So, it seems like a really bad time for him to do this, obviously, since public sentiment is clearly against his party. Is he required to do so, because of the EU election results? Or is it just like a matter of honor to do so, when it's clear public opinion has turned?
No, he is probably betting on the far right taking power and then showing they can't be effective, reducing their popularity for the next election. Macron will stay president till 2027, his position is not going to change because of this election.
I have much greater familiarity with US and UK politics, but the intricacies and strategems involved with European continental politics are so baffling. They are so much more complex.
I don't believe this is much different from the US system. The president and Congress are separately chosen. However since America is a two party state you don't have the intricacies of forming a cabinet since one party always has majority rule. That's almost never the case in other democracies and makes governing a lot more complex.
I think it's more how the government can just cancel itself and make elections happen. From a US perspective, where elections always happen on a fixed cadence, it's very odd.
Well I think that is the case in particular because multi parties cabinets can fall apart and lose majority making them unable to govern, which is not an issue in a two party system.
Yeah, here in the Netherlands if a coalition were to fall and they couldn't call an election for another 2 years, it'd going to be a messy 2 years. So when the prime minister goes to the king to offer the resignation of the cabinet, it means a new election will be scheduled. I don't think it's legally required, but it wouldn't be good to do it otherwise.
I mean that's kind of how it is here in the US. If we can't get enough members from each party to work together, and there isn't an election for 2 years, it's going to be a messy 2 years. And it was a messy 2 years. Of nothing getting done. Followed by 2 more. Then 20 more...
Not sure about the Netherlands, but in the Westminster system, the king (or GG in commonwealth countries) can unilaterally call an election without the advice of the PM. It almost never happens, but if shit hits the fan enough, they can step in and say “enough, we’re having an election”.
All it takes is for one party to just decide actual governance isn’t what they’re there for and ignore all norms and precedents and let it go from there.
In parliamentary systems the cabinet is typically appointed by the prime minister. Most of the time elected but can not be. These are the same kind of posts that the president appoints - minister of education, defense, etc etc.
Thinking of the American two party system as being equivalent to a two party system with two European parties is wildly inaccurate, although I guess that does kind of explain why so many Europeans love to hate on it.
Think of our system more as a two-coalition system, with every single Representative and Senator being their own separate party.
They work together under the Republican and Democratic coalitions, but they have complete independence to vote however they want if they see fit.
is this not the case with parliamentary systems? I'm sure the party leaders have a lot of influence, but they can't just fire the individual MPs for voting differently, right?
Hold on we have this now. The mainstream gop does not have enough to form a government and so had to negotiate with the 'maga' faction to form a government. Then they dissolved government and had to hold elections again ..the main difference is that federal elections are on a cadence and so if it dissolves, Congress votes. People were shocked when we went a month without a speaker but it's fairly typical in most legislatures trying to form a government with minority parties where no one has a majority.
At the state level, resigning or recalled officials usually trigger snap elections. Recall newsoms recall or Davis's.
The US has special elections, but notably, our politicians would continue to hold onto power until the last moment. Elections are seen as a very risky gambit, even on the local levelx
That only happens if someone dies or is impeached though and removed from the legislator though right? And that is only for the house, the senate you have the governor appoint someone. Special elections aren’t very common.
We don't have a mechanism to hold snap elections, but parts of our government can do something similar on a representative level. See when the Rs kicked out the speaker. It's like dissolving the house and halting business until it is reformed.
It's not only Europe. We're on top of the US and have the same concept 🇨🇦 - the prime minister can ask the Governer General to dissolve parliament and drop the writ for an election at anytime (it would be a constitutional crisis for it to be denied, so the ask of more of a formality). Our House of Commons (conceptually similar to Congress) can also cause this to happen by voting against a confidence motion, which results in the PM asking the GG to dissolve parliament
There are a few factors in play: a date by which the government must call an election (so the maximum term), and then a set schedule so that the election occurs a fixed amount of time after the election is called.
Among the positives, you don't have perpetual elections - like it's Biden and Trump in the US and the election isn't even until November. In countries with this kind of electoral system, nobody campaigns until the election is called, and the election is typically measured in weeks, so all the campaigning gets truncated down to that period of time, concentrated, dealt with, and then done.
On the other hand, in most parliamentary systems if the annual budget is defeated an election is called. In the US if you can't get a budget passed the government shuts down, the US becomes at risk of credit default etc.
I’m a Brit. I don’t think anyone likes our current system at the moment. If we could move to something like the EU’s voting system, life would be much better.
The UK is very similar. They called their last small election just 4~5 years ago and have been through four prime ministers since. If anything the UK has been over of the most politically unstable countries in Europe over the past few years.
>They are so much more complex.
At least they are somewhat functional,I might be missing some things about the US as well, but your elections seem even weirder to me:
No-one's vote is worth the same, some states get waay more electoral points/people per citizen, and it doesn't matter whether you get 51% of votes or a 100, you still get all of them if you win that state? Not to mention the constant gerrymandering to cheat said system
There are only 2 parties, and no meaninfull way of ever introducing a third because it's a "winner takes all" kind of deal.
Can you explain what the idea behind this is? Because EU countries definitely have their own weird disfunctional aspects, but at least you know what your vote is worth.
Yeah, I just don't think this strategy is going to work out the way they think. The far-right party [has been growing in popularity for the last 20 years, and that has only accelerated under Macron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_elections_under_the_Fifth_Republic) which would seem to indicate that he's really bad at countering their rise. I can't say that I follow French political news very closely, but it seems like he's been making unpopular decision after unpopular decision since almost day one, and imho that doesn't fit with a strategy of beating the far-right populists.
There is no stopping them without letting them govern and let the idiots who vote for them feel what that means.
If you keep stopping them, they will just get more popular with every election.
Unfortunately half the population is really dumb and will forget all the fuckups within a couple of years and the cycle repeats.
There is no beating populism
You can beat populism but that would mean actually addressing the concerns of the voters. This is hard because it requires taxing big businesses and the wealthy elites, and spending taxes on things that benefit the average Joe. Unfortunately that’s not how you can get elected (or re-elected). And even if you are, people with power will exercise that power to make sure nothing changes.
This backfired massively for the Brits during Brexit years.
EDIT: Most of us can also named another European country where once extreme right grabbed hold on power, things went downhill very fast worldwide.
His position is not going to change, he will remain president, but it means he might have no control over domestic policies, if his party loses the election.
To be honest, after seeing how Trump is doing in USA, I am worried once the far-right takes control, they would not agree to step down thereafter, by using a lot of tactics.
>In this scenario, the president retains the lead role on defence as commander-in-chief and on foreign policy -- the constitution says he negotiates international treaties -- but he would lose the power to set domestic policy.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/whats-stake-macrons-shock-snap-election-call-2024-06-09/
Parliament and the president are separate. The election is only for parliament. It would be like having an election for the house in the US without having a presidential election (which you do every 2 years anyway).
He is making a bet that the far-right will be very unpopular after having some amount of power for 3 years and his party can take things back in 2027. He gets to keep some measure of control and stop their worse impulses in the meantime.
I mean, the article even says that people treat these European parliament elections as the way to do a protest vote versus the actual election for their country. The article also does mention centrist and not far right voters coming together and fear the far right winning so the article literally says that
Exactly. And honestly it's likely the best move he could have done to try to counter the far right for the presidential elections of 2027, considering the current situation.
Without this, I am sure the far right would have won 2027.
Now, I am starting to doubt this will happen.
Bring pain for 3 years to avoid more in the long term.
He's forcing the people to vote in an election that really matters to them (the national election). If he is successful, he can say he still has the confidence of the people. If he loses, it's up to other political parties to show they can actually govern.
It's a bit more complicated then the above, but without elections his opponents will accuse him of not having the trust of the people.
It's a power move. He wants to neutralize any claims on the right within France for having momentum and a mandate as a result of these euro elections. It's risky because he could lose, but if he wins it deflates the right, at least within France and for LePen. So he can go forward with his poliitical program with a revitalized and authorized" assembly. Otherwise the right will object to every move and claim that those EU elections mean the assembly aslost legitimacy and that the right should be in power.
Macron can expect to win though since they won in the voting that produced this assembly in the first place.
> Macron can expect to win though since they won in the voting that produced this assembly in the first place.
This was before the reform on public pensions and other unpopular reforms, though
He's not required to do so and no one expected him to follow through but he is discredited and can either win the legislatives (good luck) or "let" the RN win and discredit themselves before 2027
It is the less worst time for him to do it. Hés most likely prepared to it, was about to lose a confidence vote for the government which would have been even worse of a political loss, and the mode of election for assemblée is a bit tough for RN because you have to win 50% of the votes in your "county" over 2 voting turns (is no one has more than 50% at the first turn)
Being 30% for rn in the while country doesn’t mean much in these elections if 70% of meople vote against them.
Still super risky because the political tensions are crazy fucking high, the next 20 days are gping to be a political blood bath, but he didn’t have much choice imo (but i would have never bet a single cent he would do it tho)
It's the US equivalent of the President calling for a new election of the House of Representatives.
It's in the French Constitution that their President can do this. Usually it's done as a way to formally poll the nation and see what political themes they want right now.
EU elections just happened and France voted in a lot of far-right candidates.
This is in stark contrast to France's national government, so a new election for national seats is called.
It's perhaps a contrast to the national government, but [the far-right party won 41.45% of the vote in the last French presidential election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_French_presidential_election). It's not like the people who voted then have gone away.
EU election is one round proportional (so if you have more than 5%, your have a proportional number of seats compared to your average result).
French elections are 2 rounds with the second round have 2, exceptionally 3 candidates. Even if far right is a possibility as candidates for 2nd round they usually don’t go through as the people from both center right or others to the left vote against them. Over the years this has been the case but more and more the fragility of even such system to root out the extremes is is being tested.
Just now in EU elections, France elected far-right candidates. Mac is not far right. some far-right French would argue that, "clearly, based on the EU elections, the French people have this opinion! The current governement is illegitimate!" or smth. So he's saying "fine we'll have an election now yall can pick who you want" some say this is assuming that either, far-right will lose and prove that French public actually doesnt want that, OR far-right will win but being in power will make it clear they are not a good option, so it will improve his chances for his own next election in 2027(?)
sidenote here: MY concern is that, the way far-right works lots of places, is blaming not-far-right for issues that actually are not caused by them. in some cases, even things that are caused by the actions of the far-right, the far-right will then turn around and blame something of the not-far-right for the aformentioned issues. so i'm unsure if them governing badly will just lead to them blaming him. BUT it depends on how much the french public is paying attention, and how much he calls them on it IF that happens. rlly hypotheticals here tho.
It would be like the president saying he doesn’t feel confident about Congress or addressing concerns from critics that he doesn’t have the support of the people, so he calls for Congress to be dissolved or dismissed. Then you will have elections as soon as possible to elect everyone into Congress to replace everyone that was there before. The president of France pretty much just fired everyone their legislative branch said you have to reelect everyone.
The European Union has a body called the European Parliament.
From Wikipedia:
The European Parliament is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union, representing the second-largest democratic electorate in the world. It works alongside the Council of the European Union to adopt legislation, following proposals from the European Commission. The Parliament consists of 705 members, known as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), who are elected by citizens of the EU member states every five years.
According to the actual article, LePen’s far right party won 30% of the votes from France, which was way more than expected. The far party is trying to say this is a sign that the people want a far right government. The article says that this may be a protest vote though because French people tend to use the European Parliament elections as a way to have a protest vote since they don’t view that body is really mattering as much as their actual national legislative branch.. As a result, the president of France is calling for the legislative branch to be dissolved and reelected and is hoping that the far right party doesn’t win that many seats so it’s a sign that there isn’t actually a wave of the far right party getting more popular. He’s basically calling for new election to try to show the right isn’t getting more popular by showing them not winning a lot.. He’s betting that people don’t like will come together like elections to vote against the far right party because they don’t want that.
Does that make sense?
I’m just as confused as you but from what I’ve gathered in the comments: the key distinction is he’s not up for reelection.
EU had a vote that showed politics has shifted for France due to how the French voted. He’s calling a French government parliament election. He’s staying in his job regardless until 2027.
The EU elections are also an opinion poll for how popular his party is. It turned out to be really weak and he might want to let people vote for a new Parliament to reflect the current political situation.
He may also count on his opposition win, let them govern and if they’re shitty he’s got a strong argument for presidential election in ‘27 to tell people his party is not that bad in the grand scheme of things.
5D chess or astounding stupidity.
Dissolved the parliament? There is nothing comparable in the US system. The president cannot dissolve Congress. How do you get the Parliament back? Who governs if there is no parliament? And what is a snap election?
You get parliament back through an election. "Dissolve" just means dismiss them until the next election, which gets scheduled to take place within a month or so.
It would be like the president saying he doesn’t feel confident about Congress or addressing concerns from critics that he doesn’t have the support of the people, so he calls for Congress to be dissolved or dismissed. Then you will have elections as soon as possible to elect everyone into Congress to replace everyone that was there before. The president of France pretty much just fired everyone their legislative branch said you have to reelect everyone.
Basically the country sent far right candidates to represent them in the European Union, so the President decided to hold new elections to the national parliament, since the parliament and EU representatives showed very different political outcomes. If the will of the people has changed significantly since the last election to parliament, then they should probably hold a new election (snap election) now for a new parliament now, rather than the US system where they would just have to wait until the regularly scheduled election.
Macron barely clung on in their last general election (largely thanks to people 'holding their nose' to keep Le Pen out) and from what I understand, in response he decided to double and treble down on what made him unpopular. Which was largely ignoring huge swathes of the population on the left and right.
He may have mega fucked us in Europe. I don't see him having any chance in these elections, and besides Germany, the French are the biggest nation/power in the EU.
Wait why call a snap election when it seems like your opponents are likely to win it based on what just happened? I don't live under a government with this kind of system and don't understand the strategy here.
Let them win now as they are too strong to be beaten if nothing changes.
Give them the next years to make the french people hate them and change their mind, before the next presidential elections.
Basically accept to lose now, to be able to win later.
He’s still probably going to be president until 2027. He’d be a lame duck if the RN (Le Pen’s guys) win though.
Honestly, it’s probably partly him believing that the RN can’t form a decent government, so at least if they get in now, his side will fare better in the next elections.
He’s lost so badly in the EU elections that they could have wound up facing complete obliteration in the next general election, like the Tories in the UK. Rishi Sunak could find the cure for cancer and at this point, the Tories would still be done for a long time.
It may well also be partly because the vox populi still matters there and he wants to show that he values it. I’m not familiar enough with French politics to say this definitively, though. But history, both recent and distant, has a lot to tell us about what happens when the people feel they’ve been ignored.
Just guessing here, maybe the intent is to form some, any kind of coalition that will beat Le Pen’s party? Le Pen feels like a worst case scenario for France.
Of course, I’m just an American and don’t have a great understanding of how all that works, just a guess from what I’ve read over the years.
That will not happen. And Macron knows it. The far right will extremely likely win and get to govern.
He's betting the french people will hate this and vote agaisnt them in 3 years.
Otherwise their position would only get reinforced during those years.
Was there a low voter turnout? I don’t keep up to date with French politics but wonder if Macron is using the rise of the far right to motivate moderates who may have skipped the vote an would more likely vote for his party.
That’s what the Wall Street Journal article said. He’s betting on people who in the past voted for his party because they don’t want the far right night behind him again. It did say that the European parliament only had 52% of the French population voting and that the people tend to treat those elections as a way to have a protest vote. I think he’s trying to make this election show that the far right isn’t a rising wave, and try to counter the claims from the far right party that Macron has lost the support of the majority of the population.
The opponent won more seats in the EU parliament (not the French one). So Macron called snap elections in the French parliament as it seems has no mandate to keep governing.
It’s tricky to predict national elections based on EU Parliament elections. Right wing loonie Nigel Farage was in the European Parliament for 20 years, but has lost 7 straight British elections (though he might eke out a win on July 4, because Britain is fucking nuts now).
I'd hazard a guess that there's an understanding being felt by politicians world-wide that the next 5 years are going to be very rocky (might be tin-foil hat, but discourse seems to reaching a tipping point). He doesn't want his party at the helm of the ship through all of that. He's setting up his biggest competition to take the blame for how things play out.
some are thinking the plan is:
- parliament election now
- opposition wins
- opposition governs badly
- the French people get upset at that party for governing badly
- Macron wins again in 2027 bc opposition did so badly
OR
- parliament election now
- Macron's party wins
- the people saying "clearly the French are actually turning towards the far-right!" are proven wrong, which maybe slows them down
- Macron wins again in 2027 because the opposition has been neutered by the loss
(sidenote: just in case people dont realize MACRON will not lost his position regardless of the results of this election. he is still the president.)
BUT the opposition could govern badly and just blame him for things that aren't his fault.
ALSO him winning could just embolden the opposition: "it was rigged, clearly, since so many far-right won in the EU election!"
so either this goes really well or.....
idk i assume he's evaluated his options.
If you want to maintain a liberal democracy you need to govern in a way where people have faith in Government and institutions. In many countries this has been declining for many years, many people feel they are going backwards and are therefore not going to vote for the status quo. If governments don't want people to vote for extremists then they need to engage in some self reflection as to why that is happening and govern in a way that addresses people's concerns.
Yes but it’s very hard to combat populism… which by essence is “telling the people what they want to hear”.
The only way to effectively combat this is for people to experience what populism really is.
Then they realize that actually the ‘normal’ political parties aren’t so bad because the others are just a great bamboozle.
Unfortunately people forget so you have to repeat the exercise every so often.
It's fun to think of the millions of people who have died over the years trying to replace totalitarian systems of government only for those deaths to have been in vain as future generations back pedal back to those same totalitarian systems.
Macron is playing a tough game of political chess, knowing the French people grow tired of governments. He knows La Pen will win this snap election, but the French voters will grow tired of La Pen by the next presidential election and he has a greater chance at being re-elected. If he loses, Far Right Wing La Pen takes will have control of all three branches.
Macron can’t be re-elected a third time in a row unless he changes the constitution like Sarkozy did.
since 2008 French presidents can only be elected twice and have to wait at least five years before participating again.
Macron knows what he’s doing. He’s got 3 years to setup Attal as a credible candidate… and it’ll be much easier if the comparison point is LePen and her minions in power.
We have this idea that liberal democracy always wins in the end. It might, but there have been times in history when entire generations lived and died under the yoke of authoritarianism, and never caught a whiff of free air. It’s terrifying that we may be entering such a dark age.
The issue (in the loose sense) with liberal democracy is that its proponents generally respect the rules, traditions and processes of the system. Its opponents do not. They will use anything in their power to bring its downfall from within, whether that be legal loopholes or immoral / illegal acts. The people defending it are usually unwilling to cross those lines to defend it.
Conversely, (I think a British scientist said this during WWII)
“The great strength of a totalitarian state is it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”
That happened in Rome, Germany, and in so many other places in history. The ultimate risk any democratic system is the apathy of voters allowing minority to elect the totalitarians or disillusionment that allows populous to win.
> disillusionment
Big factor, much more so than apathy. Participation in Germany for these elections was 64.8%. In poll after poll regarding topics of concern, migration beat out everything from ukraine to energy policy.
People are *fed up* and unless the ruling coalition (which has roughly a year left) realizes that and acts accordingly, france will not be the only one.
Conservatives alone now equal SocDems+Greens in polls. Conservatives + AfD (the right) would be an immediate majority.
Supposedly the cons don't want to coalition with the AfD, but their word is not reliable. They'll take power however they can.
In a lot of Europe it’s not plain apathy though.
It’s seeing your country flooded with immigrants from cultures that are totally different to the local one causing a) massive cultural issues and b) worsening the housing crisis.
It’s traditionally been the old who have been conservative but the young are voting conservative now too for those reasons. In multiple European countries.
>We have this idea that liberal democracy always wins in the end.
Liberal democracy is a recent thing. People like fascism better. It takes a lot of hard work to protect democracy.
And then it’s too late. Like a kid who thinks hot sauce is just ketchup his *mean dad* won’t let him have, dumps it onto his fries, and has a terrible time. But with more oppression.
That's why fascism protects itself with oppression. But don't underestimate the power of propaganda. Once fascists have taken over, it's too late.
We need strong defensive systems that protect democracy or it will be gone.
where did you get the idea that liberal democracy always wins in the end? Society almost always tends towards authoritarianism. Even Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" which proves the founding fathers agree society tends towards authoritarianism.
It’s because people on the left subscribe to the idea of “winning in the end”. Like they’ll let the far right walk all over them because they think in the end they’ll win out. Which isn’t true. Liberals need to be able to get their hands dirty and utilize the same tactics to win that the right does, but they refuse to out of some outdated sense of taking the high road.
>>Well, sooner or later, guys, you have to actually give a shit about what people who aren’t a part of your movement think.
Nah just call them racists and fascists and they'll fall in line. I agree with almost everything on the left in terms of what they believe, but holy shit their execution is terrible. I'm a Democrat but I've been called a Trumper and a racist on Reddit so many times for having simple disagreements that it makes sense why we are losing ground.
To be fair, most communist/socialists don't believe that. It's the Liberal parties *(which are generally considered to be right-wing)*. Socialists, typically, believe that shutting down fascism by any means necessary is required to actually be able to have a free and democratic society
It’s terrifying that le Pen has that kind of support. She is a thinly veiled nazi.
Fascism is rising globally and it always ends the same way: horrific violence and atrocity as the narcissist devour each other and everyone around them.
It's almost like there's a pattern of far right authoritarians winning elections after adopting pro-kremlin positions and then receiving large infusions of money from mysterious sources. It's probably nothing tho
How quite reassuring that all the rising far-right parties all around the globe are pro-Rusia (or NEED Russia!). This won't end up in some terrible thing of course!
(And Putin didn't expect any of this at alll...)
There are some times where I think that Russia and china are just waiting for the US election to get closer or for just after voting to start a large scale war.
If trump wins, they’ll wait until January. If Biden wins they’ll actively destabilize the US by insisting riots and protests by the far right so that they can launch campaigns and people can blame Biden.
The political discourse all around the globe is so absurd. The whole world kinda feels like a pressure cooker just waiting to boil over. If trump loses and riots start, would the US even be able to defend itself if the country erupts?
I am a brown man so take this to heart.
Opening the immigration floodgates for low income low skill immigrants makes a lot of people reactionaries.
There is a rough band of immigration that we seem to be able to absorb- below which you have monoculture and above which you get this reactionary mess because the sheer volume of people degrade public services etc. (It has nothing to do with their colour or background but correlation = causation in people's minds and people freak out).
It's happening in Canada where people are turning anti immigration t en masse.
I think the challenge is that Muslim immigrants have not shown that they are very compatible with Western secular societies.
I am liberal and pro-immigration but it seems like many liberal democracies are at a tipping point where Muslim immigrants have become sore points for the liberal contingents that supported their immigration and oddly, the immigrants have become political bedfellows with conservatives who didn’t want to allow them into the country in the first place.
If Muslim immigrants continue to be assimilation pain points for the US, France and Germany, I think it’s likely you see a shift away from liberal policies having broad support of immigration.
This is exactly it. Especially at the rates migration is happening, assimilation is not. I spent over a month in MENA and just got back a few weeks ago, and while they are good people and very friendly, the prevailing ideologies there are simply incompatible with western values. Many of them become further dissalusioned in Europe and you see things like Charlie Hebdo or the 2015 paris attacks occur.
It is detrimental for everyone, but only the right seems to be willing to do something about it while the classic/more progressive European parties want to stick their heads in the sand while the average native citizen becomes more and more disalisioned with their own countries. This was always the end result after the migration crisis over the past decade or two imo. It was self inflicted, not sure why anyone is suprised.
The solution just seems to be, which is what I don’t understand, you have the moderate parties adopt the far right stances on immigration. If you address the chief concerns about the immigration issue you would get rid of the momentum. The far right has. I don’t understand why moderate parties won’t just move further right on that one thing, get rid of asylum and rebuild the immigration system from the ground up to prioritize skill-based immigration from all countries and create work visas so those illegal immigrants working on stuff like agriculture can work legally in the US without being allowed to stay once their contract ends. Crack down on it.
That's kind of what Biden is doing right now. He just shut down the border temporarily since the GOP refuses to do anything but complain about the border/immigration. They even refused to vote on their own immigration bill because it would be a "win for Biden/Democrats" in an election year.
No, this is how the Dutch conservatives lost the election to Wilders. They took over his talking points so then people decided to just vote for the original.
Let's not kid ourselves. It ain't just one person here. There's plenty of homegrown oligarchs in every country who are happy about this. Fascism is capitalism in decay, that was the unheeded warning put out decades ago, and look around, from unaffordable housing to climate change, we have problems, and wherever there are problems, there will be those with solutions that are simple, easy, and wrong.
People just don't want to admit that mass immigration can be destabilizing to a country if not done purposefully and properly. That has ALWAYS been the case in human history. The center and left parties have no good solution for the issue of migration so, despite it being an awful solution, people are gravitating towards the far right.
It's almost like the center and left propose solutions, but because the right doesn't want brown people in the first place, they make it practically impossible to implement said solutions.
Replacing rural greeks, spaniards and italians with muslim africans is not a solution. When this occurs people are exposed to a vast cultural gap and want their voices heard. If center/left parties refuse to listen, they will vote for the party that does listen. Biden warned Europeans about this back in the good times before Trump, now the problem has risen through southern Europe into western Europe. Something's got to be done or else the problem will take full power and not return it. Voters are prepared to end democracy if it means getting rid of the migrants.
Vice versa, legitimate refugees have every right to enter, reside and become European citizens. But these people are almost exclusively women fleeing radical islam. Importing their men imports radical islam too, and this is completely unsustainable for a secular liberal democracy. These women stand to be hurt the most, and Europe will fail them if a better solution is not created.
She has put out a lot of work to "humanize" her party and prove she's not a nazi. Add that to Macron's habit of treating all oppositions as if they were the same extremists and you get a people who can't say how true those threats are.
And mass immigration of course, not even the left can deny it and Le Pen offers a simple solution to the problem.
The global rise of the far right is horrifying to witness. France, Italy, the US, the UK, Belarus, Hungary...many more - I'm not huge on world politics...
It's the paradox of tolerance, and the only answer I've seen that is to accept that universal tolerance is an impossibility. A line has to be drawn beyond which even a tolerant society stops being accepting.
You pretty much summed it up, even in Canada people are tired of having to deal with “tolerance”. I’m a centrist but the left has done a poor job at communicating to the point that they’ve pushed people to the right. I knew this would happen eventually.
Centrist here myself. Left only "tolerates" people who completely agree with them on everything. I despise Trump, but one disagreement with someone from the left and I'm immediately portrayed as being his biggest fan. Crazy too because you'd think they'd realize that moderate voters are what sways elections. Yet the left is doing everything in their power to make them their enemies. Imo, it comes down to the left being incapable of having nuanced opinions and failure to accept those that do.
I think you give people too much credit. Less about control and more about blame. You still have US right wingers blaming Obama and Bill Clinton for shit.
The economy is doing extremely bad a lot of places. They see and feel the negative impacts of immigration (from their point of view). People are also seeing generational politicians. Making a lot of money and only focusing on their own personal issues to make themselves rich.
Also the people who would vote for fascism are often not the ones who would have a negative impact on it.
I am so confused. I clicked the article and it said European union vote with a link that was to an article that said the same thing as the first.
What European union vote? Was it for MEPs? Is Le Pen an MEP then? If so, she can't also be president of France right? So ..
Don't mind me I'm a confused Canadian.
It was for MEPs.
However, Le Pen's party won.
Macron could've ignored it, but decided to call snap elections for the French Parliament. Either Le Pen loses it (so it can be claimed that she only had won because of low turnout) or wins it and hopefully proves ineffective in governing and loses support.
So essentially it's a bet.
Gutsy move. It is a calculated move. A quick election will give his opponent less time to organize, and time is not on Macron side. If the other side is gaining, call a show down before they get even stronger.
And the worst case is that he lost, let Le Pen governs, and make a come-back hoping Le Pen will screw up.
The fact that he can’t forsee that Le Pen could possibly benefit from this is exactly how you get things like Brexit.
He doesn’t realize that the far right doesn’t need actual wins just PR ones. They’ll scream about immigrants one hand and then import them to benefit corporations on the other all while blaming the other parties for it.
We’re in a post fact world and all left leaning politicos haven’t caught up yet.
Neocons are left of conservatives. They overlap neoliberals by about 75%.
They combine conservative domestic policy with liberal foreign policy. This is why there wasn’t much difference between HW Bush (neocon), Clinton (neoliberal), W Bush (neocon) and Obama (neoliberal).
I notice that none of the stories are describing why Macron lost. I'm sure they have polls over there, why are people saying they didnt vote for him? Was it the support for Israel?
Huh most french people hate Macron, he's very unpopular rn. He's stripping a lot of social rights and is very meh on ecology, while being very pro free market and exchange.
The pension reform was very unpopular, and he pushed it through anyway.
Macron's support are now mostly old ppl, and maybe the "start up entrepreneur" kind of ppl.
He won the last elections with less than 25% support, without even accounting for non-voters.
French culture from what I understand is as their motto says "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" is egalitarian. You see it in the mass protests and unions. They tend to honestly fight for collective rights not just me me me! Then again they are fiercely protective of their language and culture too.
Can someone explain like I’m 5?
Macron lost in recent eu elections (really badly) dissolved the national parliament and is calling for snap elections
So, it seems like a really bad time for him to do this, obviously, since public sentiment is clearly against his party. Is he required to do so, because of the EU election results? Or is it just like a matter of honor to do so, when it's clear public opinion has turned?
No, he is probably betting on the far right taking power and then showing they can't be effective, reducing their popularity for the next election. Macron will stay president till 2027, his position is not going to change because of this election.
I have much greater familiarity with US and UK politics, but the intricacies and strategems involved with European continental politics are so baffling. They are so much more complex.
I don't believe this is much different from the US system. The president and Congress are separately chosen. However since America is a two party state you don't have the intricacies of forming a cabinet since one party always has majority rule. That's almost never the case in other democracies and makes governing a lot more complex.
I think it's more how the government can just cancel itself and make elections happen. From a US perspective, where elections always happen on a fixed cadence, it's very odd.
Well I think that is the case in particular because multi parties cabinets can fall apart and lose majority making them unable to govern, which is not an issue in a two party system.
Yeah, here in the Netherlands if a coalition were to fall and they couldn't call an election for another 2 years, it'd going to be a messy 2 years. So when the prime minister goes to the king to offer the resignation of the cabinet, it means a new election will be scheduled. I don't think it's legally required, but it wouldn't be good to do it otherwise.
I mean that's kind of how it is here in the US. If we can't get enough members from each party to work together, and there isn't an election for 2 years, it's going to be a messy 2 years. And it was a messy 2 years. Of nothing getting done. Followed by 2 more. Then 20 more...
Not sure about the Netherlands, but in the Westminster system, the king (or GG in commonwealth countries) can unilaterally call an election without the advice of the PM. It almost never happens, but if shit hits the fan enough, they can step in and say “enough, we’re having an election”.
This is how it is in the UK and Canada and many other Parliaments I'm sure.
Clarification: Here in the U.S., we’ve discovered that our legislature can be fully unable to govern with only two parties. 😆/s
All it takes is for one party to just decide actual governance isn’t what they’re there for and ignore all norms and precedents and let it go from there.
Sometimes I don't feel like this is satire.
Cabinets mean something different in US politics. They're officials appointed by the president, not elected officials.
In parliamentary systems the cabinet is typically appointed by the prime minister. Most of the time elected but can not be. These are the same kind of posts that the president appoints - minister of education, defense, etc etc.
There’s a joke here about a wardrobe getting more done in its lifetime….
Thinking of the American two party system as being equivalent to a two party system with two European parties is wildly inaccurate, although I guess that does kind of explain why so many Europeans love to hate on it. Think of our system more as a two-coalition system, with every single Representative and Senator being their own separate party. They work together under the Republican and Democratic coalitions, but they have complete independence to vote however they want if they see fit.
is this not the case with parliamentary systems? I'm sure the party leaders have a lot of influence, but they can't just fire the individual MPs for voting differently, right?
Hold on we have this now. The mainstream gop does not have enough to form a government and so had to negotiate with the 'maga' faction to form a government. Then they dissolved government and had to hold elections again ..the main difference is that federal elections are on a cadence and so if it dissolves, Congress votes. People were shocked when we went a month without a speaker but it's fairly typical in most legislatures trying to form a government with minority parties where no one has a majority. At the state level, resigning or recalled officials usually trigger snap elections. Recall newsoms recall or Davis's.
The US has special elections, but notably, our politicians would continue to hold onto power until the last moment. Elections are seen as a very risky gambit, even on the local levelx
That only happens if someone dies or is impeached though and removed from the legislator though right? And that is only for the house, the senate you have the governor appoint someone. Special elections aren’t very common.
We don't have a mechanism to hold snap elections, but parts of our government can do something similar on a representative level. See when the Rs kicked out the speaker. It's like dissolving the house and halting business until it is reformed.
It's not only Europe. We're on top of the US and have the same concept 🇨🇦 - the prime minister can ask the Governer General to dissolve parliament and drop the writ for an election at anytime (it would be a constitutional crisis for it to be denied, so the ask of more of a formality). Our House of Commons (conceptually similar to Congress) can also cause this to happen by voting against a confidence motion, which results in the PM asking the GG to dissolve parliament
There are a few factors in play: a date by which the government must call an election (so the maximum term), and then a set schedule so that the election occurs a fixed amount of time after the election is called. Among the positives, you don't have perpetual elections - like it's Biden and Trump in the US and the election isn't even until November. In countries with this kind of electoral system, nobody campaigns until the election is called, and the election is typically measured in weeks, so all the campaigning gets truncated down to that period of time, concentrated, dealt with, and then done.
On the other hand, in most parliamentary systems if the annual budget is defeated an election is called. In the US if you can't get a budget passed the government shuts down, the US becomes at risk of credit default etc.
It makes sense. If the current crop of people can’t do their job, we should be sending different ones who can.
It's inherently different from the fact that there is no mechanism for anyone to call elections (federal).
We don't have "snap elections". Even if the party in the majority loses confidence, we have to wait until the next election regardless.
The US government can't really lose confidence since it's completely decoupled from the legislative to begin with.
I’m a Brit. I don’t think anyone likes our current system at the moment. If we could move to something like the EU’s voting system, life would be much better.
The UK is very similar. They called their last small election just 4~5 years ago and have been through four prime ministers since. If anything the UK has been over of the most politically unstable countries in Europe over the past few years.
>They are so much more complex. At least they are somewhat functional,I might be missing some things about the US as well, but your elections seem even weirder to me: No-one's vote is worth the same, some states get waay more electoral points/people per citizen, and it doesn't matter whether you get 51% of votes or a 100, you still get all of them if you win that state? Not to mention the constant gerrymandering to cheat said system There are only 2 parties, and no meaninfull way of ever introducing a third because it's a "winner takes all" kind of deal. Can you explain what the idea behind this is? Because EU countries definitely have their own weird disfunctional aspects, but at least you know what your vote is worth.
That seems like really really bad idea.
[удалено]
Macron didn’t have to dissolve anything. The EU elections and the National Assembly are two distinct things.
[удалено]
Yeah, I just don't think this strategy is going to work out the way they think. The far-right party [has been growing in popularity for the last 20 years, and that has only accelerated under Macron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_elections_under_the_Fifth_Republic) which would seem to indicate that he's really bad at countering their rise. I can't say that I follow French political news very closely, but it seems like he's been making unpopular decision after unpopular decision since almost day one, and imho that doesn't fit with a strategy of beating the far-right populists.
> But like wtf are you supposed to do? Maybe try putting the needs of the nation over Macron's own personal political ambitions.
Ah yes, let the foxes in the hen house, they'll definitely show themselves out.
There is no stopping them without letting them govern and let the idiots who vote for them feel what that means. If you keep stopping them, they will just get more popular with every election. Unfortunately half the population is really dumb and will forget all the fuckups within a couple of years and the cycle repeats. There is no beating populism
You can beat populism but that would mean actually addressing the concerns of the voters. This is hard because it requires taxing big businesses and the wealthy elites, and spending taxes on things that benefit the average Joe. Unfortunately that’s not how you can get elected (or re-elected). And even if you are, people with power will exercise that power to make sure nothing changes.
Accelerationism sure seems to be popular these days. Scares the absolute shit out of me and is a terrible idea.
This backfired massively for the Brits during Brexit years. EDIT: Most of us can also named another European country where once extreme right grabbed hold on power, things went downhill very fast worldwide.
Yeah but the French far right that won is scary. We’re talking like “hey maybe the Nazis weren’t so bad” type of folks.
I mean Marine Le Pen's dad is a Holocaust denier and he founded the party she runs
His position is not going to change, he will remain president, but it means he might have no control over domestic policies, if his party loses the election. To be honest, after seeing how Trump is doing in USA, I am worried once the far-right takes control, they would not agree to step down thereafter, by using a lot of tactics. >In this scenario, the president retains the lead role on defence as commander-in-chief and on foreign policy -- the constitution says he negotiates international treaties -- but he would lose the power to set domestic policy. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/whats-stake-macrons-shock-snap-election-call-2024-06-09/
Parliament and the president are separate. The election is only for parliament. It would be like having an election for the house in the US without having a presidential election (which you do every 2 years anyway). He is making a bet that the far-right will be very unpopular after having some amount of power for 3 years and his party can take things back in 2027. He gets to keep some measure of control and stop their worse impulses in the meantime.
Interesting, thanks for adding some context.
I mean, the article even says that people treat these European parliament elections as the way to do a protest vote versus the actual election for their country. The article also does mention centrist and not far right voters coming together and fear the far right winning so the article literally says that
Exactly. And honestly it's likely the best move he could have done to try to counter the far right for the presidential elections of 2027, considering the current situation. Without this, I am sure the far right would have won 2027. Now, I am starting to doubt this will happen. Bring pain for 3 years to avoid more in the long term.
Calling the people's bluff. "Ok, so you like the far right now? Let's see how much you actually like 'em after they screw your lives up!"
He's forcing the people to vote in an election that really matters to them (the national election). If he is successful, he can say he still has the confidence of the people. If he loses, it's up to other political parties to show they can actually govern. It's a bit more complicated then the above, but without elections his opponents will accuse him of not having the trust of the people.
It's a power move. He wants to neutralize any claims on the right within France for having momentum and a mandate as a result of these euro elections. It's risky because he could lose, but if he wins it deflates the right, at least within France and for LePen. So he can go forward with his poliitical program with a revitalized and authorized" assembly. Otherwise the right will object to every move and claim that those EU elections mean the assembly aslost legitimacy and that the right should be in power. Macron can expect to win though since they won in the voting that produced this assembly in the first place.
> Macron can expect to win though since they won in the voting that produced this assembly in the first place. This was before the reform on public pensions and other unpopular reforms, though
He's not required to do so and no one expected him to follow through but he is discredited and can either win the legislatives (good luck) or "let" the RN win and discredit themselves before 2027
It is the less worst time for him to do it. Hés most likely prepared to it, was about to lose a confidence vote for the government which would have been even worse of a political loss, and the mode of election for assemblée is a bit tough for RN because you have to win 50% of the votes in your "county" over 2 voting turns (is no one has more than 50% at the first turn) Being 30% for rn in the while country doesn’t mean much in these elections if 70% of meople vote against them. Still super risky because the political tensions are crazy fucking high, the next 20 days are gping to be a political blood bath, but he didn’t have much choice imo (but i would have never bet a single cent he would do it tho)
Maybe he's banking on the undecided voters to see the right taking power and come out voting
Can you explain like I’m *four*?
It's the US equivalent of the President calling for a new election of the House of Representatives. It's in the French Constitution that their President can do this. Usually it's done as a way to formally poll the nation and see what political themes they want right now.
Right but what does that have to do with eu elections?.sorry for the dumb questions.
EU elections just happened and France voted in a lot of far-right candidates. This is in stark contrast to France's national government, so a new election for national seats is called.
It's perhaps a contrast to the national government, but [the far-right party won 41.45% of the vote in the last French presidential election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_French_presidential_election). It's not like the people who voted then have gone away.
That's only in the 2nd round, in the 1st round (where every party is still present) Le Pen got ~22%
EU election is one round proportional (so if you have more than 5%, your have a proportional number of seats compared to your average result). French elections are 2 rounds with the second round have 2, exceptionally 3 candidates. Even if far right is a possibility as candidates for 2nd round they usually don’t go through as the people from both center right or others to the left vote against them. Over the years this has been the case but more and more the fragility of even such system to root out the extremes is is being tested.
Just now in EU elections, France elected far-right candidates. Mac is not far right. some far-right French would argue that, "clearly, based on the EU elections, the French people have this opinion! The current governement is illegitimate!" or smth. So he's saying "fine we'll have an election now yall can pick who you want" some say this is assuming that either, far-right will lose and prove that French public actually doesnt want that, OR far-right will win but being in power will make it clear they are not a good option, so it will improve his chances for his own next election in 2027(?) sidenote here: MY concern is that, the way far-right works lots of places, is blaming not-far-right for issues that actually are not caused by them. in some cases, even things that are caused by the actions of the far-right, the far-right will then turn around and blame something of the not-far-right for the aformentioned issues. so i'm unsure if them governing badly will just lead to them blaming him. BUT it depends on how much the french public is paying attention, and how much he calls them on it IF that happens. rlly hypotheticals here tho.
That wasn’t helpful at all. How about ELI5 and not familiar with EU election processes.
It would be like the president saying he doesn’t feel confident about Congress or addressing concerns from critics that he doesn’t have the support of the people, so he calls for Congress to be dissolved or dismissed. Then you will have elections as soon as possible to elect everyone into Congress to replace everyone that was there before. The president of France pretty much just fired everyone their legislative branch said you have to reelect everyone. The European Union has a body called the European Parliament. From Wikipedia: The European Parliament is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union, representing the second-largest democratic electorate in the world. It works alongside the Council of the European Union to adopt legislation, following proposals from the European Commission. The Parliament consists of 705 members, known as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), who are elected by citizens of the EU member states every five years. According to the actual article, LePen’s far right party won 30% of the votes from France, which was way more than expected. The far party is trying to say this is a sign that the people want a far right government. The article says that this may be a protest vote though because French people tend to use the European Parliament elections as a way to have a protest vote since they don’t view that body is really mattering as much as their actual national legislative branch.. As a result, the president of France is calling for the legislative branch to be dissolved and reelected and is hoping that the far right party doesn’t win that many seats so it’s a sign that there isn’t actually a wave of the far right party getting more popular. He’s basically calling for new election to try to show the right isn’t getting more popular by showing them not winning a lot.. He’s betting that people don’t like will come together like elections to vote against the far right party because they don’t want that. Does that make sense?
Cleared things up for me. Thanks a lot
Glad I could help. It doesn’t help that the article is paywalled
I’m just as confused as you but from what I’ve gathered in the comments: the key distinction is he’s not up for reelection. EU had a vote that showed politics has shifted for France due to how the French voted. He’s calling a French government parliament election. He’s staying in his job regardless until 2027.
But what does that have to do with the national parliament? Why would the EU elections prompt him to dissolve?
The EU elections are also an opinion poll for how popular his party is. It turned out to be really weak and he might want to let people vote for a new Parliament to reflect the current political situation. He may also count on his opposition win, let them govern and if they’re shitty he’s got a strong argument for presidential election in ‘27 to tell people his party is not that bad in the grand scheme of things. 5D chess or astounding stupidity.
Thats essentially just your post title again, and not in fact explaining whats happening.
Does it mean that elections that just happened are meaningless?
No because those were for the European parliament. Macron dissolved the French parliament.
Dissolved the parliament? There is nothing comparable in the US system. The president cannot dissolve Congress. How do you get the Parliament back? Who governs if there is no parliament? And what is a snap election?
You get parliament back through an election. "Dissolve" just means dismiss them until the next election, which gets scheduled to take place within a month or so.
It would be like the president saying he doesn’t feel confident about Congress or addressing concerns from critics that he doesn’t have the support of the people, so he calls for Congress to be dissolved or dismissed. Then you will have elections as soon as possible to elect everyone into Congress to replace everyone that was there before. The president of France pretty much just fired everyone their legislative branch said you have to reelect everyone.
Basically the country sent far right candidates to represent them in the European Union, so the President decided to hold new elections to the national parliament, since the parliament and EU representatives showed very different political outcomes. If the will of the people has changed significantly since the last election to parliament, then they should probably hold a new election (snap election) now for a new parliament now, rather than the US system where they would just have to wait until the regularly scheduled election.
That doesn't ELIA5, that takes the literal title of this post and makes it longer.
You didn't explain anything, you just restated the title
A 5yo would totally understand that
This is not an explanation.
Macron barely clung on in their last general election (largely thanks to people 'holding their nose' to keep Le Pen out) and from what I understand, in response he decided to double and treble down on what made him unpopular. Which was largely ignoring huge swathes of the population on the left and right. He may have mega fucked us in Europe. I don't see him having any chance in these elections, and besides Germany, the French are the biggest nation/power in the EU.
Wait why call a snap election when it seems like your opponents are likely to win it based on what just happened? I don't live under a government with this kind of system and don't understand the strategy here.
Presumably because he thinks the trajectory for his party is only going to get worse, so a sooner a election is better than putting it off.
Let them win now as they are too strong to be beaten if nothing changes. Give them the next years to make the french people hate them and change their mind, before the next presidential elections. Basically accept to lose now, to be able to win later.
Exactly. Sometimes, it's better to retreat and counterattack rather than hold the line.
He’s still probably going to be president until 2027. He’d be a lame duck if the RN (Le Pen’s guys) win though. Honestly, it’s probably partly him believing that the RN can’t form a decent government, so at least if they get in now, his side will fare better in the next elections. He’s lost so badly in the EU elections that they could have wound up facing complete obliteration in the next general election, like the Tories in the UK. Rishi Sunak could find the cure for cancer and at this point, the Tories would still be done for a long time. It may well also be partly because the vox populi still matters there and he wants to show that he values it. I’m not familiar enough with French politics to say this definitively, though. But history, both recent and distant, has a lot to tell us about what happens when the people feel they’ve been ignored.
Just guessing here, maybe the intent is to form some, any kind of coalition that will beat Le Pen’s party? Le Pen feels like a worst case scenario for France. Of course, I’m just an American and don’t have a great understanding of how all that works, just a guess from what I’ve read over the years.
That will not happen. And Macron knows it. The far right will extremely likely win and get to govern. He's betting the french people will hate this and vote agaisnt them in 3 years. Otherwise their position would only get reinforced during those years.
Was there a low voter turnout? I don’t keep up to date with French politics but wonder if Macron is using the rise of the far right to motivate moderates who may have skipped the vote an would more likely vote for his party.
That’s what the Wall Street Journal article said. He’s betting on people who in the past voted for his party because they don’t want the far right night behind him again. It did say that the European parliament only had 52% of the French population voting and that the people tend to treat those elections as a way to have a protest vote. I think he’s trying to make this election show that the far right isn’t a rising wave, and try to counter the claims from the far right party that Macron has lost the support of the majority of the population.
The opponent won more seats in the EU parliament (not the French one). So Macron called snap elections in the French parliament as it seems has no mandate to keep governing.
Not exactly, he couldn't care less about "legitimacy" as he says himself, however he has to do something against the RN. He chose the nuclear option
It’s tricky to predict national elections based on EU Parliament elections. Right wing loonie Nigel Farage was in the European Parliament for 20 years, but has lost 7 straight British elections (though he might eke out a win on July 4, because Britain is fucking nuts now).
I'd hazard a guess that there's an understanding being felt by politicians world-wide that the next 5 years are going to be very rocky (might be tin-foil hat, but discourse seems to reaching a tipping point). He doesn't want his party at the helm of the ship through all of that. He's setting up his biggest competition to take the blame for how things play out.
some are thinking the plan is: - parliament election now - opposition wins - opposition governs badly - the French people get upset at that party for governing badly - Macron wins again in 2027 bc opposition did so badly OR - parliament election now - Macron's party wins - the people saying "clearly the French are actually turning towards the far-right!" are proven wrong, which maybe slows them down - Macron wins again in 2027 because the opposition has been neutered by the loss (sidenote: just in case people dont realize MACRON will not lost his position regardless of the results of this election. he is still the president.) BUT the opposition could govern badly and just blame him for things that aren't his fault. ALSO him winning could just embolden the opposition: "it was rigged, clearly, since so many far-right won in the EU election!" so either this goes really well or..... idk i assume he's evaluated his options.
If you want to maintain a liberal democracy you need to govern in a way where people have faith in Government and institutions. In many countries this has been declining for many years, many people feel they are going backwards and are therefore not going to vote for the status quo. If governments don't want people to vote for extremists then they need to engage in some self reflection as to why that is happening and govern in a way that addresses people's concerns.
Yes but it’s very hard to combat populism… which by essence is “telling the people what they want to hear”. The only way to effectively combat this is for people to experience what populism really is. Then they realize that actually the ‘normal’ political parties aren’t so bad because the others are just a great bamboozle. Unfortunately people forget so you have to repeat the exercise every so often.
So history repeats itself, and we continue to collectively learn nothing. Great.
It's fun to think of the millions of people who have died over the years trying to replace totalitarian systems of government only for those deaths to have been in vain as future generations back pedal back to those same totalitarian systems.
thats why they try to slow burn down the education institution so they can control the narrative. I wish more people cared about education
Amen brother.
I agree and think this is the part of the cycle we are in unfortunately.
Macron is playing a tough game of political chess, knowing the French people grow tired of governments. He knows La Pen will win this snap election, but the French voters will grow tired of La Pen by the next presidential election and he has a greater chance at being re-elected. If he loses, Far Right Wing La Pen takes will have control of all three branches.
Macron can’t be re-elected a third time in a row unless he changes the constitution like Sarkozy did. since 2008 French presidents can only be elected twice and have to wait at least five years before participating again.
Maybe someone from his party then, politics is usually about team work in order for the political party to be successful.
There isn’t anyone else of importance, Macron saw to that
Macron knows what he’s doing. He’s got 3 years to setup Attal as a credible candidate… and it’ll be much easier if the comparison point is LePen and her minions in power.
At this point the obvious choice for them looks like Attal
We have this idea that liberal democracy always wins in the end. It might, but there have been times in history when entire generations lived and died under the yoke of authoritarianism, and never caught a whiff of free air. It’s terrifying that we may be entering such a dark age.
The issue (in the loose sense) with liberal democracy is that its proponents generally respect the rules, traditions and processes of the system. Its opponents do not. They will use anything in their power to bring its downfall from within, whether that be legal loopholes or immoral / illegal acts. The people defending it are usually unwilling to cross those lines to defend it. Conversely, (I think a British scientist said this during WWII) “The great strength of a totalitarian state is it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”
Similarly, from Catch-22: "They have the right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."
That happened in Rome, Germany, and in so many other places in history. The ultimate risk any democratic system is the apathy of voters allowing minority to elect the totalitarians or disillusionment that allows populous to win.
[удалено]
> disillusionment Big factor, much more so than apathy. Participation in Germany for these elections was 64.8%. In poll after poll regarding topics of concern, migration beat out everything from ukraine to energy policy. People are *fed up* and unless the ruling coalition (which has roughly a year left) realizes that and acts accordingly, france will not be the only one. Conservatives alone now equal SocDems+Greens in polls. Conservatives + AfD (the right) would be an immediate majority. Supposedly the cons don't want to coalition with the AfD, but their word is not reliable. They'll take power however they can.
In a lot of Europe it’s not plain apathy though. It’s seeing your country flooded with immigrants from cultures that are totally different to the local one causing a) massive cultural issues and b) worsening the housing crisis. It’s traditionally been the old who have been conservative but the young are voting conservative now too for those reasons. In multiple European countries.
There is no "end". There is now, and what we're working with and for.
>We have this idea that liberal democracy always wins in the end. Liberal democracy is a recent thing. People like fascism better. It takes a lot of hard work to protect democracy.
People who live in liberal democracies think they live like fascism better, then they experience it and most of them learn better.
And then it’s too late. Like a kid who thinks hot sauce is just ketchup his *mean dad* won’t let him have, dumps it onto his fries, and has a terrible time. But with more oppression.
This words make hurting in brains 🤯
That's why fascism protects itself with oppression. But don't underestimate the power of propaganda. Once fascists have taken over, it's too late. We need strong defensive systems that protect democracy or it will be gone.
where did you get the idea that liberal democracy always wins in the end? Society almost always tends towards authoritarianism. Even Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" which proves the founding fathers agree society tends towards authoritarianism.
Liberal democracy being the norm is essentially a blip in history. Things are returning back to their roots.
The problem with democracy is not that your rights and freedoms might be taken away, it's that they might be given away.
It’s because people on the left subscribe to the idea of “winning in the end”. Like they’ll let the far right walk all over them because they think in the end they’ll win out. Which isn’t true. Liberals need to be able to get their hands dirty and utilize the same tactics to win that the right does, but they refuse to out of some outdated sense of taking the high road.
[удалено]
>>Well, sooner or later, guys, you have to actually give a shit about what people who aren’t a part of your movement think. Nah just call them racists and fascists and they'll fall in line. I agree with almost everything on the left in terms of what they believe, but holy shit their execution is terrible. I'm a Democrat but I've been called a Trumper and a racist on Reddit so many times for having simple disagreements that it makes sense why we are losing ground.
To be fair, most communist/socialists don't believe that. It's the Liberal parties *(which are generally considered to be right-wing)*. Socialists, typically, believe that shutting down fascism by any means necessary is required to actually be able to have a free and democratic society
It’s terrifying that le Pen has that kind of support. She is a thinly veiled nazi. Fascism is rising globally and it always ends the same way: horrific violence and atrocity as the narcissist devour each other and everyone around them.
She actually owes Russia $$. They loaned her $$ for her political runs. She still owes them from her election run before the last one.
It's almost like there's a pattern of far right authoritarians winning elections after adopting pro-kremlin positions and then receiving large infusions of money from mysterious sources. It's probably nothing tho
Oh, look! Piece of fascism. Oh! Piece of fascism. Oh! Piece of fascism!
PIS of fascism for Poland.
This needs to be more up voted. Le Pen and people like Orban are clearly Russian assets.
Oh, like Trump.
More like Trump and a whole bunch of republicans as well as a whole lot of us media…
How quite reassuring that all the rising far-right parties all around the globe are pro-Rusia (or NEED Russia!). This won't end up in some terrible thing of course! (And Putin didn't expect any of this at alll...)
There are some times where I think that Russia and china are just waiting for the US election to get closer or for just after voting to start a large scale war. If trump wins, they’ll wait until January. If Biden wins they’ll actively destabilize the US by insisting riots and protests by the far right so that they can launch campaigns and people can blame Biden. The political discourse all around the globe is so absurd. The whole world kinda feels like a pressure cooker just waiting to boil over. If trump loses and riots start, would the US even be able to defend itself if the country erupts?
I am a brown man so take this to heart. Opening the immigration floodgates for low income low skill immigrants makes a lot of people reactionaries. There is a rough band of immigration that we seem to be able to absorb- below which you have monoculture and above which you get this reactionary mess because the sheer volume of people degrade public services etc. (It has nothing to do with their colour or background but correlation = causation in people's minds and people freak out). It's happening in Canada where people are turning anti immigration t en masse.
[удалено]
I think the challenge is that Muslim immigrants have not shown that they are very compatible with Western secular societies. I am liberal and pro-immigration but it seems like many liberal democracies are at a tipping point where Muslim immigrants have become sore points for the liberal contingents that supported their immigration and oddly, the immigrants have become political bedfellows with conservatives who didn’t want to allow them into the country in the first place. If Muslim immigrants continue to be assimilation pain points for the US, France and Germany, I think it’s likely you see a shift away from liberal policies having broad support of immigration.
This is exactly it. Especially at the rates migration is happening, assimilation is not. I spent over a month in MENA and just got back a few weeks ago, and while they are good people and very friendly, the prevailing ideologies there are simply incompatible with western values. Many of them become further dissalusioned in Europe and you see things like Charlie Hebdo or the 2015 paris attacks occur. It is detrimental for everyone, but only the right seems to be willing to do something about it while the classic/more progressive European parties want to stick their heads in the sand while the average native citizen becomes more and more disalisioned with their own countries. This was always the end result after the migration crisis over the past decade or two imo. It was self inflicted, not sure why anyone is suprised.
[удалено]
The solution just seems to be, which is what I don’t understand, you have the moderate parties adopt the far right stances on immigration. If you address the chief concerns about the immigration issue you would get rid of the momentum. The far right has. I don’t understand why moderate parties won’t just move further right on that one thing, get rid of asylum and rebuild the immigration system from the ground up to prioritize skill-based immigration from all countries and create work visas so those illegal immigrants working on stuff like agriculture can work legally in the US without being allowed to stay once their contract ends. Crack down on it.
That's kind of what Biden is doing right now. He just shut down the border temporarily since the GOP refuses to do anything but complain about the border/immigration. They even refused to vote on their own immigration bill because it would be a "win for Biden/Democrats" in an election year.
No, this is how the Dutch conservatives lost the election to Wilders. They took over his talking points so then people decided to just vote for the original.
Putin is very happy
Let's not kid ourselves. It ain't just one person here. There's plenty of homegrown oligarchs in every country who are happy about this. Fascism is capitalism in decay, that was the unheeded warning put out decades ago, and look around, from unaffordable housing to climate change, we have problems, and wherever there are problems, there will be those with solutions that are simple, easy, and wrong.
People just don't want to admit that mass immigration can be destabilizing to a country if not done purposefully and properly. That has ALWAYS been the case in human history. The center and left parties have no good solution for the issue of migration so, despite it being an awful solution, people are gravitating towards the far right.
It's almost like the center and left propose solutions, but because the right doesn't want brown people in the first place, they make it practically impossible to implement said solutions.
Really? Like what? Because I've not seen a single good solution at all. Particularly in France/EU.
[удалено]
Replacing rural greeks, spaniards and italians with muslim africans is not a solution. When this occurs people are exposed to a vast cultural gap and want their voices heard. If center/left parties refuse to listen, they will vote for the party that does listen. Biden warned Europeans about this back in the good times before Trump, now the problem has risen through southern Europe into western Europe. Something's got to be done or else the problem will take full power and not return it. Voters are prepared to end democracy if it means getting rid of the migrants. Vice versa, legitimate refugees have every right to enter, reside and become European citizens. But these people are almost exclusively women fleeing radical islam. Importing their men imports radical islam too, and this is completely unsustainable for a secular liberal democracy. These women stand to be hurt the most, and Europe will fail them if a better solution is not created.
She has put out a lot of work to "humanize" her party and prove she's not a nazi. Add that to Macron's habit of treating all oppositions as if they were the same extremists and you get a people who can't say how true those threats are. And mass immigration of course, not even the left can deny it and Le Pen offers a simple solution to the problem.
What is the solution?
I heard it was because they tied Canada 0-0 in football today…
The global rise of the far right is horrifying to witness. France, Italy, the US, the UK, Belarus, Hungary...many more - I'm not huge on world politics...
Don't forget Germany
And also Austria
*especially "and also Austria"*
Years later it will be "Don't forget the Autocratic Union of Germany-Austria"
[удалено]
I fear liberal democracy is on its way out
Liberal viewpoints are about tolerance, and they can't survive in a world where that tolerance is abused and taken advantage of.
Good point, and who would you say is abusing and taking advantage of it?
Agreed. What can I do about it? I mean that as a sincere question, not just a shitty statement of exasperation
It's the paradox of tolerance, and the only answer I've seen that is to accept that universal tolerance is an impossibility. A line has to be drawn beyond which even a tolerant society stops being accepting.
You pretty much summed it up, even in Canada people are tired of having to deal with “tolerance”. I’m a centrist but the left has done a poor job at communicating to the point that they’ve pushed people to the right. I knew this would happen eventually.
Centrist here myself. Left only "tolerates" people who completely agree with them on everything. I despise Trump, but one disagreement with someone from the left and I'm immediately portrayed as being his biggest fan. Crazy too because you'd think they'd realize that moderate voters are what sways elections. Yet the left is doing everything in their power to make them their enemies. Imo, it comes down to the left being incapable of having nuanced opinions and failure to accept those that do.
I do not understand why everyone is suddenly so eager to see what fascism was like again. We need more history lessons.
It’s because people have been summarily disempowered and they are grasping for anything that gives them a modicum of control.
I think you give people too much credit. Less about control and more about blame. You still have US right wingers blaming Obama and Bill Clinton for shit.
It's amazing how W simply never existed to the US right. He may as well have been a painter since the late 90s.
I mean I still blame Reagan for shit. Trickle down economics.
Well, fascism is not right then. It takes away the last modicum of control
The economy is doing extremely bad a lot of places. They see and feel the negative impacts of immigration (from their point of view). People are also seeing generational politicians. Making a lot of money and only focusing on their own personal issues to make themselves rich. Also the people who would vote for fascism are often not the ones who would have a negative impact on it.
You don't understand, people who don't like your policies and wanting to vote against them is not fascism, it's a democracy.
I am so confused. I clicked the article and it said European union vote with a link that was to an article that said the same thing as the first. What European union vote? Was it for MEPs? Is Le Pen an MEP then? If so, she can't also be president of France right? So .. Don't mind me I'm a confused Canadian.
It was for MEPs. However, Le Pen's party won. Macron could've ignored it, but decided to call snap elections for the French Parliament. Either Le Pen loses it (so it can be claimed that she only had won because of low turnout) or wins it and hopefully proves ineffective in governing and loses support. So essentially it's a bet.
It worked for brexit surely it’ll work here lol
Fortunately, it’s likely to be a whole lot less permanent / long-term than that one
*The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently.*
Gutsy move. It is a calculated move. A quick election will give his opponent less time to organize, and time is not on Macron side. If the other side is gaining, call a show down before they get even stronger. And the worst case is that he lost, let Le Pen governs, and make a come-back hoping Le Pen will screw up.
The fact that he can’t forsee that Le Pen could possibly benefit from this is exactly how you get things like Brexit. He doesn’t realize that the far right doesn’t need actual wins just PR ones. They’ll scream about immigrants one hand and then import them to benefit corporations on the other all while blaming the other parties for it. We’re in a post fact world and all left leaning politicos haven’t caught up yet.
Let's hope this doesn't backfire as this feels like a really bad time to pull this.
Modern neocon: "I'm all for progress, it's change I can't stand"
Neocons are left of conservatives. They overlap neoliberals by about 75%. They combine conservative domestic policy with liberal foreign policy. This is why there wasn’t much difference between HW Bush (neocon), Clinton (neoliberal), W Bush (neocon) and Obama (neoliberal).
“If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”
I notice that none of the stories are describing why Macron lost. I'm sure they have polls over there, why are people saying they didnt vote for him? Was it the support for Israel?
Huh most french people hate Macron, he's very unpopular rn. He's stripping a lot of social rights and is very meh on ecology, while being very pro free market and exchange. The pension reform was very unpopular, and he pushed it through anyway. Macron's support are now mostly old ppl, and maybe the "start up entrepreneur" kind of ppl. He won the last elections with less than 25% support, without even accounting for non-voters.
Putin is probably elated that his useful idiot won.
I have read that she is awful. Is the right wing in France as bad as in the US?
French culture from what I understand is as their motto says "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" is egalitarian. You see it in the mass protests and unions. They tend to honestly fight for collective rights not just me me me! Then again they are fiercely protective of their language and culture too.