French presidential election, 2022

[Sir John Johns]

A good example of the abysmal level of the current French political discourse: today, the LREM transportation minister described during a TV-interview Zemmour’s policies as ‘rather woke’ but acknowledged the Petainist candidate is generating ‘intellectual debates which are quite interesting’ (yes, apparently questioning the role of Vichy regime in the deportation of Jewish people, be they French citizens or foreigners or hinting that the victims of Islamist terrorist Mohammed Merah weren’t really French because they have been buried in Israel is ‘quite interesting’). This is the latest iteration of the Macronist campaign to equate the most extremist far-right with ill-defined and largely non-existent  ‘wokists’ who have replaced ‘Islamo-leftists’ as the main threat on the Republic and ‘laïcité’, few months after said ‘Islamo-leftists’ have displaced ‘separatists’ as the government’s favorite boogeyman. Meanwhile a series of attacks by far-right extremists have been foiled (interestingly, one involved a neo-nazi incel who discussed bomb-making on the Internet with a girl since arrested for the planning of an Islamist attack against a church) and anti-vax nutcases are assaulting or threatening physicians or politicians supportive of the vaccine pass. Also, an old woman has been beheaded in Hérault, a crime immediately blamed by a former PS elected official currently spending her time in TV studios on practices imported by migrants; too bad, the murderer turns out to be a former FN candidate in local elections.

On a side note about Zemmour, it make actually some sense to see him advocating antisemitism when you remember (but a lot of people has forgot) the central role played by antisemitism in French Algeria politics (built around the demand of the abolition of Cremieux decree giving Algerian Jews the French citizenship, a demand pushed by settlers up until the 1930s and realized by the Vichy regime) with recurring anti-Jewish (and sometimes deadly) riots and the election in the late 1890s as deputy for Algeria of Édouard Drumont (to which Zemmour has been compared), the godfather of modern antisemitism, or as mayor of Algiers of the candidate of a self-explanatory ‘Anti-Jewish List’.

Also, his defense of sexual assault (as long as it doesn’t come from the dirty poor in the banlieues) going as far as suggesting that Tariq Ramadan, of all people, is the victim of a women conspiracy, is totally in line with all these ‘intellectuals’ defending other ‘intellectuals’ or politicians convinced of sexual assault against minors (Polanski or Strauss-Kahn’s ‘trussing of a domestic’) or minor relatives (Olivier Duhamel) or even celebrating their pedophile feats in books which had been promoted in TV broadcasts not that long ago (Gabriel Matzneff). Contrary to the cliché, these intellectuals aren’t (or are no longer) leftist soixante-huitards: Finkielkraut has always defended Renaud Camus (the father of the great replacement theory) against accusation of antisemitism and Matzneff has received a ‘politically incorrect book’ award and is a friend with Panzerdaddy.

Otherwise, after having throwing away the first party he had founded (the Left Party, remember it?), Mélenchon is now getting rid of his second disposable party (La France Insoumise) to start yet another party, the Popular Union. But IMO the problem isn’t the party.

Hidalgo’s candidacy isn’t taking off and she made herself no favor with promises like doubling teachers’ salary in five years, limiting speed limits on motorway to 110 kilometers per hour or lowering fuel taxes which sounds improvised and incoherent and would probably seduce neither ecologists skeptical of Jadot, left-wing voters disillusioned with the policies of the Hollande government nor rural/suburban car-users. She is also too much associated with her mixed record at the head of Paris and appears unable to connect with provincial and lower-class voters. She has the same problems than Jadot in that regard, but with a mixed record as mayor of Paris to defend and a municipality to continue to manage. She has just suffered a first defection with relatively influential Socialist bigwig François Lamy (once close to Martine Aubry) having left the the PS to join Jadot’s campaign team; others could follow. And his opponent in the PS membership vote to nominate the presidential candidate, Stéphane Le Foll (very close to Hollande and who has spent the last years undermining Olivier Faure), has announced he will not campaigned for her.

It is also fascinating to see that the only people the candidacy of Communist Fabien Roussel seems to seduce are right-wingers (who would of course never vote for him) with pro-police, pro-‘laïcité’, pro-nuclear (‘most profitable energy’ ignoring the still unfinished Flamanville EPR with its so far twelve-year delay and its €19.1 billion overcost) and now pro-cruel hunting practices stances.

On the also-run not certain to have the signatures (clearly some are just pretending running to appear as still not totally irrelevant), there are Montebourg and his ‘remontada’ which is going nowhere, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (with a good share of his party leadership having decamped to join the RN in last December), François ‘I will explain in my three-hour-long video how the EU has been created by the CIA Nazis’ Asselineau who is currently indicted for sexual assault (if I remember correctly, the assault happened during that already creepy as hell Brexit celebration night), the deranged shepherd Jean Lassalle, ecologist has-been Antoine Waechter, ‘patriot’ and deranged anti-vax Florian Philippot, the Yellow Jacket necromancer lady and even more deranged people like Ségolène Royal who ‘doesn’t exclude’ to run for president.

Really, I’m done with my country’s politics.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/dupontaignan/status/1450140869722456074

Dupont-Aignan desperately trying to relaunch his candidacy by renewing his asinine project (he previously described it, of course, as 'a common sense measure') worthy of the worst Latin American demagogues of building a bagne (penal colony like those in Guyana and New Caledonia until the 1930s) in the Kerguélen Islands to jail sentenced Islamist terrorists. This has apparently seriously discussed on CNEWS yesterday...

[Sir John Johns]

Deputy from Alpes-Maritimes and candidate for the LR presidential nomination, Éric Ciotti, has indicated he would vote for Zemmour over Macron in a hypothetical runoff (then, Ciotti said few months ago what is separating the LR from the RN is 'the ability to govern').

It is also fascinating to see that the only people the candidacy of Communist Fabien Roussel seems to seduce are right-wingers (who would of course never vote for him) with pro-police, pro-‘laïcité’, pro-nuclear (‘most profitable energy’ ignoring the still unfinished Flamanville EPR with its so far twelve-year delay and its €19.1 billion overcost) and now pro-cruel hunting practices stances.

I dislike extreme laicite (esp in the current context), but going by this thread and his (google translated) French Wikipedia article, Roussel seems like the least obnoxious French Presidential candidate. Knowing where we are, I'm sure the likelihood of him saying something anti-Semitic etc. is high and I may have to eat my own words.

Well, no I don't think so. For all his flaws, Roussel isn't actually pandering to the conspirationist crowd (there is already Mélenchon for that) and has, as far as I know, abstain from making racist, xenophobic or antisemitic comments. He must be actually credited for having a strong and clear attitude on the COVID-19 issue, supporting the vaccination campaign and vaccine passport when others on the left (Mélenchon or Taubira) have chosen to adopt more ambiguous and questionable stances (Taubira refused to openly call French Guyana residents to get vaccinated; Mélenchon has firstly supported Didier Raoult, then questioned the efficiency of the Pfizer vaccine while pushing for the use of Chinese, Russian and Cuban vaccines and is now finding all sorts of excuses to oppose the vaccine pass).

The problem is his participation of a protest of policemen - also attended by Zemmour, the Interior Minister Darmanin himself, Olivier Faure and Jadot - in front of the National Assembly in last May to demand tougher penalties against offenders (when new laws going that way - also true for terrorism since 2015 - have been debated and passed in parliament on a very regular basis since more than twenty years and are clearly solving nothing; problem isn't the legal texts, it is the underfunding of police and justice and the overcrowding of courts, to which can be added the lack of training for policemen whose recruitment criteria have been lowered over year, the Interior Ministry systematically covering police brutality, poor relations with population especially in banlieues and the policy of targets introduced by Sarkozy), his call for a stricter immigration policy, his gratuitous and pretty silly attacks against the animal welfare positions of Jadot and his latest declaration in support of traditional hunting methods (use of cages, traps and nets to capture or kill birds without regard to specie) ruled illegal by the EU but the Macron government chose to re-allow for pure electoral reasons (the very recently prohibited birdlime isn't apparently concerned) which he said are opposed by 'patronizing intellectuals giving lessons' (when a lot of people in the countryside can't stand the practices of some hunters who enter private properties, shoot domestic animals or protected species, hinder families to walk safely next to the woods and can be incredibly violent like wild bird conservancy advocate Allain Bougrain-Dubourg can attest having been routinely insulted, threatened and physically assaulted when denouncing illegal hunting). This is also quite rich coming from a PCF apparatchik and journalist, the son of a PCF apparatchik and journalist; his predecessor, Pierre Laurent, had a very similar profile, quite indicative of the problems faced by the Communist Party.

Basically, Roussel is kind of following the strategy of Georges Marchais in 1981 (this one was openly xenophobic and contributed to further accelerate the electoral decline of the PCF but has ironically turned Marchais into a hero of today’s French far-right), a pretty risky gamble: he can finish liquidated the Communist support in the Red Belt (the PC lost in June the presidency of Val-de-Marne, the last département it controlled) without making significant inroads among rural, banlieue pavillonaire and declining industrial bassins voters. But, for now, he is barely discussed in the medias and is polling way below the 5% threshold to get his campaign refunded.

[Sir John Johns]

Stéphane Le Foll, the mayor of Le Mans and a Hollande loyalist, who is at odd with the party's first secretary Olivier Faure was trounced by Hidalgo in the aforementioned internal primary  (in which only members can vote as, like LR, the PS no longer wants to hear about open primaries), receiving 28% of the votes against 72% for the mayor of Paris. Le Foll is claiming, not without reason, the process was biased against him, denouncing notably the absence of a public debate with Hidalgo, hence why he would not campaigned for her. Nevertheless, he would not have been selected in any case, being associated with the unpopular Hollande, being not particularly well-known with French voters at large and, is he have at least a platform? I think he mostly positions himself to take control of what will remain of the ruins of the PS in case Hidalgo suffer a heavy defeat (which will be blamed on Faure who has traded his continuation as head of the PS against a support for the Hidalgo candidacy). Rumors Hidalgo could be 'convinced' to withdraw from the race and endorse Jadot in case her candidacy doesn't gain traction.

Apparently, the Radical Party of the Left (PRG), which has reappeared after the failure of the reunification with the (center-right) Radical Party and should not be confused with the Left-Wing Radicals, created by opponents to the aforementioned reunification (yes, the center under Macron is even more ridiculous than the 1970s French far-left), is according to this Le Monde headlines 'denouncing the multiplication of candidacies and reserving the opportunity to field its own  candidate in case the rally [of the left] remains impossible'. Its members will decided next Saturday whether running its own candidate or not. Anyway, the PRG seems to be a mere shadow of its former self (which was already not particularly relevant on national stage) and, unless it really wants to waste money in a quixotic campaign, it will not field a candidate (they have nobody even remotely known) but is more interested into negotiating constituencies with more important parties (the PS is the historical partner).

In the daily idiot electoral promises challenge, Valérie Pécresse, after having announced that if elected she would reduce by 150,000 the number of public servants in 'administering administration', has changed her mind few hours later and settled on the number of 'near 200,000'. Éric Ciotti announced few hours later he would reduce the number of public servants by 250,000.

[Sir John Johns]

* Montebourg's campaign is in self-destruction mode after the former minister for economic recovery has made yesterday in a TV interview the moronic proposal of blocking individual remittances to countries unwilling to cooperate with French authorities in the repatriation of illegal immigrants (that and goofy comments about Aznavour and Zidane having been great Frenchmen after having been immigrants when both were born in France). The proposal, previously made by Marine Le Pen, has been ironically welcomed by Zemmour while causing an outcry on the left (criticized by Mélenchon, Sandrine Rousseau and Olivier Faure among others). And now Montebourg is backtracking and saying he misspoke himself and that his measure is 'ineffective because misunderstood'.

* Yannick Jadot has promised on 29 October that, if elected, hunting will be prohibited during weekends and holidays to enable people to walk in nature without risking been struck by a stray bullet. Few hours later, a driver was seriously injured by a hunting bullet while driving on a four-lane highway in Ille-et-Vilaine; he died of his wounds few days thereafter. The head of the National Hunting Federation, Willy Schraen, publicly blamed the accident on 'bad luck' and explained that 'zero risk does not exist'. An IFOP poll published few days ago indicates that 69% of asked people are supporting the proposal of Jadot. I'm a bit skeptic over the measure (despite Schraen's best efforts to convince me otherwise) but I guess it's a nice change from circular 'debates' on immigration, insecurity and Islam which are dominating televised talk shows.

* The number of participants to the LR internal primaries has been reduced to five as Denis Payre, the self-described 'successful businessman since thirty years' but not as much successful leader of the now defunct 'We Citizens' useless and irrelevant political party (1.4% in 2014 European elections), has failed to gather the required number of parrainages from the party's elected officials to get on the ballot.

[Sir John Johns]

Les Jeunes avec Montebourg (Montebourg's campaign youth organization) is withdrawing its support to its champion and has reportedly deleted its Twitter account after having published a post highly critical of Montebourg's proposal on remittances. What a trainwreck...

[Sir John Johns]

* Believe it or not, but Montebourg’s dumb proposal on remittances has been blamed on two communication advisers of his campaign team who are describing themselves as ‘Sarkozyst’ and used to be close to the former right-wing president (as well as on a former pro-Chevènement énarque). Doesn’t stop Nono to come up with another idiotic proposal: instituting an offense of ‘economic treason’ to punish the selling of French businesses to foreign investors.

* It seems that Zemmour’s campaign is foundering before even having officially started. After comments on people owning a Parisian apartment worth €1.3 million not being ‘what we are calling wealthy people’ (totally in line with complaints of overpaid far-right TV pundits about how discussions on purchasing power are creating a diversion from the ‘real’ problems), revelations about Neo-Nazis having participated in the inauguration of his campaign office, the departure of his main founder (neoliberal millionaire Charles Gave who published a book with a preface by Milton Friedman) and a complaint against Closer (trash tabloid specialized in the invasion of privacy of real or alleged celebrities and assorted socialites) over allegation his main political adviser (and alleged mistress) is pregnant, the far-right candidate has been photographed responding to a bystander who has given him the finger by rising himself his middle finger.

He has still received some weeks ago the endorsement of a first legislator, even if we are speaking of Joachim Son-Forget, elected in 2017 as a LREM deputy for Switzerland and Liechtenstein expats (with an impressive 18.8% turnout) who turned out to clearly suffer from mental issues, to be totally unfit for the job and is more famous for his Twitter controversies than for his (non-existent) parliamentary work. Reports that LR deputy Guillaume Peltier and probably the current France's record holder of party-switching (ex-FN, ex-MNR, ex-MPF and he is only 45!) is tempted to endorse the polemicist but he probably would not did it if that means losing his parliamentary seat.

For the Bataclan terror attacks, maybe should we remember that Zemmour’s campaign has used photos of the victims in its propaganda without asking permission to the relatives. Or that Zemmour has been (unsuccessfully) sued in 2016 for terrorism apology by family victims after having declared ‘I respect people ready to die for what they are believing in – something we are no longer able to’ in the wake of the Nice attack.

* Hidalgo’s campaign is also having problems (again) as it has been reported that several banks have refused to lend money to the PS candidate. If her candidacy doesn’t take off, she could be pushed towards the exit by her fellow PS barons. But there is no replacement solution in the party so that means endorsing another left-wing candidate (presumably Jadot but some of them, like mayor of Dijon François Rebsamen, appear to be very impatient to join Macron).

* The LR debates have been (what a surprise) mostly centered around immigration, national identity and insecurity with Éric Ciotti proposing a ‘French style Guantanamo’ to fight terrorism, Xavier Bertrand supporting a halving of the ‘immigration of students who are going to France' and Michel Barnier advocating the return of military service (this one will surely resolve the problem of LR with young voters). Philippe Juvin talked also about believing 'our civilization model being superior to others'.

After Bertrand had refused his endorsement arguing of his pretty vitriolic attacks against his local arch-nemesis Ciotti, Renaud Muselier, the recently reelected president of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, has announced he is leaving LR (again, what a surprise).

* 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.

[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.

[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.

[Sir John Johns]

* Look like it is over for Dupont-Aignan’s campaign. Several key members of his staff have resigned after it has been revealed that Dupont-Aignan concealed them having got COVID-19 and instead continued his campaign as usual, hence putting his team at risk of also being infected. According to Libération, he also participated in several meetings in the National Assembly while knowing been a COVID-19 contact case, deliberately ignoring the self-isolation rules.

This latter fact is denied by Dupont-Aignan but, anyway, by now he has virtually no campaign team, no party infrastructure (a sizable of it having already defected to the RN in late 2019 and late 2020), no money and not much electoral space.

Debout la France appears now doomed to join Villiers’s MPF and Pasqua’s RPF in the political graveyard of parties which tried to exist, sometimes with some success, in the political room between the mainstream right and the entrenched Le Pen dynasty’s party but ultimately failed to survive on the long run.

* For Taubira, she once again dodged questions over her positioning on vaccination policy and, concerning her (quite mysterious) economic stances, when a presidential candidate in 2002, she advocated some kind of third-wayism (abolition of income tax and most social contributions and their replacements by a moderate ‘progressive tax’ as well as a limited funded pension system). Nothing particularly leftist, but remember she started her political career in metropolitan France as a deputy from Guyana seating in the ‘République et Liberté’ parliamentary group. This one was a motley crew of non-inscrits (independents; members of minor parties) legislators from right and left with no political consistency. It included notably Bernard Tapie (aka the French Berlusconi wannabee before he ended in jail for the fixing of a soccer game when at the head of the Olympique de Marseille), Jean-Louis Borloo, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Jean-Pierre Soisson (a super-opportunist who served as minister in both Giscard’s UDF and Mitterrand PS governments before getting elected president of Bourgogne regional council with the votes of the FN), and Paul Vergès, the leader of La Réunion Communist Party. And it was, of course, presided by the legendary Jean Royer (the arch-conservative mayor of Tours very much opposed to pornography). Taubira then voted in favor of the swearing-in of the Balladur government and was later a candidate in the 1994 European elections on the ‘Radical Energy’ list, the list headed by Tapie (there was also Noël Mamère on it) whose main purpose was seemingly to enable Mitterrand torpedoing Rocard's position as head of the PS.

Nevertheless, by this point, Taubira is probably a better candidate for the PS than Hidalgo, at least for the first round; in a hypothetical runoff, this will be different but as Hidalgo isn’t going to the runoff anyway...

* Reportedly, Nathalie Arthaud (LO) is confident having her signatures and being on the ballot on next April; meanwhile, the competition between Philippe Poutou (NPA) and Anasse Kazib (ex-NPA) sounds as a brilliant strategy to ensure none of them get their signatures.

[Sir John Johns]

This is really hard to make predictions about the presidential election at the moment.

* Firstly, we aren’t certain about the complete list of the running candidates. A minor candidate being on the ballot or not can matter a lot (imagine if in 2002 Taubira hadn’t run or if Pasqua had his signatures) but there is a slight possibility Zemmour (very controversial, no existing party infrastructure plus LR has no interest seeing him running) or Mélenchon (can no longer count on the support of the PC, at least for now) not making it.


* Secondly, the electorate is becoming more and more fluid (see 2017 when Hamon experienced a massive surge in the aftermath of his nomination before melting for the benefit of Mélenchon) and I have my doubts Pécresse, Le Pen and Zemmour will be all three above 15%: one will probably saw his/her support collapsing during the campaign for the benefit of the two others. There are also many undecided, especially among left-wing voters.


* Thirdly, the ongoing COVID-19 surge is interfering with the campaign with discussions about measures to contain the pandemic hijacking the whole public debate at the expense of other topics and the election campaign itself. Of course, nobody knows for how long this will last. Additionally, if his government really mess things up in its response to the COVID-19, Macron could be found himself in a more fragile position than expected.


* Next, we have no idea about what the turnout will be and a sharp increase in abstention, a bit similar to the one in the last regional elections but not at the extent reached then, can’t been discarded. There are indications that French voters are less interested in the election than five years ago and, IMO, there is a widespread feeling of disappointment towards the political class as a whole and towards the incumbent president in particular.

The changes promised by Macron in term of ethics fails to materialize (a pretty obscure minister has to resign few weeks ago after having been formally sentenced for lying on his assets declaration; the justice minister is currently indicted for ‘illegal taking of interest’; the interior minister remained in charge despite being accused of rape – the case has been dismissed by the justice since; a LREM deputy is currently charged for having harassed his wife and another one is still sitting in the parliament despite being sued for having attacked a PS member with a motorcycle helmet).

Tellingly, a quite sizable share of the LREM deputies are expected to renounce running for reelection due to a mix of disappointment with Macron policies, a feeling they have been totally ignored by the government and the president and a very hostile political atmosphere to which the deputies from the ‘civil society’ were unprepared to deal with (starting really with the Yellow Jackets movement and still ongoing thanks to anti-vaxxers and extremists of all shades, the constituency offices of various LREM legislators have been trashed on a regular basis; elected officials of right and left are now frequently receiving death threats, some have been physically assaulted or being confronted at their homes – the latest ones have been a pro-Macron mayor in a small commune of Normandy having his garage burnt down and pro-Zemmour messages tagged on Marine Le Pen’s house).

Speaking of the Yellow Jackets, nothing came out of the demands for a more democratic practice. This was rapidly buried in the protests under illegible and extravagant demands as the idiots and the extremists took over the declining movement and nobody in the medias nor among the candidates are now discussing that issue (same for the questions of public services in rural France and territorial inequalities). Meanwhile, the designation of random citizens to ‘advice’ the government decided by Macron to calm the protesters turned into a complete farce: the government chose to largely ignore the recommendations issued by the citizen commission on climate (basically accusing its members of having been brainwashed by the scientists consulted by said commission) and nobody has any clue about what happened to the citizen’s commission on vaccination appointed about a year ago.

On the same time, except maybe for Zemmour supporters (but Zemmour is the most rejected political figure in French electorate at large), I don't think that, outside of their more hackish supporters, voters are particularly thrilled for the batch of candidates running against Macron. Clearly Mélenchon and Le Pen have lost some their luster. Pécresse isn't particularly inspiring (too much bourgeois and too much Parisian - well Versaillaise; in some ways, she's isn't that different from Macron) and neither is Jadot.


* And that’s my very personal opinion but I’m under the impression that the mass medias (especially the television whose watcher average age is currently 56.1, up from 54.5 last year but is still the prime media for political debates and communication) have mostly renounced addressing youngest audiences. The public debate, as it currently stands on radio and television, is largely revolving about the obsessions of well-off boomer retirees – on average, French retirees are earning more than younger generations. Hence constant complaints about the alleged decline of the French civilization which can apparently been summed up by Mr. Potato, Pepé Le Pew, Gone With The Wind, French kings’ numerals having to be Roman for people having reading disability and Molière’s texts having to be completely unchanged in educational material aimed at foreigners learning French abroad*. And while there are non-stop attacks against an alleged ‘wokism’ and ‘Islamo-leftism’ in the French university, material and financial problems faced by students and teachers are barely discussed.

Plus you have had in these last months some highly publicized very indecent complaints from boomers whining about how they can no longer afford a comfortable retirement: like Luc Ferry, a TV philosopher and once the worst education minister in French history, who ‘obviously can’t live’ with a €3,000 monthly pension; or a quite famous TV presenter afraid of dying in the street with his ‘very small’ €3,500 monthly pension; or a recent TV reporting that shocked even my parents and my uncle about some retired couple pretending struggling to live with over €2,500 a month. By comparison, the minimal wage is €1,589 and I have to live with €900 a month while far from being the most to be pitied.

All of this is recipe for potential important abstention among youngest voters, something which probably would hurt Mélenchon the most and help Pécresse the most.


*Yes, these are the pseudo-debates (it can’t be called debates when it is such one-sided hysterical discussions) about totally frivolous if not non-existent problems. The worst one was about Gone With The Wind being withdrawn from Netflix for like one week becoming an unacceptable attack on liberties and democracy for ‘philosophers’ spending their time denouncing the ‘import’ of US theories in France. At the exact same time, the French government was busy attempting to curtail the right to protest under the pretext of COVID-19, something that went then largely unreported.

[Sir John Johns]

The far-right wasn’t the only one wanting EU flag off Arc de Triomphe.

Here’s the horseshoe theory at work with Antoine Léaument, the guy in charge of digital communication in Mélenchon’s campaign team, retweeting Pécresse. The LR presidential candidate was ‘only’ demanding to add the French flag next to the EU one because the erasing of the French identity and yada yada but the LFI guy was asking for the complete removal of the EU flag (described as ‘this horror’) to get ‘the homeland’s flag’ back.

https://twitter.com/ALeaument/status/1477041565306703879

Meanwhile, LFI deputy Bastien Lachaud was calling the EU flag under the Arc de Triomphe a ‘mistake’ which is enabling ‘Pétainists like Zemmour to pass as patriots’ and stating the Unknown Soldier ‘didn’t died for Brussels’.

As a side note, Lachaud is currently sued for ‘illicit supply of workers, forgery, fraud and attempted fraud’ as part of the investigations on irregularities in Mélenchon’s 2017 presidential campaign and has been additionally sentenced to a €6,000 fine for the infamous raid on the LFI headquarters when he and other high officials of the party confronted the police.

https://twitter.com/LachaudB/status/1477284280577544198

Mélenchon himself used this opportunity to start the year with some rambling against ‘the European Marian flag’ (he is obsessed with that; note that Léaument has claimed that the EU flag should be removed because it is a symbol of religious origin and, as such, an infringement on laïcité) and ‘Beethoven’s hymn’ which have been withdrawn from Lisbon Treaty by Sarkozy and with attacks on ‘the Macronist caprices disregarding the sense of symbols’.

https://twitter.com/JLMelenchon/status/1477373280516460544

That just one week or so after he posted on his Facebook account (but not elsewhere in the Internet) alleged ‘revelations on the vaccine passport planned by the European Commission since 2019, before the pandemic’ with a video featuring Sophia Chikirou, his communication advisor (and presumed partner even if Jean-Luc has clarified she isn’t ‘in the fiscal sense of the term’; Chikirou was still in Mélenchon’s private apartment when the police came there in the early morning for a search). The ‘revelations’ were actually fake news dating back from one year ago previously also spread by Philippe de Villiers. Chikirou is herself currently investigated for presumed overcharges in favor of her communication firm during Mélenchon’s last presidential campaign and has produced a ‘documentary’ denouncing the ‘lawfare’ against Mélenchon.


Anyway, if the government is to believe, the flag was planned to flaw under the Arc de Triomphe for the 31 December and 1 January. Its withdrawal has enabled Le Pen to celebrate a ‘beautiful patriotic victory’ and to thank ‘the massive mobilization of all loving France and the Republic’ which has forced Macron to step back.

https://twitter.com/MLP_officiel/status/1477565635211235331

[Sir John Johns]

Mélenchon himself used this opportunity to start the year with some rambling against ‘the European Marian flag’ (he is obsessed with that; note that Léaument has claimed that the EU flag should be removed because it is a symbol of religious origin and, as such, an infringement on laïcité)

WTF

Surprisingly, people have claimed Marian connections in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Europe#Marian_interpretation

Indeed, Léaument has tweeted this lately:

https://twitter.com/ALeaument/status/1478104515303854083

The crown of the Virgin Mary on the Eiffel Tower.

Fortunately, this isn’t a crescent on the European flag otherwise the friends of variable-geometry laïcité would be in PLS [position latérale de sécurité ‘recovery position’ aka would feel unwell]

Ironically, Léaument started his political career in Bayrou’s party, the direct descendant of Robert Schuman’s Christian Democrat MRP.


He may have a point on the ‘variable-geometry laïcité’ of parts of the French political class from the elephants in the room that are the state and the churches legally not being separated in several parts of the country (Alsace-Moselle and various overseas territories) or Christian schools receiving public funding (but nobody is wanting relaunching the school war) to the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church in Paris being illegally occupied by the Society of Saint Pius X since 1977 (the Interior Ministry is much more responsive when it is Muslim clerics doing illegal stuff) or a LR deputy who protested five years ago the absence of the Christian crosses on the roofs of monasteries depicted on the packaging of Greek yogurts of a supermarket chain (the worst thing is that came from a deputy elected from Marseille, a city with a truckload of actual serious problems).

But, a year ago LFI was opposing the law against ‘separatism’ reinforcing the control of the state over religious organizations (criticized by Christian, Jewish and Muslim organizations alike) with Mélenchon defending then an ‘open laïcité’. Now it is using such trollish arguments for the only sake of criticizing the EU that was already used by Mélenchon in 2017 to oppose the presence of a EU flag in the National Assembly (then calling it a ‘faith community symbol’).

[Sir John Johns]

Macron’s comments on non-vaccinated (‘I really want to piss off non-vaccinated’ and ‘an irresponsible isn’t a citizen’) made in an interview to a newspaper are said to be also an attempt to undermine the candidacy of Pécresse whose party is currently divided over the introduction of vaccine passport currently heatedly debated in parliament. Le Pen, Mélenchon and Zemmour are against said passport. But this could as well undermine Macron’s own candidacy, reminding people how arch-arrogant he can be, all of that when the management of the coronavirus new wave by the government is not above reproach; in that same interview, Macron criticized his own education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, for the way he informed teachers of the updated health protocols in schools: in the evening, on the eve of the back-to-school day and in an interview to a newspaper behind paywall...


Mélenchon’s campaign announcing, five years after Jean-Luc’s hologram, ‘a world first’: an immersive and olfactory meeting in Nantes on 16 January.

https://twitter.com/melenchon_2022/status/1478666114557169664

[Sir John Johns]

* Hidalgo has taken note of the failure of a tentative left-wing primary after Mélenchon, Jadot and Roussel have all declined to participate and is preparing to relaunch her candidacy for the umpteenth time. Taubira is possibly also planning the launch of her own presidential bid (she will make an announcement on her possible candidacy before 15 January). Meanwhile, MEP Pierre Larrouturou and twelve ecologist activists have started a hunger strike (jesus, this campaign is becoming more and more silly) in favor of a single candidacy of the left, the only mean to stop climate change or something like that.


* Pécresse is trying to pander to far-right voters with her stated intention to ‘take the Kärcher out of the basement’ to ‘clean the quartiers’ (deprived neighborhoods in banlieues) and ‘get the streets in order’, not excluding the participation of the army for specific operations against drug dealers. She also promised the building of 20,000 prison cells and the requisitioning of disused buildings to turn them into provisional detention centers for delinquents. Recycling the rhetoric of Sarkozy but somehow even more unhinged (stuff like depriving ‘kingpins, thugs, criminals and dealers’ of their citizenship) and, ironically, just few weeks after Claude Guéant, an interior minister and close associate of Sarkozy, went into jail for failing to pay the fine in the case he has been sentenced (for receiving undeclared bonuses in cash - taken from the police budget - when the chief of staff of Sarkozy, then Chirac’s Interior Minister). This must the first time since the Liberation that a former interior minister is imprisoned.


* According to Ouest-France, Jadot has his 500 signatures and so have Taubira and (apparently) Roussel while Jean Lassalle has so far 450 pledges of signature he said he easily got. Mélenchon had only some 300 signatures in early December (this is harder without the PC local officials network) while Kazib had 150 signatures against 168 for Poutou in mid-November. Le Pen said she is struggling getting the signatures (but the Le Pens are saying that at each election) while Zemmour has claimed having only 300 pledges of signatures by 6 January.


* Four days ago, Dupont-Aignan lost the spokesman of his campaign who resigned to protest over the candidate’s decision to campaign on the only topic of opposition to vaccination and social distancing measures. And, yesterday it was the only DLF deputy in the National Assembly with Dupont-Aignan, José Évrard (ex-PC, ex-FN, ex-Les Patriotes), who died of Covid, possibly contaminated by NDA himself as this last has chosen to ignore self-isolation rules...

I’m beginning to think that this Brexit party was cursed as most of its most prominent attendants have had problems since.


Not the scene of some horror movie but the party organized by Asselineau and co to celebrate Brexit on 30 January 2020. Amusing detail: these morons displayed the Union Jack upside down.

François Asselineau is currently indicted for moral harassment and sexual assault against two former male employees of his party; Jean-Frédéric Poisson has renounced to run for president and is now singing unfunny humorous songs in Zemmour’s meetings; Georges Kuzmanovic has lost his job in a video games company (supposedly for political reasons) but still absolutely nobody is giving a sh**t about his quixotic presidential bid; and for Philippot, this is summing up things pretty well:

https://twitter.com/ehouardvial/status/1477282769160052740

The guy could have remain the number two of one of the largest parties in France and, today, he is dancing to discount music wearing a pointed hat under the window of a minister in order to show medical personnel to which extent he piss them off.

(yes this was on New Year’s eve in an antivaxx protest before the Health ministry)

And has anybody some news about Jacques Cheminade?

Among participants of the Brexit party were also a former MPF eurodeputy currently investigated for having reportedly drugged a man way younger than him to sexually abuse him (Paul-Marie Coûteaux) and a Belgian essayist who is trying too hard to defend freedom of speech for Holocaust deniers (Jean Bricmont). Le Pen and the RN were probably right not going to such party.

[Sir John Johns]

* Guillaume Peltier has announced he is dumping Pécresse and is now supporting Éric Zemmour (strong Éric Besson vibes here):

https://twitter.com/G_Peltier/status/1480107766916296704

I have took the decision to support the only right-wing candidate, the only RPR candidate, I’m rejoining Éric Zemmour

Ignoring than when the RPR was a thing, Peltier was not a member of that party but of the FN (and MNR after Mégret split with Le Pen).

Peltier was one of the vice presidents of LR until last December when dismissed by Christian Jacob for having posted comments favorable to Zemmour just after Pécresse’s victory in the party’s internal primaries. Another vice president, Gaël Perdriau (mayor of Saint-Étienne) was dismissed from his party job the same day than Peltier but for having expressed his intention to leave LR in case Éric Ciotti was elected the party’s candidate.

Peltier has been immediately promoted to spokesman of Zemmour’s campaign. His former compadre in the La Droite forte wing of the UMP, Geoffroy Didier, is now ironically himself in charge of the communication in Pécresse’s campaign.

Peltier is consequently no longer a member of the LR caucus and some of his former colleagues have expressed some mean words against him:

https://twitter.com/AurelienPradie/status/1480127821754339332

Peltier is doing what he has always do: betraying for better sell himself. This has nothing to do with courage. Nothing to do with convictions. Zemmour is choosing for carrying his words a person who is carrying no conviction. Everything that the French are hating.

Pradié, a rising star in LR, used to be close to Peltier.

According to some journalists, Le Pen has privately said that Peltier tried a month ago to negotiate his endorsement of the RN candidate.



* Taubira will run for president if she is elected the candidate by the voters of the ‘popular primary’. Considering that other prominent left-wing candidates have all declined to participate in such process and acknowledge its results, she will have not much problems defeating the likes of Pierre Larrouturou (desperately trying to politically exist since more than two decades), Charlotte Marchandise (a nobody who won a 2017 online primary but failed to get the 500 signatures) and Anna Agueb-Porterie (a complete unknown). Still, I haven’t really understand if voters in the primary could still vote for Mélenchon, Jadot, Roussel or Hidalgo whose candidacies have been apparently registered.



* Hidalgo has expressed her support for the right to vote for foreigners residing in France in local elections. This has been a promise already made by Mitterrand in 1981 and 1988 and Hollande in 2012 but that the socialists had rapidly gave up once in office due to lack of willingness and strong opposition from the right and the far-right.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Hidalgo/status/1479246289896415233

[Sir John Johns]

Found on Twitter (source) and made with real recent declarations and ‘accomplishments’ of French politicians:



LEFT AUTHORITARIAN:

Fabien Roussel: ‘A good wine, a good meat, a good cheese: that is the French gastronomy. The best way to defend it is to enable French to have access to it.’

RIGHT AUTHORITARIAN:

Valérie Pécresse: ‘Yes, being French is to have a Christmas tree, to eat foie gras, to elect Miss France and it is the Tour de France because that is France’

RIGHT LIBERTARIAN:

A snippet from a popular cooking TV show the (largely useless) minister in charge of Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, recently participated in by preparing a ham and cheese Pithivier in the kitchens of the Ministry of Interior (sending the government’s token feminist to that peculiar show is truly a wonderful idea).

LEFT LIBERTARIAN

Éric Piolle (EELV mayor of Grenoble) (posting to the EELV mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet): ‘Dear Lyonnais friends, I can confirm that the [French] tacos are indeed from Grenoble’ [there is a typically French controversy whether such dish has been invented in Lyon or Grenoble comparable to the pain au chocolat/chocolatine name dispute or whether there is cheese in the gratin dauphinois or not].


Not sure where this one should be placed:

Go in any street of Paris or somewhere else and you will see everywhere signs in English. The creolization [some sort of ‘meeting’ between different cultures advocated by Mélenchon] is taking place. But we are also the biggest pizza consumers. And the French’s favorite dish is couscous.

[Sir John Johns]

Actually I never watch a single of his videos, first and foremost because my Internet connection is too unstable to enjoy watching long Youtube videos (also because I largely prefer writing over video/audio for various reasons). Came across to his Twitter account from another Twitter account.


* The Macron government has faced today the largest strike in education sector since twenty years with a sizable share of preschools and primary schools teachers on strike (38.5% according to the ministry of education and 75% according to the unions – as usual in France with significantly diverging estimates between the government and strikers or protesters). One school out of two was closed today. The strike was also supported by all teachers’ and professors’ unions, the main parents’ organization and even the unions of administrative personnel, school principals and school inspectors which is not something happening very often.

The main grievance of the strikers is the constantly changing and over-complicated health protocols, decided by the minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in haste and without consultation, whose implementation is turning into a disaster with record numbers of contamination among students and teachers and closed schools in a backdrop of shortage of COVID-19 testing kits in pharmacies, overcrowding of testing centers and sluggish vaccination rate among children. The education minister is also criticized for his opposition to the distribution of FFP2 masks to teachers and the persisting absence of CO2 sensors in classrooms.

And that’s for the sole health aspect because he is also opposed by unions for, among other things, his reform of baccalaureate, for the mess that is Parcoursup, the web platform in charge of university admissions (with accusations of opacity and bias against students from low-income families), for the material and financial support granted by the ministry to a yellow high-school student union and for his active involvement in the witch-hunt against ‘wokism’ and ‘Islamo-Leftism’ among social science academics (contrasting with how Didier Raoult has had for months free rein to promote his miracle cure against COVID-19 as head of Marseille university hospital institute and the related scandals over his cottage industry of falsified scientific studies and his undeclared experiments for treatment of tuberculosis, including on homeless persons, that are remaining without serious sanctions).

For a man appointed as a minister due to his alleged technical expertise as a former director of school education in the ministry, Blanquer turns out to be arguably the most ideological member of the Macron government. He is now in a position of weakness as leaders of the opposition are openly calling for his resignation, as he is widely despised by the whole public education sector, as he is increasingly isolated inside the government and has reportedly an argument with the health minister in the last council of ministers and as it has been the prime minister himself who announced the latest changes in the health protocols and took control of the negotiations with the main teachers unions.



* Strong rumors that Montebourg will terminated once and for all his presidential bid which is going nowhere to, possibly, endorse... Taubira.



* Zemmour has formally acknowledged living with his main adviser who is 35 year younger than him. His own wife was present at the meeting launching his candidacy, some weeks ago... This is turning into soap opera (and a pretty bad one).



* Guillaume Peltier is using the LR membership files he kept after leaving the party to recruit supports for Zemmour among the right-wing rank-and-file members. This is certainly illegal and Christian Jacob, the president of LR, has complained before the personal data protection watchdog.

Actually not the first time this is happening in French far-right politics: in the late 1990s, Nicolas Miguet, a crooked businessman and perennial ‘presidential candidate’ for his anti-tax party (he always announced his candidacy to each election, somehow managed to have his election posters plastered in every single commune of France but failed to get the signatures), already stole the list of FN and MPF members to advance his party, his stock market information newspaper, his small shareholders association and his holding, all domiciled in the same building.



* Meanwhile, it seems that Robert Ménard, the independent far-right mayor of Béziers often seen on TV and a political maverick to some extent (he is supporting Macron’s push for a vaccine passport, an unpopular position on the far-right), is now supporting Le Pen after having hesitate to endorse Zemmour he is considering by now as too polarizing and too obsessed by immigration.



* Anne Hidalgo has announced her program which including notably:
- a 15% increase in minimum wage
- the suppression of the unemployment insurance reform (notoriously unfavorable to unemployed persons) decided by Macron
- the lowering the voting age to 16 and the recognition of blank vote
- the change in the electoral timetable to hold legislative elections (with the mandatory dose de proportionnelle - limited PR) before the presidential ones
- the creation of a ministry for women’s rights and a ministry for climate
- the institution of some sort of universal revenue for young over 18 with a 5,000€ sum allocated to each young when reaching the age of majority
- the introduction of a citizens’ initiative referendum
- the introduction of measures to limit pay gap inside companies
- the abolition of Parcoursup
- no change in legal retirement age (staying at 62)
- an increase in the salaries of teachers and professors (but not the doubling initially announced)
- the institution of a wealth tax to fund ecological transition
- the introduction of a 16-week paternity leave (of which 6 weeks would be mandatory)
- no construction of additional EPR (providing the first one is even completed: the entry into service of the Flamanville EPR, whose construction is ongoing since 2007, has been few days ago once again postponed, this time to mid-2023) or small nuclear reactors with an exit from nuclear energy planned for 2050 (against 2030 in Mélenchon’s platform)
- making mental health a priority
- a ‘conference’ on weed legalization (when Jadot and Mélenchon are openly in favor)



* some philosopher/essayist/writer named Gaspard Koenig has announced his own presidential bid for the 'Simple' movement he has founded. His main plank is a drastic simplification of administrative standards and the end of the 'bureaucratic oppression', a goal he intends achieving by dividing the number of administrative standards by hundred. He has no chance to get the signatures and is probably running only for self-promotion, still he got some media exposure these last days.

[Sir John Johns]

Taubira has officially declared and unveiled parts of her platform: an increase of minimal wage to €1,400 (up from €1.269), a €800 monthly revenue for students during five years, the hiring of 100,000 professional carers and nurses and a 0% VAT on organic farming products. She has however said she would respect the results of the ‘popular primary’ she is the favorite to win. The ‘popular primary’ for a united left-wing presidential candidacy resulting with yet an additional candidacy would be an ironic outcome. The PS mayor of Marseille has also announced he would campaigned for the winner of the popular primary.


https://twitter.com/jeanlassalle/status/1481998108888379394

Jean Lassalle is threatening to sue Zemmour, claiming the logo of Reconquest has been plagiarized on the one of Lassalle’s party, Résistons! Note, that the recently appointed spokesman of Zemmour’s party, the Egyptian-born Jean Messiha (a very nasty guy who is spending his days in the studios of Bolloré's TV channels), has been kicked out from the RN for repeatedly plagiarizing articles of far-right websites and elsewhere on the Internet to redact his own memos he was paid €16,200 by Le Pen’s party. He was already the most paid adviser to Le Pen in her 2017 campaign, receiving the exorbitant salary of €12,700 a month (more than a minister) as the coordinator of Le Pen’s presidential project.

[Sir John Johns]

in that same interview, Macron criticized his own education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, for the way he informed teachers of the updated health protocols in schools: in the evening, on the eve of the back-to-school day and in an interview to a newspaper behind paywall...

This is going unbelievably worse for Blanquer:

https://twitter.com/fabricearfi/status/1483165528084652034

Omicron: Blanquer has announced the new protocol in schools from Ibiza.

The minister returned from his holiday in the Balearic Islands only the day before the classes resumed, despite the fifth wave and its consequences on school life.

No such than a scandal exposing how your education minister is a complete joke, just few days before another massive strike in the education sector and less than three months before the presidential election first round. A LREM senator (François Patriat, ex-PS) somehow managed to add more fuel to the fire by stating that ‘teachers would not like their holidays being discussed’.

[Sir John Johns]

* Montebourg has dropped out of the race, citing the fact that his ‘ideas have probably become alien to [his] own political family’. Declaring taht his ‘perspectives traced for the country aren’t shared’, he has decided to not endorse a candidate in the election. RIP La Remontada.


* In his immersive and olfactory meeting, Mélenchon somehow managed to blame Covid-19 on massive deforestation and domestic animals ‘martyred in the hyper-intensive livestock farms they are enclosed in’ before delivering an angry tirade: ‘and then they are inventing sanitary passports and vaccines, one, two, three, four, five doses [public beginning to boo the vaccines] without closing a single intensive farming and without ending the martyrdom of animals and the danger for human beings’. Of course, not a word on the responsibility of the Chinese government as Méluche is, with former PM Jean-Pierre Raffarin, one of the biggest chills of Beijing in France.

https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/1482713074180231177

Note that just today the LFI abstained on a non-binding resolution condemning the persecution of Chinese authorities against Uyghurs as a crime against humanity and genocide.


* Zemmour has been sentenced to a €10,000 fine for hate speech concerning declarations he made in 2020 on CNews about minor migrants being all thieves, murders and rapists (that’s rich from the guy himself accused of rape by several women and employed on a TV station where half of the regular participants have been sentenced for abusive expenditures, abuse of social property or, for one pseudo-journalist still on air prosecuted for sexual harassment and undeclared work in the sordid case of the production of a gay porn web series involving barely adult men – how this asshole has not still been fired is beyond me).

In the following days, Zemmour will return to the court to be judged for denial of crimes against humanity (for having said Pétain saved Jews) and for the case of copyright violations in his campaign announcement video.

Of course, he is denouncing a ‘political justice’ and pretending that it is ‘abnormal’ that presidential candidates are facing justice during the election campaign. Adding that the judges already ‘stole’ the 2017 election to Fillon and right-wing voters.

One a side note, I discovered that his past declarations on Alfred Dreyfus are even worse than I thought as he also claimed that Dreyfus wasn’t attacked because he was Jew but because he was German, hence denying the whole antisemitic nature of the Dreyfus Affair.

Zemmour also made several days ago comments on disabled children you can, at best, called clumsy, in which he denounced the 'obsession for inclusion' of disabled children and said they should attended specialized institutions, except the 'slightly disabled' ones. Such declarations have been heavily criticized by disabled rights organizations and the whole of the political class and forced Zemmour to partly backtrack.


* Finally some hope for the candidacy of Georges Kuzmanovic, a former spokesman for Mélenchon 2017 campaign on international questions and defense, who left LFI over disagreement on immigration questions, to start his own sovereignist and ‘above left and right’ phone booth, Sovereign Republic, he announced the creation on the Russian-owned RT France. He has received the support of Jacques Cheminade, the Larouchist grandpa who is wanting to colonize the Moon. Cheminade’s adepts are reputed to harass mayors of small communes until they give their signatures to their champion so maybe Kuzmanovic could have the 500 signatures this year just like Cheminade did in 1995, 2012 and 2017 despite being politically totally insignificant.

[Sir John Johns]

Zemmour has received these last days the endorsement of two relatively important members of the RN who have jumped ship from Le Pen’s campaign.

The first one is Jérôme Rivière, currently a MEP and, until his departure from the RN, the head of its delegation to Brussels. A former UMP deputy from Alpes-Maritimes (in the constituency currently held by Éric Ciotti), he joined De Villiers’ MPF in 2007 before becoming a member of the FN in 2015, at a time when the MPF was no longer a thing. Rivière was one of the spokesmen for Le Pen’s campaign (he is now holding the same job in Zemmour) and an adviser of the RN candidate for defense matters. Being largely unknown by French voters at large and considered as marginalized in the RN, he isn’t a decisive addition to Zemmour’s campaign but having the head of your party caucus in European Parliament decamping in the middle of your campaign isn’t good publicity for Le Pen.

The second one is Gilbert Collard, also currently a MEP, after having been a FN/RN deputy from Gard between 2012 and 2020. Unlike Rivière, Collard is a quite famous figure, firstly as a lawyer in high-profile criminal cases since the 1970s (he had his puppet in the Guignols de l'Info satirical show twenty years ago, always introduced as 'Gilbert Collard, lawyer at the court, on radio and on TV') and thereafter, since his election as a deputy as a frequent guest in political talk shows.

His political career is really odd, from being a member of the SFIO and the PS in the 1970s and 1980s to a supporter of Pierre Boussel (aka ‘Lambert’) who ran for president in 1988 as the candidate of a Trotskyist party (the Movement for a Workers’ Party, ex-Internationalist Communist Organization, ex-Internationalist Communist Party later successively renamed the Workers’ Party in 1991, the Independent Workers’ Party in 2008 and the Democratic Independent Workers’ Party in 2015 when the majority of the party led by its two most recent presidential candidates, the incredibly dull Daniel Gluckstein and the more ‘folkloric’ Gérard Schivardi, left to found a new party). Collard unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Vichy as the candidate of a right-wing alliance in 2001 and as the candidate of the New Center in 2008 (since then renamed ‘The Centerists’, a satellite party of the UMP/LR led by Hervé Morin after he left the Modem in 2007 with the pro-Sarkozy faction of that party) before officially endorsing Marine Le Pen in 2011. He didn’t became a member of the FN for a long time however due to personal grievance with Panzerdaddy (he was the lawyer of this latter’s first wife during their divorce proceedings) and has be critical of the ‘dediabolization’ strategy.

Like Rivière, he was an increasingly marginal figure in the RN (him going from a national deputy to a MEP could be seen as a demotion) and is more representative of the traditional FN electorate of Southern France than the recently conquered electorate of deindustrialized North.

[Sir John Johns]

You say Collard's career is odd but isn't it actually fairly standard for many French rightists to start of as trots? Like a certain former president?

Except he spent 20 years in SFIO/PS before going over to the trots.

Yes, going from SFIO/PS to a Trostkyist small party is very unusual. This was traditionally working the other way with the Trotskyists (especially of the ‘Lambertist’ flavor) practicing entryism into the Socialist Party, generally to rapidly morph into generic social democrats/social liberals (see Lionel Jospin or Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the right-hand man of Strauss-Kahn, you would have hard time considering as a left-wing extremist). Mélenchon was also a member of the OCI before joining the PS. The oddity with Collard is also that, by the late 1980s, the Trotskyist movement in general and the OCI in particular, which was embroiled in a series of purges/departures, had fallen out of favor.

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...

For Roussel, whatever his intentions are, it should be noted that what have been widely publicized is the fact that he wants poor to eat good quality meat and drink wine. But the concrete measures he would take to reach such result are never been discussed. In the end, this is still stupid culture wars prevailing over economic issues. His gimmick is still entirely in line with Georges Marchais’ produire français (‘producing French’) slogan and the PCF campaign in the 1950s against Coca-Cola it contrasted with the French ‘good wine’:

On the other hand, Roussel also defended in last October a bill to render ineligible people convicted for racism or antisemitism, which should have logically led him to be labeled as a ‘woke’ but this didn’t happened...


On a related note, the opposition between Roussel and Mélenchon on a series of political topics is becoming quite caricatural: when Mélenchon is talking about animal well-being and receiving the endorsement of a relatively famous animal rights defender, Roussel is supporting hunting even when involving cruel practices; when Roussel is loudly proclaiming his support to nuclear energy, Mélenchon is advocating the end of that energy in terms that even I, a nuclear skeptical, can’t accept (between the exaggeration of the dangers of nuclear energy and the promotion of offshore wind turbines and whatever system is using the Papeete hospital as the magic solution); when Roussel is meeting butchers, Mélenchon is calling for the end of factory farming.

[Sir John Johns]

Like Rivière, he was an increasingly marginal figure in the RN (him going from a national deputy to a MEP could be seen as a demotion) and is more representative of the traditional FN electorate of Southern France than the recently conquered electorate of deindustrialized North.

Imo Zemmour's platform and appeal is more "old FN" than "new FN". Less post-industrial than Le Pen's appeal. I could be wrong, but I think that will show in the results too.

Indeed, the platform of Zemmour is reminiscent of the one of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1980s which was mixing historical Poujadism (opposition to taxation and bureaucracy from the point of view of small shopkeepers and craftsmen) and inspiration from Reaganism with the required healthy dose of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism. This is arguably also the period where the FN leader made his most heinous declarations.

Comparison could be also draw with Bruno Mégret, who led a split from the FN, the MNR, in the late 1990s at a time when Le Pen had drifted toward a much more anti-establishment/anti-system posture. I don’t remember much of his economic platform (immigration and insecurity remained the core of his program) but Mégret, who originally came from the RPR, was much more vocal than Le Pen against the PS (calling Jospin the leader of the most extremist left-wing government in Europe when Le Pen stated that Chirac was worse than Jospin) and a strong advocate of the so-called union des droites (‘union of the rights’, i.e. making political alliances with mainstream right-wing parties, especially the RPR) in spite of, like Zemmour, harboring in his party and satellite organizations the most radical and extremist elements from the far-right, including neo-nazis (a MNR candidate for 2001 municipal elections attempted to murder Chirac on 14 July 2002).

There is also seemingly a difference in the social background of the party officials of Zemmour’s new party and Marine Le Pen’s RN. In the latter, figures like Jordan Bardella (coming from a humble background and who grew up in a deprived banlieue – now he is dating a girl of the Le Pen family) or Steeve Briois (mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, a city hard hit by deindustrialization) are put forward to illustrate the opening of the party to popular classes. Meanwhile, the new faces which are acting as the spokesmen of Zemmour (Antoine Diers, Stanislas Rigault) seems to be born with silver spoons in their mouths (there are not much information about their background, actually) and sporting a very bourgeois appearance with Diers even having the mustache and the haircut of someone trying to impersonate an aristocrat from the nineteenth century. Diers has been a municipal councilor in Lambersart (a wealthy suburb of Lille) and, until very recently, the chief of staff to the mayor of Le Plessis-Robinson, a posh commune in Hauts-de-Seine, so presumably not someone very much in touch with lower classes.

Actually, the emergence of Zemmour may have force Le Pen to stick to her demagogic economical platform (mixing defense of social programs and public services with tax cuts and no indication how she intends to finance this) when she has started, since her disastrous performance in the 2017 debate (with her plan to withdraw from euro nobody, not even her seemingly, understood), to move to more openly pro-business/financially orthodox positions aiming at acquiring some credibility in economic matters and reassuring pensioners (not fans of ill-prepared economic experiences) with the abandonment of any reference to a withdrawal from euro, the rejection of any plan to cancel public debt and the promotion of ‘common sense’ and ‘sound management’ on that matter (that was in February 2021, this topic has now been totally sidelined) and the discussion that took place inside the party about considering dropping the promise to lower the legal retirement age back to 60 (finally, this is still defended by Le Pen), a proposal also defended by Mélenchon but not Hidalgo nor Jadot (who are advocating keeping the current legal age of 62).

[Sir John Johns]

* Éric Woerth, a bigwig of LR (budget minister and labor minister under Sarkozy, national treasurer of the UMP in 2002-10 – a post for which he is indicted in the supposedly illegal financing of Sarko 2007 campaign –, the general-secretary of LR in 2015-16 and currently the president of the finance commission of the National Assembly), has announced he’s endorsing Macron. A blow for the Pécresse candidacy which, so far, isn’t taking off, still struggling to overtake Le Pen in the polls and isn’t not at all ensured to go to the runoff.

* Also Hidalgo has now fallen behind Jean Lassalle in the latest Elabe poll while Taubira has started her campaign post-selection by the popular primary with the totally left-wing proposal of reducing the inheritance tax and a performance considered as disastrous before the Fondation Abbé-Pierre dedicated to poor housing problems, appearing as not being familiar with that matter (then again, Taubira’s speech sounds always to me as some pompous fluff with random literary quotations and references to historical personalities but very short on details). Reportedly, her campaign team has started discussions with the one of Jadot. Anyway, she has been attacked as the candidate of wokism, responsible of the decline of the French left by no less than Manuel Valls who really really want to get a ministerial job be it under Macron or Pécresse (from the guy who has abruptly abandon his two previous jobs as deputy of Essonne and municipal councilor in Barcelona).

* Hilarious answer of Nathalie Arthaud after Gilbert Collard complained that Arthaud who is polling at 1% has more signatures than the combined Le Pen and Zemmour):

https://twitter.com/n_arthaud/status/1491147793595248640

This is the difference between activists fighting for their beliefs and flies changing of poop before an election. We are accustomed having to fight for everything. Unlike Collard, Zemmour and co. nothing is falling into our laps.