It's a very long way that led us here, but the the last weeks have been
the wildest I ever seen in politic in France since I'm following it (roughly 40 years). Macron's surprise move "dissolution" has led to the following:
1) Only two days after being elected, 4 out of the 5 new european deputies from the far right Reconquête party has left to join Rassemblement National (RN, Le Pen) party. At the head of the 4 leavers is Marion Maréchal, formely named Marion Le Pen, niece of Marine Le Pen (who civil name is Marion Le Pen too). The only remained Reconquête deputy is the mother of the last child of the head of the party (Zemmour, son of an immigrant algerian jew couple).
2) The former main right party in France since WW2, Les Républicains, who already lost a big center left chunk to Macron in the past years, exploded in 24 hours: the chief of the party, Ciotti, decided to side to RN (Le Pen), crossing the rubicon for the first time. The entire party board then reunited and voted to fire Ciotti, who closed the door of the party (litteraly, he closed the door of the building to keep other from entering). Ciotti won in court two days later and kept head of party. Mad pilot in the plane cockpit, door closed.
3) All significant parties from the Left, who were insulting each others during European campaign, made a coalition in just 5 days. We're talking about some jews and hardcore antisionist siding together against RN, here.
4) RN is plagued with nepotism and has a big corruption case that will come to court in september, but it's not enough, so let's see some of RN candidates:
- A man under the guardianship status for mental health: he can't even legally occupy a deputy seat. He got 32,76% at first round.
- A woman convicted in 1995 for having committed a hostage-taking in the town hall, with a rifle (no injuries despite a shot being fired). She also stole money from charity. She got 31,11% at first round.
- Several "officials" having served as observers for Putin's illegal referendums in occupied territory in Ukraine.
- A ghost candidate that never appeared anywhere during campaign (she refused all public expression, and don't even show her head on official material). 33% at first round.
- A woman appearing wearing a Nazi WW2 cap. She qualified for the second round but has been forced to retire (you can be a Nazi at RN, but not get too much national attention). 20% at first round.
Yo, France... what the hell dude?
In seriousness though, I don't follow French politics, just wondering if the Two-round system characterisation of "First round with your heart, second round with your head" is likely to play out?
I'm not sure what is worst: to vote RN with your heart or with your head?
Anyway, the rule of this election is that you qualify for second round if you finish 1st or 2nd at first round, or if you finished beyond that but with more than 12.5% of eligible voters. We now know that most of non RN candidates that finished 3rd has removed themselves from the race (to do a "barrage" against RN), setting the election bar to 50% of effective voters. This means that
it is very unlikely that RN will get enough deputies to have an absolute majority, in which case they said they would refuse to form a government (they want absolute power).
On an almost humoristic note, a (serious) poll showed yesterday that 45% of the french think that Jordan "TikTok" Bardella (RN) would be a good prime minister... but that the current prime minister, Gabriel Attal, reach... 48%, despite the fact that most of his deputies will be wiped out of the assembly.
Yes, and Russia maintains momentum with massive social media bots and doppelganger operations (building of fake version of local trusted online media).
The only thing I hope is gonna happen is if the far-right get to rule the country, the voters learn their lesson from voting for a party which promises to be "tough" on immigration, but likely won't do anything (
as I've said before, Italy and UK is prime proof that there's no guarantee) and instead will just jump to another target to abuse as a scapegoat for the country's "failure". Not that I think its particularly likely for them to learn their lesson, but still.
This is the political calculation on the table currently, and which haunts me: since the rise of the RN seems inevitable, would it not be better to give them power in a contained manner now (Macron can dissolve the assembly again from 1 year from now) rather than for 5 years at the 2027 presidential election? We keep hearing from RN voters "they are the only one we didn't tried".
Congratulation for having written failure between quotation mark, French have a skew view of their own economic situation.
Just seems like an easy win to me... "If le migrants want to go to Grande Bretagne... why don't we let them!"... it's an easy 'win'... it reduces the burden on France, and shifts the bad optics onto foreign 'liberal lefties'.
The French-UK border is a totally non existent subject in french public debate right now.
Edit: (forgot that one)
Sigh... more far-right takeovers,
just what this miserable world needs. And if the
wiki page is any indication, it appears to have extended from (anti-immigrant) racism to
antisemitism. Which given how the far-right loves to claim to support Israel and cry about "antisemitic muslims" is rather ironic. But then again, it's not like they've ever not been antisemitic, they just happen to hate
muslims brown people more.
You misread I think. RN has always been anti-Semite, and tend to make it less visible (Marine Le Pen has proven ties with anti-semites, but many ignore it). The recent rise of visible antisemitism emerged from the far left (LFI party), which as ties with the far right Muslim Brotherhood influence, which itself gain popularity among young french "brown" people (it's rather easy to trigger something among Muslims when it's in the Sunna).
