Thank you France
This is not over. We have to continue to fight. Not only against the far right but for the people, for social justice for everyone. I’m so proud of France today. I’m so relieved but this is not over, what’s scares me now is that the country is deeply polarized. This was a wake up call for me. These last years of politics have made me apathetic. But what happened today gave me hope. I’m gonna do something, I don’t known what yet but I will. I’ll vote as I always did but I’ll do more. I will fight.
“The good fight is the one you are losing” or no rest for the wicked as it where I guess
My hope is that Leftwing implements policies that undo large parts of the Money-is-King and Screw-You-Plebes Neoliberalism, thus removing at least part of the popular discontent and distrust (people feel poorer and yet the mainstream keeps telling them the Economy is Growing) that the Far-Right feeds on with their “the blame is those other people that are even worse of than you (not at all the super rich)” scapegoating.
Reduce the pain by making the State more supportive again and getting more “from those who can the most, to give to those who need the most” and you take the wind off the Far-Right’s sails.
Without the majority in the Parliament that is very unlikely to happen. Worse, I fear that a government formed by the NFP would accept a coalition with the Macrony just so they can barely apply their program and thus give more ammo to the RN in the next presidential election.
What is a good news today could be a very bad news in 2027. Depends in how the left will handle it.
I too fear that, but for now I’ll stick to hope.
Thankfully some gerrymandered states are finally getting their maps in order. I really really hope we are in the timeline where Dems take the House, Senate, and Presidency.
Also, don’t get overly proud of this. The idiotic notion of “there are two extremes polarizing everyone,” where they put the left and the right on equal danger-footing, is all over this article. I mean, it’s a few quotes from a few people, but still. That kind of shit is poisonous. It not only likens what the left wants to what the fascists want, but it also shields the far right from the view that their opinions are as dangerous as they are. “We want everyone to be cared for and we think nationalism is wrong” is not the same as “nationalism.” Still a pretty scary article. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the RN didn’t take the election, but they are still a huge portion of that govt. and that is very fuckin scary.
If these numbers hold, it will come down to Macron’s faction to decide who to align with. And counting on neoliberals in that scenario is…scary.
This is The Guardian, a Liberal (not Left, Liberal) newspaper in Britain, a country whose only left of center (by European standards) party is the Green Party which has all of 4 seats out of 300 in Parliament now (and it used to be just 1, even though they had 1 million votes out of 40 million).
(Labour was once leftwing, before Blair’s Third Way, and when recently it’s members voted for it to go back to being Leftwing there was a massive smear campaign which included this very newspaper to bring down the leftie leader and put the neoliberals back in control of it).
From the point of view of the journalists, editors and board of The Guardian, even Social Democracy if “far left”.
Britain is maybe the most “like America” (but not on the good things) country in Europe, with a very similar voting system (First Past The Post) and with and Overtoon Window far more shifted to the Right than almost any other country in Europe (basically the Tories are a posher version of Orban) and their Press is one of the least trusted in Europe, and that includes The Guardian.
Think of The Guardian as a British New York Times.
If you want to see coverage of the French elections that’s not been twisted by a British hard-Neoliberal Private School Attending High Middle Class journalist in a newspaper that prides itself of being “opinion makers”, try Le Monde.
The Guardian has a pretty broad ideological base stretching from centre/centre-right all the way out to moderate left. Unless you think George Monbiot and Owen Jones are neo-liberals too? (Sample articles Things are not going to get better as long as oligarchs rule the roost in our democracies and Natalie Elphicke is a hard-right Tory. Her defection sums up Labour’s contempt for progressive voters )
In your post you literally listed all the left of center writers that The Guardian has out of all their opinion writers and journalists, many of whom loudly proclaim themselves as “opinion makers”.
And that’s not even mentioning their editorial direction after the editor that published the Snowden Leaks was kicked out because of doing it.
Sure, they have all of two token lefties who get maybe one article every week or two each, in an ocean of neoliberals.
This for a newspaper many here seem to think is left of center.
I’ve lived in a number of countries in Europe, including the UK, and The Guardian’s take on European subjects (which are the ones were I can more easily compare it with newspapers from other countries) is always to the right of the take of most newspapers in Continental Europe and hence they generally, as the previous poster pointed out in this article, spin that which is just normal Left in Europe as being Far-Left and Neoliberalism (a pro-Oligarchic ideology that puts Money and those who have it above the State and hence the power of voters) as being Center-Left.
You can hardly claim that a haystack is in fact a needlestack just because there are two needles in it.
Yes? As I said they have a wide range of views giving comment. Just because it isnt Pravda doesnt mean its exclusively neoliberal. For example you’ll be hard pressed to find any opinion pieces favourable to privatisation and public sector cuts which are two of the chief pillars of neo-liberal orthodoxy.
Hoping the same for the United States.
A leftist hat trick would be amazing.
I see a lot of the nay sayers as a vocal minority. They yell the loudest, but only because the media gives them a platform to generate clicks. Just like how Republicans believe everyone in the nation, who doesn’t worship satan, is pro-birth. Kansas, a deep red rural state proved otherwise with a vote to add abortion rights into their constitution a couple years ago, something their conservative supreme court just upheld.
Honestly, the recent ruling on the Kansas ballot initiative, which quite frankly surprised me to begin with, shows that in some places judges still do their job even when their personal beliefs may differ from the law they are entrusted with interpreting. Kansas voters, you showed us the way and stood out against the backdrop of “conservative status quo.” Kansas showed, in the last two years, that when given a chance, even deep red states see the writing on the wall.
I have a feeling the outcome of this election is going to be a “silent storm” event and wake-up call to the GOP that they are out of touch with what the people really want. They’ve drank the loud-mouth’s Kool-aid for far too long and won’t believe it when it happens.
Think of it like the silent majority (maybe 80% of nationwide voters) is the massive tornado that took out the drive-in theater in the movie, Twister. In the movie, no one saw it until a random lightning strike shed light on the sheer girth of the monster bearing down on them. The GOP is the drive-in. The night of the election will be their lightning flash. We, the voters, will be the tornado.
That would be amazing but it doesn’t require playing chicken with Biden’s age issue and the political maneuvers the French left and center pulled off were possible because of polling, not in spite of them.
Kansas, and other red states are deeply poisoned against democrats by about 60 years of propaganda. This shows in the polling where they’d rather vote for the new RFK with brain worms and vaccine conspiracies than vote for Biden. That’s not just a joke, Biden loses to RFK in Kansas if the election was held today. And RFK is competitive with Trump. He’s expected to lose but nobody’s really studying the non battleground states very hard.
It would be hilarious if RFK managed to siphon enough EC votes to throw it into congress. (Even though that would also mean a Trump presidency because they vote as state delegations, 26 of which are firmly controlled by the GOP)
UK: done
France: done
US: please don’t let us down.
When was the last time all 3 had general elections at the same time?
I know we’re not on people’s radar like the three you mentioned, but South Africa also had general elections this year.
The long reigning party lost their majority for the first time since 1994, so the coalition talks were a big deal for a few weeks.
That’s exciting, thanks for bringing it up!
Oh right I remember that! Thanks for reminding!
Don’t forget Mexico!
True i read about it some time ago. Mexico got(at least from what I heard) a very good president.
How fucking cool is it to have a woman IPCC scientist as your president?
Germany had Merkel
Turned out great for them (not sarcastic)
Except for her monumental mistake of giving up on nuclear and consequently giving enough leverage to Putin to finance his imperialist plans peacefully.
My vote will be going to the lesser of the two evils but (a) between my state’s Gerrymandering and the composition and voting habits of my district it won’t matter and (b) until the US electoral system is meaningfully reformed (first-past-the-post, two-party system and how it affects voting in many states, Gerrymandering, lack of ranked choice, outright voter suppression, etc.), the US will continue to slide further right anyway
Not American but I agree. Fptp and gerrymandering is the biggest bullshit. But how will it change? Why would the two ruling parties shoot their own foot?
For FPTP, we need to get more local and regional elections to move to something like ranked-choice voting and have it go from there. IIRC, some states are trying to ban it “because it’s confusing” since they realize it opens up more than the traditional two parties. Voters can vote for other candidates in their primaries as well (many people do not seem to vote in primary elections).
More people also need to be voting, even as powers try to make that more difficult. We also need more young people to run for offices, but I fully understand why they wouldn’t want to.
US is always bashing Cuba for being a one party state while they’re just one party away from having the same electoral system.
The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
- Julius Nyerere
Iran too?
Yeah!!
Sorry bud. Biden is in the middle of shitting the bed. If we get can get a different candidate in without much issue then we’ll have a chance again.
Well done france
That might look like good news, but it’s just delaying the problem. Far right has only gained votes for the last 20 years, and it’s only through jolts like the first round of these elections that other candidates unify to not let them pass. Nothing is done to address the underlying problems that make people vote for these fuckers, so it’s only a matter of time before they end up accessing power.
The far-right in Europe, with money from both Russia and American billionaires, has been ridding the wave of insatisfaction that’s the side effect of the very problems created by Neoliberalism (which is now in its natural end stage were wealth is far more concentrated than ever since the early XX century and social mobility is pretty much non-existent, hence why most people feel poorer and hopeless) which itself was created with billionaire money pumped into Think Tanks and buying politicians mainly in America in the late 70s, early 80s.
As I see it, the best way for the Left to disarm the the Far-Right is to undo most of Neoliberalism - go back to higher levels of State support and State control of strategical assets, free Education, Progressive taxation with excessive wealth heavilly taxed, and so on - thus removing the very cause of the popular insatisfaction that the Far-Right feeds on using a litany of “blame everybody but the rich” excuses.
At least some of this actually seems to be what the NFP has announced it will do.
Now, Macron (and his party) being hard core neoliberals will fight this tooth and nail, as will the EU because most of the governments there are neoliberals and things like the ECB as as pure neoliberal as it gets, so for starters, they will most definitelly try to help the ultra-rich in France more evade tax even more than now.
The other problem is that part of the NFP is the old centrist “left” party (the Socialist Party, which has nothing at all to do with Socialism) who were part and parcel of the Neoliberalization of French politics (a typical corrupt as hell mainstream “centrist” European party of the last 2 decades) and eventually suffered massivelly at the polls for it. That said, the fear of being made even more irrelevant will probably put a break on their corrupt neoliberal tendencies.
The good news is that, if the French Left manages to overcome the forces in France that will be arrayed against any undoing of Neoliberalism, that country is big enough to pretty much ignore EU pressure.
Here’s to hoping that “Left/Green” can tackle some of those issues.
Wasn’t the right poised to take it all in a landslide only just… checks notes - yesterday?
Yes they were, and both the NFP and the Macronists collaborated to drop their own candidates strategically to beat the NR. Had either one of them not done that, the NR would have won. Had both of them not done that the NR would have had a majority.
i mean, they got the most votes. the only reason they didn’t win is cause all the other parties are forming a coalition. they got 1/3 of the vote
The centrists worked together with the left to beat the far right. Absolute mad-lads.
Take note, America.
Tell that to our centrists. They hate our left more than our right.
Unfortunately our media are studiously not taking note.
Prior to these results, a few weeks back, NPR was trying to make it seem like the far-right and the “far left” were working together. It was the most bizarre, disjointed reporting I’ve heard in a while. They want people here to believe the center/left is extreme and uncompromising.
Didn’t see the NPR article, but this absolutely rings true to me. I live in a blue city in a red state. We were littered by Green Party ads for the primaries that were funded by right wing groups. I wouldn’t say that the far left and far right are working together, but the right is for sure posing as leftist in local outlets and actively encouranging the left’s tendency to eat their own.
but the right is for sure posing as leftist in local outlets and actively encouranging the left’s tendency to eat their own.
Of course they are, and they’ve been doing it for decades at this point all over the Internet. Anybody remember #walkaway? The movement founded by a ‘former liberal’ who ended up at J6 3 years later.
It’s funny how often they barely try to hide their right wing roots
Centrists don’t like the far right for some reason.
In Belgium, even the right don’t like the far right. And would rather work together with the left. Lol
Might be that WW2 still lingers in their mind.
In America the centrists would rather have Trump than work together with the left. Though it’s hard to call the Democratic party centrists anymore they are just slightly less right wing than Republicans.
Belgium being so quirky is why I love it so much.
Thank you, UK.
Thank you, France.
Hat trick, USA?
Putin getting nervous.
Crossing my fingers and will be contributing to this hat trick come November
I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but if Biden doesn’t step down I’d bet money we lose as much as it pains me to say it. No data supports a Biden reelection. And I’ve seen no promising path to altering the trends in the polls that are largely a result of an immutable, worsening vice: age.
Fact
America is trying to do the opposite by getting MORE candidates in to split the vote more on the lib/dem side, because to many people in Media are invested in the ratings from the next Trump shitshow.
Also extremely rare Iran W
Let’s hope for a good election in Germany next year 🙏
We are hoping to defeat the conservatives AND idiot single-issue liberals(to end genocide they are going to support both continued and more aggressive genocide AND turn the US to the path of joining the WW3 axis powers…). It’s an uphill battle.
Eat shit fascists
Alright! Now if France and Britain’s new left-of-center leadership can just… PLEASE not fuck it up… there may actually hope for the rest of the planet.
Britain left of centre ? . . . these are blairites, “labour” in name only , they literally propped up the second homes buy to let market through the 2000s. and they’d gladly privatise every public service we have left if they can. I’ve already heard shit like “individualised healthcare” being mentioned in their “think tanks”.
They’re probably not worse than the tories, and they probably will fuck it up less, that’s about all you can hope for them.
They aren’t going to tackle anything fundamental like bank regulation, promoting domestic investment, industrial strategy or developing public services.
I hope France gets a lot better.
100% agreed. Weirdly, Starmer was very left-leaning during his time as a prosecutor, and a lot of people assumed that he’d be a rising force of the left when he moved into politics. Sadly, he seems closer to the right than even Blair did…
to be determined in my opinion. he’s been in office two days atm.
give him a chance
My opinion is pretty much based on their manifesto. I don’t see how they can do anything progressive when their mandate is based on that bag of shite.
It’s a a democracy, representatives aren’t supposed to impose what they want onto the people. They’re supposed to represent what the people want. It’s likely Starmer is still more left leaning than the consensus of the public. But his job isn’t to impose his will on the people but to do what the people want.
And according the abysmal turnout and the fact that starmer’s labour couldn’t even really outcompete Corbyn’s in the popular vote despite the collapse of the Tories, the people naturally want a watered down version of the Tory austerity platform and enlightened centrism?
If there’s one thing the UK election will show you, the people want someone to fucking do something about their cost of living problems, not play middle of the road and keep the status quo. They go to the far right because of that.
Politics is about compromise to be a best fit to the will of the people. Starmer is a better fit to the overall will of the people in the UK. Corbyn might have been a better fit to what the left wanted, but are you really claiming he was closer to the overall will of all of the people of the UK than Starmer is?
Democracy is about following the will of the people, not imposing your will upon the people.
Considering he got 40 percent in one of his elections and Starmer didn’t even get 35 percent in this one, yeah I guess I am.
At least I have a metric I’m pointing to when I’m saying what the consensus is, instead of generally pulling it out of my ass.
Fuck the metrics, Starmer is PM and Corbyn is just an independent nobody that will effect zero positive change.
But talking big and doing nothing is what socialism is all about these days, isn’t it?
They’re supposed to represent what the people want
They are supposed to listen to their constituents and do whats best for them.
Sometimes that means not giving them what they want, cause the average person is a fucking moron… and half of them are dumber than that.
Great example would be Brexit.
But who’s really the moron here? People that don’t like people that call them morons, or socialists who say they’re for the working class, need the support of the working class for their movement to succeed, but publicly call the people they need support from “fucking morons”?
Trump also says similar things about people whose support he needs BTW.
Yes yes the “b-b-both sides!” false equivalency again. Thats totally not tried and tired.
You sound basically the same, but if you’re wrapping yourself in the red flags of failure while Trump is wrapping himself in the American flag, why would you think someone would even bother to hear you out?
You can’t win over the working class because modern socialism doesn’t care about being appealing to the working class. It’s entirely focused on being holier than thou towards liberals which accomplishes less than nothing. Net negative effect on society in real terms.
Yeah, by European standards, I don’t think New Labour are even just Center-Right: they have far too much love for “businesses”, privatisation and deregulation to be an inch left of the traditional Right - in many ways they’re pretty much were the Tories were back in Thatcher’s day.
This was not a vote for leadership. It was a vote for one of our houses. Unless the president decides to play nice (spoiler: he won’t), we won’t have a prime minister from any left party, causing things to be difficult for the right but not impossible, as there are provision to force some laws to pass for the prime minister, and outright impossible for the left to do anything because they’re unlikely to get support from a right-oriented prime minister, and are unlikely to get an actual majority vote on anything.
Basically, unless something really unexpected happens, this will result in a stalemate for a while. Which is, admittedly, the lesser of two evils, but kinda sucks anyway.
I feel like “the right gets a big showing early on but ends up losing” is a regular feature of modern French elections. It seems like it’s happened multiple times in my lifetime.
Still, they are way too cocky all over the world. But great work, France. Thank you
I definitely wouldn’t extrapolate anything about the rest of the world from this. I just remember “Le Pen is going to be the next president of France” being said more than once in my lifetime.
Conservatives just lost the UK in a big way. France on course to do the same (not to the same extent). Tons of money (and Russian manipulation) are pushing hard for far-right politics, but they keep losing. Remember, abortion has won every time it’s on the ballot since Roe was overturned. I’m still cautiously optimistic about the US’s chances
While I agree with you in general, it’s the electoral college that’s a uniquely American fuckery I worry about. France and the UK don’t have to worry about the majority vote being the losers.
You are more optimistic than I am, but I hope you’re right. At this point, my hope is that at least Democrats will retain the congressional power to do something about a Trump regime I am seeing as an increasing inevitability.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still terrified, but I think the chances are better than the media is portraying currently.
Don’t forget that the media’s main goal is profit. How can they make sure to make more and more profit? By constantly showing you stuff that keeps you in fear and in turn makes you want to know everything that’s happening. The only way to know the current events? Watch our media segments, read our newspaper, read our website etc. (also see 24/7 news cycle)
What you said is true and in addition to that we should consider that the responsible thing to do in the face of fascism is raise the alarm. Not crying panic over far right politicians and their nightmare policy fantasies would just normalize them and help bring those nightmares about.
So while there is a fairly typical “follow the money” argument to be made here, alarmism over fascist ideologies is also just good activism and responsible citizenry.
“The French are socialist cowards who don’t know shit but actually get off their asses to protest…”
– 'Muricans
The background trend, unfortunately, is of the far right slowly but surely gaining votes. We pushed them back to third place today, but they still almost doubled the number of representatives they’ll be sending to parliament (from 89 to the projected ~130 for today’s elections).
- In 2002, Jacques Chirac won against the far right with 82% (to the far right’s 18%).
- In 2017, Macron won against the far right with 66% (to the far right’s 34%).
- In 2022, Macron won against the far right with 58% (to the far right’s 41%).
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
A tale as old as time.
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
While i am no fan of Hollande and establishment socialism, I feel like he’s really the butt of the joke here. Whatever we do, we always seem to punch left.
He was president for 5 years, yeah it was limp-dicked as fuck and it veered right in mid-course, but if you remember, he was basically elected on a platform of not being Sarkozy. The people were so KOed by his mandate that Hollande’s whole angle was to be the “back to normal” president. And that’s a promise he kind of kept, if you look at his time, sandwiched between two hyper-mediatic hard-right presidents, well yeah it felt like the kind of politics our parents talked about. Not great politics, just normal not-sadistic politics.
Thank you for giving more info, I appreciate it!
Not to make this about the US, but hopefully we see similar.
The far right is making a huge push around the world in recent years. Every time populations resist their influence is a giant win for humanity and the future.
I believe we have it in us but this Democratic Party is a finely oiled machine designed to blunt our progress, not lead it. Goddamn Biden said in the beginning that he wouldn’t seek reelection and he should have stuck to that. Now he’s in danger of actually losing to Shitstain L’Orange.
In their presidential elections at least it’s pretty much by design. It happens because they have 2 rounds.
The first round the far-right option gets a relatively large amount of votes. Then the round after only 2 options remain, so anyone who doesn’t want the far-right option just votes for the only other option. Not sure what happens in general elections, but presumably it’s somewhat similar because there’s still 2 rounds.
As far as election systems go it has quite a lot of obvious flaws, but it’s perhaps not quite as bad as first past the post. At least it makes the tactical voting a bit more straightforward.
The French show us the correct path.
Today, in my heart I am French.
Hard to believe with the error-free English
You’re right, I wrote that more like a German. /s
I would have gone with my epic Canadian cereal box French, but I think bad French is probably worse than no French.
Mmm petit déjeuner
Flocons de mais, tabarnak…
“Aujourd’hui, ma baguette est levée pour la France.”
(more or less)
Does a baguette pee Chardonnay?
Depends on the baguette.
Start listening to the working class and the far right won’t even be a fart in the night
Far Right Night Fart?
are you guys finally dusting off the guillotines?
Lol, from the AP.
Some big-name stores in Paris are protecting their windows in case of unrest as results come out, but that’s a pretty common precaution.
They party like it’s 1799, guys.
Good job France!
Joe Biden, take note of how rigged the polks and press are and keep going.
This isn’t the example you want. Candidates from two other parties stepped aside to change the election math. This isn’t the polls being wrong, it’s people who care about the country listening to the polls and doing what they have to do in order to stop the bad guys. The analogy here would be Biden withdrawing.
Alright if there was a further left party that would take over for Joe Biden that would absolutely be the move.
The issue with Joe Biden dropping out is there’s no one really to replace him other than Kamala. Conservatives don’t want her because they’re racists, leftists don’t want her because she’s a fucking cop.
And what happens if Joe dies in his sleep before election day? No one is talking about this as a liability but given the speed of his cognitive decline and the stress of the job and schedule, why is it outside the realm of possibility? Trump will of course live to be 180 years old since he’s literally a conglomerate of McDonalds microplastics and literally one of the worst pieces of shit to walk the earth in the post modern era. Why would anyone want Trump over Kamala outside of being an impotent right wing Russia cuck?
Kamala sucks but she’s the contingency plan. She’s part of his admin that passed the IRA, CHIPS, etc. and trying to put forth executive action that would seemingly be beneficial for the American people. Presumably she’d continue many of the same policies as her predecessor. There is no perfect candidate in a FPTP two-party system.
My point was less Kamala sucks, and more people probably want to vote for her even less than they do Joe Biden.
Its kind of telling when he talks about dropping out the first name everyone talks about is Sanders instead of Harris. Despite how unfortunately far fetched the idea is.
Think the point is that there’s no good option known and an overly short runway to build momentum, and the likely option would be Harris, and she’s already the default option.
Instead of “Biden should step aside”, the calls should be more specific in what they affirmatively do want.
Same with rhetoric about “just any third party”, that’s so vague that no one should want that, as third parties are very different and in opposition to each other.
So calls for ‘not Biden’ or ‘just any third party’ are utterly useless except for screwing up chances for a D win, without any particular actionable agenda being advocated for.
In the US it doesn’t have to be another party. The Democrats could nominate Jesus the Pug at the convention if they wanted to.
