I don’t know shit about French politics but it looks like the Left/Center took their election, judging by the exit polls. Macron lost support, the Right gained support, and so did the Left. Predictions were that Macron was going to go down in flames. Here’s Taniel’s Bluesky thread on the election, along with short “what’s next” explanation. Here’s the Guardian livestream.
Also, I’m finding that Bluesky is getting steadily better and has a lot of useful, non-troll content. Tom Levenson, former FP and steady hand Cheryl Rofer and the asshole writing this post all have active accounts there.
Jinchi
Awesome. And another example of the media predicting a far right victory and being surprised that many voters want absolutely no part of that.
satby
Very good news.
And for people who are interested in it, here’s an excerpt from Timothy Snyder’s latest email on Fascism and Fear:
satby
And thanks MMix, for putting up this thread.
The Red Pen
I asked a friend who lives in Lyon WTF is happening in France and he said this, FWIW:
O. Felix Culpa
What a relief. Perhaps liberal democracy isn’t dead yet. And perhaps it’s time for us [write large] to refuse to kowtow to the MSM and other trolls, who are doing their best to enable the bad guys.
@satby: Thank you for the Snyder quote. The MSM and other trolls are not only obeying in advance, they’re putting big fat thumbs on the scale for the authoritarians.
Echoing satby’s thank-you to MM for this thread.
Jinchi
I’ve seen too many columns quoting anonymous panicking Democrats, fundraisers and strategists at length, ending with a throwaway line that “of course” Biden still has support of many leading Democrats (many of whom are named, but rarely quoted), to give the media the benefit of the doubt anymore.
$8 blue check mistermix
Thanks to the new followers on Bluesky. I normally just post when I post on B-J, but once in a while I’ll make a comment there.
Jeffg166
Maybe authoritarian government isn’t such a great idea. Or a very popular one. That said the right won’t go away. They’ll be back.
japa21
So, let’s get this straight.
The Brits throw out their version of MAGAs.
The French prevent their version of MAGAs from taking over.
The US is teetering on the edge of allowing MAGAs back into power.
Just teetering, though.
Up to us to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Ishiyama
I shall go to my kitchen and prepare crepes in celebration!
Lapassionara
@Jeffg166: Yes, alas. And I’m not sure what will happen if Hollande becomes PM. IIRC, he did not seem very effective the last time he was in office.
scav
@satby: There’s another odd thing there. So, if they didn’t even bother to ask TIFG to step down (because he wouldn’t listen and would refuse to) how in the holy hell do they feel entitled enough to mount their high snit because Biden didn’t hurry obsequiously to accept their OP edicts.
And to the main point Allez la France!
Thing I notice though, same as in the UK, the numbers are all lumpy. There’s not any clearcut supermajority consensus, nor really a clear two-partyish vibe. There have to be coalitions or the like going forward. Both elections, through different means, did some tactical voting, backing out, whatever, arrangements to get the basic outcomes they desired. Practical, not purity politics.
MazeDancer
C’est magnifique!
Baud
🇫🇷
jimmiraybob
@satby:
Thanks for the link. Snyder’s one of the many that I’ve been missing from the twitter days.
satby
@Jinchi: the media doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. It’s their job to report. They chose that job, knowing that it can occasionally be a very dangerous one. They want the job, they should do it, instead of celebrating journalists murdered in other countries while at black tie dinners pretending they’re just as brave.
My younger son has decided to apply to his local police department, though he’s near the top age limit and may not get in. Though I come from a long line of policemen (and one woman), I was surprised and asked him why. Because of Uvalde, he said, seeing those cops hiding in a hallway instead of doing their job to stop the shooter, even though it risked their own lives, because that’s the job they signed up for.
Baud
@satby:
His mama raised him right.
Baud
I hope one day the breakdown of the political spectrum includes Baudists.
delphinium
@satby: Good for him-hope he gets in!
Roberto el oso
I know that there are many reasons to dislike or be wary of Macron, but he does seem to have excellent instincts when it comes to the back-alley, sausage-making aspects of politics. His calling for this election was seen by many as idiotic and/or desperate, but the gamble paid off, which means he had a better understanding of what the voters wanted then all the pundits whose job it is to read the electorate.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
Truth. Quoting Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it is enemy action.” And it’s been many more than three times that the press have whipped up hysteria and baseless negative stories about Democratic candidates and presidents. Time for us to get a clue.
Woh, good luck to your son. I wish him well if he gets in. It will take fortitude to buck contemporary police culture, but he could be a good influence.
lol chikinburd
Soundtrack.
satby
@Baud: well thank you, I am proud of him whether he gets on or not. It was a family affair on my father’s side though. And we all grew up knowing that’s ultimately what the job may call for. If you’re doing the job as the public service it should be, which despite their flaws, my dad and his brothers believed it was.
Baud
@Roberto el oso:
I feel the modern pundit is hired to get engagement not be accurate.
kalakal
@Baud: Today you’ve been overshadowed by the sans-culottes
jimmiraybob
@Jeffg166: “That said the right won’t go away. They’ll be back.”
Have you listened to Maddow’s Ultra podcast (Season 1 or Season 2 – just getting under way)? Or read her book, Prequel? These outline, in some detail, America’s 1st very close call with Fascism & Hitler in the 1930s. Most people know some of the surface details but the depth of the threat is chilling.
The fascination with authoritarianism is always simmering. It was simmering in 1776 and was simmering during Jim Crow and was simmering when they found a feckless champion in 2015.
I believe that it calls for eternal vigilance. And vigilance means knowledge – the 1st form of resistance.
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
Wow, good for your son. That’s a cogent and admirable reason for signing up, and I hope they don’t age him out.
SiubhanDuinne
@kalakal:
Oh LOL! Well done Kalakal!
S Cerevisiae
This is great news! We have a trip to Paris booked in the fall and I was hoping they wouldn’t fall for the far right bullshit. We will also be back in plenty of time to vote for President Joe Biden and his wonderful Veep Kamala Harris.
SuzieC
Viva la France. This plus the Labour victory in Britain gives me hope that we too will defeat the far right.
Chris
I want to repost what I did in the previous thread:
What this election brings up, and is always worth remembering because of how much the narrative cuts against it, is that fascism is not popular. Even in Italy and Germany I don’t believe it ever crawled its way to an outright majority. Even in peak periods when there really are a lot of people who like it, there are at least as many people who are horrified and disgusted by it and very much don’t want it.
It takes enormous, sustained, and usually violent effort, and usually at least some luck, for the bad people to push fascism to the point where it’s actually in a winning or competitive position. No matter how hard they try to portray themselves as such, they’re not actually the natural voice of the people – they wouldn’t need all the authoritarian measures if they were. The antifascists have a lot of people to work with. We’re never as alone as we think, and that can never be said enough.
satby
@O. Felix Culpa: not to dwell on this too much, but he’s gotten to know several of the cops there since he’s one of the guys who fixes their cars. And he feels like the ones he’s met are focused on public service rather than the more macho militarized kind. Or I doubt he’d apply, because no one was more openly contemptuous of the uniformed bullies than my dad.
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: thanks. Me too, though I’ll worry 😉
O. Felix Culpa
On Bluesky: Evergreen
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: damn, I just got it 😂
PJ
@Chris: This is a good point. The corollary is that fascism can’t be treated as “just another valid political viewpoint”, the way a lot of the US media treats it; there are enough powerful people who would love to see the fascists prevail because they believe (often erroneously) they would control the fascists, and if the fascists prevail, there will be no other parties, and no future whatsoever.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: Glad to hear it…and good for him! (Yes, I would worry too.)
satby
@delphinium: thanks 🤞
rikyrah
Yeah France 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
rikyrah
@satby:
Good luck for him
O. Felix Culpa
The esteemed Professor Levenson on bluesky:
satby
@rikyrah: thanks rikyrah. He also said it was important to have white cops believe and model BLM too. Allies have to show.
satby
@O. Felix Culpa: yay Tom! He has a good-sized audience there.
Another Scott
@Roberto el oso: +1
One usually* doesn’t get to be president in a modern representative democracy without being pretty darn good at electoral politics. Probably better than the average pontificator who hasn’t ever been elected to anything.
* – there are well-known counter-examples, but those are rare.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris
@Jeffg166:
Then let’s beat their ass again when they are.
Chris
@satby:
I’d like to believe that someday we’ll have enough good cops for the police to be something approaching a functioning institution.
Good for him.
O. Felix Culpa
Casablanca: “La Marseillaise”
Chris
@jimmiraybob:
Hitler In Los Angeles by Steven Ross is a good and depressing summary of how many fascist groups were running around in the 1930s and how utterly uninterested the FBI and, at least in California, the police were in doing anything about them.
Geminid
@Chris: If you feel like answering I have two questions: how would you characterize National Front voters, demographically and othewise? And how big a driver of their vote was immigration?
Another Scott
@satby: Things won’t improve unless good people are willing to do the work to make things better. Thanks to him for stepping up. And thanks to you for the inspiring story!
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris
@O. Felix Culpa:
Ha! Great minds and all that.
JaySinWA
@Baud: You’re flying that flag upside down//
O. Felix Culpa
@Chris: Indeed. :)
No One of Consequence
@satby: smashed the like button so hard it broke my mouse. I kid of course, but hear hear for posting that.
My only ongoing concern with a lot of this is: who, are these alleged undecideds?
I realize we are steeped in the tea in the jackalariat, and I have very little faith in polling other than potential trend line analysis (but often the methodologies are left undiscussed and thus the modeling ((imho)) is *still* off enough to merit glances askew). Both of these candidates are known quantities. I would argue that they may be even known quantities on an emotional, or sub-conscious level. Collectively, I mean. That societal knowledge gives me hope, even if sometimes the optics on our side is bad and the news is unrelenting.
Might it be possible that a lot of these alleged undecideds are having us on?
I don’t know who to attribute this to but someone said that Trump is the ugliest political thing we have ever seen in America. I think that pretty much sums it up for a lot of folks. The ones that are attracted to that ugly chaos, they aren’t changing their minds. The ones that are utterly repelled by the very idea of Trump (let alone the material reality of him) aren’t changing their minds. The ones that aren’t sure, I think are full of shit. BUT AT THE VERY LEAST: I think they unconsciously ‘think’ that Trump ‘felt’ bad, or at least that his term was consistently chaotic and the public was confronted with him daily for four years.
Does this make any sense, or am I just fog-headed?
For your consideration all, *I* might be atypical (depending upon the populations(s) being examined). Yes I mean me, Really: ME (and maybe you, too).
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that you expend more political energy in a single day than most of your fellow citizens do in an entire year. It might be worth bearing that in mind in the midst of the wailing and the gnashing of teefs.
Peace,
-NOoC
Bill Arnold
@satby:
This from that same Timothy Snyder piece is also on point.
(From one of the links, he might be a Pass the Torch guy, or adjacent. I’ll carefully consider his arguments, for sure.)
JaySinWA
@O. Felix Culpa:
There was an important correction to the comments you posted;
Chris
@Geminid:
You’d have to ask people who actually live in France for a more solid answer (I’ve lived in America since I was twelve, even if I still go back frequently). My understanding, however, is that immigration easily dwarfs all the other factors. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a million other things motivating them (including, especially for the old guard, antisemitism and anti-republicanism), but anti-immigration sentiment is the “respectable” prejudice that they harp on the most and get the most voters from.
Bill Arnold
@JaySinWA:
Well, yeah. :-)
My inner autocorrect usually corrects such typos without conscious awareness (lousy proofreader in that mode), but that one surfaced to consciousness.
O. Felix Culpa
@JaySinWA: Thanks for the update!
O. Felix Culpa
@No One of Consequence:
You ask good questions to which I don’t have answers. I don’t know anyone who is undecided, and it would be hard to have a civil discussion with such a person. In a perverse way, I can more easily understand being a Felon cultist. But I don’t get not being sure whether you prefer tire rims and anthrax or Italian.
frosty
@satby: Good for your son; his reasoning is solid. I hope he gets in, more like him are needed.
I haven’t talked to my policeman son about Uvalde or other semi-political matters. From everything I see (including his Natl Guard duty) he would feel the same.
(No cops anywhere in our family trees – he’s following his own path)
No One of Consequence
@O. Felix Culpa:
Oh, I’m all in for the tire rims, but that’s because I am iron deficient.
But I know what you are saying. I don’t fight family anymore about politics, and none of my friends are Republican, or if they are they won’t speak so around me, or I won’t shut up. But a small town Iowan family member confided in me that he just couldn’t pull the lever for Trump again, and would find another to vote for or just not fill in the presdential vote. I thought it best not to push it with him to ask him to tip his hat to Biden, but he’s not a Bad Person. I can easily see a situation where as the election approaches, as things become more dire, he might consider pulling the Dem lever for the Resolute Desk assignment. One can hope. Then again, I never thought Trump could get in the first time.
frosty
@jimmiraybob: I just finished Prequel. The threat was indeed frightening but what I found interesting was how many people fought back in many different ways; with no recognition in history of what they did or how important it was.
geg6
@jimmiraybob:
Podcasting is where her talent lies. I love her podcasts and mostly find her show unwatchable.
JMG
My daughter lives in France and has dual citizenship, so she voted in the elections. She voted for the Left candidate in her very bourgeois district of Bordeaux, because she didn’t like Macron. She’s in the wine business, which is hardly a hotbed of leftist sentiment. But having been in France many times, the casual racism often expressed by folks would be startling to a Chamber of Commerce member in Biloxi, Mississippi. The left opposes the LePen folks on ideological grounds, the Macronists often do so because they don’t see the far right as “respectable.”
frosty
@geg6: I dislike podcasts – I can read info faster than listen to it. Which is why I’m glad Maddow put her podcast into book form. More accessible, ar least for me.
Tony Jay
You’ve got to feel for the corporate media, though. A Far-Right takeover of France would be so cool and edgy, and great for their CVs.
Just imagine how many selfies of themselves our intrepid journalist could have taken looking concerned and yet determined in a manly fashion (rocking a stylish shirt/silk scarf combo they picked up for buttons in a little place off Le Marais) while the Front Nacional’s militias march in their thousands through the Arc de Triomphe behind them.
Thrill to the thought of the stories they could have told about shady little assignations in smoky bars on the Left Bank, smouldering gitane trembling in excitement as their charismatic but mysterious contact in Le Resistance leans forward and whispers with just the right timbre of husk “Zis information must reach ze free world, mon ami. Zoo you zink you can, ow you say, be az brave az you are ‘andsome?”
Frig yourself loopy at the image of them racing through moonlit puddles to cross a scenic bridge hand in hand with a raven haired chanteuse, pursued by the sharklike shapes of La Milice Nouveau’s slate-grey Citroens, the crack of a single gunshot and the sultry songstresses’ café au lait hand slipping from theirs, a spreading red circle staining the crisp white silk of her blouse and a last, unknowable declaration of amour dying on her crimson lips as the steel-grip hands of a Marine drag our hero and his cargo of Breaking News to safety behind the doors of the US Embassy.
That’s what those ignorant Lefty voters have cost
the infotainment industryus all. Damn their onions! When oh when will they ever get to ply their vital trade in such a fantastically noir environment?Yutsano
Vive le France!!! I appreciate one of my homelands got things right here. Also am slightly gobsmacked that Emmanuel’s gamble paid off here.
Roberto el oso
@Tony Jay: Bravo! If I should ever feel the need to steal “frig yourself loopy” (which I almost certainly shall), I shall give you a h/t …
Geminid
@Chris: Now I remember, you voted from the French Embassy. I asked about immigration because the issue seems to hit Europeans differently than it does Americans.
Tony Jay
@Roberto el oso:
Once it’s out of my head it’s free to air, my friend.
rikyrah
From Rachel Vindman:
The UK 🇬🇧, France 🇫🇷…looks like we’re up next 🇺🇸 💙❤️💙❤️
Frank Wilhoit
The most significant thing about this is the number of voters who must have switched between the first and second rounds. They saw what they nearly got themselves into and noped out. Nothing like that could happen here.
Yarrow
@O. Felix Culpa: That 27% number is so consistent. From The Guardian liveblog on the election:
So the Macron guy got 73%, which means the far right got….
Michael Bersin
I messaged my cousin in Paris:
Did voters save France from the Fascists?
She replied:
Right-wing fascists yes, far-left fascists no!
I replied:
Better than us, so far…
rikyrah
Angry Staffer 🌻 (@Angry_Staffer) posted at 1:19 PM on Sun, Jul 07, 2024:
Hey so uh… pollsters largely said LePen was going to win in France and she just got blown out.
Polls don’t vote.
(https://x.com/Angry_Staffer/status/1810015748297015481?t=aOdX_GZcWO6L5YKt0BfSfg&s=03)
jimmiraybob
@Chris:
“Hitler In Los Angeles by Steven Ross”
Thanks. I will look to add this to the library.
jimmiraybob
@frosty:
To answer a question that was raised a day or two ago, resistance comes in many forms.
jimmiraybob
@geg6: Like a number of media commentators, I had to train myself to sit through her shows – just to many good tidbits to miss. Now it’s effortless.
Jay
@Frank Wilhoit:
Between the First and Second rounds the Left, Macronists and the Centerists, agreed to pull candidates, so other than the regional parties, the only candidates many voters could vote for in the Second round was either La Resistance or Le Nazis.
This prevented vote splitting.
Chris
@Jay:
I honestly had serious doubts that they had it in them, and they deserve all kinds of props for coordinating this effectively, especially on such short notice.
The fact that the professional party members were willing to put this together and the fact that turnout was so massive shows that there’s still a very strong constituency among both elites and voters for the principle of “we cannot allow a Nazi government, period. No matter how much we have to hold our noses and work with people they don’t like, that has to remain true.” I can’t say just how strong or how long-enduring, but it’s still an incredibly encouraging result. I feel better about antifascism in France than I have in a long time.
satby
@No One of Consequence: hey friend, glad to see you! (BTW, heading back to Seattle in Oct. for 4 days, hope to catch up). Without knowing you asked, I sort of answered somewhere around #160-ish in the next thread. Also this
I think is accurate. The squishy, incoherent middle, low info voters are a real thing. They’re persuadable to at least a few percent, and they’re likely to peel off with more focus on Project 2025 gifts to us all, and on the felon’s continued criminal revelations. The child fucking will be a long slow fuse until it blows.