French political discussion megathread: Yellow Vest Redux

[Zinneke]

Shall we start at the beginning. Éric Piolle, mayor of Grenoble, allows women to go to to public swimming pools wearing a burkini. The political-media class has a meltdown; the LR Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes president Laurent Wauquiez announced the suspension of all funding for the city of Grenoble.

But also, the French actually put signs like this up at their swimming pools


why are they like this??

I honestly preferred Rufin's stance than Piolle, who revived this for purely internal political reasons because he realised Rousseau's hyperwoke wing of the party has to be won over.

https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jacquesaura/blog/160522/francois-ruffin-burkini-jen-ai-vraiment-rien-secouer

How in god's name does it benefit the NUPES to revive this issue and play a game of chicken with a cucked politician like Wauquiez?

[Zinneke]

Darmamin is trying to cause a diplomatic spat with the UK blaming Liverpool fans because his broken excuse for a police force couldn't police the Champions League final adequately. Meanwhile Seine-St-Denis supposedly the land of milk and honey the European Left should strive for according to LFI types again showed itself up as an utter ghetto.

Lessons need to be learned on both sides before the Rugby World Cup and Olympics.

[Zinneke]

How are the Méluche/NUPES cultists on here justifying his stance on Taiwan?

Antonio, are you enjoying watching the French hard left wank itself silly to authoritarian regimes invading democratic ones?

[Zinneke]

Mbappe is a spoiled rich kid.

If you're trying to be a contrarian Isaak you're failing. I should know.

[Zinneke]

His family are not as poor as he makes out either. They're professional athletes themselves.

He's a massive female sexual organ and I never understood those who thought that because he could actually string a sentence together and not do weird sh**t like Pogbas witchcraft or Mendy's serial rapist act he was an "intelligent footballer".

[Zinneke]

Adrien Quattenens has resigned from his LFI portfolio because it was leaked that he slapped his wife.

Melenchon's reaction : a three pronged mainstream media, police and social media conspiracy and the wife beater deserves credit for bravery.

Quattenens proves yet again LFI as an organism cannot be relied on because the individuals who follow the cult leader are as bad as the cult leader. .

Be interesting to hear how the pro-Nupes people here justify wife beaters. Bouhafs was given some leeway for being from a North African background. So ginger people deserve some slack too I imagine...

[Zinneke]

Adrien Quattenens has resigned from his LFI portfolio because it was leaked that he slapped his wife.

Melenchon's reaction : a three pronged mainstream media, police and social media conspiracy and the wife beater deserves credit for bravery.

Quattenens proves yet again LFI as an organism cannot be relied on because the individuals who follow the cult leader are as bad as the cult leader. .

Be interesting to hear how the pro-Nupes people here justify wife beaters. Bouhafs was given some leeway for being from a North African background. So ginger people deserve some slack too I imagine...

This is an example among many other examples why I don't support NUPES. It's very low to defend wife beaters.

There's a good chunk of abstentionnists and Macron's electorate that could be convinced to get behind a genuine, minimalist left-wing platform rather than a social fascist or caricatures created by the media like Sandrine Rousseau. But alas the Meluche cultists got their way. That's why it angers me even more than any fash flash in the pan : a total missed opportunity thanks to the mythology of LFI somehow being populated by remotely credible people.

[Zinneke]

I don't think anyone who still supports En Marche can be considered meaningfully "left" tbh.

Supports enthusiastically? no. But voted for them? there are still some. As usual though, with post-2008 Left it's about pushing as many voters away rather than broadening the circle.

Anyway, in EELV news, Julien Bayou has also had to resign for much less serious allegations than Quatennens. Why? because Sandrine Rousseau is bulldozing the party into the hyperwoke caricature she wants it to be, with the help of the French media establishment who see her as box office token "left" figure to provoke as many 20 second clips and outrage as possible.

[Zinneke]

This "social movement" is just a recipe to pit one class of professionals against another. It is highly predictable given that the capitalist class is withholding production with the excuse of Ukraine and Covid to satisfy the shareholders, but the whole strategy will not result in working class unity, quite the opposite.

Then again there are those "authentic progressives" (let's call them authentocrats) who care about the buying power of labour aristocracy because Mr Martinez turns up on TV plateaus in his blue dungarees and acts hard and working class in a rough provincial voice, and there are us fake progressives who care about the buying power of all people who get up in the morning and work.

Between the "surprofits" just going to a few Total workers (many of whom make 5k net and are demanding more) and a windfall tax to help the real poor, I know which is the more progressive policy.

[Zinneke]

Did you really... just confuse the rather different issues that are the social movement and the TV licence?

Ummm...no? its just that you can't seriously preach left-wing unity under a NUPES banner and at the same time engage in exclusionary rhetoric because someone who considers themselves a progressive has a different policy opinion to you...one that doesn't involve defending Russia, PR China and Iran...which your favoured candidate (a genuine social fascist third positionist who called Germans naturally prone to re-arm and invade Europe) does.

Which if anything, just shows that unions are effective in protecting workers' rights and that maybe the answer is for stronger unions that cover all workers rather than getting angry at the fact they are covering some people in difficult jobs who might demand some right to the immense profits being generated by their employer.

You know full well this isn't just about union membership (I'm a member of a union btw), it is about one sectoral industry holding the rest of the country to ransom because they want to engage in the same behaviour their executives did in order to bid up their shareholders earnings : deliberately withholding and sabotaging supply of resources to cripple the country. They want to use their industry's position in the economy to hold the rest of the country to ransom and create a Mexican standoff of all other industries with zero solidarity.

Congratulates parochial boy, you are now a fully signed up member to "the market is always right" school of thought.

And in any case, who exactly has been leading outrage about Total using their massive profits to make huge disbursements to their shareholders? and leading demands for a windfall tax? with who being opposed exactly?

Because the French Left is led by a social fascist demagogue who defends wife beaters and the likes of Eric Piolle and Sandrine Rousseau (definitely people who focus on your social movements rather than culture wars issues...right!), they are not actually tackling the structural issues that have led to shareholder capitalism at companies like Total running riot : lack of proper regulation, overall lack of worker input at board level, countless other measures that don;t include witholding supply to bid up the prices and profit from this. Instead, they are engaging in their favorite hobby : artifice and outdated strike action designed to hold other sectors of the economy to ransom. Yay! Go Total Workers bidding up all our fuel prices in a major economic recession! That's sure gonna convince the masses that the dungarees wearers are on their side!

[Zinneke]

Have to agree with pb on this one I'm afraid.

Foreign policy positions are important, and yes often a weakness for too many on the left.

But they aren't *everything*.

This is less about the foreign policy theory and more about the way elements of the Francophone far left believe they have the monopoly of indignation, and that this belief is based on a sense of "authentocracy" - we are the real working class because our mediatic figures incarnate what they think is working class but really is just a caricature, or if we're blunt, labour aristocracy.

Meanwhile the chinaman who basically supports western working class buying power by accepting to be paid a bowl of rice a week? That's ah-okay, because according to the above, the global proleteriat are just abstract beings and the CCP is a genuine left-wing counter-power to the Big Bad Uncle Sam.

If it were the shopkeepers and not the Total workers striking, we would hear nothing from these Brahmin...

I'm basically criticising this attitude of antagonising any progressive that might just have an alternative perspective...which in endemic in the Mélenchon Cult.

The best way to help French workers is getting a left-wing candidate in the Elysée, not pitting the masses against each other.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/ugauthier/status/1598076173468446720?t=vMICU50GxgzMJApmMFouS...

[Zinneke]

I imagine there will be a split in the party. He will call for a stop at cooperating with Macron and some will reject this and create a splinter group.

This is the final nail in the Gaulliste coffin.

[Zinneke]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AnttonRouget/status/1602358941136162837

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/1634057763163627520

[Zinneke]

I take back all what I said

Mea culpa

Macron is a massive female sexual organ

Va te faire mettre fils de pute de ta mère !

[Zinneke]

Today's riot videos are tomorrow's LREM campaign material. Or better yet - tomorrow's videos of escalated riots are LREM's campaign material the day after tomorrow.

Hmmm I had the same sentiment re the Gillet Jaunes, but this feels much bigger and less "assorted hicks, conspiracy theorists and strasserite Le Pen-LFI" voters.

I genuinely think Macron's approvals will tank following this.

[Zinneke]

Thankfully their two extra years of work will pay for the reparations

[Zinneke]

He should have taken it off, looked at the camera and said "you see this watch? you see it? this watch cost more than your car" in a New Jersey accent...he gives off very estate agent vibes to me, physically speaking, in the sense that I want to deck him.

[Zinneke]

Tattooing 49.3 on your tits is just a bit of banter and anyone who is provoked by it is as immature as Schiappa.

In the end she did the stunt to support women showing some cleavage without being harrassed. People like Antonio want to stick their head in the sand though when paternalists from certain communities, be it Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, harass and intimidate women either from their own community or worse from a different one, not to mention the countless sexist pigs of all denominations who wolf whistle women on the street. I only have anecdotal evidence but it's particularly bad in big cities in France?! So in the end her Playboy cover is to advocate for women to wear whatever they want, not promoting 49.3 or whatever.

When Mitterand used 49.3 I doubt the French Left cared either, but I understand why the situation is different and still think Macron made a huge mistake using it for a pension reform rather than backing down and compromising.

Anybody who thinks the Strasserite's or Panzergirl's Presidency would have been "more democratic" though is naive.

Everybody, including the Presidency, needs to just calm down and not drift France into a democratic crisis. And more importantly, we desperately need the party system to return instead of these personalist vehicles. I get that the PS and LR and their old roles are bust, but in a country the size of France it would do well to have party vehicles that can actually build capacity within the political class and not in the horrible vacuous way the LR-PS machine politics did.

[Zinneke]

I'd add too that the opposition are obsessed with painting Macron as being out of touch and not a steward the "real people" (as if LFI and FN represent the majority themselves) when the messaging should be about Macron being nakedly corrupt with his privatisaiton schemes of motorways for example. I get that the two things are linked, but every attack seems to be about his watch, his ministers posing in playboy, his ribbon cutting persona, etc..

[Zinneke]

Okay that's enough pretentious, incoherent rambling. Welcome to the ignore list.

boo! hiss! What's the point of posting on a psephology forum if it isn't to be pretentious and incoherent? You're an academic, you can surely find venues with accredited people to get genuine insights from instead of a US-based forum. C'est le PMU digital ici mon ami.

[Zinneke]

. C'est le PMU digital ici mon ami.

Thicc 'n' juicy.

Daddy like.

case in point!

[Zinneke]

Is there any particular reason why you chose to frontload an otherwise decent series of points with an irrelevant personal attack, Zinneke?

It is not a personal attack on Antonio, it is a personal attack on Antonio's political views. I have no doubt Antonio is a thoroughly decent individual with a strong moral code. You can tell this because he actually cares.

[Zinneke]

Is there any particular reason why you chose to frontload an otherwise decent series of points with an irrelevant personal attack, Zinneke?

It is not a personal attack on Antonio, it is a personal attack on Antonio's political views. I have no doubt Antonio is a thoroughly decent individual with a strong moral code. You can tell this because he actually cares.

Fair enough, but I still think we're in danger of getting distracted by the Playboy aspect, which up until now no one here, including Antonio, has really focused on. I'm not sure why you tried to foreground it given that you don't seem to have an especially high opinion of the focus on frivolous showboating in French politics right now either.

Well I am a fan of playing devil's advocate, so the bulk of my post relating to Schiappa's stunt was defending her as she did not pose to talk about 49.3, she posed to talk about the serious issue of women being harassed on the street for dressing like they want to dress. And while I don't buy the French Right's paranoia over this being about islam (it is in reality about young men), I also criticize the way the Fancophone Left doesn't want to actually tackle the paternalist structures in certain communities that result in women being harassed in the street. So in essence if Schiappa's stunt had actually worked, it would have been worth it.

It failed because she not only decided to tattoo 49.3 on her chest as a troll, but also because it seems a lot of people who would otherwise consider themselves progressive on social issues think that because she is Macronista, and attractive, she can be subject to ridicule.

When Sanna Marin was posing with a decolleté, she was criticised by right-wing bad faith actors and defended to the hilt over it by some here even on the Left, but when Schiappa does it, suddenly it's...open season? Yet Sanna Marin wasn't even promoting a valid reason for posing, she was just getting the horny points in and posing to be the nice bland social democatic wondergirl while the real politics happens behind her and she was punished in the end.

I agree that that the "frivolous showboating" and overall "peopleisation" is a net negative, hence why I went off on a tangent about the return of a party political system as opposed to personalist vehicles for attention-seeking firebands.