French political discussion megathread: Yellow Vest Redux

[Zinneke]

https://mobile.twitter.com/libe/status/1645751872085544961

[Zinneke]

Disappointing, but not surprising. The Constitutional Council is a joke, but tbh it wasn't really their job to clean up Macron's mess.

Sadly this fight is probably over, but Macron is now weaker than ever, and I doubt he'll be able to 49.3 his way out of the next controversy.

what about the referendum option? Or will the French just riot instead of taking democracy into their own hands?

Referendums will be from this point on just be seen as plebiscites on the government in question (which is obviously the huge debate in every country that doesn't have a culture of referendums). It won't be seen in any capacity as a referendum on the actual issue.

[Zinneke]

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.

[Zinneke]

Riots in France over shooting of a 17 year old by police.

Macron and Darmamin for once took the side of the victim and said it was unacceptable? Result? the police unions are pissed at them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they took a step back and let the rioters harm the President's image. Its how those guys operate.

[Zinneke]

Yes , looting Nike and Zara stores and vandalizing Samuel Paty *'s plaque shows these guys are intellectual revolutionaries, of course.


* I would wager many of these rioters set off fireworks when Paty was beheaded, but not in protest.

[Zinneke]

Rioting is always bad but to riot because a criminal was unjustly killed is just bizarre. The police action was wrong but I can't blame him too much since that teenager was trying to run away from arrest. How many people have been killed by a reckless driver attempting to flee?

I disagree. The rioting is objectionable, counter-productieve, but it is not bizarre : these people have nothing else but refusenik mentality to hang on to. They and elements of the police should be stuck on an artificial island and made to play Hunger Games/Battle Royale. Violence is what stimulates these people, along with the Imam or Stormfront in the riot police case : give to to them. Instead of puzzle solving Fort Boyard should become a 21st century gladiator arena

[Zinneke]

Macron is asking parents to keep their troublesome youth home, but he doesn't realize that the reason these youth are troublesome is because their parents have given up parenting a long time ago. Really France and Belgium could do with an old school Anglo-Saxon approach (before they gave up to allow parallel legal systems to interfere) to social services and strengthening this, allowing for parents to have their children taken away from them until they get their act together. Stricter more effective social services would be a useful expenditure of the taxpayer's money as opposed to handguns and special tanks for police unions to boast about.

Of course, on Atlas, we have had posters claim that parents are the ultimate right-holders in these situations : they should be allowed to ruin the lives of their children. And the basis of this was of course religious law.

[Zinneke]

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

You're right. Sometimes we on Atlas lose touch with the common people, and forget that working-class folks love having their cars and upstart businesses torched in democratic socities, where there's just no political or media avenues to pursue changes we want to see enacted. /s

Though, I don't want to leave this comment without saying that I do think the identity of the teen played a part in why he was shot and murdered with zero need and I hope justice eventually prevails.

As if anybody is wealthy enough to own a car or a business in the banlieue...

This is a profoundly ignorant comment : many lumpen class people's lives and indeed jobs (including drug dealing of course) require a car, not to mention how cars actually serve as a status symbol to many of them due to the orgy of consumerist propaganda they take in when watching the tiktok videos or their favorite rapper or football star brag about his gold plated Lambo. And many working class people in Paris live in périurbain places where without a car they would not be able to work, and I am not talking about 4-sided villa inhabitants.

The 17 year old was killed driving a car, not a scooter.

[Zinneke]

And by wrath of God the hillbilly GOP types on here mean arming police to the teeth in a massive public spending spree that amounts to a grift. It definitely works in the US in terms of public order right?

Rest assured, European tax payers spend enough money on Frontex for shiny new military style toys that are legit useless when push comes to shove. But Meloni and co encourage it for kayfabe purposes. And now police unions will hold Macron to ransom and ask for bigger guns, toys and whatnot.

[Zinneke]

Yeah when they go back to their "home" countries, they are very much seen as foreigners there too...the riots when Morroco were winning the World Cup for example, was a bit like Irish Americans rioting if Ireland were winning, but that rarely happens (Ireland winning I mean).

Although interestingly enough the Morrocan NT is also full of 3rd gen who don't speak Arabic

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/mbompard/status/1675558576373354500

LFI nostalgic of Chirac...says it all (but very true words from both)

[Zinneke]

Russian propagandists on twitter are trying to make out that there'll be a military coup within 48 hours...I wonder why?

[Zinneke]

Russian propagandists on twitter are trying to make out that there'll be a military coup within 48 hours...I wonder why?

They should be more "concerned" about their homeland in that regard, if anything.

Yes it was a rhetorical question

Anyway, I listened to a French podcast with a wide range of views, and there was some tidbits I thought I'd share to add to this "combat d'infirmes" with my own conjectures

• This is much more like the London riots of 2011 that the George Floyd protests. The George Floyd protests were still fundamentally political, these protests are somewhat nihilistic and there is no actual genuine political requests coming out of these, which is also what makes this protest different to say 2005. Looters and just generic nihilistic behaviour is the main driving force of these. And sure you had looters in the BLM protests, opportunists, etc but the central gatherings during that time were genuine protests with banners, people power, etc. Apart from the white march for Nahel there isn't much political mobilisation, just talking heads on TV calling for police reform. And incidentally that doesn't mean the median French voter is uninterested in reforming the police, but its pretty obvious that the median French voter, in so far as they exist, deem public order in these banlieues to be a much bigger issue than police reform, and that's a shame as both are obviously linked
  
• France's precarious internal security situation over the past 10 years (several terrorist attacks) meant there were massive recruitment drives of police officers, which were rushed and thus poorly trained and poorly vetted. In that context its no wonder that there are extreme right police officers on the ground right now, and its no excuse either, as these guys just continue the problem + the police unions continue the grift (I genuinely think a lot of police unions are only far right for the grifting purposes, or at least they are casually far right but above all else want shiny new toys that they can claim budgets with and blackmail the President so his approvals don't tank).
   
• Related to this, Macron is a President who is actually pretty strict when it comes to tackling drug trafficking, more so than previous Presidents. The reasons for this are multiple, I would theorise its because of what I said before about him : he is a goody two shoes who feels genuine contempt for people he deems imperfect, whereas the likes of Chirac and Hollande, despite being arrogant/aloof, understood the imperfections of humanity and societies like these as a whole. Anyway, one of the speakers on the podcast said it is perfectly possible this is an intimidation tactic of influential drug dealer gangs in specific quarters to turn the heat up and rally certain types to their anti-policing cause. Police presence in these areas has gone up massively under Macron compared to Chirac and Hollande. Sarkozy was quite authoritarian too but he butchered "police de proximité", the equivalent of the British community police, with his austerity. Macron in tandem with Hollande's recruitment drive after the terror attacks has really upped the tempo in these areas in terms of boots on the ground.
  
• Amidst the over-analysis of the causes of these protests, you can for sure include racial profiling and austerity and a bunch of other ready made issues that we all know about, I still maintain listening to the sociological perspectives is that the number one issue in these places is broken families or broken parenting. Partially that can be put down to for example working class people working long hours, nightshifts, supervision etc, but I think we're being really blind with "baizuo" if we're not honest about some cultural aspects too. In a village in the Atlas mountains its perfectly normal to let your child roam and explore the world until midnight/1 am, hell even Spain for example has that culture - it should be expected though that in a city like Paris you should know where your 13 year old kid is at ing midnight. And the adaptation of this culture leads to very specific phenomena like 13 year olds hanging out with guys who can afford Mercedes A-class with Polish number plates. It still staggers me that there are people here who in the name of cultural relativism would say its up to a parent to do what they want with their kid.
   
• Even so, the only way you link the issue of Mediterranean migration to this issue is through austerity and public services unable to house and deal with more people. if you think its because of more Muslims or Arabs that this is somehow a related problem : we're talking 3rd generation here vs newcomers and more importantly treating each one of them as individuals rather than a blob - there's absolutely no link and the real culprits for both are the decades of cost-cutting McKinsey fuelled neo-liberalism that destroyed the State as a capable actor of housing, educating and providing public and cultural services to people of all backgrounds, as well as a police force which for the reasons I cited now inhabits far right activists. Quit the ing "France is going to sh*t" rhetoric, its still a more tolerant society than most, and its incredible seeing Americans think its some sort of warzone when they probably have a fair amount more "no go" areas that could genuinely be called ghettos as well as unhealthy obsession with self-segregation, so the eurobashing is honestly a bit laughable.
  

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/mbompard/status/1675558576373354500

LFI nostalgic of Chirac...says it all (but very true words from both)

Me no speako Frog

¿dlǝɥ sᴉɥʇ sǝop

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/mbompard/status/1675558576373354500

LFI nostalgic of Chirac...says it all (but very true words from both)

Me no speako Frog

¿dlǝɥ sᴉɥʇ sǝop

Yes, however not as much as subtitles would

I mean, the main thing is you have an LFI deputy citing Chirac as an examplary figure, which shows you how the Overtone window has shifted so far in France to the Right.

Chirac's speech itself is asking the French to "understand" where the rioters are coming from and also very explicitly condemns racism.

[Zinneke]

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.

[Zinneke]

He must be longing for the days of 7 year presidential terms.

Yes and so are many people but the endless cohabitations were clearly a problem.

[Zinneke]

NUPES in crisis again, this time over Mathilde Panot of LFI refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organisation.

Gee us normal sane social democrats warned this kind of stuff would go down.

[Zinneke]

The issue is the massive proliferation of mosques with extremist views, with French authorities allowed Saudi and Qatari wallets to fund.

I'm not sure what happened to the "Islam de France" idea but it wasn't exactly the worst one.

[Zinneke]

PCF have passed a resolution calling the current NUPES situation a "dead end" and for a "new chapter" of Left unity.

[Zinneke]

Another 2 people shot dead in Brussels, just for being Swedish, and a teacher killed in France but let's Segway into the hard issue of Moody's financial analysts not voting anymore...

[Zinneke]

Another 2 people shot dead in Brussels, just for being Swedish, and a teacher killed in France but let's Segway into the hard issue of Moody's financial analysts not voting anymore...

Heh, its actually segue.

Don't normally pick up on typos, but the fact it is a French derived word makes this one irresistible

TIL

[Zinneke]

Darmamin is now at risk of being sued for libel for accusing French footballer Karim Benzema of belonging to Muslim Brotherhood networks even though Benzema is currently playing his trade in a country that considers the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organisation. Darmamin, not understanding the concept of libel, said he'd retract his comments if Benzema tweeted a tribute to the murdered school teacher.

Darmamin could resign if only to just double down on his idiocy and line up a hard-right-Marconiste-loyalist type candidacy. Massive cuck.

Incidentally, 347 "incidents" during the minute of silence for the murdered teacher Dominique Bernard.

[Zinneke]

https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/politique/article/les-ecologistes-lancent-leur-campagne-des-europeennes-avec-une-booty-therapy-marine-tondelier-s-explique_226549.html

Good to see the French ecologists have a sense of priority when fascism is at the gates.

https://twitter.com/dobsky33/status/1731420629373464870

Gee I wonder why the Left is in decline with them and Mélenchon as main Spokespeople.

[Zinneke]

Between Gérald Darmamin and Gérard Dépardieu, which sex pest will Macron pick I wonder?