"Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has announced that he is dissolving the national assembly, and calling for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.
The French president said that he can’t pretend nothing has happened, that the outcome of the EU election is not good for his government and that the rise of nationalists is a danger for France and Europe."
Hey, uhh, Europe? Can we talk?
Look, I know the way the left has been handling immigration has you upset, but could you please take a closer look at the absolute freaks you’re electing today?
I mean, just take a good look at the United States, circa 2017 through 2020. Did we look like electing an absolute freak worked out for us? Did it fix our own immigration problems? Did it make electing your own Donald Trumps look like a good idea?
When people feel ignored in a democratic country, they begin to feel like the democracy they live in is a sham or that democracy itself doesn’t work.
Votes like this aren’t necessarily about “we need a different direction” and more about desperation and/or anger. They want to show the elites of their country that they still have the power, they want to cost them something for treating the population like it’s there to be harvested from, they want to shake up the status quo at all cost.
They want to prove to themselves that their vote still matters.
Letting it get to this point is really bad governance. Once you get here, either they win, or they don’t. And of they don’t, most of the people who support them have their suspicions confirmed, they don’t live in a democracy, they voted and didn’t get what they want, again. This creates a division that is difficult to come back from.
Except the fascists ARE the elites most of the time. This never hurts them. It only hurts themselves.
Exactly. And they won’t fix immigration, they’ll just enrich themselves as much as they possibly can.
These right wing parties need migration. Their whole existence depends on there being immigrants to blame so actually closing the borders and “sending them home” is the worst move they can make politically speaking.
Correct, the next step in the strategy is to blame the immigration on any random external entity (cf Brexit). Eventually this may devolve into full blown war, genocides, etc etc.
Well, you know, there’s a type of “immigration” that fascists love, and the wage cost is zero. You just have to keep the “prisoners with jobs” alive.
not just right wing parties. every country with an aging population needs more young laborers and migrants can help.
fascists just need someone to blame, and someone desperate to do the same work for less pay.
No worries; foreigners, jews, blacks, arabs, and ofc the gays to start.
There is always someone to blame for everything.
Sometimes, you just wanna punch yourself in the dick. It won’t fix your problems, but it’ll make em feel less important for a few minutes.
Jimmy beat sausage, sometimes
They want to prove to themselves that their vote still matters.
Voting ultra right because of this is like trying to prove life is worth living by eating a bullet
I think you’re being too charitable.
Some people will happily elect somebody that will be horrible to people they don’t like. Far more people than is comfortable.
Sure, but that’s not how it starts usually.
Democracy doesn’t work when there’s rampant misinformation and psyops.
All the shitheads on facebook are drip-fed russian troll-farm garbage and they eat it up like santa eats up biscuits on christmas eve.
There are literally no consequences to misinformation and disinformation. A politic can literally say anything and get away with it.
Well, that’s dismissive. You don’t think that these people are reacting to genuine concerns they have? Not even some of them, some of their concerns?
In an environment where nobody controls the information, people will lie. If democracy doesn’t work when information flows freely, doesn’t that mean democracy doesn’t work?
What do you mean nobody controls the information? We’re sitting here talking on lemmy, but most people (or at least most vooters) get their information from capital intensive sources controlled by the ruling class. Television is captured and subject to manipulation, mainstream “algorithmic” social media is captured and subject to manipulation, independent (local) print media is dead. I get really depressed when I think about it
So I was responding to the parent statement, he said when there’s disinformation democracy doesn’t work. Well in order to avoid disinformation, you need strong control of information flow. That sounds a lot like a dictatorship. The people you vote for control what you know about them, that’s not democracy. So if democracy doesn’t work because people lie, and democracy doesn’t work if information is controlled, then democracy doesn’t work, right? Interestingly, he confirmed lower in the thread that he does not believe in democracy.
I’m with you, all news is controlled propaganda. I don’t follow any of it as a result. It is sad, but all we can do is try to live in the world we are in. I don’t let it get me depressed, I just carry on.
“Information”.
Are their concerns manufactured? Like “immigration bad”, while it’s proven that immigration boosts economy? Like “black people bad”?, “Gay bad”?
Did I miss any of the “concerns” that Afd party is prompting?
If I tell you that your nose will fall off if you don’t give €5, that is not information.
An environment where no-one controls the information is anarchy. Anarchy is not a democracy, no.
An anarchy is an environment where no one controls the application of force. Information has nothing to do with it.
Seems to me you don’t like democracy and only use it as a means to an end.
…and nobody controls the flow of information.
I think democracy is shit, when paired with unbridled capitalism and rampant disinformation & misinformation.
That doesn’t mean I have an alternative. But it’s definitely not anarchy.
It is a sham. An arrogant 3rd term fool imported a population increase of 3 percent in 18 months during a housing crisis and can’t figure out why people hate him. Successfully lowered wages across the whole country after devaluing the currency intentionally. This is not a mystery why people wants see him at a minimum out of office immediately. I think you all know what a lot actually think should be done with him.
I just cannot comprehend how anyone can look at post brexit UK and think “yes, I want the same for my country”
It’s truly bizarre. Every couple of decades or so, either the United States or significant chunks of Europe decide, “What the hell, let’s give the right-wingers another chance, they say they’ll fix immigration,” and then we end up cutting funding for services and giving tax cuts to the rich. They pull this shit every goddamn time, and we keep falling for the bait-and-switch.
The recent success of the European far right is precisely because they’ve revised their image to get rid of the freakshow aspects. The days when you could dismiss these people just by calling them “absolute freaks” are over.
But the freakiness is still 100% present in their platforms and ideologies. They’re just dressing nicer now.
Unfortunately, “decorum” is really the only thing keeping some folks from hopping on board those movements, not the policies themselves.
No… No they are all still freaks. Did you just take off your “they live” sunglasses or something? The Freakshow aspect is in the ideological makeup.
That’s terrifying
Not true, 95% are still freaks, optically and mentally.
We love copying the USA.
The US won the Civilization cultural victory 70 years ago and the world has continually gotten worse as a result.
We might need a Ghandi with nukes…
Best we can do is Modi
30 years, no?
As an American, I would argue that the United States didn’t win the Cold War, the Soviet Union just lost it.
And making sure to tell the USA how stupid they are at the same time.
A bit hypocritical, eh?
If you look a little closer, it’s not. Educated European people do not want to copy American culture, or at the very least try to pick out the good stuff. They are those who criticise the US for the bad stuff, though.
Our dummies, deplorables, low class people on the other hand have eaten up American culture hook line and sinker, they are culturally in sync with basic bitch Americans and their lifestyle and hobbies (minus guns because of laws)…music, movies, food, holiday destinations, political views, clothing, hobbies is all copied from the US. American soft power works wonders on soft European brains. These are the people who don’t criticise the US but the US shouldn’t take that as a compliment, because they’re morons.
So there is a huge class divide in Europe between people who want to turn Europe in the US, end those who think that’s not a good idea. No hypocrisy.
Educated American people don’t like the way the US is right now either haha
I know
Not really hypocritical, not all of us are Fr*nch
Unfortunately
*our lower classes (in terms of education) do
We’re at the USA obesity levels of 1995, now tell me it’s just the ignorant.
I mean it probably starts there but with a third if a population voting far right, ignorants will soon be the biggest part of our countries.
It might as well be, that’s why the upper classes should look for an alternative.
Also, who is “we”? I’m not from the UK
We = Europe
In that case “we” are at 53%, the US were at least at 55% in the early 90s, which is 35 years ago. I think that’s a long enough timespan to make any comparison moot.
It makes me want to mock the EU considering how much, deserved, shit the US gets. But this is just depressing. I would much prefer the US to be mocked as we get our shit, hopefully, together. Not fucking join us.
Are they electing our Trumps or are we electing their Mussolini? Shitty people being shitty is not a US exclusive, but you’re right.
As Saint George says, garbage in, garbage out
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I’d actually give the Catholic Church a few points in the “Good” column if they made Carlin a saint. He could be the patron saint of jesters and fools.
I am from the U.S. so I don’t really understand how this works, or what the significance is. Can anyone EILI5?
Macron’s party got disastrous results and got trounced by the far right in the European elections.
He had been selling himself as the shield that protected France from the rise of the local far right party. With these results, he has lost his credibility, and therefore his government did as well.
Therefore he’s calling out-of-schedule French parliamentary elections that – I assume – he hopes will reelect his party and allies ahead of the far right. It might work: the far right party polls strong at around 30%, but has few allies, and may not be able to form a coalition government. If Macron himself can, that will strengthen his legitimacy.
Needless to say, this is a risky gamble.
He acknowledge he lost his credibility and therefore he dissolves the parliament? He just gain my appreciation
Because delaying mean’s momentum against him will continue to grow
You wait it out if you think there’s no chance for you or you hope it fades
Still a very bold move imo
Rock and a hard place.
*fronce and a hard place
It’s the correct move. It’s democracy, you gotta accept the will of the people… even when they’re being idiots.
unfortunately they are being manipulated into being idiots
The euro election seems to be a low turnout election, so this could absolutely be a wakeup call to apathetic voters as well.
It’s a gamble but it’s a calculated one.
That’s be cause what u/balinares forgot to mention is that Macron has been steadily giving the far right his (barely disguized) support by leading policies that are very well aligned with far right ideas, and he has continuously portrayed lefists as crazy. Oh and he also kept setting up debates between his party and the far right leaders, putting them in some sort of ‘legitimate’ position (like there’s been a debate between our prime minister and the head of the far right list for these election, there was absolutely no reason to do it, but hey who give a crap about fairplay uh?). Oh and also we now have our own fox news (cnews here), broadcasting on a public network, but not respecting there duty to remain neutral. But no wonders why, since these media are owned by a far right billionaire.
TLDR: Macron carefully set the conditions for the far right to win these election by portraying them as the only opposition, and now he’s all whiny that surprise surprise, the far right is aslo far ahead.
Oh… Unfortunately, that makes more sense :(
I know right, we’d been waiting for the UK Tory party to realise that since 2022.
*2016
We’ve had two elections since then.
While I hoped the Tories weren’t popular in 2016, unfortunately for all of us, Boris (and Corbyn proving about as popular as a fart in a spacesuit) kept them relevant.
Maybe French elections are different to American ones…but isn’t this essentially “I didn’t win, therefore I invalidate the election”?
If the people voted, and this is what they want, even if you don’t like it, isn’t that what the people want?
Sorry, I should have been clearer: his party scored badly in the EU elections, so he lost credibility in France and is calling snap elections in France. I’ll edit my comment above to clarify.
So the EU vote includes offer countries then right? So like, “I’m not as popular among the other countries, do you still want me around France?”
People vote for EU members from their own countries (so France in this case). Macron’s party underperformed in those elections, so he’s hoping to get ahead of any further decline, maybe with the hope that the EU vote was more of a protest vote, rather than a sincere desire for the far-right to be in power.
No, it isn’t. His party “lost” in the EU parliamentary elections, not those of the national parliament. It’s a very bold and bizarre strategy.
It’s bold but not bizarre. It’s all about confidence in the next election. Better to have an election when you think you can still win than when you think you wont
if you equate USA with Europe …
then France will be one of the states …
and Macron would be the governor of his state who would decides to call state election because on the federal level his party lost (while there was not yet elections at the state level)Also : this election called by Macron calls for a possible change of his government but his own seat as president is not challenge until the next election in 2027.
So you’re saying the election he’s in hasn’t even happened, but a bigger election DID happen, but a bigger election his party lost. So this is more like a preemptive surprise election?
I don’t support the far right, but I also don’t support these tactics. I’m sure if I looked into it I’d find tactics I don’t support on the far right. But you can’t lower yourself to that level if you’re trying to shield your people from those types of tactics.
You can’t be the savior of the people by being the poster boy of what the people are afraid of.
You’re completely misunderstanding the situation. Macron is basically saying “you voted for the far right in the EU election so I’m calling for French national elections now to see if I still have your support to lead this country”.
That is a ballsy move then. Maybe even a little dumb, if the far right just won the EU elections.
Most of the time the far right gains power is because people don’t show up. The best moment to win in such an scenario is the moment the results are in. Because anti far right people will freak out and will hopefully show up. If they let this fester the right will just gain more votes.
Right it is ballsy but it also has metits. The eu election that macrons party did poorly in is bigger in that it involves all of europe, but it has almost no direct power in france(someone please correct me if its flat out wrong to say that) but its not insignificant.
The leader of france or any country has long term planning to do and he just got shown his opponents CAN best him.
But this election isnt the most important one for france so a lot of people dont take things as seriously. They vote in ways they wouldnt in more important elections.
By admitting his weak position it rallys people to actually turn out and vote for realzies this time.
The way the world is Macron likely thinks if he waits and has to run an election later its going be bad. But also he will risk needless opposition at home making his job significantly harder domestically. If its harder to manage france its much harder to be a good helpful member of the un and the right is gaining power.
Could easily backfire, but he wouldnt do if he himself didnt think it was his best chance. And if he gets the boot he can become the oppostion focusing all his efforts on JUST fighting against the right which he may see as the most important thing right now
No, it isnt anything like that. The EU elections are different than the national ones and they arent explicitly connected in any way.
But they are implicitly connected. His party just did very badly in the EU elections. He could technically continue to govern till the next national elections or he could go to early national elections and ask the voters “hey, you didnt vote for me in the EU elections, do you still want me to rule this country or not? Please confirm that you still continue to support me”.
Basically Macron is saying “You just saw how fucked things are, with the far right getting over 30% of the votes in the EU elections. Vote for me or the fascists will win”. It is a move intended to rally the voters to his party but he also risks losing the elections(resulting in a fascist government).
As a general rule, in many countries the governing party does worse in the EU elections, because the EU elections are often used as an opportunity to vote for small/minor political parties or protest vote. The EU parliament isnt as legislatively relevant. They dont make laws, they just approve/reject laws proposed by the EU Commision.
The EU Commision isnt directly elected by the voters. The european country governments appoint EU Commission members(one from each country) and the EU parliament votes for the EU Commission leader. This is a point of contention.
Technically it is “democratic” because eventually everything comes down to either national european governments(who are democratically elected) or the EU parliament(which is also democratically elected). But many people think it is weird to have the most powerful EU institution appointed instead of directly elected. The procedure isnt as transparent as people would like and it involves a lot of backdoor “politicking”.
PS On the other hand, directly electing the EU Commission would give its members a lot more political power, basically on par or higher with the elected country leaders. Being directly elected greatly increases your political power.
This is somewhat analogous to the way midterm elections are treated in the US, and a decent comparison would be when Mitch McConnell blocked Obama from appointing a Supreme Court Justice towards the end of his second term.
The Democrats lost seats in Congress during that midterm season, which the Republicans used to claim that the American people had no faith in the Democrats and therefore no faith in Obama. They then used this claim as an excuse to block the Democrats ability to govern.
In this case, the people of France have voted for another party to represent their interests internationally to the EU parliament.
Macron will now face claims within the French government that the people voting against them in the EU elections indicates that they have no faith in his party’s leadership and that will make it difficult for him to govern.
With this move, calling an election early, they will have a clear indication of who the French people wish to lead them internally and, if they reelect Macron’s party, can dismiss the claims from opposition parties that the people don’t trust them.
It’s worth mentioning that many governments around the world don’t have fixed election cycles the way you do in the US. Instead many countries have an end date by which the election must occur, but a new election can be called at any time before that date if the government thinks it’s necessary. A similar thing is currently happening in the UK where the Conservative Party has called an election for early July, even though the election didn’t have to take place until late January 2025.
“dissolving parliament” means they’ve announced a general election. Parliament won’t meet any more, and all the existing members of parliament will go home and begin campaigning
The UK is going through the same thing. The Prime Minister dissolved Parliament about two weeks ago, and elections are going to be held of July 4th. (An odd choice, but apparently elections are always on a Thursday in the UK.)
Can anyone EILI5?
Sure. A lot of people voted for bullies who can talk themselves out of consequences.
Russia is the biggest winner when far-right sentiment increases
That’s why they are funding and supporting far-right parties in almost any Western country. The AfD in Germany is a good example, their MPs were literally caught receiving money from the RuSSians. Their MEPs also work for the Chinese intelligence service btw
An unprecedented move which could backfire as it did for Chirac in 1997. Macron is playing a dangerous gamble with the Fifth Republic… 🗳️🇫🇷
Comparing it to Chirac’s situation is downplaying how crazy te move is right now. Can you imagine how fucked up this is? Like “oh, the far right has more than twice as many votes as we got, it must be some sort of big misclick situation, lets check it out !”
I think it’s more that the situation is only going to get worse the longer we wait so he’s pulling the trigger now for the best conditions he’s ever going to get. Not great
The conditions he spent years building? Yeah, I’m not falling for that.
Like I said: a dangerous gamble with the Fifth Republic…
We all know how the far right has a hard time letting go of it’s grip on power, that’s for sure. But this ils no ‘gamble’, like he’d be cornered to do this, he led us here. He is deliberately playing with the french like they’re just paws in his self-centered game.
And by the looks of things it seems like I was right it has (so far) spectacularly backfired. Obviously we have to wait for the second round but…
Why is the right becoming more popular? What changed?
2008, the global financial crash, the subsequent shift of trillions of all the currencies towards the already-rich, then Covid hammering the final nail in the coffin of proving that governments care about the people only inasmuch as they provide value.
We’ve had sixteen years of people getting poorer and poorer, shit getting more expensive, and the news outlets they read pointing towards immigrants/gays/leftists as the problem.
The right take those messages and amplify them. They tell people that only they can speak truth to power, when the reality is far more nuanced than that. But people don’t want nuance, they just want to be able to pay their bills. The people aren’t stupid though, they know that the windbags can’t really change anything, but the status quo hasn’t done shit to help them, so fuck it, we’ll vote for the other guy.
“They’re all the same anyway”
2008, the global financial crash, the subsequent shift of trillions of all the currencies towards the already-rich, then Covid hammering the final nail in the coffin of proving that governments care about the people only inasmuch as they provide value.
I get the frustration, but where is the evidence the far right would care an iota more about people? Specially during covid almost every far right government did worse, in terms of actual dead people, than any left one
Sometimes people don’t vote by logic. They see stuf going to shit, hear grand promises of how “we’ll fix everything, the establishment is incompetent/evil”, and hope they’ll deliver.
That’s not the criteria, the criteria is whoever is the loudest in criticizing the status quo. And the far right is the loudest
The far right would make everyone poorer but wouldn’t change the class structure, so they are allowed to exist while the left gets suppressed. See for example how many of the titans of industry in west germany who supported the Nazis got off scot free (or with much commuted sentences) and got to keep their assets. The system works :)
I’d say we are right on top of one
@andrewta so I’d say it’s deflating, right?
Central Bank rates are reducing in EU. In USA not yet or maybe growing. China is still in the crisis with signals of recovery more and more delayed
No. In the US at least, wages are up for blue collar work, and that’s where the economy was most vulnerable. Inflation has been bad but it’s coming back under control and wages can outpace it in the next couple years, median wage growth already has (yes I have a hard time believing this too, but that’s the numbers).
The last financial crisis had a flagrant cause in default-prone loans. There isn’t such a problem right now.
The largest crisis we are running into is a crisis of propaganda, where people are being told “everything is terrible” when in fact the numbers show that everything is pretty great… except for white collar tech workers (me!).
I think the tech market will rebound the second that the fed lowers rates again, because tech is fundamentally capital intensive and speculative. So you need cheap money to fuel tech. Video games deflated/corrected a bit but that’s fine, those people can work on other things.
Ridiculous assessment.
Everyone is being told its all fine, but the insane CPI massaging has gotten beyond out of hand. There are very little gains for the proletariat masses RN, mostly losses.
This is more of a general answer as fascism seems to be gaining more ground globally. A book published in 1997 “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy” theorized roughly every 80 years (or about a human life span) we face a crisis related to a critical mass of people losing the knowledge and shared values from the previous generations. Imagine the perspective of a Revolutionary War veteran who fought under General Washington to help forge the United States, who would be understandably upset to hear any mention of a Civil War between states, which didn’t start until 82 years later.
We are losing that collective memory now both in the U.S. and abroad; the remaining World War II veterans are in no position to punch these fascists when they see a swastika flown at a rally. Unless we vote in numbers large enough to throw the MAGA movement into the dustbin of history, in the future we can expect younger Trump acolytes to take root in the same vacuum of thought.
”With these words Biden addressed the bitter irony that haunted the commemoration ceremonies. While D-Day occurred eight decades ago, America is now just five months from an election that could bring to power a man and a movement who embody and celebrate the twisted authoritarian values of the enemies we sought to defeat so long ago. Fascism has not gone away. The tactics of the Nazis to employ racism and demagoguery to divide society and enable their seizure of power and their gutting of democratic institutions currently are the playbook of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.”
All the major media outlets have been bought by a few far-right billionaires. For some years now, propaganda has been omnipresent, 24 hours a day.
Social media disinformation campaigns from the Kremlin and possibly also the CCP.
Powerful American people/groups spreading disinformation or funding political extremism is very different from the government doing it.
Money is power. Just because that shower have the sense to sit outside of the spotlight of political scrutiny does not mean that they are apolitical nor does it make the influence they cast not strongly American in flavour.
There’s too many factors to name in a brief comment, but here’s an interesting statistic:
In all recent European elections, all center-left parties that have tried to swing to the right on immigration to try and woo right-wing voters, have lost seats. No exceptions.
Edit: Clarified the swing on immigration was to the right.
Is this because they waited too long, or because the answer is something other than anti-immigrant sentiment?
For example, there’s this statistic that almost everyone dies shortly after having CPR performed on them. Paradoxically, that doesn’t mean CPR is bad: it absolutely saves lives. It’s just that they do it too late on a lot of people (and also perform it on a bunch of people who are going to die no matter what but that’s not the point of this anecdote).
Great analogy.
Could cost them their base without attracting new voters too.
Everything is in motion, nothing is static. As Capitalism declines and the material conditions of Europe decline, reactionary elements longing for “the good old days” rise. It’s generally what happens when Social Democracy turns Nationalist, and is deeply terrifying.
This can be opposed only through strong antifascist organization, not just sitting home and hoping things get better. They won’t, with that attitude.
Edit: to add, the reason Social Democracy specifically was mentioned is because both Social Democracy and Fascism are based on the idea of Class Colaboration, only the aims and results are obviously very different. Adding the Nationalist element to an existing Social Democracy can quickly end up changing to outright fascism.
Immigration policies in particular have been a hot topic in Europe, so Nationalism has been rising with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
easy emotional messaging × a lot of funding from rich assholes of all types × great means of communication that can target audiences even in isolation.
Technology
Bolloré
The left is fucking the dog, is what.
WTF, why would he do that… This gives me David Cameron / Brexit referendum vibes.
Maybe he hopes that left-leaning voters will get mobilised by the election outcome today.
It’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it pans out.
Fantastic use for this
He called during his televised speech to get rid of the “ruckus causers”, separately from the far right.
The current largest leftist party had (until last night) close to a third of Parliament, and have a reputation of loudly contesting shit they don’t stand for.
I really don’t think Macron’s intention is to give them a chance at more votes. If anything, he’s hoping this forces leftist voters to move towards the center, seeing as how his own party barely cleared 14% (the largest far right party did over 30, and a smaller splinter party got around 7% on its own).
Thanks for the insight. I didn’t know about the leftist party, we only read about Le Pen here.
I’m definitely more mobilized than ever
My cynical take: he wants to let the far right win the legislative elections while he still has close to 3 years left in his term.
He thinks this will “show” their electorate that voting far right doesn’t get you what you want.
At the same time, he can take advantage of the media bashing the leftist party has been getting for their vocal opposition to Israel’s actions since October 7 2023, and run them out of Parliament. At least, it’s a gamble he’s willing to make.
He is just as much of a clueless, egotistical liberal as David Cameron was, so your analogy is sadly pretty accurate.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Hopefully they dump this creep on his ass and elect a leftist.
Lol, have you been following the news much?
I’ve actually been trying to keep away from it recently.
That shows because this article (even the title) tells you France will have parliamentary elections, not presidential. Macron will remain president regardless of the outcome.
Bluh. 😒
france try not to be racist and xenophobic for one hour challenge
