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Please stop calling Macron's party centrist. It's right wing and has always been, regardless of what they pretend.
Macron in the middle
lol
I think it's reasonable to call it centrist, despite also being right-wing (ie centre-right)
To me, centrism isn't just about being somewhere in the middle between the left and right of the political environment, but also about having policies that make small adjustments to the current system, as opposed to fundamental, large scale change
Then you are forever looking out the Overton window, and are beholden to those who move it. In this case, Macron has moved it, so you think it's the center.
Well, yes, that's kind of the whole concept of the overton window
The Overton window describes movement on a political axis by views held palatable to the public but does not reject the concept of objective definitions of "right" or "left."
For example, the Overton Window would imply that there were right, left, and center Nazi party members. And there are, in the frame of the Fucking Nazis, but that doesn't make a "left" Nazi an actual socialist.
Saying "Macron isn't center" can be taken as an objective assessment of his politics. And it's correct. He is not a centrist. Who don't actually fucking exist anyways, but whatever.
So, basically, OP is saying you're playing the fascists' game when you let them define politics by relativism instead of objectivity. Bowing to the terminology of the Overton eventually leads to arguing about which "centrist Nazi" you find most palatable.
having policies that make small adjustments to the current system
Well, that's not really what happened the past few years. Civil rights and social protections have been degraded wayyy faster than by previous rightwing (not claiming to be centrist) governments. Structural change has happened several times, making big changes in some areas. Macron and their buddies don't want to play it small, they want to make big changes.
Do you have some examples of the structural changes he's made? My understanding (disclaimer: I'm not french, so don't follow their politics as closely) was that one of the biggest frustrations both from the left and right is his refusal to make any real change
The biggest event I can think of from his presidency is the retirement change age, but it stands out more to me because of the backlash than the significance of the change itself
As I see it, the biggest frustration from the left is that he makes right-wing changes.
The right pretends to be frustrated by his policies because they need to disagree if they want to have a reason to exist - and they've been leaning towards the far right for years to find a place on the political spectrum because Macron took their place.
A few examples, I hope I'll be able to explain correctly.
So in France we got something called the "prudhommes" which is a board that specializes in dealing with employee vs company legal matters. Usually, when you get fired and you think they didn't do it right, you go to the prudhommes and you can sue them for money.
The prudhommes are important for the workers because they can charge bug fines to the companies, and once one worker has won their case, it becomes easier for their colleagues to do so if they were wronged in the same way.
It's a powerful tool that kind of forces companies to follow the "code du travail" aka workers' rights.
When he changed (read: degraded) lots of stuff about workers' rights just after his first election in 2017, Macron introduced an important change: there is now a maximum amount that the prudhommes can force a company to pay. This changes the balance of power because now companies can now how much breaking the law will cost them and decide that it's the cost of doing business. Worst thing is, this amount can be changed by the government at any time without requiring a vote from the national assembly - this is read by many commenters as the start if the prudhommes' dismantlement.
In France, we've had (I believe since the eighties) a kind of universal basic income. It's far from a livable income (it's around 600€/month currently) but it's still more than nothing. You need to be french (we wouldn't want to share nice thingd with refugees, right?) and jump through a few hoops to claim it, but it exists. Until Macron, the only condition you had to fulfill was having no other income.
This is used a lot by people who are unable to work but can't apply for unemployment or sick pay mechanisms. It's always been the last safety: when everything else fails, at least you get something.
Since Macron, you now have to be actively looking for a job to qualify for it. Which means that if your unemployment office thinks you're not looking hard enough, you can get excluded from this income and have absolutely nothing (which then leads to homelessness and a whole life of fun). And of course over the past 7 years of Macron, the unemployment offices are under an ever increasing pressure to find people who are not deserving enough.
In terms of image, Macron took lessons from Trump: truth and facts don't matter and you don't even have to be coherent. Time and time again, he and his governement have lied, contradicted themselves... They are of course not the first to do it, but they are the first to not give a shit. Before Macron, they tried not to get caught lying, and when they got caught they tried to get out of it "that's not what I meant". Sometimes they even apologized. Macron and his government have had a different strategy: we don't even care.
When Macron visited the french carribean, he said in a public discourse "the chlordecone [a nasty pesticid wildly used by french companies in the carribean until y2k] is not cancerigen". Right after the discourse, scientists and physicians were like "well yes it is, it's been known for 30 years". Macron didn't even bother answering himself, but his services blantly told the press "he never said it was not cancerigen" even though he said it a few hours earlier in front of all tvs and radios. This is just one example of something that now happens weekly.
These changes might seem small, not structural. But they change fundamental things in the balances of power, the way we treat people and the way we do politics. Especially since there are lots and lots of them in a lot of areas, when you take them together, french legislative and checks/balances landscapes have changed a lot in 7 years, much more so than they had since the nineties (Idk before that).
Macron is from the bourgeoisie, is fighting the class war and has been waging and winning more battles than his predecessors by a lot. He is not interested in the status quo at all.
I hope this makes sense and answers your question ;)
policies that make small adjustments to the current system, as opposed to fundamental, large scale change
The word you're looking for is “conservative”
(in a political context) favouring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas
Conservative implies right leaning, centrist implies opposed to large scale change
One can be a radical conservative, and one can be centre-left
The word I was looking for is "centrist"
National Rally are basically the French equivalent of the British National Party, and they are right wing as fuck.
When they're leading in the polls, you know that Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron fucked up hard.
Gee, the title sure is sensationalist. Nothing has been 'won' yet. The actual percentage here don't matter, the system works using two rounds in each circonscription (subdiv of France which can elect 1 MP). What really matters now is who will call to vote for who. The NFP (Left Alliance) leaders said no vote for Far Right, and Macron (in spite of how much he shat on the left) called for a 'grand coalition against the RN' (RN being Far Right here).
And I'll repeat it as many times as it takes 34% IS FAR FROM 50% (The RN is unlikely to find allies, as all the traitors of the trad right wing party have already gone to them)
Edit: forgot to mention that not all votes have been counted yet, the big cities finishing up later, which will likely drive the NFP's score up and RN's down.
I get that immersion tends to normalization...
... but man, 34% is still a LOT. Especially when it's 2x the previous result and the largest bloc.
It'll be good if they are prevented from having easy access to legislative action, but it's still an underpants-threatening result in my book.
I expected better from the French. It's disheartening watching Fascism take root globally like this. 34% is 34% too much.
34% is already lower than what they polled (and it will go down more as cities' vote get counted). Though, you are right, the normalization of Far Right IS scary af. But it's not a recent thing in France, it started nearly two decades ago, but surged to an extreme during the past few years esp with:
-
Bolloré (our own personal Murdock) bought more and more media, fired the journalists, and put propagandist in their place.
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Macron started taking Far Right's talking points (immigration), language ('national preference', which is a concept that makes no sense) and methods (just two days ago, his party made, published and propagated on social media a fake 'NUPES' (name of the last Left Alliance) website to calculate one's future pension based on their 'program'. As it turns out, the calculations were not based off their program at all and was nearly always defavorable to the person)
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Macron, when asked about the surge of Far Right, had only one response: bUt WhAt aBoUt tHe LeFt? (And goes on and on to try and sell a 'both sides' to try and make himself more popular. Spoilers: it didn't work) It's also why it's refreshingly suprirsing to not hear him bash 'theLleft' tonight, and instead call on everyone to vote against Far Right.
FWIW, I'm seeing projections based on the counts that still have them at 34, but I guess we'll see.
I agree that a resurrection of the cordon sanitaire is probably a positive and I agree that Macron was extremely clumsy, like much of the EU's centre and demochristian right, in sliding towards far right positions they just can't defend any better than the actual fascists. But still, from an international perspective France is now firmly in the club of Central European countries with a major fascist problem in a way it wasn't yesterday, even if the outcome was already understood to be going this way.
The vote finished in the night and we got the official results now. Paris voted massively NFP and Renaissance, so Far Right is now at 29.3% while NFP is just behind them at 28.0%. Honestly? Given the polls we had, RN is lower than anyone could have hoped.
Source: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/ensemble_geographique/index.html
I'm kind of surprised this image of France having a Far Right issue is only becoming a thing now though. These results are close (if not better for non far right voters) than the last 2022 Presidentals, and Far Right already had a huge score in 2017.
Thanks for the link! International press is still running the 33% estimate they probably got from the French morning papers or have taken down the results, so my references hadn't updated the number.
For the record, the image is not new, there was a lot of international coverage regarding Le Pen's presidential chances in 2022. But presidentials are presidentials, only one person gets to win. Legislatives raise a lot of questions about parliamentary dynamics, alliances and the potential for the second round to generate another bout of Macron shooting himself in the foot followed by him shooting everybody else in the foot for good measure. That, and there is more paranoia about the tilt right across the EU and internationally about the US.
These days it seems there’s a rough third of the population in most places that’s stupid and/or bigoted enough to vote for shit like this. Those numbers don’t shock me. But I’m hoping France proves more resistant at the national level to the hyperconservative/neofascist resurgence at the we’re seeing in a distressing number of countries.
Culture wise? Probably. Institution wise though...?
Our current republic was founded by de Gaule, and our constitution was written by him as well. The thing, he's a millitary general, who (much like a good chunk of the French population at the time) held disdain toward parlementarism, due to the lack of stability of the Fourth Republic.
What that means? Our current system has much of the power concentrated in the hands of the gov (see 49.3 and to some extend 47.1 where the PM can just decide to override anu vote on law. It was something taboo, only used a fair few times before Macron, like once in 2014(?) and it ruined the PM (at the time Manuel Vals)'s carrier. Macron used it dozens of times throughout his years as President), leaving the National assembly with little manuveur than the censor motion (dissolves the current gov, but leaves the president in power).
That and Macron preparing to sell our public media and hospital to the private certainly don't give me mich confidence in that regards if the RN were to win (' •_•)
Oh man, that’s rough.
It’s extremely frustrating watching this happen in all of our countries. It’s even more frustrating that a lot of us saw it coming and have been concerned for years, even decades.
how many surprised faces will there be when the right fails to actually do anything substantial for the common voter and just fills up their pockets with gov funds (see: hungary)
If Hungary shows us something, the answer is "not enough"
By then it'll be unfortunately too late, with laws and policies that might take decades to undo.
Fascists? Enriching themselves at the expense of the state? This happens?!
See Argentina, too.
That's exactly Macron's plan. Have the right-wingers fuck up bad so his chances are better at the presidential elections in three years.
He can't be re-elected, and failed to secure an actual legacy.
Fine, maybe not to better his chances but still to lower Le Pen's. It's no secret. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-european-election-results-2024-emmanuel-macron-snap-election-marine-le-pen-national-rally-jordan-bardella-national-assembly/
Impressive how you write with total conviction, yet are utterly wrong.
His chances at the next presidential elections are zero because he can't run again. Whatever is in that article changes nothing.
I get that the French weren't a fan of the Nazi invasion, but avoiding it happening again by pre-empting it with their own Nazi rule isn't the best option.
Yeah, but desperate brown people are fleeing hell holes and day old accounts on social media say they will rape me and eat my kids.
God damn people are stupid.
Conservatives need to stop projecting their kinks into real life. It ain't healthy.
They can't help themselves, they're constantly wondering what type of genitals people have
They were such fans, they collaborated with zeal.
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
Unless I see a Muslim person on the street, then we're locking everything down and it's every man for himself.
Everything old is new again.
"Those people are dangerous, so we need to make a government that kills people." The world is willing to burn because a few people who are different exist nearby.
Well done France. This is democracy in action. Ignore the people and tell them what they want, they will just find someone that will listen to them.
All the left/centrist parties in the world just need to look at Denmark and the far right will go away within one election cycle.
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The real news is that Melenchon has finally managed to make it to the second round. And the question now is whether Macron's voters are as compromised about stopping fascism as they've claimed for years to the point that they'll vote to *horrified gasp* raise their taxes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is urging voters to give her National Rally an "absolute majority" in parliament after estimates showed her party won 34% of the vote.
With France's next parliament set to be decided in the runoff vote next Sunday, leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon said his New Popular Front (NFP) is ready to tactically drop election races if it helps beat far-right RN.
Melenchon is one of the most divisive figures in French politics, enthusing and horrifying voters with his unrestrained tax-and-spend proposals, class war rhetoric and controversial foreign policy positions, probably most notably his longstanding call for France to pull out of NATO.
Earlier in the day, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally (RN), which is favored to take most of the votes in the poll, also cast her ballot in her party's stronghold in northern France.
Macron's party has said it is committed to cutting the budget deficit to the EU ceiling of 3% of GDP by 2027, but the possibility of achieving this has been called into doubt by institutions from the national auditor to the International Monetary Fund.
Its president, Jordan Bardella, has said that if chosen as prime minister, he would not allow French missiles to be delivered to Ukraine that can strike targets within Russia itself, let alone send troops to the conflict, an idea floated by Macron.
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