https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3lZ8B1WIAEpom7.jpg
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 1 February 2017 14:03 (seven years ago) link
so the 'trump builds momentum for le pen' narrative seems really counter-intuitive to me. is there any country in the world that's going to have a stronger negative reaction to a loudmouth asshole american presidency than france?
― iatee, Wednesday, 1 February 2017 14:10 (seven years ago) link
lotta people like him. he's "outside the system". he'll "shake things up". etc
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 1 February 2017 14:14 (seven years ago) link
also hey he hates minorities. always a plus with a lot of french voters.
Except this loudmouth asshole fucks with the mainstream media, the SJW-ish leftists, immigrants, and generally with the whole idea of being a decent human being. The FN base loves this. People who feel like mainstream politics are rigged and everyone is in cahoots love this. Trump winning means to them they can win too.
― Dinsdale, Wednesday, 1 February 2017 14:18 (seven years ago) link
sure, assholes across the world love him, but that's not gonna get you a majority (it didn't even in america...)
― iatee, Wednesday, 1 February 2017 14:22 (seven years ago) link
Right but if you can make people who don't usually vote to go out and vote, things become less predictable. Especially if your opponent is hated enough (say, Mélenchon for the right, or Fillon for the left).
― Dinsdale, Wednesday, 1 February 2017 14:28 (seven years ago) link
i would hope at least a few would care about her stealing £300m of the EU's money for her own party -
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/marine-le-pen-front-national-eu-funds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 1 February 2017 14:50 (seven years ago) link
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/07/marine-le-pens-youth-brigade-national-front-young-voters-france/
― Mordy, Saturday, 4 February 2017 16:46 (seven years ago) link
Most of the conference attendees — waving tricolor flags and sporting “Proud to be French” baseball caps — were middle-aged, a reflection of the party’s core demographic. Yet party leader Marine Le Pen, flanked onstage by a chorus of young women as she sang the national anthem, has also been pitching the FN as the party of choice for alienated French 20-somethings — and the pitch appears to be working.Hundreds of young people have been elected to local office under her leadership since 2011, and some of the FN’s best-known faces have yet to turn 30. Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the blond bombshell of the far right, is France’s youngest MP. And then there is David Rachline, a senator and the mayor of Fréjus, who at 28 has just been named Le Pen’s presidential campaign chief.
Hundreds of young people have been elected to local office under her leadership since 2011, and some of the FN’s best-known faces have yet to turn 30. Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the blond bombshell of the far right, is France’s youngest MP. And then there is David Rachline, a senator and the mayor of Fréjus, who at 28 has just been named Le Pen’s presidential campaign chief.
http://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/h_51107257-714x476.jpg
― Mordy, Saturday, 4 February 2017 16:56 (seven years ago) link
Analysts stress the huge abstention rates among young voters unenthused by any of the political options on offer — 65 percent of young people did not vote in the last regional elections, according to Ipsos estimates. Yet of those aged 18 to 24 who do intend to vote, Le Pen ranks in surveys as the preferred president. In the first round of December’s regional polls, 35 percent of them backed the FN, according to the Ipsos study, when the national average was 28 percent. The ruling Socialists and main opposition Republicans, by comparison, garnered only 21 percent of the youth vote each.
maybe the good news is that the youth vote haven't gotten what they wanted in any of the other recent elections so maybe their hopes will be dashed here too
― Mordy, Saturday, 4 February 2017 17:00 (seven years ago) link
In the United States, Donald Trump’s nationalist presidential campaign has struggled with so-called millennials.
a lot of this is because whites makes up smaller percentage of millennials, right? 48% of 18-29 year old white voters backed Trump, 43% Clinton. (For whites overall it was 58% Trump, 37% Clinton).
― soref, Saturday, 4 February 2017 17:03 (seven years ago) link
(a up smaller percentage of US millennials, that is)
― soref, Saturday, 4 February 2017 17:04 (seven years ago) link
that's still a 10% shift for white millennials on top of making up a smaller percentage of age cohort
― Mordy, Saturday, 4 February 2017 17:04 (seven years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/795333715186647040/gpl8ZdKA_400x400.jpg
― Mordy, Saturday, 4 February 2017 17:05 (seven years ago) link
Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the blond bombshell of the far right, is France’s youngest MP.
I was going to say I assume she's not related to Sylvain Maréchal, but her family background is fairly complicated:
In a book entitled The Conquerors (Les Conquérantes) launched on 18 November 2013, the French journalist Christine Clerc (fr) revealed that Samuel Maréchal is not her biological father.[9] On 7 November 2013, the French weekly news magazine L'Express disclosed the identity of her birth father, Roger Auque, a Mossad agent and investigative journalist who died in September 2014.[9] On 8 November, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen officially announced that she had asked her lawyer to sue L'Express for a "serious invasion of her privacy".[10][11]
― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Saturday, 4 February 2017 18:02 (seven years ago) link
(I was reading about Sylvain Maréchal earlier, y'see)
― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Saturday, 4 February 2017 18:14 (seven years ago) link
The media have made their choice
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3_4Z8CXAAA3qfU.jpg
― Dinsdale, Monday, 6 February 2017 17:42 (seven years ago) link
(it's about the broadcast of the candidates' meeting, caption from left to right: full live broadcast, partial live, delayed, nothing)
― Dinsdale, Monday, 6 February 2017 17:44 (seven years ago) link
does anyone have any idea what would happen if Fillon pulled out? what would be the latest point at which another candidate could take his place as the Les Republicans' candidate? it would be something if this led to an 11th hour Sarko comeback, I suppose that's unlikely though.
Presumably just got even more unlikely...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38890993
― least virile man on the list (Mr Andy M), Tuesday, 7 February 2017 17:03 (seven years ago) link
maybe i'm just shook by brexit and trump but the right-wing firewall against le pen appears to be dissolving into thin air :/
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 7 February 2017 18:15 (seven years ago) link
I think there's a fair degree of wishful thinking going on here, but it's possible:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/08/opinions/trump-european-populism-andelman/index.html
― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Saturday, 18 February 2017 12:39 (seven years ago) link
I'd like to think so. This tho:
Closing all frontiers and barring the desperate and needy is anathema to broad swaths of the French electorate. Moreover, the French are hardly inclined to make their own vast domestic Muslim population feel even more disenfranchised
is like, not true at all. "Broad swathes of the French electorate" don't give a shit what happens to Muslims or immigrants, I'd say in roughly the same proportion as in America.
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 18 February 2017 14:22 (seven years ago) link
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/europe/france-albi-french-towns-fading.html
The visible decline of so many historic city centers is intertwined with these anxieties. Losing the ancient French provincial capital is another blow to Frenchness — tangible evidence of a disappearing way of life that resonates in France in the same way that the hollowing out of main streets did in the United States decades ago. A survey of French towns found that commercial vacancies have almost doubled to 10.4 percent in the past 15 years. As these towns have declined, voters have often turned sharply rightward. Albi is traditionally centrist, but the same conditions of decline and political anxiety are present, too.Turn a corner in Albi, and you’ll pass the last school inside the historic center, abandoned a few years ago. Down another street is the last toy store, now closed, and around a corner is the last independent grocery store, also shuttered. Walk down the empty, narrow streets on some nights and the silence is so complete that you can hear your footsteps on the stones.“If nothing is done, a substantial part of the French soul will perish, taking with it more than half the French population,” the businessman Charles Beigbeder wrote in Le Figaro recently, calling for a “Marshall Plan” for “peripheral France.”
Turn a corner in Albi, and you’ll pass the last school inside the historic center, abandoned a few years ago. Down another street is the last toy store, now closed, and around a corner is the last independent grocery store, also shuttered. Walk down the empty, narrow streets on some nights and the silence is so complete that you can hear your footsteps on the stones.
“If nothing is done, a substantial part of the French soul will perish, taking with it more than half the French population,” the businessman Charles Beigbeder wrote in Le Figaro recently, calling for a “Marshall Plan” for “peripheral France.”
― Mordy, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 23:07 (seven years ago) link
Exactly like the UK then.
― Return of the Flustered Bootle Native (Tom D.), Wednesday, 1 March 2017 23:36 (seven years ago) link
Though the sharp turn rightwards is debatable. As it probably is in France.
― Return of the Flustered Bootle Native (Tom D.), Wednesday, 1 March 2017 23:37 (seven years ago) link
Still, we'll be okay, we're Brexiting!
― Return of the Flustered Bootle Native (Tom D.), Wednesday, 1 March 2017 23:41 (seven years ago) link
I haven't been to Albi, had the idea of going this last summer when I was in Toulouse for a week, but the weather was off. It sounds like the problem is familiar to Americans: they opened a mall outside the town center, and many people prefer going there, as it is in the States.
I stayed away from Fillon's rally today, for which it sounds like right-wing Catholics were bussed in to hear (unsurprisingly nothing about it at mass this morning, since my church, mostly African immigrants, aren't the Catholics that the LR want). The weather's awful today, but that seems appropriate.
― droit au butt (Euler), Sunday, 5 March 2017 17:06 (seven years ago) link
Fillon's capacity for self-important melodrama is just limitless
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 5 March 2017 21:22 (seven years ago) link
Lavish ad for Le Pen headed up by BBC's Hugh Schofield who's squeaked right-wing opinion into his French political analysis in the past - reluctant to link to it but: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/marine_le_pen
Don't think they're doing this for other candidates but would love to be proven wrong.
― nashwan, Tuesday, 14 March 2017 11:02 (seven years ago) link
stoked for le madness
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 20:10 (seven years ago) link
live feed of the debate with inadvertently funny live English language dubbing.
http://www.france24.com/en/livefeed
― soref, Monday, 20 March 2017 20:24 (seven years ago) link
(funny to me anyway, but I'm easily amused)
― soref, Monday, 20 March 2017 20:25 (seven years ago) link
the guy doing Melenchon is my favourite
― soref, Monday, 20 March 2017 20:26 (seven years ago) link
omg
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 20:35 (seven years ago) link
was trying to work out who Melenchon's voiceover artist reminded me of and then I realised it's the guy from Office Space
http://image2.funscrape.com/images/o/office_space-25299.jpg
― soref, Monday, 20 March 2017 20:41 (seven years ago) link
"bad guys? i don't like ´em! never have! zero tolerance for lawlessness!" - everybody
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 20:44 (seven years ago) link
er did hamon just suggest le pen is on drugs?? maybe i missed something
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 20:50 (seven years ago) link
so proud of hamon and melanchon for their answers on immigration.
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 20:58 (seven years ago) link
"No no, no no, no no, no no no..."
English dubbers getting into their role enthusiastically! Lol.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, 20 March 2017 21:05 (seven years ago) link
macron looks like a little boy up there :/
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 21:09 (seven years ago) link
Fillon looks like he'd rather just be at the beach with a drink.
― droit au butt (Euler), Monday, 20 March 2017 21:19 (seven years ago) link
The bunch looks quite doloreux tbh
― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, 20 March 2017 21:21 (seven years ago) link
le pen literally just said that unemployment is the fault of the unemployed, because they haven't been looking hard enough. wtf. even my le-pen-leaning father-in-law would disagree w that.
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 22:05 (seven years ago) link
how much does he hate muslims tho
― Οὖτις, Monday, 20 March 2017 22:10 (seven years ago) link
oh lots! lots and lots. well not individual ones. mysteriously, every person he actually knows or meets - gay or muslim or anything else he has an ostensible, widely-declared problem with - he thinks is fine. "one of the good ones" i guess. but in the abstract? grr snap bite
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 20 March 2017 22:43 (seven years ago) link
IIRC she said that that's what the unemployed are told
Summing up Macron's whole debate for you: "I agree".
― Dinsdale, Monday, 20 March 2017 23:22 (seven years ago) link
OK that makes more sense! (Presumably on her way to blaming immigrants...)
By that point I was zapping around the dial, everything was just so infuriating, so I think I missed the setup to that. Macron has totally bought into the anti-immigrant narrative, totally bought into the burkini ban. He's spineless. To be honest he looked like you could knock him over with a feather. I fear for him against Le Pen.
I was really impressed with Hamon apart from the bickering he seemed unable to stop himself from entering into. He was confident, succinct, memorable. But I can't imagine anything he can do now will be enough.
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 21 March 2017 00:04 (seven years ago) link
My kids thought Macron was the clear winner, the only one who looked "presidential" in their eyes. They'd never seen Le Pen before & thought she was awful. But the real laughs were for Fillon, who seemed happy to lay back and zing.
― droit au butt (Euler), Tuesday, 21 March 2017 06:46 (seven years ago) link
Macron certainly wins the "most likely to be in an underwear ad"
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 21 March 2017 07:34 (seven years ago) link