Early projections indicate Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) has won most votes in the first round of the parliamentary election in France, beating the leftist NPF alliance and Emmanuel Macron's centrist Ensemble.
34% is already lower than what they polled (and it will go down more as cities’ vote get counted). Though, you are right, the normalization of Far Right IS scary af. But it’s not a recent thing in France, it started nearly two decades ago, but surged to an extreme during the past few years esp with:
Bolloré (our own personal Murdock) bought more and more media, fired the journalists, and put propagandist in their place.
Macron started taking Far Right’s talking points (immigration), language (‘national preference’, which is a concept that makes no sense) and methods (just two days ago, his party made, published and propagated on social media a fake ‘NUPES’ (name of the last Left Alliance) website to calculate one’s future pension based on their ‘program’. As it turns out, the calculations were not based off their program at all and was nearly always defavorable to the person)
Macron, when asked about the surge of Far Right, had only one response: bUt WhAt aBoUt tHe LeFt? (And goes on and on to try and sell a ‘both sides’ to try and make himself more popular. Spoilers: it didn’t work) It’s also why it’s refreshingly suprirsing to not hear him bash ‘theLleft’ tonight, and instead call on everyone to vote against Far Right.
FWIW, I’m seeing projections based on the counts that still have them at 34, but I guess we’ll see.
I agree that a resurrection of the cordon sanitaire is probably a positive and I agree that Macron was extremely clumsy, like much of the EU’s centre and demochristian right, in sliding towards far right positions they just can’t defend any better than the actual fascists. But still, from an international perspective France is now firmly in the club of Central European countries with a major fascist problem in a way it wasn’t yesterday, even if the outcome was already understood to be going this way.
The vote finished in the night and we got the official results now. Paris voted massively NFP and Renaissance, so Far Right is now at 29.3% while NFP is just behind them at 28.0%. Honestly? Given the polls we had, RN is lower than anyone could have hoped.
I’m kind of surprised this image of France having a Far Right issue is only becoming a thing now though. These results are close (if not better for non far right voters) than the last 2022 Presidentals, and Far Right already had a huge score in 2017.
Thanks for the link! International press is still running the 33% estimate they probably got from the French morning papers or have taken down the results, so my references hadn’t updated the number.
For the record, the image is not new, there was a lot of international coverage regarding Le Pen’s presidential chances in 2022. But presidentials are presidentials, only one person gets to win. Legislatives raise a lot of questions about parliamentary dynamics, alliances and the potential for the second round to generate another bout of Macron shooting himself in the foot followed by him shooting everybody else in the foot for good measure. That, and there is more paranoia about the tilt right across the EU and internationally about the US.
These days it seems there’s a rough third of the population in most places that’s stupid and/or bigoted enough to vote for shit like this. Those numbers don’t shock me. But I’m hoping France proves more resistant at the national level to the hyperconservative/neofascist resurgence at the we’re seeing in a distressing number of countries.
Our current republic was founded by de Gaule, and our constitution was written by him as well. The thing, he’s a millitary general, who (much like a good chunk of the French population at the time) held disdain toward parlementarism, due to the lack of stability of the Fourth Republic.
What that means? Our current system has much of the power concentrated in the hands of the gov (see 49.3 and to some extend 47.1 where the PM can just decide to override anu vote on law. It was something taboo, only used a fair few times before Macron, like once in 2014(?) and it ruined the PM (at the time Manuel Vals)'s carrier. Macron used it dozens of times throughout his years as President), leaving the National assembly with little manuveur than the censor motion (dissolves the current gov, but leaves the president in power).
That and Macron preparing to sell our public media and hospital to the private certainly don’t give me mich confidence in that regards if the RN were to win (’ •_•)
It’s extremely frustrating watching this happen in all of our countries. It’s even more frustrating that a lot of us saw it coming and have been concerned for years, even decades.
I get that immersion tends to normalization…
… but man, 34% is still a LOT. Especially when it’s 2x the previous result and the largest bloc.
It’ll be good if they are prevented from having easy access to legislative action, but it’s still an underpants-threatening result in my book.
34% is already lower than what they polled (and it will go down more as cities’ vote get counted). Though, you are right, the normalization of Far Right IS scary af. But it’s not a recent thing in France, it started nearly two decades ago, but surged to an extreme during the past few years esp with:
Bolloré (our own personal Murdock) bought more and more media, fired the journalists, and put propagandist in their place.
Macron started taking Far Right’s talking points (immigration), language (‘national preference’, which is a concept that makes no sense) and methods (just two days ago, his party made, published and propagated on social media a fake ‘NUPES’ (name of the last Left Alliance) website to calculate one’s future pension based on their ‘program’. As it turns out, the calculations were not based off their program at all and was nearly always defavorable to the person)
Macron, when asked about the surge of Far Right, had only one response: bUt WhAt aBoUt tHe LeFt? (And goes on and on to try and sell a ‘both sides’ to try and make himself more popular. Spoilers: it didn’t work) It’s also why it’s refreshingly suprirsing to not hear him bash ‘theLleft’ tonight, and instead call on everyone to vote against Far Right.
FWIW, I’m seeing projections based on the counts that still have them at 34, but I guess we’ll see.
I agree that a resurrection of the cordon sanitaire is probably a positive and I agree that Macron was extremely clumsy, like much of the EU’s centre and demochristian right, in sliding towards far right positions they just can’t defend any better than the actual fascists. But still, from an international perspective France is now firmly in the club of Central European countries with a major fascist problem in a way it wasn’t yesterday, even if the outcome was already understood to be going this way.
The vote finished in the night and we got the official results now. Paris voted massively NFP and Renaissance, so Far Right is now at 29.3% while NFP is just behind them at 28.0%. Honestly? Given the polls we had, RN is lower than anyone could have hoped.
Source: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/ensemble_geographique/index.html
I’m kind of surprised this image of France having a Far Right issue is only becoming a thing now though. These results are close (if not better for non far right voters) than the last 2022 Presidentals, and Far Right already had a huge score in 2017.
Thanks for the link! International press is still running the 33% estimate they probably got from the French morning papers or have taken down the results, so my references hadn’t updated the number.
For the record, the image is not new, there was a lot of international coverage regarding Le Pen’s presidential chances in 2022. But presidentials are presidentials, only one person gets to win. Legislatives raise a lot of questions about parliamentary dynamics, alliances and the potential for the second round to generate another bout of Macron shooting himself in the foot followed by him shooting everybody else in the foot for good measure. That, and there is more paranoia about the tilt right across the EU and internationally about the US.
I expected better from the French. It’s disheartening watching Fascism take root globally like this. 34% is 34% too much.
These days it seems there’s a rough third of the population in most places that’s stupid and/or bigoted enough to vote for shit like this. Those numbers don’t shock me. But I’m hoping France proves more resistant at the national level to the hyperconservative/neofascist resurgence at the we’re seeing in a distressing number of countries.
Culture wise? Probably. Institution wise though…?
Our current republic was founded by de Gaule, and our constitution was written by him as well. The thing, he’s a millitary general, who (much like a good chunk of the French population at the time) held disdain toward parlementarism, due to the lack of stability of the Fourth Republic.
What that means? Our current system has much of the power concentrated in the hands of the gov (see 49.3 and to some extend 47.1 where the PM can just decide to override anu vote on law. It was something taboo, only used a fair few times before Macron, like once in 2014(?) and it ruined the PM (at the time Manuel Vals)'s carrier. Macron used it dozens of times throughout his years as President), leaving the National assembly with little manuveur than the censor motion (dissolves the current gov, but leaves the president in power).
That and Macron preparing to sell our public media and hospital to the private certainly don’t give me mich confidence in that regards if the RN were to win (’ •_•)
Oh man, that’s rough.
It’s extremely frustrating watching this happen in all of our countries. It’s even more frustrating that a lot of us saw it coming and have been concerned for years, even decades.