French political discussion megathread: Yellow Vest Redux

[PSOL]

All this hewing and heaving over a Burqa is seriously pathetic. The burqa is a symbol of male ownership of another and has no place in society, to let its use be used among the most vulnerable of French women is to threaten the rights of all French women.

[PSOL]

So...

What's been happening in France

A lot of women are out there wearing Burkinis.

[PSOL]

Isn’t Aliot Jewish?

[PSOL]

Macron's views are not liberal. Macron's views as that the nerdy kid at the front of the class who does well should be successful. Liberals may also believe this, but Macronistas don't believe in a host of liberal values. Macronistas believe in a warped extreme centrism narrative where individual rights are actually trampled upon. But a sort of "internal raison d'état of self-preservation of the French Republic as a concept is bigger than individual rights" isn't the reason for it (unlike with the UMP/PS machine). The Macronista believes these individuals were bottom of the class for xyz reason so they deserve it! there is basically a view that elite formation should be meritocratic but once that elite is formed it has boundless rights. A conservative/Gaullist in France justifies the police beating protestors by insisting it is to preserve the Leviathan : the people themselves are not wrong but they must fit into the straightjacket regardless. Macron genuinely just thinks anybody who is against him is of a moral lower standing and lack the value of a Jupiterian President like him.

He is a dangerous figure.

You have to give props on the honesty of his rhetoric

[PSOL]

Violent riots are always the wrong approach and lead to nothing other than more innocent people or their property getting hurt. What happened is a tragedy and disgrace, but two wrongs don't make a right. Protests should always be peaceful, otherwise it's no protest.

That's not how things work in the real world

[PSOL]

Honestly I don't see how France doesn't end up into some kind of civil war. It's clearly being divided into three camps who hate each others. It's already a banana republic given Macron passes important laws by decrees anyway but things are going to deteriorate.

France had arguably three civil wars, and it either worked out for the better immediately afterwards or set the groundwork for a better society later on.

In the Hundreds Year war, a group of French people illegally declared their own government with a usurper in charge over the rightful kings of France. They conducted illegal activity and pretty heinous acts like suppressing Jacquieres or taking integral parts of England as their own but no one questions that what they did wasn’t the best course of action.

The French Wars of religion set the stage for the moniker of equality and fraternity to be enforced in the French Revolution, of which both saw massive riots against state oppression.

France is an authoritarian state where rule of law does not exist, the vicious attacks of the state against the workers of France through authoritarian retirement policies and massive attacks against the Maghrebi population proves it, and its government only serves at best 30% of the population no matter how well you slice it and is only in power thanks to the regime of the unrepresentative FPTP. There are many important organizers on the ground seeking the removal of Macron and the continued oppression and containment of the people in and even outside of work without ownership or their labour.

These “riots”, like the revolt of 2005, will set the stage for a better France where the jackboot is removed or lay the stage for a fourth time of liberation.

An inevitability, given France's immigration policy. Perhaps they'll change course, but I doubt it.

They deserve everything that is coming to them.

Oh please, when the white working people were protesting not too long ago the same people were cracking their skulls and supporting that measure. At this point Macron barely sees the difference between a Maghrebi or a Gaul.

[PSOL]

Sounds like these riots are a gift from the heavens to Le Pen

The election is 3 years away 🙄

And are things likely to get better by then, or worse?

Starting to think France may need a spell of utterly disastrous FN rule to get it out of their system.

Who knows 🤷‍♂️. When the yellow jacket stuff happened there was a bunch of “oh man Le Pen is going to win the next election” takes here that didn’t age well

People will forget by then.

[PSOL]

It’s funny seeing liberals call this a lumpen riot. There are a lot of regular people out there on the street, if anything it seems more upscale than the black demographic during the George Floyd protests.

[PSOL]

It’s funny seeing liberals call this a lumpen riot. There are a lot of regular people out there on the street, if anything it seems more upscale than the black demographic during the George Floyd protests.

I'm not talking about the strikes against the pension reform. But clearly the riots the past few days were clearly from very poor urban people

I wasn’t either

[PSOL]

Public opinion is a generally bad way to measure if something is good or not, they usually are not on the edge of providing most advanced ideas. The vast majority of the United States thought MLK was a negative influence when he was alive.

Also most Maghrebis in France act basically the same as their French peers and are integrated into French society. The current situation is due to most of them being forced into their certain caste and making up a heavy amount of the French working class. That’s on the government for doing such a separation.

[PSOL]

On distinguishing between a protest and a riot: if the property being damaged is owned by the state or state officials then it is a (violent) protest, whereas if the destruction is aimed at, say, random cars and businesses then it is a riot. The former could be circumstantially justified (say, it's 1944 and you're up against Literally Hitler) but the latter has no justification.

The past week has firmly fallen into the second category and if anything is closer to a pogrom than a protest. The thing is, nobody is going to tolerate indefinite lawlessness, not even the French. There are two possible endgames here: an escalation in police power probably accompanied by a political swing to the right, or if the police are unable/unwilling then nationalist militias will fill the void. You can just take a look at Lebanon to see where that road ends.

The war in Lebanon overthrew a brutal dictator and was going to usher in a democratic, secular government until reactionary outsiders to the south invaded. What makes it even crazier was that the secular democrats still won, which prevented a massive genocide of Greek christians and Muslims and the takeover of power by Fascist sympathizers.

Complaints of private property being destroyed are the same rhetoric used by Trump and De Gaulle to promote their authoritarian regimes, and will fall under deaf ears. Even an escalation misses the components to De Gaulle's success; the undivided and committed wish by Germany and the United States to prop up the French regime where these nations have their own worries and have been busy with Ukraine, the absolute loyalty to the far right who this time smell blood in the water, and the betrayal and direct clashes done by the PCF and Trotskyist saboteurs whom are seriously under threat of extermination of their future careers as Macron promises to gut unions and the universities.

Macron is under thin ice, and regardless of where the police and military lie, a country like France has seen the military lose the battles in the polls and has a hard time stamping out that revolutionary spirit even with force if history is seen as a guide.

[PSOL]

The protests are shaping up just like the Mahsa Amini protests, just as they begin to die down the authorities kill another person or brutalize children to remind people just why they hate the government so much.

[PSOL]

It is clear that now with a whole bunch of massacred civilians, the French government will not allow freedom and life to Maghrebis or anyone really. Does French society respect women’s lives?

[PSOL]

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/senatoriales/senatoriales-la-france-insoumise-denonce-un-enterrement-de-la-nupes-avant-une-possible-alliance-ps-eelv-pcf_5932595.html


LFI are angry at EELV, PS and PCF for negotiating electoral alliances behind their back. NUPES is all but finished.

NUPES has been finished since after the prior legislative election

[PSOL]

https://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/senatoriales/senatoriales-la-france-insoumise-denonce-un-enterrement-de-la-nupes-avant-une-possible-alliance-ps-eelv-pcf_5932595.html


LFI are angry at EELV, PS and PCF for negotiating electoral alliances behind their back. NUPES is all but finished.

NUPES has been finished since after the prior legislative election

As was widely forecast at the time tbf.

Really it was never to last from its birth, from Meluche’s ego blindsiding him and the fact that the left-liberals without trot history knew this was their chance at rebirth