French presidential election, 2022

[Lord Halifax]

* Le Pen is proposing to exempt from income tax every young under 30 and even explained on radio that, if elected, even Kylian Mbappé would be exempted from paying income tax until the age of 30.

Sounds counterproductive not to exclude rich athletes, singers, actors and models from the proposal. I mean, presumably her core voters will find it very unfair that young multimillionaire celebrities (esp. "of color") don't have to pay taxes.

[Sir John Johns]

Well, apparently, the first draft of the proposal excluded the wealthiest ones but Le Pen changed her mind just three days later to enable everybody under 30 (well everybody under 30 paying the income tax which means far less persons) to benefit the measure which is aiming to prevent the departure of promising young people to foreign countries where they are receiving higher wages. The choice of Mbappé to illustrate the measure is indeed quite bizarre. Some articles are describing it as a way to attract young voters (so maybe the reference to Mbappé?), but I’m not really convinced this could work.

The true sovereignist measure would be that well-paid artists and athletes ACTUALLY pay the taxes they owe in France (French tennis players are notoriously known for being Swiss residents for fiscal reasons; there have been also the cases of Alain Delon, Michel Houellebecq, Florent Pagny or Johnny Hallyday to name a few and now trash TV-reality 'celebrities' expatriating in Dubai).

Anyway, exemption of income tax for people under 30 has some non-negligible chances to be ruled as unconstitutional for breaching the principle of equality before taxation but if French politicians have now to make realist and feasible proposals that doesn’t breach the Constitution there will be nobody remaining to run for president.

[Umengus]

last ifop poll

Macron: 25 =
MLP: 19 +3
Z: 14 -3
Bertrand 13 =
Melanchon 7,5 -1
Jadot 7 =
Hidalgo 6 +1

Macron: 54- (-2)
MLP: 46 (+2)

So another poll confirming the decline of zemmour, who just had an eventful visit to Marseille, which ended in a middle finger to a leftist who had done so previously. That would have been disqualifying 20 years ago. Today, not so much.

[President Johnson]

So Hildalgo has no chance to make it to the runoff? I found her candidacy somewhat impressing and would probably vote her in the first round.

However, in the second round, Macron is obviously superior to all the right wing candidates.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Why are the proposed policies such clown shows ? "exempting everyone under 30 from income tax" so let's cut their effective income by 20% just when they probably need more money to deal with children and other expenses.

[parochial boy]

last ifop poll

Macron: 25 =
MLP: 19 +3
Z: 14 -3
Bertrand 13 =
Melanchon 7,5 -1
Jadot 7 =
Hidalgo 6 +1

Macron: 54- (-2)
MLP: 46 (+2)

So another poll confirming the decline of zemmour, who just had an eventful visit to Marseille, which ended in a middle finger to a leftist who had done so previously. That would have been disqualifying 20 years ago. Today, not so much.

The racism, the anti-semitism, the misogyny, the authoritarianism... all of that is no problem but it is a middle finger that it is outrageous. Pretty good demonstration of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the French media and political elite.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A bit like the disciplinary code in Australian Rules Football.

[Zinneke]

Zemmour officially declares.

His campaign  launch video is like a parody.

[Sir Mohamed]

When is Macron expected to announce formally?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Watched his campaign video, just a montage of arabs and black people rioting followed by bunch of happy white families.

[Zinneke]

Apparently French media can't show his video because he used copyrighted footage without consent.

Amateurism at its finest.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Here's the video, if anyone's interested.
(just use auto-translation into English if need be)

[Coldstream]

Given Zemmour hasn’t got a party, or shown much interest in politics till recently, is he still going to be able to get the 500 nominators?

[DL]

I decided to be a masochist and watch the Zemmour video. I was struck right off the bat by two things:

1. The video makes all these evocations to French "grandeur" (some would say "delusions of grandeur") - and yet the entire soundtrack is Beethoven - who was German! You'd think he'd at least find some inspirational French music.

2. So many xenophobic references to "the other" and a message of hate towards anyone who isn't traditional French, white catholic etc.... and yet Zemmour himself is a rather foreign looking little nebbish who is himself a North African Jew - in other words he himself personifies the exact type of person who the French right has traditionally "othered" and vilified...

Then again, it was often noted that some of leading Nazis who went on and on about the German master race were very UNaryan-looking weaklings (i.e. Hitler and Himmler). Hitler was rather dark and swarthy and was rumoured to be part Jewish and Himmler was apparently a very effeminate child who played with dolls and would dress like a girl...he went on to spearhead the Nazi attempt to exterminate gay men....sigh. Its almost too facile to see the self-hate at work with these guys

[DavidB.]

2. So many xenophobic references to "the other" and a message of hate towards anyone who isn't traditional French, white catholic etc.... and yet Zemmour himself is a rather foreign looking little nebbish who is himself a North African Jew - in other words he himself personifies the exact type of person who the French right has traditionally "othered" and vilified...

Then again, it was often noted that some of leading Nazis who went on and on about the German master race were very UNaryan-looking weaklings (i.e. Hitler and Himmler). Hitler was rather dark and swarthy and was rumoured to be part Jewish and Himmler was apparently a very effeminate child who played with dolls and would dress like a girl...he went on to spearhead the Nazi attempt to exterminate gay men....sigh. Its almost too facile to see the self-hate at work with these guys

Very classy to compare a Jewish candidate for public office to Nazis and to comment on his appearance in a way you would never do with a black, Muslim or female candidate.

[MaxQue]

2. So many xenophobic references to "the other" and a message of hate towards anyone who isn't traditional French, white catholic etc.... and yet Zemmour himself is a rather foreign looking little nebbish who is himself a North African Jew - in other words he himself personifies the exact type of person who the French right has traditionally "othered" and vilified...

Then again, it was often noted that some of leading Nazis who went on and on about the German master race were very UNaryan-looking weaklings (i.e. Hitler and Himmler). Hitler was rather dark and swarthy and was rumoured to be part Jewish and Himmler was apparently a very effeminate child who played with dolls and would dress like a girl...he went on to spearhead the Nazi attempt to exterminate gay men....sigh. Its almost too facile to see the self-hate at work with these guys

Very classy to compare a Jewish candidate for public office to Nazis and to comment on his appearance in a way you would never do with a black, Muslim or female candidate.

Well, said candidate also said that the Pétain régime wasn't all bad and that maybe Dreyfus was really a spy, so, your Jewish candidate is hitting all the anti-semitic tropes.

[Horus]

2. So many xenophobic references to "the other" and a message of hate towards anyone who isn't traditional French, white catholic etc.... and yet Zemmour himself is a rather foreign looking little nebbish who is himself a North African Jew - in other words he himself personifies the exact type of person who the French right has traditionally "othered" and vilified...

Then again, it was often noted that some of leading Nazis who went on and on about the German master race were very UNaryan-looking weaklings (i.e. Hitler and Himmler). Hitler was rather dark and swarthy and was rumoured to be part Jewish and Himmler was apparently a very effeminate child who played with dolls and would dress like a girl...he went on to spearhead the Nazi attempt to exterminate gay men....sigh. Its almost too facile to see the self-hate at work with these guys

Very classy to compare a Jewish candidate for public office to Nazis and to comment on his appearance in a way you would never do with a black, Muslim or female candidate.

Classiness is irrelevant, he wasn't wrong. Zemmour is a nasty toad of a man. Of course, you only care about antisemitic tropes when they're coming from Muslims.

[VPH]

The portion of the Zemmour announcement listing off "le pays de ____" is literally just like this far-right video from Institut Iliade that went viral a few years ago called "Ni Lampedusa, ni Bruxelles, être Européen".

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

2. So many xenophobic references to "the other" and a message of hate towards anyone who isn't traditional French, white catholic etc.... and yet Zemmour himself is a rather foreign looking little nebbish who is himself a North African Jew - in other words he himself personifies the exact type of person who the French right has traditionally "othered" and vilified...

Then again, it was often noted that some of leading Nazis who went on and on about the German master race were very UNaryan-looking weaklings (i.e. Hitler and Himmler). Hitler was rather dark and swarthy and was rumoured to be part Jewish and Himmler was apparently a very effeminate child who played with dolls and would dress like a girl...he went on to spearhead the Nazi attempt to exterminate gay men....sigh. Its almost too facile to see the self-hate at work with these guys

Very classy to compare a Jewish candidate for public office to Nazis and to comment on his appearance in a way you would never do with a black, Muslim or female candidate.

Classiness is irrelevant, he wasn't wrong. Zemmour is a nasty toad of a man. Of course, you only care about antisemitic tropes when they're coming from Muslims.

Zemmour seems to basically be the French Stephen Miller at this point. What a weird little self-hating freak.

[Continential]

Apparently French media can't show his video because he used copyrighted footage without consent.

Amateurism at its finest.

Reminds me of when the Tories did that weird Willie Wonka ad in the start of the campaign.

[Sir John Johns]

* Incidentally or not, Zemmour’s declaration of candidacy was published the same day the first black woman, the American-born music-hall icon, Free French secret agent and speaker at the 1963 March on Washington Joséphine Baker, entered the Pantheon.

His declaration video is using countless film footage, TV reports excerpts and musics without asking for permission to right-holders or people featured in the video. Hence, paving the way for the possibility of various lawsuits for copyright infringement and breach of moral rights.

The polemicist was later interviewed on the most-watched TV channel, TF1, and was pissed up by the interviewer, publicly denouncing him later as a ‘prosecutor’ and reportedly calling him an ‘asshole’ when leaving the TV studio.



* Jadot’s campaign is experiencing difficulties in the wake of the recent airing of a TV report featuring five women claiming having been sexually assaulted by Nicolas Hulot, a former TV broadcaster, head of an environmental trust and minister for Ecological and Solidary Transition under Macron. A sixth woman, a former TV host, later also claimed having been sexually assaulted by Hulot when she was only eighteen. Allegations of sexual assault against Hulot have already made in 2018 when he was still a minister but dismissed by the government. Hulot then appeared in numerous TV and radio broadcast to dimiss the accusations and filed a libel suit against the online newspaper which published the story that was later withdrawn.

The spokesman of Jadot’s campaign, Matthieu Orphelin (elected a LREM deputy in 2017 now seating as an independent), who is very close to Hulot (having working for his trust), was subsequently demoted from his position; he later affirmed having already planning his departure from Jadot’s campaign before the end of the year due to political disagreements.



* The Hulot scandal is also a (minor) problem for the Macron government as the minister for Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, had in 2018, when state secretary for equality between women and men, publicly defended Hulot, attacked the article on alleged sexual assault and published an opinion piece in Le Journal du Dimanche hinting the article was politically motivated and basically telling women to go to the courts rather than speaking to the press (the statute of limitation had expired in the case...)

When asked on the matter by a journalist on a news channel, Schiappa answered ‘When we prepared this program, I told you we had a seminar on fighting separatism yesterday. And you said: I will not discuss Nicolas Hulot because this doesn’t interested me’. The journalist denied and asked Schiappa if she often asked journalists to not discuss particular topics.

It is a well-known fact that French TV journalists are particularly subservient when interviewing politicians, especially the ones in charge, but apparently this isn't enough.

[Hash]

Cleaned up the thread, without infractions. Keep it civil and clean.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Cleaned up the thread, without infractions. Keep it civil and clean.

Just going to say, as the OP, I would like to redouble this request from our moderator. Thank you. Merci.

[Zinneke]

Ciotti and Pecresse are the final 2 in the LR Primary

https://twitter.com/ElectsWorld/status/1466409090326880271

Bertrand endorses Pecresse. Barnier will too.

Both came pretty close :

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1466404166566350859

[Hash]

LR online primary 'congress' first round results from today, before the runoff tomorrow/Saturday:

Éric Ciotti 25.59%
Valérie Pécresse 25%
Michel Barnier 23.93%
Xavier Bertrand 22.36%
Philippe Juvin 3.13%

t/o 80.80% (113,038 votes)

Pretty huge surprise: nobody saw Ciotti come close to winning. If you're wondering, all are basically hard-right and obsessively focused on immigration and security, except maybe Juvin. Ciotti is the most far-right: he'd support Zemmour 'his friend' over Macron, and had the most far-right platform of any candidate. Pécresse opportunistically also campaigned on pretty hard-right themes.