thats a pleasant surprise and all but the nazis will be back.
electoralism wont fix this and we better be prepared for the next time they have any opportunity. another pink wave won’t resolve our problems now for the same reasons it didnt before.
nazis need to be dealt with asap, or else, and the best way is for leftists to actually organize.
I want my scalps. And all y’all will git me one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazis.
How is it that a French political party can get 15% fewer votes than a rival party, and end up with 8 more seats in Parliament than that rival party?
You new to politics?
1000 people vote in 10 districts. Their choices are a Hard-Right party, a Centrist Party, and a Left coalition, representing the Left-Centre, Left, and Hard Left. PS: This is what the French had going on.
Let’s say 373 people wanted the Hard Right party, 269 people wanted the Left-Wing Coalition, 223 wanted the centre, 51 picked a minor libertarian party, 50 picked from a slew of minor parties not on the Right, and 35 picked from other Right-Wing parties.
In a proportional representation system, you’d expect 37.3% of the representatives be from the Hard-Right party, 26.9% from the Left-Wing Coalition, 22.3% from the Centrist party, plus about 14% being from minor parties. But France uses a First Past the Post system and so does our hypothetical nation. So here we go:
Riding 1: 95 people voted Hard Right. 3 vote Centre, and one each vote other Right and Libertarian. Hard Right wins this riding. Riding 2: 90 vote Hard Right, 5 vote Centre, 2 vote Other Right, 1 votes other Non-Right, and two vote Libertarian. Right wins this riding. Riding 3: 85 vote Hard Right, 10 vote Centre, 1 votes Left, 3 vote Other Right, and one votes Libertarian. Winner is Hard Right. Riding 4: 15 vote Hard Right, 65 vote Centre, 10 vote Left, while 2 vote Other Right, 5 vote Other Non-Right, and 3 vote Libertarian. Centre wins. Riding 5: 12 vote Hard Right, 60 vote Centre, 12 vote Left, while 4, 8, and 4 vote for minor parties. Centre wins. Riding 6: 20 each vote Hard Right and Centre, while 3, 4, and 2 vote third parties. Left gets 51 votes and wins the riding. Riding 7: 22 vote Hard Right and 11 vote Centre. 2, 9, and 4 vote Third Party, and Left wins the riding with 52 votes. Riding 8: 15 vote Hard Right and 21 vote Centre. 3, 5, and 5 vote Third Party, and Left wins again, this time with 51 votes. Riding 9: 10 vote Hard Right and 14 vote Centre, while an amazing 8, 10, and 8 votes being sent to the Third Parties. However, Left once again takes the riding with 50 votes. Riding 10: 9 people vote Hard Right, while 14 vote Centre. Another 21 vote Libertarian, with 7 voting minor right-wing third parties, and 7 voting for non-right-wing minor parties. Despite these 50 people likely having more in common with each other than with the Hard Right or the Left, because they couldn’t agree on one candidate to vote for, their votes get split, allowing the Left to win the riding with 42 votes.
End result: 3 Right, 2 Moderate, and a whopping 5 Left. It didn’t go this badly for the non-Left parties in France, but it illustrates how a party with a lower vote share can get more representation in a First Past the Post system. It illustrates why Gerrymandering is bad. If those voters in the first three districts are packed there because some partisan power broker got into the redistricting process, they’ve basically been defanged by political shenanigans. Doubly so if the left-wing coalition managed to spread all their voters out so that they had a solid lock on 5 of the districts.
This is a fundamental problem with FPTP, so that’s why many of us advocate for RCV or Proportional systems.
I know how gerrymandering works in USA’s system - the last two far-right Presidents were elected despite the center-right candidate getting more votes. But the margins were tighter in those contests - a few percentage points not double digits. I’m curious about the peculiarities of the French system that lead to such an apparently wide gap between votes versus representation.
The difference in the UK was far more ridiculous. Labour got roughly two thirds of the camera with one third of the votes.
if you think that’s bad/weird
https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2024/uk/results
Labour
total votes 9,686,329
share 33.7%
412 seats
Conservative
total seats 121 total votes 6,827,311 share 23.7%Vote distribution
Win seats by a small margin, lose seats by a wide margin
I feel like the real lesson is being missed here:
Do not mess with Mbappé.
Facts. He’s a national hero over there.
UK: done
France: done
US: please don’t let us down.
When was the last time all 3 had general elections at the same time?
My vote will be going to the lesser of the two evils but (a) between my state’s Gerrymandering and the composition and voting habits of my district it won’t matter and (b) until the US electoral system is meaningfully reformed (first-past-the-post, two-party system and how it affects voting in many states, Gerrymandering, lack of ranked choice, outright voter suppression, etc.), the US will continue to slide further right anyway
Not American but I agree. Fptp and gerrymandering is the biggest bullshit. But how will it change? Why would the two ruling parties shoot their own foot?
For FPTP, we need to get more local and regional elections to move to something like ranked-choice voting and have it go from there. IIRC, some states are trying to ban it “because it’s confusing” since they realize it opens up more than the traditional two parties. Voters can vote for other candidates in their primaries as well (many people do not seem to vote in primary elections).
More people also need to be voting, even as powers try to make that more difficult. We also need more young people to run for offices, but I fully understand why they wouldn’t want to.
US is always bashing Cuba for being a one party state while they’re just one party away from having the same electoral system.
The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
- Julius Nyerere
Sorry bud. Biden is in the middle of shitting the bed. If we get can get a different candidate in without much issue then we’ll have a chance again.
Don’t forget Mexico!
True i read about it some time ago. Mexico got(at least from what I heard) a very good president.
How fucking cool is it to have a woman IPCC scientist as your president?
Germany had Merkel
Turned out great for them (not sarcastic)
Except for her monumental mistake of giving up on nuclear and consequently giving enough leverage to Putin to finance his imperialist plans peacefully.
Mexico is where around 40 candidates have been murdered recently?
Yup…and she still won! I am not from Mexico personally, but that has to irk the cartels just a wee bit.
That or a viral snuff video soon.
It’s looking like both USA and Canada are gonna fuck it up, though.
As an European, I’m just happy that the cultural influence of the US has faded so much in the last couple of decades that even with massive amounts of American billionaire money trying to pump-up the Far-Right in Europe, it’s still but a pale shade of what’s going on in the US and, as we see, even that far-right wave seems to already be breaking: notice how already in the European Elections the Left grew in various Scandinavian countries (in my experience Northern European Countries, especially the Nordic ones, tend to be ahead of the rest of Europe in social and political terms).
There is hope on the horizon for Europe.
I am, however sad for Americans with leftwing principles, since even with a Biden victory the US will continue to be an ever more dystopic late-stage ultra-Neoliberal experiment bound for a Fascist takeover sooner or later (if not Trump now, some other Fascist will sooner or later ride the wave of misery - that the Democrates too, as hard Neoliberals, gleefully keep feeding - into the Presidence and ever more authoritarianism)
even with massive amounts of American billionaire money trying to pump-up the Far-Right in Europe, it’s still but a pale shade of what’s going on in the US
The influence of Russia and China are what are inflating the rise of the far-right in both Europe and the US, when you misrepresent this fact you’re helping provide cover for them.
The people who, during a time of great inequality induced by Neoliberal politics, most and most directly stand to gain from stopping the Left from getting power back, and would prefer to see the righteous rage of the average person at the worsenning of their quality of life directed to blaming “outsiders” pushing politics even more to the Right, are the ones with the most money and Assets, and not only is that gain far above and beyond the geostrategical gains for Russia and China from it, but as insiders they have far more capability to make it happen than outsiders.
Also a few years ago Steve Bannon came to Europe with money from rich Americans, very overtly and loudly to “fund Far-Right parties”, so it’s not as if what I say is an unsupported theory.
Blaming foreign governments is just another variant of the “blame foreigners” argumentation that’s a central Far-Right slogan (i.e. blaming immigrants), and furthers exactly the same objective: blame “outsiders” so as not to look hard into the actions of the people in this country who have most of the money, most of the assets and can afford doing the most buying of politicians.
(I bet the same minds who came up with “blame the immigrants” for use by the Far-Right, came up with “blame Russia/China” for use by the Liberals).
Mind you, I absolutelly can see how Russia and China would have a geostrategical interest in influencing polics in the West. It’s just that next to the insiders who captured most of the wealth and would be most negativelly affected by typical leftwing policies (such as progressive taxation), the capability of those nations to influence the political process and the gains they would get from it are way smaller - there are at stake quite literally Trillions of Dollars worth Yearly just in tax avoidance and evasion for the ultra wealthy and the corporations they control if they allow a shift of the politicis in Europe such that tax policies change from Regressive to Progressive.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all those actors are pushing the same cart in the same direction, but lets not deceive ourselfs with the Liberal variant of “blame the foreigners” and put all of the blame on some very specific foreign nations (and, curiously, failing to mention the likes of Israel, which is vastly more overt in its influencing of politics at least in the US, UK and Germany) whilst ignoring those who are logically far more powerful forces (both due to their wealth and from working from the inside) with far more to gain from that specific outcome.
I mean, Russia would gain a country’s worth of land if Europe and America would just fuck off, so I’d say he has as much to gain as any given billionaire in America and Europe. And politically weakening your opponents by sowing division among their electorate seems like a relatively easy way to do it. Hell, there’s even a book about it.
Certainly, those billionaires have been pushing in the same direction, but I think they have help.
There is no way in hell that present day Russia could take over Europe, especially in light of what we see in Ukraine were Russia has advantages only in manpower, conventional airpower and stores of Soviet time vehicles and they’ve still been brought to a stop and are slowly losing most of those advantages.
They have no such advantages versus even just a small coalition of European countries as long as one of the big ones is in it: France alone in a war footing would fuck them up. I even suspect just a coalition of EE countries would fuck them up if Poland was included.
Further, Far-Right parties are nationalists - they’ll hapilly take Russian money to fund their growth but they will never turn their countries into vassals of Russia, if only because their members would quite literally murder any leaders who tried it. It would only ever go as far as Orban took it - fine with taking a pro-Russia position against a different set of foreigners (whilst very likely being paid for it) but not with Hungary actually being subservient to Russia in its internal affairs.
Russia might capture one or two small EE countries if the EU breaks up, and China gains from the West being too disorganised to oppose their rise to being the prime superpower (which is mainly about the US, since Europe is pretty mild about it) and that’s served by political chaos in the West, not necessarilly the Far Right (and again, the Far Right being nationalists means that their rise might actually harden the European stance towards China).
I think we are in agreement that all of them are pushing for it a bit, it’s just that I think that the possible gains for the ultra rich in stopping the rise of the Left of Europe are far larger, more immediate, concrete and guaranteed - trillions in avoided taxes and keeping their wealth untaxed not to mention the money they make from markets that should never have been privatised - than the geostrategical gains for Russia, much less China, even if one has goes with a wildly fantastical idea of what the Russian military can achieve even in Europe.
A whole screen of text and you didn’t even finish the first sentence of my comment, and don’t appear to have read the second to last one…
Unfortunately true, but at least Poilievre is nowhere near as batshit crazy as the republicans are. Still fucking sucks that the cons are most likely going to win though. At best things will continue to get slowly worse like they already are, and at worst, things will degrade faster.
Either way the average Canadian isn’t getting any help from whoever wins the next election.
I just love the people who go crazy when the government passes a law that people are sure will be unconstitutional, and of course the latest time the Liberals did it Poilievre was all over it, then when says he will not only pass unconstitutional laws but will use the Notwithstanding clause to keep them, they are suspiciously silent.
Poilievre isn’t an idiot, for all his other failings. Just because he hasn’t outright said how far he’s willing to take things doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plans to. It has the potential to be very bad.
I mean I wouldn’t go that far. Poilievre is going to implement the same sort of anti-porn passport bullshit that Spain introduced, so that’s not a good sign.
Yup, and all they have to do is change leaders to win. There was that story last week about Biden thinking of stepping down, but Trudeau refuses to step down, if he, guilbaut, and freeland fucked off we could easily get another liberal government. So now we’re going to a Conservative government.
Unless something changed today with Biden’s leadership meeting, his last public remarks on it were in the ABC interview. And he was flabbergasted by the idea that he was polling badly, much less that he would step down.
Iran too?
Yeah!!
I know we’re not on people’s radar like the three you mentioned, but South Africa also had general elections this year.
The long reigning party lost their majority for the first time since 1994, so the coalition talks were a big deal for a few weeks.
Oh right I remember that! Thanks for reminding!
That’s exciting, thanks for bringing it up!
I feel like “the right gets a big showing early on but ends up losing” is a regular feature of modern French elections. It seems like it’s happened multiple times in my lifetime.
In their presidential elections at least it’s pretty much by design. It happens because they have 2 rounds.
The first round the far-right option gets a relatively large amount of votes. Then the round after only 2 options remain, so anyone who doesn’t want the far-right option just votes for the only other option. Not sure what happens in general elections, but presumably it’s somewhat similar because there’s still 2 rounds.
As far as election systems go it has quite a lot of obvious flaws, but it’s perhaps not quite as bad as first past the post. At least it makes the tactical voting a bit more straightforward.
The background trend, unfortunately, is of the far right slowly but surely gaining votes. We pushed them back to third place today, but they still almost doubled the number of representatives they’ll be sending to parliament (from 89 to the projected ~130 for today’s elections).
- In 2002, Jacques Chirac won against the far right with 82% (to the far right’s 18%).
- In 2017, Macron won against the far right with 66% (to the far right’s 34%).
- In 2022, Macron won against the far right with 58% (to the far right’s 41%).
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
Thank you for giving more info, I appreciate it!
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
A tale as old as time.
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
While i am no fan of Hollande and establishment socialism, I feel like he’s really the butt of the joke here. Whatever we do, we always seem to punch left.
He was president for 5 years, yeah it was limp-dicked as fuck and it veered right in mid-course, but if you remember, he was basically elected on a platform of not being Sarkozy. The people were so KOed by his mandate that Hollande’s whole angle was to be the “back to normal” president. And that’s a promise he kind of kept, if you look at his time, sandwiched between two hyper-mediatic hard-right presidents, well yeah it felt like the kind of politics our parents talked about. Not great politics, just normal not-sadistic politics.
Not to make this about the US, but hopefully we see similar.
I believe we have it in us but this Democratic Party is a finely oiled machine designed to blunt our progress, not lead it. Goddamn Biden said in the beginning that he wouldn’t seek reelection and he should have stuck to that. Now he’s in danger of actually losing to Shitstain L’Orange.
The far right is making a huge push around the world in recent years. Every time populations resist their influence is a giant win for humanity and the future.
Still, they are way too cocky all over the world. But great work, France. Thank you
I definitely wouldn’t extrapolate anything about the rest of the world from this. I just remember “Le Pen is going to be the next president of France” being said more than once in my lifetime.
Conservatives just lost the UK in a big way. France on course to do the same (not to the same extent). Tons of money (and Russian manipulation) are pushing hard for far-right politics, but they keep losing. Remember, abortion has won every time it’s on the ballot since Roe was overturned. I’m still cautiously optimistic about the US’s chances
You are more optimistic than I am, but I hope you’re right. At this point, my hope is that at least Democrats will retain the congressional power to do something about a Trump regime I am seeing as an increasing inevitability.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still terrified, but I think the chances are better than the media is portraying currently.
Don’t forget that the media’s main goal is profit. How can they make sure to make more and more profit? By constantly showing you stuff that keeps you in fear and in turn makes you want to know everything that’s happening. The only way to know the current events? Watch our media segments, read our newspaper, read our website etc. (also see 24/7 news cycle)
What you said is true and in addition to that we should consider that the responsible thing to do in the face of fascism is raise the alarm. Not crying panic over far right politicians and their nightmare policy fantasies would just normalize them and help bring those nightmares about.
So while there is a fairly typical “follow the money” argument to be made here, alarmism over fascist ideologies is also just good activism and responsible citizenry.
While I agree with you in general, it’s the electoral college that’s a uniquely American fuckery I worry about. France and the UK don’t have to worry about the majority vote being the losers.
There are so many levels of fuckery in the American system. It goes all the way up to just asking the supreme court (who you appointed) to please let you win.
Yep it’s fuckery turtles all the way down
“The French are socialist cowards who don’t know shit but actually get off their asses to protest…”
– 'Muricans
The centrists worked together with the left to beat the far right. Absolute mad-lads.
Take note, America.
Tell that to our centrists. They hate our left more than our right.
Unfortunately our media are studiously not taking note.
Prior to these results, a few weeks back, NPR was trying to make it seem like the far-right and the “far left” were working together. It was the most bizarre, disjointed reporting I’ve heard in a while. They want people here to believe the center/left is extreme and uncompromising.
Didn’t see the NPR article, but this absolutely rings true to me. I live in a blue city in a red state. We were littered by Green Party ads for the primaries that were funded by right wing groups. I wouldn’t say that the far left and far right are working together, but the right is for sure posing as leftist in local outlets and actively encouranging the left’s tendency to eat their own.
but the right is for sure posing as leftist in local outlets and actively encouranging the left’s tendency to eat their own.
Of course they are, and they’ve been doing it for decades at this point all over the Internet. Anybody remember #walkaway? The movement founded by a ‘former liberal’ who ended up at J6 3 years later.
It’s funny how often they barely try to hide their right wing roots
We don’t really have a ‘left’ here, unfortunately.
relative left
We only have “centrists”. There’s no ‘left’ for them to work with. The democrats do everything they can to keep anyone remotely leftist from being elected within their party, and to maintain the political duopoly.
This perspective really bugs me.
The terms left and right are relative.
It’s absolutely fine that the dems are not as far left as you would like, but they are still your left of center major party.
The more elections they win, the more the whole spectrum moves to the left.
That’s fine, but this comment thread is about centrists and the left working together to defeat the right. There is either no political left, or there is no political center. The democrats are already all united. It just isn’t really analogous to a parliamentary system.
Centrists don’t like the far right for some reason.
In Belgium, even the right don’t like the far right. And would rather work together with the left. Lol
Might be that WW2 still lingers in their mind.
Belgium being so quirky is why I love it so much.
In America the centrists would rather have Trump than work together with the left. Though it’s hard to call the Democratic party centrists anymore they are just slightly less right wing than Republicans.
And Macron started he won’t accept a coalition that includes France Unbowed. Something something antisemitism.
Something something antisemitism.
What is this claim based on? Got an example?
I’m not French, but it seems to be because they’re anti-zionist with a Muslim immigrant constituency and the center and the right like to use that as a political lever. That’s why I said “something something.” I have yet to see anything with substance but I obviously can’t go digging either.
An example I saw was the party leader was accused of being antisemitic because he said the finance minister was in the pocket of international banking. He later clarified he had no idea the guy was even Jewish, just that he was a centrist finance minister that he thought was in the pocket of international banking.
Then when the media reports on this as antisemitism and they complain that the media is biased against them they’re supposedly using the trope that the Jews control the media. In actuality it’s the capitalists that control the media and they’re more than happy to do a hit job on the left.
Appreciate the response now days that terms doesn’t mean much of anything so got to check before before jumping to conclusions.
Thank you France
This is not over. We have to continue to fight. Not only against the far right but for the people, for social justice for everyone. I’m so proud of France today. I’m so relieved but this is not over, what’s scares me now is that the country is deeply polarized. This was a wake up call for me. These last years of politics have made me apathetic. But what happened today gave me hope. I’m gonna do something, I don’t known what yet but I will. I’ll vote as I always did but I’ll do more. I will fight.
Thankfully some gerrymandered states are finally getting their maps in order. I really really hope we are in the timeline where Dems take the House, Senate, and Presidency.
My hope is that Leftwing implements policies that undo large parts of the Money-is-King and Screw-You-Plebes Neoliberalism, thus removing at least part of the popular discontent and distrust (people feel poorer and yet the mainstream keeps telling them the Economy is Growing) that the Far-Right feeds on with their “the blame is those other people that are even worse of than you (not at all the super rich)” scapegoating.
Reduce the pain by making the State more supportive again and getting more “from those who can the most, to give to those who need the most” and you take the wind off the Far-Right’s sails.
Without the majority in the Parliament that is very unlikely to happen. Worse, I fear that a government formed by the NFP would accept a coalition with the Macrony just so they can barely apply their program and thus give more ammo to the RN in the next presidential election.
What is a good news today could be a very bad news in 2027. Depends in how the left will handle it.
I too fear that, but for now I’ll stick to hope.
“The good fight is the one you are losing” or no rest for the wicked as it where I guess
Hoping the same for the United States.
A leftist hat trick would be amazing.
I see a lot of the nay sayers as a vocal minority. They yell the loudest, but only because the media gives them a platform to generate clicks. Just like how Republicans believe everyone in the nation, who doesn’t worship satan, is pro-birth. Kansas, a deep red rural state proved otherwise with a vote to add abortion rights into their constitution a couple years ago, something their conservative supreme court just upheld.
Honestly, the recent ruling on the Kansas ballot initiative, which quite frankly surprised me to begin with, shows that in some places judges still do their job even when their personal beliefs may differ from the law they are entrusted with interpreting. Kansas voters, you showed us the way and stood out against the backdrop of “conservative status quo.” Kansas showed, in the last two years, that when given a chance, even deep red states see the writing on the wall.
I have a feeling the outcome of this election is going to be a “silent storm” event and wake-up call to the GOP that they are out of touch with what the people really want. They’ve drank the loud-mouth’s Kool-aid for far too long and won’t believe it when it happens.
Think of it like the silent majority (maybe 80% of nationwide voters) is the massive tornado that took out the drive-in theater in the movie, Twister. In the movie, no one saw it until a random lightning strike shed light on the sheer girth of the monster bearing down on them. The GOP is the drive-in. The night of the election will be their lightning flash. We, the voters, will be the tornado.
That would be amazing but it doesn’t require playing chicken with Biden’s age issue and the political maneuvers the French left and center pulled off were possible because of polling, not in spite of them.
Kansas, and other red states are deeply poisoned against democrats by about 60 years of propaganda. This shows in the polling where they’d rather vote for the new RFK with brain worms and vaccine conspiracies than vote for Biden. That’s not just a joke, Biden loses to RFK in Kansas if the election was held today. And RFK is competitive with Trump. He’s expected to lose but nobody’s really studying the non battleground states very hard.
It would be hilarious if RFK managed to siphon enough EC votes to throw it into congress. (Even though that would also mean a Trump presidency because they vote as state delegations, 26 of which are firmly controlled by the GOP)
Also, don’t get overly proud of this. The idiotic notion of “there are two extremes polarizing everyone,” where they put the left and the right on equal danger-footing, is all over this article. I mean, it’s a few quotes from a few people, but still. That kind of shit is poisonous. It not only likens what the left wants to what the fascists want, but it also shields the far right from the view that their opinions are as dangerous as they are. “We want everyone to be cared for and we think nationalism is wrong” is not the same as “nationalism.” Still a pretty scary article. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the RN didn’t take the election, but they are still a huge portion of that govt. and that is very fuckin scary.
If these numbers hold, it will come down to Macron’s faction to decide who to align with. And counting on neoliberals in that scenario is…scary.
This is The Guardian, a Liberal (not Left, Liberal) newspaper in Britain, a country whose only left of center (by European standards) party is the Green Party which has all of 4 seats out of 300 in Parliament now (and it used to be just 1, even though they had 1 million votes out of 40 million).
(Labour was once leftwing, before Blair’s Third Way, and when recently it’s members voted for it to go back to being Leftwing there was a massive smear campaign which included this very newspaper to bring down the leftie leader and put the neoliberals back in control of it).
From the point of view of the journalists, editors and board of The Guardian, even Social Democracy if “far left”.
Britain is maybe the most “like America” (but not on the good things) country in Europe, with a very similar voting system (First Past The Post) and with and Overtoon Window far more shifted to the Right than almost any other country in Europe (basically the Tories are a posher version of Orban) and their Press is one of the least trusted in Europe, and that includes The Guardian.
Think of The Guardian as a British New York Times.
If you want to see coverage of the French elections that’s not been twisted by a British hard-Neoliberal Private School Attending High Middle Class journalist in a newspaper that prides itself of being “opinion makers”, try Le Monde.
The Guardian has a pretty broad ideological base stretching from centre/centre-right all the way out to moderate left. Unless you think George Monbiot and Owen Jones are neo-liberals too? (Sample articles Things are not going to get better as long as oligarchs rule the roost in our democracies and Natalie Elphicke is a hard-right Tory. Her defection sums up Labour’s contempt for progressive voters )
In your post you literally listed all the left of center writers that The Guardian has out of all their opinion writers and journalists, many of whom loudly proclaim themselves as “opinion makers”.
And that’s not even mentioning their editorial direction after the editor that published the Snowden Leaks was kicked out because of doing it.
Sure, they have all of two token lefties who get maybe one article every week or two each, in an ocean of neoliberals.
This for a newspaper many here seem to think is left of center.
I’ve lived in a number of countries in Europe, including the UK, and The Guardian’s take on European subjects (which are the ones were I can more easily compare it with newspapers from other countries) is always to the right of the take of most newspapers in Continental Europe and hence they generally, as the previous poster pointed out in this article, spin that which is just normal Left in Europe as being Far-Left and Neoliberalism (a pro-Oligarchic ideology that puts Money and those who have it above the State and hence the power of voters) as being Center-Left.
You can hardly claim that a haystack is in fact a needlestack just because there are two needles in it.
Yes? As I said they have a wide range of views giving comment. Just because it isnt Pravda doesnt mean its exclusively neoliberal. For example you’ll be hard pressed to find any opinion pieces favourable to privatisation and public sector cuts which are two of the chief pillars of neo-liberal orthodoxy.
Well done france
That might look like good news, but it’s just delaying the problem. Far right has only gained votes for the last 20 years, and it’s only through jolts like the first round of these elections that other candidates unify to not let them pass. Nothing is done to address the underlying problems that make people vote for these fuckers, so it’s only a matter of time before they end up accessing power.
Here’s to hoping that “Left/Green” can tackle some of those issues.
The far-right in Europe, with money from both Russia and American billionaires, has been ridding the wave of insatisfaction that’s the side effect of the very problems created by Neoliberalism (which is now in its natural end stage were wealth is far more concentrated than ever since the early XX century and social mobility is pretty much non-existent, hence why most people feel poorer and hopeless) which itself was created with billionaire money pumped into Think Tanks and buying politicians mainly in America in the late 70s, early 80s.
As I see it, the best way for the Left to disarm the the Far-Right is to undo most of Neoliberalism - go back to higher levels of State support and State control of strategical assets, free Education, Progressive taxation with excessive wealth heavilly taxed, and so on - thus removing the very cause of the popular insatisfaction that the Far-Right feeds on using a litany of “blame everybody but the rich” excuses.
At least some of this actually seems to be what the NFP has announced it will do.
Now, Macron (and his party) being hard core neoliberals will fight this tooth and nail, as will the EU because most of the governments there are neoliberals and things like the ECB as as pure neoliberal as it gets, so for starters, they will most definitelly try to help the ultra-rich in France more evade tax even more than now.
The other problem is that part of the NFP is the old centrist “left” party (the Socialist Party, which has nothing at all to do with Socialism) who were part and parcel of the Neoliberalization of French politics (a typical corrupt as hell mainstream “centrist” European party of the last 2 decades) and eventually suffered massivelly at the polls for it. That said, the fear of being made even more irrelevant will probably put a break on their corrupt neoliberal tendencies.
The good news is that, if the French Left manages to overcome the forces in France that will be arrayed against any undoing of Neoliberalism, that country is big enough to pretty much ignore EU pressure.
Start listening to the working class and the far right won’t even be a fart in the night
Far Right Night Fart?
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But why does the working class want the far right?
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Okay great, but the far right never has the answers to economic woes. Ask Brazil, UK, Italy etc
Edit also, it’s not the powerless immigrants fault that the neoliberals have consistently shat the bed for so long.
Countries with the Nordic model see a decrease in far right ideology, the problem is plain as day. Ruling class decidedly needs a class to exploit, and they keep the useful idiots busy by pretending their issues are because of immigrants.
No, vote more progressives in positions of power and authority, and ask them to create social welfare programs like those in civilized countries
the far right never has the answers to economic woes
Indeed. The answers they have are easy, quick and wrong, but a peeved populace stops thinking at quick and easy.
Because the far right offers simple solutions. That these solutions will only lead to things being much worse and Germany being completely ruined as a result is something they dont understand. Our biggest “newspaper” has been constantly bombarding people with fear and hate for decades and it only got worse and worse. Uneducated people who read that will panic and vote for those offering the simplest solution.
If people are hurting, some of them will listen to the arguments of the Far Right - “the blame is those other guys who don’t look the same as you” is quit an appealing argument for many.
There are two solutions for that:
- You try to get most people to really think deeply their politics, in a well informed way which puts aside tribalisms, thus reducing the take of far-right arguments.
- You remove the causes of the hurt, which at the moment it’s mostly end-stage Neoliberalism (basically the wealth people produce is incredibly ill distributed).
I reckon the first one is pretty much impossible (I mean, it would be great, but it doesn’t work for actual human beings, with all their tribalism and ignorant self-evaluations as not at all ignorant), whilst the second absolutelly is possible (and probably required, if only to stop the Environmental destruction of our planet and guaranteed the survival of our civilization).
But they will stop these evil immigrants from stealing my jobs and living of my tax money and destroying my culture…
/s
Yup, the right has been more successful than the left in influencing the working class. The fact that a lot of working class get scammed by far right narratives is in indication of how the left is absolutely terrible at communicating with the working class.
Is it because they (the far right) listened to them?
Only insofar as they can better pander to them instead of serve them.
They act like they listen, yes. But their policies would bring ruin for all of germany. The country that exports more than any other country on earth would be completely wrecked if it leaves the EU
I disagree - the Working Class want’s a mix between the original SPD and the original FDP. Those that want more right for the workers and those that are self employed. Because everyone thinking straight knows, we need immigration. However, we need a new set of rules. The AfD pretty much does play the role of “Bauernfänger” (the literal translation of “Scam” doesn’t work), as we say. All of those AfD Politicians that have actual seats have done shit over the years.
In Italy too. Must be some sort of cultural legacy 😂😂😂
And that’s happened after East Germany was consistently fucked over ever since the reunification, leaving a chunk of the country extremely skeptical of mainstream political parties. Would there be people who would still be racist if East Germany had been treated fairly? Some would be, but it wouldn’t define the vote of most of them.
Is the left listening to the working class?
The center left hasn’t been listening much for a few decades, which is why the far right has been steadily rising from a 20% ceiling to this 35% ceiling just now. But the alliance that won today is not center left - it has some legit left. You can tell because the center and the media have been working overtime to prop up the most divisive figure as Literaly Worse Than Hitler that needs to be stopped at all cost, even by electing literal Nazis.
But this new left is also an alliance, and the current fear is that some of them will jump ship to side with the center right when we all realize that we really can’t form a government, because no one has an absolute majority. Even with those potential defections, the center will likely still not get a majority back. Worst case scenario is the left breaks, no one can govern, and Macron uses an obscure law to take over 100%, best case scenario the left holds and Macron can’t even do that and we have a chance of getting at least SOME improvement.
The socialists haven’t been communicating with the working class for decades. Just sitting around complaining about liberals not listening to them.
The socialist sentimentality around the imagery of red flags, hammers and sickles, photos of Marx and Che Guevara means the working class is going to ignore everything you say. These are imagery associated with the failures of socialism. No matter how many excuses you make about how it wasn’t socialism’s fault the previous iterations failed, you’re the ones putting yourselves in that position by insisting on associating yourselves with those failures.
Liberals are the left side of where the will of the people is at. Because it’s a democracy and not being anywhere near where the consensus of the people are at isn’t going to win an election. You’re just sitting to the left of where liberals are at laying down judgement as if that’s going to influence the people of a country which is the only thing that’s relevant.
Liberals will always be the left side of the will of the people. If you influence the people to move further left, liberals will move further left. But communicating with the working class isn’t what socialism is about in the 21st century. 21st century socialism is all focused on waving red flags to get attention and complaining about how politicians that follow the will of the people aren’t following your will instead.
Fake ass socialists just whining on the internet instead of talking to the working class.
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imagery of red flags, hammers and sickles, photos of Marx and Che Guevara
Name one French politician who uses that?
It’s not the politicians, it’s the people that the working class ignores do that. ie. Solcialists. Since the voters aren’t influenced by that bullshit, the politicians aren’t going to influenced by it either.
Socialists are incapable of influencing the will of the people because of sentimentality over symbols of the past. And really why should anyone be influenced by people nostalgic for past failures and just sit around making excuses for those failures?
? ? ? Sir this is Europe, you’re in the wrong part of the world, you don’t know what socialists are.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon leader of La France Insoumise which is the biggest party on the left in France.
Don’t watch far right propaganda. Even the communist party removed the hammer and sickle over a decade ago.
You are whining about a vocal internet minority, that’s why they’re not doing anything. Just because you see someone complaining about “the man” and calling themselves socialists on lemmy or some other internet forum doesn’t mean they’re representative of the left in general.
Nah fam, I vote in every election I’m eligible for. I choose who to vote factoring in which platform is closest to what I want along with the probability of that party actually being in a position to implement it. I phone bank so politicians will owe me and I can influence them to go further in the direction I want.
None of the text you type on this site influences anything a politician will do. Actually participating in the process does. Typing up essays about how liberals are bad because they aren’t socialists is just useless whining. If you fail to convince the working class that socialism will make their lives better (and if you did that the politicians would fall in line) then you’re accomplishing nothing.
WDYM?
The left will always deliver better quality of life for the working class.
The right likes to blame migrants and taxes which resonates with the working class.
I don’t understand the first line because I’m not a native English speaker, and acronyms sometimes confuse me.
I agree with you, and I am very happy about this victory in France. I was referring to the fact that the working class prioritizes certain issues that the left doesn’t always place at the top of their agenda.
I think it’s time to show that advocating for minority rights doesn’t mean neglecting measures in favor of workers. I believe this is true, but we need to demonstrate it now; otherwise, when the vote happens again in France, no coalition will be able to stop fascism.
Sorry, wdym is “what do you mean?”
In Australia, the centre left has very strong ties with employee unions. They will always advocate for better terms for employees.
Sadly, much of the “working class” votes on the right because they think of themselves as something better than the working class, despite being poor. There’s a phrase “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”.
Further left we have the greens, and indeed they prioritise environmental issues over employee terms.
The left, as in die Linke definitely does. It has great approaches to make life better for the working class. Unfortunately their foreign policy is so terrible they are unvoteable for me. A party that is against delivering weapons to Ukraine cannot get my vote.
Most “center” “left” parties in Europe nowadays are just Neoliberals (pro-business, pro-privatisation, pumping up asset bubbles and generally bough and paid for by moneyed interest) and hence not really Left and often not even Center.
However all countries in Europe still have real Left parties (even the UK with it’s highly rigged First Past The Post voting system has the Green Party), though judging by the one in my own country (of which I am a member) there’s often this messy mix of people whose leftwing thinking is basically slogans from the Soviet Union (these being mainly people in their 60s and older) and people who grew up in the post ideology neoliberal age for whom leftwing is basically greed but for-the-group instead of the individual (hence you end up with Identity Politics which is a twisted subverted charicature of the Fight For Equality that far too often is dominated by people who are members of a group they were born into demanding shit for their group - instead of a broad push for Equality done on the basis if need an independent of the “group” people were born into, we have competing pulls for getting shit per group, with people said to be deserving or undeserving based on the genetics they were born with, thus far too often rewarding some people who are priviledged but have the “right genetics” whilst not helping those who have real need and yet were born with the “wrong genetics”).
I don’t really know if the present day Left can find a modern ideology and vision that’s not just a “branch of neoliberalism that doesn’t talk of Economics”, though the victory of the NFP in France, lead by Melenchon and his party rather than the old “moderate” mainstream party - called Socialist but not in any way form or shape so, but rather just neolibs plus performatice leftwing talk - gives me hope.
B-B-But POLLS!!!
What a joke…
Dodged a bullet
Thank you, UK.
Thank you, France.
Hat trick, USA?
Putin getting nervous.
We are hoping to defeat the conservatives AND idiot single-issue liberals(to end genocide they are going to support both continued and more aggressive genocide AND turn the US to the path of joining the WW3 axis powers…). It’s an uphill battle.
Also extremely rare Iran W
America is trying to do the opposite by getting MORE candidates in to split the vote more on the lib/dem side, because to many people in Media are invested in the ratings from the next Trump shitshow.
Crossing my fingers and will be contributing to this hat trick come November
I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but if Biden doesn’t step down I’d bet money we lose as much as it pains me to say it. No data supports a Biden reelection. And I’ve seen no promising path to altering the trends in the polls that are largely a result of an immutable, worsening vice: age.
Fact
Let’s hope for a good election in Germany next year 🙏
Oh thank goodness. Worst fear allayed, now on to the next one.
Good job France!
Joe Biden, take note of how rigged the polks and press are and keep going.
This isn’t the example you want. Candidates from two other parties stepped aside to change the election math. This isn’t the polls being wrong, it’s people who care about the country listening to the polls and doing what they have to do in order to stop the bad guys. The analogy here would be Biden withdrawing.
Alright if there was a further left party that would take over for Joe Biden that would absolutely be the move.
The issue with Joe Biden dropping out is there’s no one really to replace him other than Kamala. Conservatives don’t want her because they’re racists, leftists don’t want her because she’s a fucking cop.
And what happens if Joe dies in his sleep before election day? No one is talking about this as a liability but given the speed of his cognitive decline and the stress of the job and schedule, why is it outside the realm of possibility? Trump will of course live to be 180 years old since he’s literally a conglomerate of McDonalds microplastics and literally one of the worst pieces of shit to walk the earth in the post modern era. Why would anyone want Trump over Kamala outside of being an impotent right wing Russia cuck?
Kamala sucks but she’s the contingency plan. She’s part of his admin that passed the IRA, CHIPS, etc. and trying to put forth executive action that would seemingly be beneficial for the American people. Presumably she’d continue many of the same policies as her predecessor. There is no perfect candidate in a FPTP two-party system.
Think the point is that there’s no good option known and an overly short runway to build momentum, and the likely option would be Harris, and she’s already the default option.
Instead of “Biden should step aside”, the calls should be more specific in what they affirmatively do want.
Same with rhetoric about “just any third party”, that’s so vague that no one should want that, as third parties are very different and in opposition to each other.
So calls for ‘not Biden’ or ‘just any third party’ are utterly useless except for screwing up chances for a D win, without any particular actionable agenda being advocated for.
My point was less Kamala sucks, and more people probably want to vote for her even less than they do Joe Biden.
Its kind of telling when he talks about dropping out the first name everyone talks about is Sanders instead of Harris. Despite how unfortunately far fetched the idea is.
In the US it doesn’t have to be another party. The Democrats could nominate Jesus the Pug at the convention if they wanted to.
