French elections 2017: completing the hat-trick?

Tom, he lengthened bereavement leaves and implemented a 'right to disconnection'. He is unlikely to get rid of the 35 hour work week and will extend health coverage to dental care, which is currently not free. He also plans on giving benefits to the self-employed as part of his labour reforms. Truly neoliberalism incarnate.

Oh and eyeglasses will also be covered by 2021 at the latest.

Dinsdale, everyone on the left conveniently leaves out the 75% wealth tax, which Hollande was subsequently forced to backpedal on because it turned out to be a complete and utter failure. So yes, he did aim for maximum 'leftism' given his wiggle room. A tragic cautionary tale if ever there was one.

That said, I don't think Macron's ISF reform is the way forward.

I agree with everything you're saying, pomenitul

I do think that the gilets jaunes are a good counterweight to French neoliberalism, in LREM and LR and whoever else. There was no such voice in the presidential election : instead it was fought about immigration because of the fascists. I'm heartened by the gilets jaunes' lack of interest in immigration. If racism becomes a prominent part of their surges then I'll be cheering the army on. As it is, this is a democratic counterweight of which we were robbed by Le Pen (and by Mélenchon's lack of interest in ordinary French life but rather in the mostly-irrelevant "international politics of the left")

This is mere anecdotal evidence, of course, but my (French) wife has been keeping me informed about the bits of far-right 'alternative facts' her supposedly left-leaning relatives – all gilets jaunes sympathizers or members – are spreading on Facebook and there are some significant racist elements among them.

Les Décodeurs do a great job of summing up this particular xenophobic conspiracy theory, which has gained a fair amount of traction worldwide these past few weeks:

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/12/06/vendre-la-france-a-l-onu-de-donald-trump-aux-gilets-jaunes-l-itineraire-mondial-d-une-intox_5393268_4355770.html

Yes, I've seen articles about that in several European countries this week. No doubt the Russians are trying to seize upon the moment.

For those who haven't encountered it yet, it's about how Macron's decision to sign the UN Global Compact for Migration on Monday will accelerate the so-called 'grand remplacement' or 'great replacement', a now-mainstream racist theory developed by the loathsome writer and 'intellectual' Renaud Camus. In essence, it states that white Christian Europeans are being deliberately, systematically replaced by exogenous, coloured forces bent on the destruction of Western civilization.

There surely are lots of rotten apples within the Gilets Jaunes and especially with those are somehow appear as "leaders" (self-appointed or not). Which is part of why I can't fully support them.

Dinsdale, everyone on the left conveniently leaves out the 75% wealth tax, which Hollande was subsequently forced to backpedal on because it turned out to be a complete and utter failure. So yes, he did aim for maximum 'leftism' given his wiggle room. A tragic cautionary tale if ever there was one.

Like you said, he backpedaled. That's pretty much his M.O.

The lingering problem is unemployment. How would you solve it?

According to Macron finding a job is actually easy, you just have to cross the street. So I don't know what he's waiting for, build more streets Manu! And actually, at this very moment you have thousands of people walking in the streets of France, they haven't figured out the whole crossing thing but as soon as they do we can kiss unemployment goodbye.

You forgot the 'complete and utter failure' part.

Anyway, Macron's calculatedly off-the-cuff statements are often quite dumb and he definitely deserves to get flak for them.

He scolds like a French schoolteacher.

On a slightly different note, I do find it sad that Renaud Camus, an excellent prose stylist and disciple of Roland Barthes, now follows in Céline's footsteps.

Mélenchon does indeed seem to be losing support on the left, for reasons more to do with his personality and dictatorial style than policy afaict.

That being said, it is pretty galling to hear so much about how the international left doesn't understand French politics when international liberalism still views Macron as a saviour because, uh, he's not Le Pen and he zinged the orange guy once.

A lot of French politics is right in the currents of stuff happening in world politics.

And Melenchon's loss of support has been reported on in the English press:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/11/22/samuel-earle/melenchons-decline/

xp strong handshake too

This is a detailed account of the yellow vests: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/12/11/from-sans-culottes-to-gilets-jaunes-macrons-marie-antoinette-moment/

Goes contrary to the excuses ppl on the thread have been making for Macron.

Yeah, the part about how there are almost no far-right elements among the gilets jaunes is simply not true. Read up on their spokespeople and their obsession with the aforementioned migration compact. Check their Facebook accounts, which is where it all started.

Yes I did find it funny how on the one hand there was little non-white make-up and yet there was also no far-right elements/racist messaging - but it doesn't look like anyone has truly co-opted the movement.

For sure, it's still fairly heterogenous at this point. I do wonder whether backpedaling on wealth tax reform would get them to stop protesting completely (it's the Macron policy I disagree with the most).

The piece has an arc to it - sounds like when he was first deregulating/fighting unions people were giving him some leeway to see where it was all going, hence Macron's success in pushing that through.

With tax reforms, coupled with the abuses of power and the rhetoric since it looks likes its going in a direction that people are very angry with. And, as has been discussed, he won but he doesn't have a very strong mandate.

This may not be the ideal thread for it, but what the hell.

How to draw attention to yourself (as if it were still necessary) prior to the release of your latest novel:

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/01/donald-trump-is-a-good-president/

Isn't that exactly what you'd expect him to say though?

Indeed it is. His trolling used to be more subtle, however. It suited him and his writing better.

lol, he really puts the terrible into being an ageing enfant these days. He ought to be a bit disturbed that his Trump/Brexit controps just pretty much sound like what you'd currently read in the dying UK tabloid press, but not in a making u think way or the oh so hilarious provocateurish "own the libs" thing I think he might be trying to aim for.

The first American military interventions I can really remember are those of the two Bushes, especially the son’s. France refused to join him in his war against Iraq—a war that was in equal parts immoral and stupid;

I'm thirty years younger than him, and I can clearly remember that there was another guy in between the two Bushes who intervened a couple of times. Or is he saying that his memory is not what it used to be?

how is his position any different from yr standard counterpunch / greenwaldian pov?

He's a couple of years older and has an accent

ah yes the totally leftist and not at all reactionary movement that the cops are somehow drawn to. https://t.co/GkhUHQf16B

— Michael T Sweeney (@mtsw) December 19, 2018

Good piece by Mark Lilla on intellectual currents of the new French right:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/20/two-roads-for-the-new-french-right/

That is a pretty good article, despite my usual skepticism of Lilla's understanding of Europe.

Once I naturalize here (hopefully this next calendar year) I may well vote right, whereas I would never do so in the usa. I wouldn't have voted for Fillon because he's just another corrupt rich scumbag, but an anti-global-capital right (albeit one who supports gay rights) could attract my vote.

Are you ok with it being rabidly anti-immigration? Because that and opposition to gay rights are pretty much the only things this right offers that the left doesn't.

Portrait of Marion in that piece uncomfortably fawning imo.

I favor quite limited immigration, yes. I am not anti-EU though.

A useful reminder:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-russian-bank-gave-marine-le-pens-party-a-loan-then-weird-things-began-happening/2018/12/27/960c7906-d320-11e8-a275-81c671a50422_story.html

And I hope you're not seriously thinking of voting for the RN or Philippot, Euler.

No, I wouldn't vote that far right, and probably wouldn't vote right in a national election, but the mess that the PS is making of my quartier gives me considerable doubt about immigration and thus about how "the left" can be trusted to manage integration.

Are you referring to the Goutte d’or?

basically, L@ Ch@pe11e more particularly, but the Goutte d'Or is a five minute at most walk. we've been sacrificed by the city and by the state to have minimal police presence / disruption so that the migrants come here and not to the fancier parts of the city. meanwhile, the resulting lawlessness leads to more and more stabbings, drugs, street harassment of women (of my twelve year old daughter every day, for instance), not to mention filthy sidewalks and streets.

all these things lead me toward the right (plus I'm a practicing Catholic, one who favors gay rights (since the Church is obviously gay) but who is otherwise "pro-family". fuck the rich now and forever though.

What’s Wauquiez stance on gay rights? Can’t remember now how vocal he was during the marche pour tous saga (although I can pretty much imagine). Not that Wauquiez has any real conviction of his own.

I don't want to minimize your concerns, Euler, because I've witnessed them myself and, having grown up in Canada, I am consistently shocked by the street harassment my wife has had to endure over the years in France – it's frankly less of a safe country for women (and especially teenage girls) than Romania – but let's not forget that ex-ministre de l'Intérieur Nicolas Sarkozy aka Mr Kärcher abolished the police de proximité, among other things, which has only served to aggravate matters. The right has fuelled its (dog-whistling) obsession with security without ever doing anything about it. I daresay letting violence fester benefits them because they're perceived as the sole rational solution by default, just by virtue of their rhetoric.

That said, the PS and LRM haven't done shit about it either and I do agree with some on the right when they express disgust with the series of light sentences the perpetrator of the Strasbourg attacks received prior to his supposed 'pétage de plombs', for example – 'multirécidiviste' doesn't even begin to describe such a man. But what is to be done then? Increase the prison population, which is already bursting at the seams? Further empower the police, which is shameless in its racial profiling and a recruiting ground for the RN? Nobody has the balls to tackle the banlieues directly by openly discussing France's institutional racism – because the modèle républicain d'intégration is a fundamentally flawed system, to put it mildly – and so nothing changes. Despite the 'communautariste' boogeyman, there's no dialogue between communities, no willingness to improve anything, just the same finger-pointing over and over again. 'You need to allow yourself to be assimilated' is a mantra that can only end in violence, especially when it's aimed at the heirs of a colonized people, and doubly so when they're not even really allowed to assimilate in the first place. There are countless stories of 'good Arabs' and/or 'good Africans' who are still viewed as exogenous even though they're third generation French citizens and don't know the first thing about the so-called 'bled'. Ironically, that's the ideal, right? Saying farewell to your history forever and embracing the totally-neutral-and-totally-universal-French-family.

One last thing: I have been insulted by French people of Arab descent while in France simply because I'm white. 'Sale Français', they called me, which I found quite rich. My wife has been repeatedly called a 'sale pute française' by street harassers, so I'm very much aware that it goes both ways. But one way is considerably more violent than the other, because it has the option of opening up public discourse to a genuine confrontation with the nation's assimilationist model, and chooses not to for almost religious reasons, kind of like how so many Americans worship the US constitution. So as things currently stand, I'm going to continue pinning the blame on France's political caste: left, centre and right (and in that order). Sorry for the free-form rant, but it's something that drives me up the wall.

As for Wauquiez, I'm pretty sure he's a low-key homophobe. Like, he doesn't agree with the 'gay agenda', 'totally understands' where the Manif pour tous is coming from, and 'draws the line' at surrogacy or some such.

Hmm that’s another debate but does opposing surrogacy equal latent homophobia ?
Anyway, that’s a great take on the situation. I haven’t lived in France for the last 20 years (but I am French) but I never really hear local commentators try to untangle the clusterfuck of racial/community relations un France.
Re. Wauquiez - this guy will turn whichever way the wind blows. Because of Macron’s ascent, he’s now decided to go for the far-right demographic for whom RN is still too vulgar. A truly despicable scumbag

yeah I don’t know how to address race here. we’re immigrants who get assailed sometimes by français de souche for having American-accented French, and by arabes for being...non arabe. Here in my quartier one passes the buck : the mairies of the 18th and the 10th blame Hidalgo, who blames Macron, who says nothing. locals blame cops for being unwilling to bust heads, who blame judges for letting people off with light sentences. the prisons breed daech. Meanwhile it’s Obonoland and her left says we should welcome all the migrants here, who hustle contraband and fight in the streets. Meanwhile I work in the 5th and 6th and it’s gorgeous. And we live in the city, not the 93! rents are sky high here. I really don’t understand.

I'm a bit out of touch as I don't live in France anymore, but I did for many years and while I was there I was always struck by how incredibly corrosive the structurally high unemployment was and what a range of knock-on effects it has. Obviously it's toughest when you're trying to find work but also I knew so many people who were miserable in their public service jobs but who were too scared to try something different for fear of losing their job security. Apart from making everyone miserable that obviously also has the effect of making the whole system less flexible.

And of course there's the lethal combination of racism and unemployment which ironically makes integration even harder than it is in comparable countries despite France's ideological preference for integration over multiculturalism.

I have no idea what the solution is - the centre-right says there are too many financial and other burdens placed on employers wanting to employ people which may be right, but which doesn't necessarily mean you have to introduce more precarity into the system as in the US etc. - maybe there's something to be said for the Danish flexicurity model...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/06/08/ss-2021-6-8-14-5_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq0RglTN43wyGR-NQABDM7ErkcnEMN6jgniYeqwz6a86k.png?imwidth=480

u loves to see it!

Does anyone know how the 49.3 motion came to exist?

Awful stuff today. Sending my solidarity to french ilxors protesting.

The 18th Brumaire of Emmanuel Macron.