill-passed-controversy-emmanuel-macron-marine-le-pen

Love how this racism is described as controversial