French presidential election, 2022

[Zinneke]

It's very hard to have a favorite candidate in this election.
There are Macron, the far-right candidates, and the best performing left-wing candidate, Melenchon, supported protests against the vaccine pass.

#HidalgoOrBust

Low energy!

[Zinneke]

The FF liberal progressive Macron that "I EU" people stanned in 2017 obviously doesn't exist anymore (if he ever did at all), but even today's Macron still has his moments. It's great to see him #trigger the right people once in a while, like with this:

French far-right wants EU flag off Arc de Triomphe

PARIS, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Far-right leader Marine Le Pen protested on Saturday against the placing of a European Union flag on the Arc de Triomphe for the start of Paris' six-month presidency of the bloc.

"To adorn the Arc de Triomphe with the sole colours of the European Union, without the presence of a national flag, is a real attack on our nation's identity, because this monument honours our military victories and houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier," she said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from the pro-EU Macron, whom Le Pen accused of giving a "direct order" to hang the flag.

He has removed it already, because the snowflake Right were outraged.

[Zinneke]

https://mobile.twitter.com/fredericsays/status/1477932642981105665?s=21

A lot of "Jeb!" vibes from Pécresse tbh.

[Zinneke]

A croissant on the Eiffel Tower is a fantastic idea.

Anyway Macron getting a suprising blowback from all sides for his comments about pissing off antivaxxers.

[Zinneke]

Might be shooting this off a bit early, but Méluche does seem to have established a slightly bigger gap in terms of being the best polling candidate of the left in recent weeks. Certainly more so than back in the Autumn when Jadot looked close to drawing even. Yannick seems to be faltering a bit at the moment, not at Hidalgo levels, but not great.

As far as Macron's plan to "emmerde" the unvaccinated, there is a social side to this to. As in, stuff like this going round demonstrating that the unvaccinated are very disproprtionately low income. That is, living in low income, badly connected areas; with (an often rather justified) a certain suspicion of the state and it's actors (victims of police violence, racism, straight out fear of deportation for certain people in Seine-Saint-Denis or the Quartiers nord of Marseille)... and so on.

As in, making the unvaccinateds' lives more difficult will disproportionately hit lower income groups in certain areas. A carefully worded campaign could make this look like just more hurting the poor and could work out well for Mélenchon - if he gets it right (and I say that as someone who really doesn't have a lot of patience for the way the anti-vax movement has delayed us from ever being able to go back to normal).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4omcmEQlvQ

Is telling people not to take Pfizer but getting 3 doses of it "getting it right"?

This guy is a disgusting social fascist who again is playing a tactically superb campaign to finish a solid 3rd place that the Left and working classes are supposed to celebrate. Wow we really owned the snob Macron there.

Honestly inserting the class divide into the argument against Macron reeks of the kind of cheap workerism. I tend to think being poor doesn´t excuse you from being an antivaxx arsehole. On issue such as crime of course social conditions play a huge role in crime reduction. But on the issue of public health, Macron is right to call these people out. Arguing that working class people are more vulnerable to disinformation implies forgets that the controlling variable is inevitably what their cultural background is. THe communities in 93 you speak of are subject to disinformation campaigns because they are not exposed to a common cultural sphere that we are.

The rhetoric you are going down leads to people like Djokovic´s father saying things like this you see :



Not surprised Méluche is trying to use similar undertones winking and nudging antivaxxers as oppressed working class people.

[Zinneke]

And it's a pretty big stretch to go from the the actual consequences of restricting primarily working class people from economic life, access to mobility and so on, which principally serve to precararise them further; to defending a spoiled millionaire like Djokovic or the insane rantings of Philippot or Jean-Marie Bigard.

I am not saying you are defending them, I am saying that your discourse is what allows theirs to flourish. The idea that somehow antivaxxers are poor oppressed little people and that Evil Bourgeois Macron wakes up every day, drinks his cocktail of crushed Gillets Jaunes provincials, looks in the mirror and thinks "how can I piss off working class people today". Its a total caricature that actually fails to address the real structural problems with the French elite.

In that respect, it is right to bring up the fact that these measures disproportionately affect people in the most precarious situations; that access to the vaccines has been uneven so far; and right to talk about why that it is

Can you source how access to the vaccines has been uneven in a French context? The government has not charged money for the vaccine, there is no priority for rich people, and yes, it just so happens that living in a city means you have more options to travel to get vaccinated. Just like living in a city gives you more options for pretty much anything? I mean don't get me wrong territorial inequality is a massive issue in France but the idea that antivaxxers are not getting vaccinated because its too far away when the French government has made efforts to ensure rural populations have access is just plain wrong.

And it isn't just because they aren't integrated as you seem to suggest. There are reasons for a Malian guy to be suspicious of the intentions of the French state towards him. Especially if he has a family member living in an irregular situation or whatever and is more worried about getting deported when he turns up to get vaccinated; or someone who doesn't speak French well enough to be able to interact with the authorities; or maybe doesn't trust a government that constantly tells them that they aren't part of French society - and none of those things are exactly unusual somewhere like La Courneuve.

You are just trying to pull heartstrings over an individual example of a Malian guy who is undocumented when you know full well the bulk of antivaxxers are people like this :

https://twitter.com/paullarrouturou/status/1478096057989054469?s=21

Guess what? there are plenty of working class Malian immigrants who went through all the legal procedures to get documented, pay taxes towards healthcare, who have followed all the rules, who respected everything, who got the jab 3x and are STILL restricted in their freedom to access healthcare because of sh**tty antivaxxers clogging up ICU units. These are the people the Left should be defending.

Anybody who would read the above would think there are armed police ready to arrest clandestine immigrants at every vax center. There are indeed police at vaxx centers, protecting the medical personel from antivaxxers, not looking to deport immigrants. Its again playing to the American crowd that France is some kind of fascist state.

And why don't you say it : these antivaxxers are also influenced by religious extremists, be it Christian or Muslim or Jewish Orthodox. But if any leftist dares take this up they are accused of violating religious freedom.

I would also btw think the pass sanitaire/vaccine passport is the biggest load of tosh we've been sold yet. We went from saying that if 70% of the population were vaccinated it would be scrapped to a progressive changing of the goalposts by incompetent government authorities. And as it turns out the vaccine barely stops the spreading. So I actually think there are some convincing arguments to be had about the vaccine passport being a useless, freedom-infringement measure.

But fundamentally I still hold antivaxxers far more responsible for the debacle, and I have zero time for people who want to ride their favorite hobby horse, be it right-wing libertarianism or class warfare, to defend a fraction of antivaxxers and score some cheap points against Macron when everybody knows he is right to say those words (just maybe not as a President).

[Zinneke]

I think that since the Hamon debacle a primary on the Left is pretty useless at this stage. There's no way some candidates will commit to voting for Mélenchon and his Russophile, pro-dictatorship stance after losing a primary to him if they already found it hard when Hamon won.

[Zinneke]

But anyway, we're getting bogged down onto technicalities : when Macron tackles the antivaxxers I don't think he is referring to undocumented migrants or people in extremely rural areas unable to get it. The latter especially may not frequent any establishent such as a bar or a cafe, and if they do something tells me that establishment doesnt force the coronapass anyway.

So I don't think this is a veiled attack on the working class. There are antivaxxers like the people in the video above who are insane and they are "antivaxxers" who like the Bogdanoff brothers, believe they know better and whilst not actively creating conspiracies or campaigning against everything, decide to not get it because of an invincibility complex. Both categories deserve no sympathy.

[Zinneke]

[Zinneke]

Well, where are the people who put Hollande over the top in 2012? Who are they supporting now?

About 50% are supporting Macron, or so I heard on a podcast I'm listening to.

Remember that Hollande got sizeable transfers from Centrist voters because Sarkozy was a genuinely horrible, corrupt person and that people should remember that Macron, despite the Benalla affair, doesn't have the abuse of power affairs that Sarkozy had.

adma needs to stop comparing French politics to Canadian politics though.

The electoral systems are different (so yes, a leftist may vote Macron in second round, doesn't mean they support him or like him - and more and more say they will abstain, otherwise Pécresse wouldn't be close in 2nd round polling)

And the cleavages are different.

Trudeau and Macron are put side by side by a weird bunch of international journalists who see them as from the same political tradition of milktoast post-2000 neoliberalism when Macron is really sui generis and a couple of statements on climate change being bad and multilateralism being good doesn't necessarily make him a liberal.

[Zinneke]

Well, where are the people who put Hollande over the top in 2012? Who are they supporting now?

About 50% are supporting Macron, or so I heard on a podcast I'm listening to.

Remember that Hollande got sizeable transfers from Centrist voters because Sarkozy was a genuinely horrible, corrupt person and that people should remember that Macron, despite the Benalla affair, doesn't have the abuse of power affairs that Sarkozy had.

adma needs to stop comparing French politics to Canadian politics though.

The electoral systems are different (so yes, a leftist may vote Macron in second round, doesn't mean they support him or like him - and more and more say they will abstain, otherwise Pécresse wouldn't be close in 2nd round polling)

And the cleavages are different.

Trudeau and Macron are put side by side by a weird bunch of international journalists who see them as from the same political tradition of milktoast post-2000 neoliberalism when Macron is really sui generis and a couple of statements on climate change being bad and multilateralism being good doesn't necessarily make him a liberal.

Re Pecresse being close in 2nd round polling: that'd still roughly correspond w/ the "left + Macron" vs "right" figures, wouldn't it?

No, it corresponds to the Left (whatever the  that means in French politics these days) abstaining en masse alongside large chunks of the Right, but Pécresse being aided by some core elements of the Right transferring to her including Macronistes swing voters from the center-right lending their vote to her in the event of a close contest. I think the Pécresse/Macron map will be very interesting for sure because it will sui generis and based on a lot of things like personality, local contacts and regional power figures etc.

I don't think we can say for sure yet that the second round map will be a Left-Right map of old.

 "Left + Macron" doesn't equal "Left = Macron", particularly given the nature of the political divide (and I'm looking beyond the strict "left-right" binary here) these days compared to the Giscard D'Estaing era.

There is no strict Left-Right binary anymore.

[Zinneke]

Collard's pathway to the Right was pretty unique but recently there has been an influx of the equivalent of concern trolls who are nominally Left but are at this point adverts for the left to extreme Right vote.  Michel Onfray for example basically all but endorsing Zemmour at this point, Brice Couturier and his insane obsession with wokism, Caroline Fourest...there should be a sociological study into these people.

One figure I can't discern is whether Roussel basically wants to incarnate that movement or if he is a more serious communist candidate...

[Zinneke]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/01/25/francois-hollande-says-ready-comeback-french-left-descends-chaos/?utm_content=world%20news&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1643123716

Just in case the French left wasn't divided enough.

I'd actually vote for him. It's so brazen that it's what France deserves.

[Zinneke]

Or, more to the point, the multiplication of left candidates and the mediocre polling both individually and collectively points to one thing in particular - the weakness of the left wing candidates who are standing. The reason they're all floundering in the single figures is that none of them has a message, a line, an anything that is unifying enough or frankly good enough to go beyond that.

Which of course is a endless issue in and of itself. If "The Left" collectively does not think it can get into round 2 against Macron, then all the candidates who actually could excite people stay out and the overall quality lowers. Since nobody dynamic is consolidating the field, other 'B listers' see the B listers that are running floundering and think "well I'm as good as them, I can save us!" And so the field multiplies.

Who are?
IMO fundamental problem is that there aren't enough left-of center voters in France.

That is purely the fault of the centre-left being nonexistent and a joke in France ever since PS’s implosion.

Yep and Melenchon is the poor victim who makes attempts to build bridges with the left-wing voters he needs, gotchya!

[Zinneke]

Hasn't a segment of the PS moved into Macron's party as well? Let's not forget that Macron got his start as Economics Minister in Francois Hollande's government so he has likely sucked up a lot of the more "third way"/centrist types from the PS

Yes - a significant number of members and quite a lot of voters. Of course there's a precedent for this: much of the SFIO base voted for Poher in '69.

With the utterly predictable note that a bunch of them, notably Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Health Minister Olivier Véran are technically not members of LREM but of a separate party called Territoires de progrès that supports Macron's government. Much as Agir and Édouard Philippe's Horizons do on the right.

Because, well who knows, you ain't serious unless you've got your pointless microparty or something

Also because LREM is a total mess.

[Zinneke]

[Zinneke]

Can someone explain the controversies of all (major) candidates, especially Roussel & Melenchon.

Well since it's easier to list negatives than positives :

Roussel
- supports China as a model to follow. In the PCF manifesto China is cited as an example of successful socialism.
- is selling a "luxury communism" ideal that is simply unachievable outside of populist pipe dreams
- from a left-wing perspective the PCF is a notorious sell out organization
- sort of acts as a testimonial concern troll candidate for right-wing figures to point out and say "look, this is what the Left could be!"


Mélenchon
- supports Putin and China
-supports Latin American dictatorships
- supports some dodgy rhetoric on Algeria
- supports renegotiating the EU treaties but has no plan whatsoever to do so
- supports blatant anti-German rhetoric. Thinks the German working class is less free  than China's (lmao)
- is more obsessed with destroying the PS than actually winning

Hidalgo
- has no record of governance other than Paris, which has to be one of the most overrated positions in the land. Basically worked the party structures to get to the top.
- hardly did a stellar job as Paris mayor, even if mentalities changed regarding cars
- is part of a cucked political party that is anachronistic at this stage, basically a party that was for the Valls's of this world to have a career in politics

Pécresse
-supports de-marrying gays
- overcompensates for having a vagina and having to face 2 uninhibited far right candidates by constantly warping on about restoring order and the islamo-leftist take over
- wants to put 200,000 public servants on the bread line with no plan to re-employ them
- Is from the Sarkozy clan's sphere of influence; the same clan that had no issues whatsoever engaging in abuse of power and filling public administrative position with cronies


Jadot
- doesn't take into consideration the cost of immediate nuclear phase out
- doesn't honestly say that he favours degrwoth policies because he knows its electorally unviable so packages it through things like "GDP isn't an accurate measure of a country's wealth!!!"
- Has a segment of his party that is laughably caricatural on woke issues
- has tried to reach out to right-wing parts of France by attending things like police demos, only to be upstaged to an extent in this by Roussel

Panzergirl
- is from the Le Pen family
- is part of an organization that has historical links with neo-fascism
- is obsessed with Islam
- is basically owned by Putin and his financiers
- convicted for misuse of public funds

Macron
- Bénalla affair
- completely tone deaf to the ordinary concerns of several vulnerable sectors of society
- in the pocket of the nuclear lobby, excessively so, whatever your stance on nuclear.
- sells off state assets on the cheap in the name of effecient privatization

Taubria
- is ambiguous on everything, but especially vaccinations
- basically the reason Panzerdaddy got into the second round in 2002
- tries clearly to cleave society on certain ethnic lines


Zemmour
- controversy is his fond de commerce so there is no point whatsoever making a list - you just have to look up every statement he has made since he emerged, but just as an example; thinks the French state should not apologize for the deportation of Jews under Vichy.  
- is basically owned by a billionaire, Bolloré, who it wouldn't surprise me if he himself was owned by the Russian intelligence through some sex tape with Morroccan minors
- convicted for hate speech

All of them are HPs to the power of a 100.

[Zinneke]

Who is more evil: Eric Zemmour or Marine Le Pen?

Zemmour. I think Marine Le Pen is only in politics because it's a family business and her sister was always the politically engaged one - Marine was rejected from a lot of private sector circles simply because of her family name. There's every chance that had she been born without Le Pen in the family name she would have gone on to be a run of the mill somewhat cynical centre-right lawyer.

Zemmour is a polemicist by nature, the guy at the back of the class who says provocative statements and is too smart for his own good; who goes to elite schools but because he is too smart for his own good has to settle into polemicism as a trade. Plus his views are just horrible on things like the French role in Algeria and the Holocaust.

Not to normalize Panzergirl of course; but at this point it is evident that she is the lesser of two evils. Though not enough to ever get me to go out and vote in a Le Pen/Zemmour second round.

[Zinneke]

Tbh even given the parlous state of the PS, its still a surprise that Hidalgo has bombed so badly.

I mean, she's pretty alright.

Don't feel too sorry for her. Her previous job before becoming a career politician was as a work inspector. These people are either by nature psychopaths or become one.

[Zinneke]

Unless she has a really good plan to turn things around very quickly, then I really don't see the point in Hidalgo staying in the race. Doing so otherwise will - unless we're seeing a serious case of polling failure - only further damage her image and that of the remnants of her party. She was always a curious choice of candidate given the general field: given that Macron is the incumbent and that there was always going to be a Green candidate, what exactly is the purpose of her candidacy? Other sorts of PS politician could maybe justify themselves under these circumstances, but not her sort. There's no room.

I'm intrigued to know which PS candidate could justify themselves. The PS's unique selling point for years, that kept it alive, was merely its ability to sell itself as the only left-wing force that could actually govern. That myth has totally dissipated now.

Hidalgo is indeed a particularly poor choice, but it seemed primarily motivated by strong support within the youth sections of the party and a belief this would somehow translate to the rest of the next generation

[Zinneke]

The thing about the anti-car measures in Paris is, is that whatever way you look at it, whichever side you are on (and I am firmly with parochial boy on the improvement it has or will eventually have) the main issue is that Paris-city as a polity has excessive power over its entire metropolis and its next level of government is île de France, which given that's where Pécresse was President, isn't actually representative of Paris. Key stakeholders weren't consulted and it felt like Hidalgo was being deliberately destructive in that respect.

I think Paris like Berlin would be allowed to expand politically and annex its surrounding areas, especially as it doesn't have the ethnic dimension as an excuse unlike Brussels. 

[Zinneke]

Pécresse absolutely bombed her big speech today. Several right wing figures are wondering whether to jump ship.

[Zinneke]

Zinneke, what about Poutou? What is your breakdown of him like you did the others.

I like Onfray's takedown of the NPA and Besancenot : "You only have to look at how the Trotskyite symbology has changed over the years. Previously you had a hammer and sickle to represent the factory workers and the peasantry. Now you have a loud speaker.''

[Zinneke]

I wonder if the Russian invasion of Ukraine could be a factor in France. It could lead to more scrutiny of how LePen, Zemmour and Melenchon support Putin and presumably will cheer on the invasion. There will also be more stories about how Putin funds various far right and far left political parties in France

I'm not a Mélenchon fan but even he condemned the invasion in Ukraine. And which parties of the far left8 are funded by Putin exactly, where did you get this idea ?

He only condemned it in a watered down manner.

[Zinneke]

I hope it silences the crypto-fascistic love affair with the "I would have voted Chevènement in 2002" line of argumentation.

Otherwise insignificant.