Here’s some news for you buddy ; The far right is not your friend , not in the US , not in France , nor anywhere else you care to mention.
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Open question - so what is the take on Macron’s decision now? I see a lot of dunking on him for “losing”, but it seemed to me this election was less about him winning, and more about doing deflating the far right bubble. Is it giving him too much credit to say he willingly sacrificed his coalition to get a timely win against Le Pen and should be praised for that, or is this just damn luck?
Not sure Macron would see working with the Left as good luck. Maybe the lesser of the evils, but still very awkward allies.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the Ukraine policy. It wouldn’t be surprising if there are a few Russia sympathisers in the new government.
It’s impossible to say as only he knows the true motivation. Whether this comes to be seen eventually as a masterstroke or folly on a grand scale , we’ll probably only know when the next élection présidentielle comes around in a little under three years.
To help understand the man , here’s a very entertaining read delving into the psyche of Macron from a journalist who got up close and personal with him on his China trip last year ;
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Isn’t he term limited to run again? I thought France was only allowed 2 consecutive terms?
But my question goes beyond his own position. Isn’t there praise to be given for someone willing to risk what happened for the chance of dealing the far right a damaging blow? Or am I applying my own take on the far right to him and under appreciating his feeling towards the French left?
Yep , he can’t run again but if the Présidentielle in 2027 comes down to a run off between the far left (Mélenchon) and the far right ( Le Pen ) , which is entirely possible , then we can safely say his snap election now will have been been a major mistake.
Like I said , we just don’t know if that was his primary motivation. I’m more minded to think that he acted out of a fit of pique , knowing already that there was a plot attempt coming anyway in September to stop him passing a budget which would have heaped more humiliation on him , and that he could dress it up as an heroic act to save the country from the far right. Apart from himself , I don’t think there’s many others who thought it wise , or indeed that it could be considered in any way a success.
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Macron is a very strange person and almost impossible to predict it seems. He’s clearly a narcissist and an egomaniac, but apart from that, who knows?
Besides, what France had since the last Presidential election wasn’t too far from paralysis.
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RN increased their seat tally by 60% while Ensemble lost 35% of theirs. Calling the snap election was never a good idea with RN enjoying tailwind. The surge by NPF was the saving grace. Macron must realise that he lost two elections, very convincingly, within weeks.
I think this loss might turn into a positive for Le Pen in 2027. The accusations of the alliance just to keep them out of power will become a weapon to solidify the right base and bring on board new supporters who previously might be undecided might think that the left alliance to keep the right out is unnatural and contrary to democracy. While Le Pen might have been hoping to win since the first round was so indicative of that but I think all along the strategy has always been 2027.
I’m pretty interested in how the French government is going to function, with the competing interests of each faction in the NFP, then the competing interests presumably between NFP and Ensemble if they do in fact form a coalition. A lot of fucking concessions are going to need to be made by all involved.
The thing that will most likely bring Le Pen to power is the left alliance fracturing (only a matter of time) and LFI becoming the dominant force once again and making it to the run off ahead of whoever the centrists put up. In that scenario she probably wins.
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Thé dissolution was more about Macron feeling parlement had become ungovernable. Hence having to rely on 49.3 to get through and extrême right wingers to get things passer. Thé left would play along.
So hé décide he’d make it even more ungovernable.
What’s going on IS just batshit crazy.
Macron just wrote a post card to France setting out how hé wants things to go. This IS not his rôle then he’s never known what his rôle was.
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Surprised to see no comments about the Thuringia and Saxony elections. Probably not really a watershed moment so much as a continuation of the process of the emergence of the populist right in the EU.
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I think it’s pretty much as you said, that it’s nothing surprising.
I guess it also reinforces the point that there’s no point for the mainstream parties to try to be even more extreme on immigration, because they’ll never win that argument.
Wrote about it months before the election. In terms of the AfD results it’s actually not quite as bad as I and many others had feared (still bad). These are the absolute strongholds for the AfD in terms of states in Germany of course.
In the short term wtf to do with the BSW is probably more relevant for these states and to a degree the country as a whole, especially since they are trying to dictate foreign policy (Ukraine especially) in exchange for coaltition in these states (which is brazen and frankly ridiculous tbh, but here we are).
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There is a fair bit of coverage on Deutsche Welle (In English):
I have never actually come across someone in real life that votes for the AfD. Possibly that’s because I am an immigrant (and also usually much bigger than them) so they don’t really want to advertise the fact. However, I always liken them to paedophiles, in that clearly they do exist but very few would admit to it publicly.
I suspect that in the old East Germany there is a certain misplaced nostalgia for the DDR. We were over there recently and there is nothing that would indicate that people are hard done by. It has had eye-watering amounts of money spent on it and everything is bang spanking new and lovely. You also see very few faces that would indicate that they are from a migration background (and the actual figures in those states from a migration background are very low.)
I think there are two areas of support. One is older people who have a nostalgia for a simpler time. There is a kind of siege mentality that they felt protected from the outside world by living in what was effectively a large prison. I think there is also a feeling that East German culture has been denigrated, which I would actually regard as a fair criticism.
There is also what they regard as the TikTok vote. Under 30s that get their information online from non-traditional sources, and have a nostalgia for something that never existed. I’d see an equivalent as young people in Ireland reminiscing about the Troubles as some sort of heroic adventure that they missed out on.
What surprised me was not so much the AfD vote as the but turnout for the BSW which is a new populist left wing party. I think that reflects more a hankering after the old DDR than the AfD which is effectively just recycling old Nazi myths.
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I think that’s actually a very good summary of what I’ve gleaned from all that I’ve read around it. It’s not so much an economic vote, but simply a cultural one.
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I guess that this is a further moment along the process of Germany’s ‘normalization’. It’s sad, but after all, most countries in Europe have that kind of percentage of right wing voters now.
(where has your avatar gone, btw? Do you want to go more anonymous?)