France General Discussion II: Living under Marxism

[RogueBeaver]

Curious what French posters think about this long American Interest article on the Right's history.

[politicus]

Curious what French posters think about this long American Interest article on the Right's history.

Makes you wonder how French politics would have developed if no North African immigration had been allowed in the first place.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Curious what French posters think about this long American Interest article on the Right's history.

It's not too bad a summary, but very simplistic in several ways.

First of all, it's very debatable to say that France is "culturally left-wing" (although I understand why it could seem so to an American public). Politically, the Republican and Radical left enjoyed dominance from 1876 to 1919, but it had stopped being "left-wing" by the first decade of the 20th Century already. Interwar political life saw radicalization on both sides, but no real prevailing side (even the famous "Popular Front" only lasted for a year and half). The 4th Republic saw wild swings in both directions and, as the article notes, the right governed undisturbed for 23 years at the beginning of the 5th Republic (which, by the way, has still not lasted as long as the 3rd one). Intellectually, it's more debatable - of course, like in other European countries, communism dominated academia in the postwar years - but not nearly as clear-cut as the article makes it out to be.

To me, the key characteristic of French politics since roughly the mid-1970s has been conservatism - in the literal sense of the world. Political discourse is very much oriented toward the past and the need to "preserve" things that made France great in the good old days. This, to me, is the reason was France was relatively hostile ground for neoliberalism: the left was able to frame the issue of the Welfare State as a heritage that needed to be preserved from the assault of the radical right. Chirac led a very right-wing (and openly inspired by the Thatcher example) government in 1986-1988. This allowed Mitterrand to present himself as a reasonable elder statesman promising not to upset the existing balance in either direction, allowing him to crush Chirac in the 1988 election. Jospin's 1997 victory wasn't so different, as it built a lot on protest against now-President Chirac's economic reforms. French people generally fear change and want things to stay as they were back when (they believe) everything was going well.

Still, eventually neoliberalism more or less got its way during the 2002-2012 era of right-wing dominance (especially Sarkozy's presidency). And Hollande, since 2012, is largely continuing the same supply-side and anti-welfare policies (while left-wingers enacting right-wing policies is nothing new in many countries, the French left had until now largely resisted 'third-wavization', so this is a significant change in course). This means that France's fear of change and urge to preserve is increasingly focusing on issues of immigration and globalization. Both the right and left played their part in heightening these issues, but the key turning point to me is Sarkozy's 2010 speech in Grenoble. After this point, he fully embraced the FN's rhetoric on immigration, Islam and crime, and his policies toward the end of his term already bordered on State xenophobia (for example, there was a ministerial decree directing businesses to hire French workers over foreigners with the same competences). Talking about the "White race" is only the logical conclusion of this drift, which is encouraged by the fact that the right and FN are united in opposition against Hollande. Honestly, I see little to no difference between them on immigration issues at this point (though there are still huge differences in European and economic policy).

[politicus]

Thanks Tony. I was wondering about the culturally left wing thing as well.

[Hash]

Meanwhile, EELV's collapse continues. Yesterday, Barbara Pompili, the co-president of the greenie group in the National Assembly, left EELV. She is the latest in a series of high-profile exits from the party - François de Rugy (the other co-president) left in August and Jean-Vincent Placé, the loudmouth and unpleasant president of the Senate group left in August as well. The reason is the party leadership's (Emmanuelle Cosse/Cécile Duflot etc.) strategy to ally with the anti-government left (the FG, or more accurately the PG part of that likewise moribund shell), starting with the regional elections in December. Pompili, Placé and de Rugy were all from EELV's pro-government wing. Placé and de Rugy have founded a new party (because of course they have), which is called Écologistes !, basically 'centre-left' and pro-government. Pompili said she 'sympathizes' with them, but doesn't want to join, since she says her priority is defeating Panzergirl in the regionals (she is deputy for the Somme, now part of Marineland).

Prior to these departures, two other pro-government deputies had also left the party: Christophe Cavard in June and François Michel-Lambert (who joined the 'Front démocrate', a party founded last year by Jean-Luc Bennahmias, ex-MoDem Flanby supporter). According to Le Monde, 4 pro-government deputies and 4 pro-government senators remain in EELV, including Éric Alauzet, the deputy with the most consistently pro-government voting record in the Assembly. It is likely that at least a few of these people will leave the party, perhaps after the regionals.

Wikipedia tells me that Écologistes !, Bennahmias' party and Génération écologie (which still exists, somehow) will create some kind of confederation called Union des démocrates et écologistes later this month. I suppose it will be just as relevant and independent of the government as the PRG.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The French Greens' ability to self-destruct has always amazed me.

[politicus]

The French Greens' ability to self-destruct has always amazed me.

Yes, its a really weird phenomenon.

[Hash]

The French Greens' ability to self-destruct has always amazed me.

It's amazing, right? They've basically single-handedly fucked up all the chances that voters have given them (and there have been more than a few) to become a consistently strong and relevant party - it's quite a feat. As far as I'm concerned it's something of a pity, because they're the only party which isn't completely awful.

[politicus]

The French Greens' ability to self-destruct has always amazed me.

It's amazing, right? They've basically single-handedly fucked up all the chances that voters have given them (and there have been more than a few) to become a consistently strong and relevant party - it's quite a feat. As far as I'm concerned it's something of a pity, because they're the only party which isn't completely awful.

Why is there this different to fx nearby German speaking countries on this? It seems the French Greens are the most malfunctioning in Western Europe.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The French Greens' ability to self-destruct has always amazed me.

It's amazing, right? They've basically single-handedly fucked up all the chances that voters have given them (and there have been more than a few) to become a consistently strong and relevant party - it's quite a feat. As far as I'm concerned it's something of a pity, because they're the only party which isn't completely awful.

Why is there this different to fx nearby German speaking countries on this? It seems the French Greens are the most malfunctioning in Western Europe.

Yeah, it's telling that the only EELV politician with an actual vision for the party as a political force with a project was actually German...

[Hash]

The French Greens' ability to self-destruct has always amazed me.

It's amazing, right? They've basically single-handedly fucked up all the chances that voters have given them (and there have been more than a few) to become a consistently strong and relevant party - it's quite a feat. As far as I'm concerned it's something of a pity, because they're the only party which isn't completely awful.

Why is there this different to fx nearby German speaking countries on this? It seems the French Greens are the most malfunctioning in Western Europe.

Well, to be completely fair to our greenies, the French electoral system and political culture of the 5th Republic is not very favourable to them. In the French system, the presidential election has become the most important election, and these elections polarize around 3-4 candidates in the first round - usually one from the left, one or two from the right/centre and one from the far-right, so the greens find themselves excluded from the top candidates. A presidential election also requires strong, charismatic and politically savvy candidates - something which the Greens have always lacked, with very few exceptions. In legislative elections, the electoral system (in the runoffs) tends to punish those parties lacking an alliance even if they are quite strong nationally; in 1993, the Greens found themselves in this situation, winning no seats despite winning (together) about 10% of the vote, which was a very strong result - although it's worth pointing out that, compared to the 1992 regionals, the 1993 Green campaign was terrible and a total trainwreck. The 1993 elections pushed most of the Greens to ally with the PS, which served them well in 1997 (and again in 2012), but led to the transformation of the party into one clearly dependent on the PS if they wanted to win anything important. At the same time as these deals are necessary, they reflect quite poorly on the greens, as was seen with the 2011 deal between the PS and EELV, because the greens are incompetent negotiators who can easily be portrayed as selling out to the highest bidder.

They have been successful in some EP elections, like 1999 and of course 2009, but that was due to being led by unusually good candidates and that major parties bleed lots of votes to smaller ideologically-friendly similar parties. 2009, of course, was a perfect storm - a very strong green campaign with some very good candidates (most of whom were not traditional politicians), and the PS being in terrible shape following the sh**tstorm of the previous year. 2009 did give them momentum, which to a lesser extent carried into 2010 and 2011, but the presidential and legislative campaigns completely destroyed that.

That being said, the French Greens have mostly been led by duds and their presidential candidates have mostly been terrible. Antoine Waechter became totally irrelevant after leaving the greens in 1993. Dominique Voynet is an incompetent idiot career politician who would lose an unopposed race for grade 4 student council, and who was a total disaster as mayor of Montreuil. Noël Mamère has more political convictions than most greens (and has indeed left the sinking ship known as EELV) and isn't a career politician but he's a bit of a crank. Cécile Duflot is also an incompetent idiot whose lifelong dream was apparently becoming a stale career politician, and she has played a large part in destroying the Europe-Écologie dream. Nicolas 'la chouette' Hulot would probably have been a fairly decent 2012 candidate for them, but he was seen as impure and I don't really like him much, I think he's a shameless opportunist and attention whore. Eva Joly was clearly the most morally upstanding candidate in 2012, but she is also clearly a very very bad political candidate whose campaign was disastrous. Daniel Cohn-Bendit has long been the only person in the French green movement with an actual vision which didn't involve "let's all become career politicians by whoring ourselves to the PS", but he's always turned out to be exasperated with the incompetence and toxic political culture of the French greens that he's never stuck around. I doubt he has ever really wanted to be their presidential candidate.

[Zanas]

A few things to add : these defections are evidently timed to be as toxic as possible for EELV. There is actually one or two "local executive" who leaves the party nearly every other day, making noise. They want to destroy EELV's chances, just because they diverge from the choices that have been made by 60 to 80% of the members, depending on the regions. So, for once, it's not exactly just a case of "EELV being EELV", but also a case of "sore losers wanting to have a career", that happen to be in EELV.

Also, what's hilarious is that the PS executives are actually not really thrilled to welcome these defectors on their lists : they would strongly alienate the official EELV list, which would be bad for the merger before the runoff. To put it simply : taking in Placé or any Placé-like candidate generates like a 0,05 pt bonus in a region, whereas merging with the official EELV list before the runoff should generate a 4-5 pt bonus.

Placé and the like leave with nearly no activists, just with their elected offices. They mean nothing to the members and voters. Some voters, like myself, are actually more willing to vote EELV once those scumbags have left.

[rob in cal]

   Isn't the main problem for the French Greens the lack of proportional representation in elections for the National Assembly?  I would think if they had a solid parliamentary base, not dependent on runoff support and deals with other parties, that it would give them a foundation to organize a coherent movement. 
   Greens seems to be pretty stable in getting support in countries which have PR, and not surprisingly fail to win many seats in countries which don't. Canada in two weeks will be the next example of that.

[Storebought]

Apologies if posted elsewhere. From the Guardian:

At least in the towns with right-wing mayors, pork-free cafeteria lunches no longer to be offered in French public elementary schools .

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Even without the politics, France takes its cafeteria food seriously.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Aren't there vegetarian options in France?

Also veal?

[DavidB.]

That's horrible.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Having been to my school cafeteria a couple time these meals look way too good to be true. Unless the school is in a very privileged area.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Tbf, those menus are seriously skimpy in regards to decent puddings.

[big bad fab]

Guys, I'm back in French, en français dans le texte:
https://sondages2017.wordpress.com/

[swl]

Sarkozy is under attack within his own party. They are once again divided on the strategy to adopt when faced with a choice between PS and FN.
Moreover, on Sunday evening he was not following the elections' results, but was at the stadium watching the football match PSG-Lyon. Even the UMP-friendly press (Le Figaro) is attacking him.

[The Last Northerner]

Apparently, he wasn't exactly given a a hero's welcome by a few of the LR/UMP candidates in the regional elections either. Perhaps some viewed him as more of liability than an asset?

[MaxQue]

Well, he is still umpopular from his time as President and I suppose some are afraid he would end 3rd in the next presidential election.

Leading to a PS-FN runoff.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Flanby has been named one of the best dressed men in 2015 by FT

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/72fea7de-9f45-11e5-beba-5e33e2b79e46.html

so, err, congrats

[Slow Learner]

Flanby has been named one of the best dressed men in 2015 by FT
so, err, congrats

Quite an odd contrast with the rest of the 'contestants'.

Why is James Corden on there though?

[The Last Northerner]

This week, Hollande announced his support to removing (dual) citizenship from suspected terrorists.