Macron leads!

That leftists should refuse to back a status quo, fully establishment-orientated pro-capitalist French version of Tony Blair suggests that they are completely serious and have a nuanced understanding of contemporary political trends, and that they are looking towards the future.

Obviously yesterday’s result is ideal for liberal ‘centrists’ because they can play their ‘lesser-evil’ card for all its worth.

This suggests that, at least in France, right-wing populism has hit a limit, for the time being.

I wonder where that limit will be after four more glorious years of the—ahem—serious pro-European centre-left. We are about to find out!

Chris: with all due respect: reducing all criticism to “childish chanting” (or dismissing all because some are perceived by you as “un-substantive”) is philosophically /uncharitable, to say the least. If you want to have a substantive discussion, this is not the best opening.

As for Macron being “committed to changing the EU”: Just like all the other “Pro-EU/EZ”-pols, he’s committed to paying lip service to changing it, while knowing nothing will change while people who share his outlook dominate. The EU cannot be saved by people who confuse “love for something” with codependency, and none of the current technocratic cabal sees any reason for the EU to change in the direction needed (and even if they would, they wouldn’t dare jeopardize their future career prospects by being outspoken in the criticisms they don’t understand).

I understand why an EU enthusiast would be disposed to like him. But there is more to a president than their foreign policy, and there are real reasons to be skeptical of his presidency. First, he has no party and will have minimal legislative support. He is very likely to be working with a right wing dominated body, which will mean that any left leaning ideas go nowhere. It’s also likely that the government will be paralyzed and accomplish nothing.

Second, his stated policies are vague and contradictory. Spend more money, cut taxes, balance the budget… It’s not a profile in courage, and he really did antagonize the left with labor law “reforms”.

I saw this earlier and wanted to write a comment expressing my admiration for Chris’ post, which I thought, in addition to being intellectually and morally serious, was a brave one, given the likely reaction from the CT community. But then I held back, because I thought I should wait to see what that reaction was rather than making assumptions (and also because I didn’t want to risk Chris re-evaluating his position by agreeing with it too vigorously). Two comments in and it seems my initial expectations were depressingly accurate.

Then again, perhaps I’m being too harsh. After all the question “Should the anti-fascist left collaborate with anti-fascist liberals and centrists in order to prevent fascists coming to power, or should they go it alone in order to maintain their ideological purity and pursue a ‘heighten the contradictions’ strategy?” is a truly difficult one, with literally no analogous historical examples that could serve as a guide.

Chris @10

Allez le Front Populaire!

Regarding comment #1, Melenchon’s position is no more “nuanced” than ‘revolutionary defeatism’.

Another notable feature of the outcome is that Le Pen’s first round vote is only about 5 percentage points higher than her father’s in 2002. On the other hand, despite Fillon’s endorsement of Macron, it seems likely she will pick up a lot of his voters in the second round

My analysis is that the core racist/tribalist/Trumpist vote hasn’t increased that much. Rather it’s the fact that right/hard neoliberals, now a minority on the right, have chosen to support Trumpists rather than anyone to their left.

JQ @15

I won’t pretend to have any deep knowledge of French politics, but didn’t Fillon run on a program of Catholic social conservatism, and generally hail from the ‘beat the Front through co-option’ school of the Republicans? That would seem to suggest that Fillon voters drifting to the front aren’t so much hard neoliberals as they are soft Trumpists. Like I said – I’m by no means an expert on this so cheerfully willing to concede the point if I’m missing something.

The free movement of people is the central pillar of the EU and the people who support the EU most vocally seem to also oppose practically limits to the free movement of people in principal and in fact. The French have a far greater investment in the EU than Britain. That and Le Pen’s politics should carry any pro-EU centrist over the finish line. A substantial subset of France’s population has had enough of politics as usual, which explains in part why the mainstream parties lost. My sense, however, is that a substantial number of French people over the age of 35 have a very strong latent sense of nationalism, as foreign and contemptible a concept that is to some. This is not necessarily right-wing, or left-wing. Le Pen’s name earns the respect of the folks she needs least, and engenders fear and loathing in those she needs most. The threat may come from Le Pen, but the Trump presidency shows us that any clown with the right messaging can win high office.
Constrained by the EU and unable to reform the EU the centrist can only promise more of the same only worse, much like HRC. That’s not going to work in the long run, and maybe not even the short. A celebrity clown who promises to pull down the temple can go a long way.

EM @20

“especially after Macron’s ‘Hope’ campaign achieves even less than Obama’s.”

25 million Americans who now have health insurance might take issue with you here, not to mention the tens of thousands who aren’t dying unnecessarily every year as a result.

which to my mind indicates that Mélenchon is an unserious poseur, but then his enthusiasms for Hugo Chavez and his apologetics for Assad ought to have been a clue to that.

Exactly right; well said.

He is very likely to be working with a right wing dominated body, which will mean that any left leaning ideas go nowhere. It’s also likely that the government will be paralyzed and accomplish nothing.

Perhaps true, but I don’t see how that’s a point in Melenchon’s favor.

managing and distributing the pain and disappointment equitably

I guess we have different understandings of ‘equitably’:

Macron wants to roll back state intervention in the economy, cut public-sector jobs, and reduce taxes on business and the ultra-rich. He wants to deepen employer-friendly labor reforms. And he backs the current direction of the European Union, viciously hostile to public investment across the continent. All in all, it’s a program nearly guaranteed to aggravate the problems at the heart of France’s political crisis: unemployment, inequality, and poverty. These are the same forces driving growing numbers of French people to withdraw from politics altogether—or worse yet, cast ballots for the National Front.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/french-election-trouble-with-emmanuel-macron-centrism

@22 I don’t think most people in the West worry about relative economic decline when comparing themselves to China or India. They worry about their ability to find a job, afford a home, provide for their family and deal with any crises in their lives. This has little to do with a country’s competitiveness versus the rest of the world, and everything to do with how income is distributed within countries.

I suppose it’s possible Macron may have said different things at different times?

As with that other great Presidential outsider who conquered the White House, the contradictions get resolved into real policy when he calls in the people who know how things work, and they put in the same old ideas he was believed to be challenging.

Why do you think that another Hollande term will be good for France or for Europe?

This simile (h/t Frederic Lordon, LMD, april 12) is quite telling:
Emmanuel Macron, « Moi j’ai jamais connu un éleveur heureux avec des animaux malades (…) C’est comme l’idée que, un employeur, ce serait quelqu’un qui adore licencier les gens », devant la FNSEA, 30 mars 2017.

When are “livestock” owners unhappy? When animals are so sick that they can no longer be profitably used, sold or killed. (Never minding, for now, that this is generally due to business decisions to not treat them better before they are killed.) What does that have to do with business decisions to downsize? Is the point that workers are ‘human resources’ with no intrinsic value? Is it that when someone decides to downsize, this is necessarily because the “business” is “sick” — which apparently “transfers” to the employees, who are then declared “sick” and/or redundant, and thus to be culled? In other words, these two situations are pretty much inverted — the proper analogy would be healthy animals being killed out of financial considerations. What does it say about Macron’s world view that he considers this a proper analogy, and that he sees businesses as organisms?

which to my mind indicates that Mélenchon is an unserious poseur, but then his enthusiasms for Hugo Chavez and his apologetics for Assad ought to have been a clue to that.

Or, even more worrysome, that he is not an unserious poseur, and actually stand by that.

Macron may well be an step forward in the neverending spiral toward some noeoliberal whatever the hell you want. That is not the question, right now. The question is, what the fuck are french leftiest going to tell their Muslim neighbourghs, for example, the day after a Le Pen win they did not oppose. “Sorry, but the dynamic of the social forces right now demand that you lot spend several years in fear for your life, tough luck”?

Get the disgusting nazi beaten, then oppose all the neoliberal stuff you want

Kicking the can down the road, managing and distributing the pain and disappointment equitably, trying to sustain support for international institutions and human rights, trying to foster reasonably tolerant intercommunal relationship is as good as it is going to get for the foreseeable future.

Ideally, maybe. But truth to be told, I don’t buy it that Macron will do that. I think inequality will continue to rise, workers rights and Frances social system will continue to erode, etc. until the unreasonable people win. And even then it is not guaranteed, c.f. Tsipras in Greece.

Some analysis of French society here https://www.city-journal.org/html/french-coming-apart-15125.html that will ring bells in USA and the UK.

It looks like Le Pen will get beaten in the final round, possible quite heavily. Elsewhere UKIP are going backwards in the UK, and AFD in Germany seem to be making no progress. Many will consider the failure of these parties to gain significant power a good thing, and I wouldn’t disagree, but the thing that stands out about, say UKIP, is that it is full of nutters, weirdos, people with some very unpleasant opinions and kitchen generals who have all the answers and answer to no-one. If ever one of these parties gets serious and finds a charismatic leader who can get their rag-tag armies to maintain some kind of discipline then they could make significant electoral inroads. As long as “mainstream” parties ignore the large section of society who are clearly not thriving then they are leaving fertile ground for some potentially seriously nasty parties, so they need to start reconnecting with a broad base as a matter of urgency.

I agree with Mario @41. Kicking the can down the road (with just a little more inequalities, a little less social mobility and not nearly enough attention paid to climate disruption and general environmental questions) means in all likelihood a little more Le Pen. In 15 years, it went from 18% to very probably above 35%. What happens in the next 15 years?

Get the disgusting nazi beaten, then oppose all the neoliberal stuff you want

That strategy appear suggest a good, if risky, counter for neoliberals: make sure there’s always a Nazi in the game…

Oh

If the centre-left/liberal ‘realists’ here believe that that kind of politics, or the mere passage of time, can ameliorate the deep sociological problems that the west is presently experiencing; or that those problems do not exist, and that the present upswing of radical nationalism, racism and protectionism is a superstructure standing on no ‘valid’ economic base, then I can see how Melenchon can easily be loathed for his hesitation to unambiguously endorse Macron in the face of fascism.

And indeed I hope we all agree that Macron must defeat Le Pen. The problem for the left, for whom Macronism is the fount and origin of the uglinesses presently producing fascist voters, is that whilst it is clear that Melenchon must muster his voters against Le Pen this cycle, he mustn’t allow a single working-class voter to imagine that he has any complicity whatsoever with the policies that Macron will then pursue. If the left allows itself to be conflated with or seen as a willing handmaiden of the ‘centre’, and loses ground in the “opposing Macronism” stakes relative to the radical right, then, whether she wins this time or no, in the long run, Le Pen has already won a French election.

To put it concretely: Macron’s the Tories, Melenchon’s Labour, Le Pen’s the SNP. It’s all very well for Unionists of the centre-right to insist that, for the sake of the UK, which is facing an existential threat, Labour must endorse ‘better together’. But when the Tory UK government later does as Tory UK governments are wont to do, how do you think Scotland will voice its opposition? And what is the long-term outcome for the Unionism in defence of which Labour tarnished its good name in the first place?

Labour must do the absolute minimum that they need do to ensure a unionist victory, and not the smallest thing more. If the polling says that that means they need do nothing, then, I’m afraid, so much the better.

Primadant @46

“Young Mélenchon voter here. It’s painful to see you dismiss all the progressive ideas of Mélenchon’s program just because he wants to renegotiate the European treaties.”

FWIW I also dismiss Melenchon because of his opposition to NATO and primitive anti-Americanism, his apologism for Vladimir Putin, demonisation of the Russian opposition and uncritical parroting of the Kremlin line on Ukraine (in the immediate aftermath of Nemtsov’s assassination no less) and policy of confiscatory taxation, which combines insurmountable obstacles to implementation with utterly ruinous consequences if ever actually tried. Combined with the Chavez and Assad snuggling Chris mentioned in the OP, I think this provides more than adequate evidence to support his conclusion that Melenchon is an unserious poseur.

faustusnotes @32

Melenchenomics even has a ready made onomatopoeic definition – an economy based on the bartering of melons and other foodstuffs for essential goods, because your country is led by a man who thinks Chavezism provides a model to emulate, rather than a cautionary example.

“He’s someone both committed to the EU and committed to changing it”

I certainly hope you’re right, but I’d be shocked. If the choice is between stifling monetary policy and helping the lower class get jobs, the Germans have made quite clear that we will be getting stifling monetary policy. If the choice is between job protections and community aid, Macron has already committed to dumping job protections. This is the same dynamic that led to Brexit–which is not to say that France will leave the EU, but rather that it is setting the stage for reactionary politics to be very powerful.

Politics is about priorities. Macron has made clear that his priorities are more on the side of globalization than redistribution. Again, this is the dynamic that led to Brexit–for too long the Party allegedly on the side of the workers chose to prioritize globalization while merely gesturing toward ameliorating the problems globalization caused. For decades they got the votes from leftists who were for the European project because in order to strongly support the European project you had to be willing to support parties who proclaimed they would do things about poverty and disadvantage, while acting otherwise. Who proclaimed they would have a proper regional policy but never did. Similarly, Democrats in the United States constantly prioritized globalization over dealing with the ill effects of globalization. I fully agree that much of globalization has been good for the country when seen as a whole. But at some point (and we are easily 30+ years into the project) you have to decide if FURTHER globalization or FURTHER deeper union ought to take priority over FINALLY starting to deal with globalizations ill effects.

The frustrating thing about the matter is that whenever the status quo pro-globalization candidate wins over a scary populist, we all breathe a sigh of relief and then go right on with the policies which increase the power of the scary populists.

A proper technocrat would say “hmmm, we seem to be alienating more and more people. That isn’t a sustainable course so we should probably take ameliorating action”.

Macron doesn’t give me the slightest reason to think that we are past that dynamic yet.

Manoel @ 52

“Why is Macron so different from Clinton and/or Blair?”

Where he is different is that he is effectively a liberal Bonapartist. Despite his origins as a career member of the administrative, financial and political elites, he made a deliberate decision to stand above party politics. This stance will both enable him to appeal to all shades of opinion and none, while at the same time governing as head of his own clique without any restraints from party members.

Contrary to his own propaganda, he is an ideal figure for the French establishment because he can ‘rule’ from the point of view of the technocracy while commanding a direct popular mandate. What will be interesting, given that he is unlikely to command significant support in the legislature, will be whether he seeks to mount his own 18th Brumaire, as head of the ‘party of order’ against the vicious extremes of Left and Right.

And that is the key- we should remember when centrists are claiming that the like of Melanchon are ‘unserious’ that Macron is every bit as opposed to the Left as he is the (Far)Right, and that in spite of all the fear-mongering liberal capitalism still holds all the levers of power in France.

john c. halasz @56

If ‘the BBC view of the world’ is one that condemns Putin’s invasion and territorial dismemberment of Ukraine as an act of aggression by a crypto-fascist regime, rather than spinning fantasies about ‘US mercenaries’ and echoing Kremlin propaganda outfits, I’ll take the BBC view of the world, thanks.

Are why, not “is why”. Oh well. Ranting and grammatically correct sentences probably shouldn’t go together anyway. Ruins the tone.

As an ideological leftist, I hope one day that leftist writers, activists, and politicians (to the extent there are any), will focus their energy on winning elections and exercising power, and not policing liberals and whining.

If Christopher Caldwell has a point, then politics is now becoming more about geography than traditional right/left orientation. It’s now centres versus peripheries. Look at the map of the French results on Le Point. Le Pen got up to 36% of the vote in the French equivalent of the Rust Belt. In central Paris her vote was tiny.
As we know, you can drive from the Oregon coast to Washington DC without passing through any county that went for Hillary.
But doing something about the pain of the periphery is not a simple task, as with homelessness in the centres.

Chris, by Rust Belt I meant the de-industrialised northern departments, from Pas de Calais eastward. That was where Le Pen got her biggest share of the vote. Her other stronghold is in the south-east, including Beziers, which at one time had the highest FN vote in France. I know Beziers, and the FN base in the south is indeed different. It very much overlaps with those who were voting for the French communist party thirty years ago.
Do you think there’s no validity to Caldwell’s centre/periphery argument? On the face of it, it explains the Brexit vote rather well.

As an aside, most of these analyses of the French election seem to proceed from the premise that he and his hopelessly unpopular policies are being foisted upon an unwilling French public by an unseemly alliance of discredited elites, and that this will inevitably come back to bite them in the form a resurgent FN. This requires us to overlook the minor matter of Macron winning the first round by a solid margin, while Le Pen came close to being knocked into third by Fillon. This would have been regarded as a highly improbably argument 2-3 months ago, and a rather powerful data point contra the ‘Macron is unpopular and helping the fascists’ thesis.

France isn’t the nation it was in 1799, or 1899, or even 1999. That said regional hostility towards Paris and regional economic disparity, and xenophobia of varying orders are very real factors in France today as they are in Britain and the UK. So, in my view the rust belt analogy holds – if we accept that the initial demand for an EU referendum and the results were an expression of the demand for change by the unhappy many who refused to ‘move to London’ and get with the program.
Macron is a band-aid and for reasons outlined well by various commenters, unlikely to do other than try to pretend all is well. The notion that Macron is a Bonapartist is a bit of a stretch. However, that doesn’t mean a Bonaparte isn’t exactly what many French want – no matter how unrealistic that dream may be. We can be grateful no such figure (currently) appears on the horizon. Franco ‘rebuilt’ Spain and remains a figure of adoration for the Spanish right. That’s what’s looming over the horizon if those left behind in France tire completely of the empty promises made by politicians kicking the can down the road.

@Sebastian H I certainly hope you’re right, but I’d be shocked. If the choice is between stifling monetary policy and helping the lower class get jobs, the Germans have made quite clear that we will be getting stifling monetary policy.

And Macron explicitly campaigned on hard monetary policy, stable budget and a generally “Schäuble-compatible” European position. That was even his first named priority in the summary in four points of his official campaign program. So I share your skepticism that he will suddenly flip on that position.

@Chris Bertram the claim that Béziers is like the US rustbelt is a clue to how seriously the article as a whole should be taken.

Chris, that is in turn not serious! Marine Le Pen is above 30% (and of course in the lead) in the arc Haute-Saône, Haute-Marne, Meuse, Ardennes, Aisne, Oise, Somme, Pas-de-Calais. That is as close to the French Rust Belt as one can get. In this arc, Macron is typically below 20%. She is also the leading candidate in 18000 French communes, while Macron leads in 7000 only (if memory serves). So there is absolutely no doubt that there is a very strong element of dynamic regions (mostly in the Western part of France) and within them dynamic cities against decaying regions and peripheries. Even the narrow claim of the article (which I went down to check) is that Béziers is “desertified”. That is absolutely and unequivocally true, to an extent that you would have a hard time to imagine if you haven’t been there in the last 20 years.

@john c. halasz And calling Marine LePen a “Nazi”, when she has, in fact, made considerable efforts to modernize…

Marine Le Pen did make considerable efforts to modernize the Front National and is an extremely guarded person herself. She is, however, surrounded in her close circle by genuine Nazis (the kind who celebrates Hitler’s birthday or post swastika on Facebook).

“xenophobic anti-Germanism” is a thing?

David @ 58 and others in a similar vein talk about ““keep the National Front out of power at any cost”, but at this point it really is Macron or Le Pen. It’s not a “May or Corbyn” / “Trump or Clinton” over-simplification the election, nobody has to not vote for their preferred candidate so that they can keep the far right out.

I’ve been there several times in the last 20 years, and was in the airport (rather than the town) last week.

Well then, didn’t you think it is having a hard time? Economy is far from being the sole explanatory factor, but: Béziers poverty rate 32% unemployment rate 20% median income 15k€; Antony (where I live, comparable size) poverty rate 7% unemployment rate 9% median income 28k€. Béziers : Le Pen 31% Mélenchon 20% Fillon 19% Macron 17%. Antony : Macron 34% Fillon 26% Mélenchon 17% Hamon (!) 7,8% Le Pen 7,6%.

“fighting side by side with Assad and the Russians” against ISIS, despite the fact that neither Assad nor the Russians have shown the slightest interest in doing either.

Except at Palmyra, north Aleppo, east Hama, Deir ez-Zor….

One can hold no brief for Assad (or Chavez) and still not mindlessly repeat things that are patently false.

I’ve not been reading much about the French elections. But I did see a while back (I think initially through a post at this blog) that Macron had stirred some controversy by referring to the French war in Algeria as a ‘crime against humanity’. Presumably the voters most upset by that were already going for Le Pen or maybe also (?) Fillon.

Not that this tidbit has much to do with the main issues, but I found it interesting.

Forgot the second paragraph, which follows:

Macron/Le Pen is not a genuine choice. Le Pen is not an economic populist nor is Macron an EU liberal idealist, except insofar as the EU is the ideal of a hard money, low/no deficit budget, labor discipline, cheap immigrant liberal. The whole point of liberal democracy (or neoliberal if you insist on the latest buzzwords,) is to make sure that there’s no real choice. The increased reaction promised by Le Pen will come under Macron because it is the French ruling class, like all bourgeois ruling classes everywhere, that is moving to the right. The French people as a whole are not likely to be moving rightward, but “the people as a whole” are the delusion of nationalism, aka democracy. The global economy cannot meet even the appetites of the wealthy, much less the needs of the many.

Chris Bertram @ 91

“Commentary from some people on the left really stinks of “third period” Stalinism, when the German SPD was characterized as no different from the Nazis.”

For God’s sake. The SPD, for all its faults, was a party of the organised working class, trying fruitlessly to strike some sort of bargain with ruling elites that were still sympathetic to the social and political world-view of Wilhelmine Germany.

Macron is a thoroughgoing member of France’s elite playing at anti-establishment politics in a country that is dominated by a liberal capitalist state and economy.

Stop trying to pretend that this is Weimar Germany and the early 1930s.

Mr Bertram, @91

You’re not interpreting all of your interlocutors as charitably as is possible. You needn’t accept that Macron’s policies will have the effect claimed, of course, as I made clear at the beginning of my last post. I’d just note that I wouldn’t know where to begin accounting for current political trends in the western world without referring to the policies of the contemporary consensus — utterly, perfectly instantiated in Emmanuel Macron — and that this being so, his candidacy doesn’t seem to me to bode well for France’s future.

And I for one have been crystal clear that you are right, temporary avoidance is better than certain death.

But I feel most spectacularly misconstrued when you assert that the left is claiming that Macron is no different from Le Pen — on the contrary, the whole trouble is that Macron and Le Pen both find a political strength that they would otherwise lack in advertising that they are indeed as unlike as two political forces can be. And the only solution to the terrible conclusion in which this is likely to issue is for the left to stress that it is at least as unlike either.

If I were to be uncharitable, I would say that ‘centre-left’ posters here understand that the left will step into the breach, if necessary, to help to deliver France from fascism. And that if they were looking at the situation dispassionately, they would see the logic in the left otherwise keeping as great a distance from Macron as is possible.
What they really cannot stand is that the left feel no enthusiasm whatsoever in supporting the policies in which they remain believers. And the implication that their politics, from which they are used to deriving some moral warmth, causes deep distaste to their onetime allies.

and @89
‘The whole point of liberal democracy (or neoliberal if you insist on the latest buzzwords,) is to make sure that there’s no real choice.’

Really? –
and as somebody – who always has the choice between:
a kind of a ‘open-minded empathetic (European) Society’
– with a truly ‘GREAT’ Life-Work balance –
– Very good pay for what I do –
‘GREAT’ and payable health care and –
very relaxing and long vacations –
compared to pretty much the opposite – in my homeland the US – I would say – there is a tremendous choice.

And as an even more pronounced type of choice between ‘small-minded nationalistic fascistic idiots’ and the complete opposite is existing inside a country like France –
the choice couldn’t be… yuuger in these times.

And I really, REALLY don’t understand people who think: ‘there is no choice’.

On what planet are they living?

– and about this funny –
what ‘the left’ got to do -(or not)?
From the perspective of an average American -(if there is something like it?) – the average – ‘liberal’ or lets say: ‘social-conscious’ European who loves her – or his ‘social net’ -(and everything which comes ‘with it’) – such a tolerant and open-minded European is:
‘A bloody Communists’ -(like ME) – and as I’m currently residing in a ‘State’ where ‘the Greens’ are governing and which is the State the closest to France – yes ‘the Left’ -(or ‘Greens’?) doing everything they are supposed to – being ‘solidaric with the workers’ – making sure that their wages and salaries are very, VERY livable – and throw in lots and lot’s of ‘healthy conscience’ for saving our earth too.

So what’s about that?

A French colleague I work with, who is very depressed about the state of his country, remarked that the election amounted to a choice between “a fascist, a fascist, and a really fascist fascist”.

It seems that the fascist and the really fascist fascist are now facing off, and the plutocrats are delighted by this (to judge by the markets) as they should be, since whoever wins the election they will benefit.

This discussion is so much a reprise of the arguments that led up to a Trump victory. “He can’t possibly win,” “He isn’t so bad,” “They’re both the same.” etc., etc., etc.

And then he did, he is, and he is not.

Fight the fascists. Fight them with all your heart and mind and soul. Remember that what is at stake is not peacetime policy, but the peace of Europe and the world itself.

It may be that reason is on holiday CB103 but there is a problem for the Left since the guidance to their voters needs to be something like, ‘Vote for Macron as the least bad and then be prepared for the next 5 years to oppose his social policies, his labour legislation, his foreign policy, his taxation policy . . .and so on’.
Then when your living and working standards are worse than now vote for us – while Le Pen says we are all part of an Establishment that doesn’t care for the country or its workers.

– and @104 –
the dilution of the term ‘fascist’ – that seems to be yuuge US speciality -(as wasn’t even Obama called ‘a fascist’ by some of US fellow Americans?)

From a contemporary German point of view it’s pretty easy to identify a real ‘Faschist’ or Neo(Nazi) – those are mostly ‘extremly nationalistic and smallminded antiliberal a…holes
who would love to destroy openminded modern and parlamentic democracies.
And on top of it they -(the Fschists) are pretty racist too.

So – just by a (superficial) comparison check of Le Pen and Macron – Le Pen comes out as a pretty solid ‘Faschist’ while Macron doesn’t.

“Stop trying to pretend that this is Weimar Germany and the early 1930s.”

This would be identical to the KPD’s position, in that it also underestimated the threat of a fascist authoritarian with disastrous consequences.

“a choice between “a fascist, a fascist, and a really fascist fascist”.”

Also identical to the Comintern’s justification for the anti-Popular Front policy.

“the plutocrats are delighted by this (to judge by the markets) as they should be, since whoever wins the election they will benefit.”

You are vastly misreading the markets. A Le Pen victory would be utterly disastrous for the French and European economy, and the reaction is largely due to the fact that Macron is on course to crush her.

“Look, if we must go in for facile cross-border analogies, this is like an election where David Miliband or maybe Nick Clegg are facing off against Nigel Farage. Anyone on who thinks that Miliband/Clegg should not be supported in such a contest on the grounds that they are “the cause of fascism” or “objectively fascist” is someone whose reason has gone on holiday (and may never return).”

That we’ve reached the point where Chris is envisaging scenarios where he would endorse a vote for Nick Clegg should serve as an indicator of how far off the deep-end of leftier-than-though purism we are here.

One more observation – Le Pen has resigned as leader of the FN. People with greater knowledge of the Front and French politics generally have told me that her ‘moderation’ strategy is not terribly popular with the hard-core of the party that makes up its activist base, and was tolerated only as a means to bring victory. If she loses, the result is likely that the FN adopts a ‘back to basics’ strategy, which strikes me as terribly unlikely to grow its support. That kind of undermines the ‘Macron – mid-wife of fascism’ argument, non?

‘the promise of a bright future and absolution of past sins Le Pen’s victory is not if, but when.’

What ‘Quatsch’!

Since the US elected a very ‘nationalistic and small-minded Clown’ – and a lot of Europeans got a very realistic ‘taste’ about – what such idiotic right-wing-rule means –
ALL the ‘Le Pens’ in Europe are thankfully – on the retreat!

Would could Le Pen actually achieve if she wins the 2nd round? How much support does she have in the NA for any of her program, such as she has one? Are we just going to get a long cohabitation with a President at odds with the legislature?

@108

My view of the UK GE is that the “no deal” wing of the Tory Party are so demented I have to vote Labour regardless of how bad I think Corbyn is. But I only have to mark a paper that I support the sitting Labour MP, and there’s not much danger of the Tories breaking through in this bit of West London.

@Mario and PGD

This is ancillary, but “a serious document detailing why Le Pen is a fascist in the dictionary sense of the word” would almost be a contradiction for obvious historical reasons. Serious documents detailing how the Front National emerged from the real, historic fascist segments of the French right and how, since then, it constantly campaigned (and governed, in the rare instances it could) on the idea of a France subjugated by foreign powers, threatened by immigration, losing its identity to multiculturalism, bankrupted by social programs and parasites, plagued by crimes and duped by leftists ideologues and teachers… and how only a strong(wo)man relying on the full extent of state power and violence can save it, you will find no shortage of.

Nazi is easier. I think everybody will agree that someone who expresses sympathy for the Nazis, for instance someone who deplores the death of Hitler, or who jokingly celebrates the Third Reich’s annihilation of the Jews is at the very least a Nazi-sympathizer. In that most literal sense, Marine Le Pen’s inner circle is populated by Nazi-sympathizers.

Daragh @ 111

Well, see, what you’ve said here is different. If you’re willing to reserve yourself to “we must ensure that Macron beats Le Pen – and enjoy a somewhat well-founded hope that in the aftermath the NF will implode,” well, as far as that goes, you and I can shake hands and leave it at that.

I only object when you go further and say that the present upswing in radicalism has no economic generators, and certainly not any rooted in the modern economic consensus; or that a dose of monsieur macron is either irrelevant to the present malaise or likely to alleviate it.

That attitude seems to me to be terribly dangerous. The left is needed right now, and probably before now. The ‘centre’ is emphatically ‘left-wing’, or an effective compromise with the left-wing, no longer, insofar as it ever was. If the left does not win at this juncture, the radical right will.

You can hold out for a technocratic or civil-society-based solution between this election and the next if you want to, and I don’t discount the possibility. But I rate it fairly low. And it would not say flattering things of your political principles if you had to hope on some extra-political deus ex machina, so wedded were you by conviction or interest to the present political and economic dispensation.

The second round vote is going to be similar to the way the brocialists imagine the 2016 US election: a racist populist who represents the interests of the rust belt (cough! goldman sachs cough!) vs. a classic militarist neoliberal. So if the French vote massively in favour of the militarist neoliberal and squish the fascist, what does that tell us about the difference in political attitudes between France and the USA? And can the “both sides do it” Putin leftists mount the same arguments about France as they can about the USA? By their lights Le Pen should win and a good thing too, because North Korea never did anything wrong and Assad is no worse than Obama and Le Pen will drain the swamp. But if she doesn’t – and if just two months later (or is it a month?) Corbyn’s labour get their arse handed to them, is it yet time to admit that Trotskyism is not a winning electoral formula? And the modern developed countries prefer “neoliberalism” to either Fascism or incompetent Granddad leftism, as represented by Corbyn and Sanders?

@casmilus Would could Le Pen actually achieve if she wins the 2nd round?

First of all, she won’t. Purely theoretically, if she did, her support in the Assembly would be very thin: for historical reasons, French electoral districts are drawn around the locally larger city so naturally gerrymanders the Front National vote (funnily, Macron’s En Marche, Le Pen’s Front National and Melenchon’s France Insoumise, movements, which do not have a single point of common agreement, would all gain if this system was changed to better reflect the composition of the electorate; so that might finally happen).
A more interesting question is the level of support Macron will get in the Assembly. Personally, I would completely rule out neither a hostile strict majority (making him powerless as soon as elected within current institutions) nor an overwhelming victory for his movement nor an intermediate situation in which he has to preside over a coalition.

@nastywoman Since the US elected a very ‘nationalistic and small-minded Clown’ […] ALL the ‘Le Pens’ in Europe are thankfully – on the retreat!

The original one is on the retreat by picking up more than a million voters since the last presidential election, with the most optimistic polls predicting another four to five millions new votes in the second round.

If your political priority is to defeat Le Pen, it’s not at all clear that you should be pleased with this outcome. Presumably, you’ld have been better served by a final election that was (a) between two candidates neither of which was Le Pen; or (b) between Le Pen and the candidate most likely to beat her. We certainly don’t have (a), and it’s not clear it’s (b) either, as Macron appears to be so unpopular with a segment of the left that we’re worrying they might defect to to Le Pen. So it looks more like we’ve got the worst and most alarming of the likely outcomes.

I found the tone of the original piece a bit over the top using phrases like “unserious poseur”; and then in followup comments goes the full Godwin’s Law with questionable comparisons with the Nazis.

The term “Fascist” has long been abused by the left to refer to anyone they don’t like, and is no longer at all informative, even if it once referred to actual political movements, such as Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

A non-serious politician is one who supports the Syrian government’s war against ISIS. A serious politician is one who supports Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthis.

Serious politician: supports Egypt’s dictatorship.
Non-serious: doesn’t reflexively oppose everything Putin does.

Peter T @85

“Except at Palmyra, north Aleppo, east Hama, Deir ez-Zor….”

I was under impression that ISIS had no significant forces involved in the battle of Aleppo. Ditto East Hama. Happy to accept correction if this isn’t the case.

ISIS repulsed the Deir ez-Zor offensive, which given the difficulties ground-based forces without effective anti-air capabilities have when faced with an opponent that has capable air forces on its side, suggests that neither the Russians nor the Syrians were putting their back into it.

You’re on slightly firmer ground with Palmyra, but the first time the Russians/SAA took the city was basically a quickie propaganda exercise so the Russians could claim they were fighting ISIS, get a few shots of Roldugin in front of some ruins, and then bug out to focus on Aleppo. The force the Syrian Arab Army left behind was so second rate ISIS retook it near the end of 2016 in 2 weeks. The Syrians then spent three months retaking it at the start of 2017.

So while may have I over-stated the case a bit, it is indisputably the case that the vast bulk of the Russian military effort in Syria, as well as that of the SAA has been directed towards the anti-Assad rebels, rather than ISIS. The initial actions specifically targeted the US backed, moderate rebels (relatively speaking – I’m sure I’d find most of their views pretty objectionable myself). In this, Moscow has simply been providing more firepower for the strategy Assad has been pursuing since before the start of the war – focus your efforts on massacring your most reasonable opponents and empowering the most bugf*ck extremists, then turn around and claim “Overthrow me? Are you mad! Then the most bugf*ck extremists will be in charge!” Putin knows the game because it was the KGB that taught the Mukhabarat how to play it.

You’ll also note that in the case of Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra (round two), that joint offensives commenced at the start of 2017. Palmyra (round one) was launched in March 2016. Tariq Ali was speaking in late 2015 when Russia was overwhelmingly focused on Aleppo except for a few token anti-ISIS strikes to provide propaganda cover – so still an ill-informed narcissistic tosser.

steven t johnson @118

“I would like to point out that in 1919 the SPD used the Freikorps to kill the precursors of the Communists”

You’re confusing the SPD with Gustav Noske.

“I’m not quite sure what kind of a political critique is implied by “narcissistic” by the way.”

This is… not surprising.

“Le Pen, unlike Berlinguer and Trump, is not one of the owners coming to push aside incompetent middle management”

It seems Trump has found yet another sucker to buy into his ‘I am a billionaire real-estate mogul, for reelz’ schtick. Free tip steven – a man who hocks a line of ‘five-star gourmet’ (sic) cheap steaks, sold at a home electronics store of all places, is highly unlikely to also be a paid up member of the oligarchy.

“it really does seem somewhat obtuse to forget that an essential goal of fascism is to mobilize the nation for conquest.”

[citation needed]

“Presumably I am the third period Stalinist”

Only in your pseudo-intellectual pretensions, opportunistic distortions of the historical record, and willingness to defend mass-murdering autocracies on the grounds that they are not ‘capitalist’.

@Daragh

Just of curiosity, if I may, what would you advise people do in the eventuality of a Mélenchon/Le Pen second round?

If you don’t like hypotheticals, in a month, there will be a number of electoral districts in which the candidates from Front National and from France Insoumise will be the two top candidates, perhaps followed very closely from the candidate from En Marche ! or Les Républicains (Béziers above might be such an electoral district). For the general Assembly, candidates placed third and sometimes fourth may maintain their candidacy in the second round if they wish to do so (subject to some conditions of course).

Any advice on what the candidate from En Marche ! and her voters should do? Does it change something if in other situations with order reversed the France Insoumise does not withdraw her candidacy? I admit I would be very pleased to see you write that the candidate should obviously withdraw its candidacy and that electors should obviously vote for France Insoumise and be quite disappointed if the question “Should the anti-fascist left collaborate with anti-fascist liberals and centrists in order to prevent fascists coming to power?” should suddenly prove to be difficult.

steven t johnson

I am not a member of the CT commentariat.

I do not understand this statement. It conveys no clear meaning to me. I reread it — in context again — in case it became clearer to me, but I only experienced a mild sense of hallucinatory disorientation. I would much appreciate any possible clarification.

Just to be clear, on the main point of this post I am a lesser of two evils voter so I would support the centrist Macro despite his ” serious” stance on the Middle East, even if I think his views are awful.

But in partial response to Daragh, John Kerry explicitly said that Russia entered the Syrian war to prevent Isis from winning. He also said that he US stood by and watched the rise of Isis, hoping it would pressure Assad to negotiate but instead he got Putin to help. You can hear this at minute 26 on the tape below.

Minute 25 also has some interesting admissions from Kerry and another American that the US, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey on the rebel side poured vast amounts of weapons into Syria and that this led to weapon imports on the other side and more deaths. This is the Serious foreign policy we hear so much about.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e4phB-_pXDM

Old Jim — I agree that “Griffin” would have been a better comparison than Farage, but clearly CB was speaking loosely and off the cuff. Farage is good enough. I’m really impressed with the person who thinks that Clegg would push the British economy leftward; not sure I disagree with that, but still it’s generous. And, if we were face with a choice between Osborne or Laws and Griffin, I wouldn’t have to think for a second. Would anyone here really have to?

CB is obviously not enthusing about Macron as some ideal wonderful leftish candidate; and equally obviously expressing relief and pleasure that, even though Le Pen got through, the one candidate who can crush her (and looks as if, by contemporary standards, he will be a fairly standard sane representative of the ruling class) also got through. I shared that relief and pleasure; not because I am particularly hostile to Melenchon (sorry, can’t figure out how to do the accent), but because his success would have created an opening for Le Pen. That he (Melenchon) is hesitating to support Macron now is dispiriting.

even though Le Pen got through, the one candidate who can crush her (and looks as if, by contemporary standards, he will be a fairly standard sane representative of the ruling class) also got through

Where does this come from? The projections I saw showed Mélenchon (and Fillon) beating Le Pen.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20170420/french-presidential-election-the-six-unprecedented-scenarios-facing-france-from-patriots-vs-globalists-to-armageddon

Faustusnotes: The only country I can think of where there has been a genuine choice in recent times between a socialist and a fascist was in Greece.

If Melenchon had won, we’d have seen if liberals could vote for the lesser evil. You seem to assume that they wouldn’t.

Melenchon (sorry, can’t figure out how to do the accent),

All you have to do is find it or create it anywhere else with the accent, Copy, and then Paste here, like this:
Mélenchon

Z would know the terrain much better than an outsider like me, but the idea that Marine Le Pen hangs out with the old guys exchanging Nazi jokes doesn’t square with the available (if mostly Anglophone) reporting. She’s side-lined her old man and apparently doesn’t speak with him, (unlike her niece Marion who reportedly still gets along famously), and reportedly her key adviser/confidant Florian Phillipot is both an Enarch and gay, hardly traditionalist. It’s true that in her efforts to modernize and de-demonize her inherited party, thereby expanding her appeal and “base”, she actually risks splitting it between the old guard and the new, (many of whom in the north especially were or would have been SP or PCF voters). But I think the faux pas she made toward the end of the campaign is symptomatic: that the French were not responsible for the deportation of Jews during the War because the legitimate government was in London, a Gaullist myth and a far cry from the anti-Gaullist Poujadist beginnings of the FN. (I would even guess she has a fair amount of Jewish support, since most French Jews are North African Sephardics who might be susceptible to her to her appeals).

But I have no wish to defend MLP, other than to note that, having grown up in a thoroughly political, if odd and broken, family, she’s a fairly adept politician, (which isn’t exactly a good thing in my book). What I do object to is the utterly ahistorical application of fascist or Nazi to any sort of right populism, in order to forcibly align sundry leftists with the “liberal” status quo. (At a local lefty discussion group, I objected to the same move against Trump, saying he’s a right libertarian far more continuous with the Republican right in everything but style, which as a sociopathic con-man, he’s just blown the lid off of, and such a trope just serves to align the U.S. left, marginal, but growing, with the Dembots, who want to hold on to their power apparatus at all costs and evade responsibility for their own abject failures. If there’s an analog, it’s Berlusconi, not Mussolini, and if there’s any question of “neo-fascism”, it’s of a decidedly post-modern sort- at which point they laughed, as if “post-modernism” were just an intellectual fashion, rather than a “superstructural” symptom of broader socio-structural evolutions). My basic point is that such reflexive labeling, though peculiarly comforting by virtue of donning models and clothing from the half-remembered historical past, does little to to clarify and analyze current situations. (Though there are real fascist parties with clear roots in the War, such a Jobbik in Hungary- 20+% or Golden Dawn in Greece).

But my initial intervention here was to note the pro-Euro vs. anti-Euro split in the initial vote, (which is a reverse mirror image of the Brexit vote, Cameron’s not Corbyn’s fault). From my far distant perspective, that is the crucial issue, functionally rather than ideologically. (The Italian banking crisis is being papered over by the EU “authorities” until this election season is past, but that is likely the next big financial “shock” and not just for Europe). Ignoring that in the name of “normative” idealism and misplaced moralizing, (a standard liberal mind-set), strikes me as just blame ignorant. This I think is a fair reading of what Macron amounts to, ( though maybe I’m just linking to it so Faustnotes head will rotate 380 degrees at increasing rpms until s/he emits some effluvium):

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/31/big-stakes-in-the-french-presidential-election-governance-versus-the-people/

That Chris Bertram is now an acolyte of such “post-democracy” (Colin Crouch) to the extent of smearing Melenchon as a Chavista amd therefore unserious and “narcissistic” is one of the interesting things I’ve learned from this thread. But I suppose I’ve never put much stock in these quadrennial plebiscites on which the people are to be herded like sheep to the slaughter into procrustean electoral systems in order to produce “legitimacy” for prevailing power relations. When Niklaus Luhmann first proposed 50 years ago his theory of self-referentially self-legitimating political elites, based on a sheer sociological functionalism modeled by general systems theory, it seemed nuts. This guy doesn’t even understand the meaning of the word/concept “legitimacy”. But nowadays, however loopy, it seems prophetic. But for ordinary citizens forced to make impossible choices for their fearless leaders, not lesser evilism, a Hobson’s choice, but double binds, a Sophie’s choice, my only advice is don’t identify with them and their media-manufactured “charisma”. Politics has become the last refuge for magical thinking in an otherwise thoroughly disenchanted world: it’s the same for Obama voters as for Trump voters.

steven t johnson @ 118:

I checked it out and Enrico Berlinguer was indeed from a Sardinian noble family of Catalan descent. Some of his forebearers were supporters of Garibaldi and Mazzini and collateral relatives became Christian Democratic notables. A much different background than the great Sardinian himself. But he youthfully joined the anti-fascist resistance and then the PCI and was probably the most effective and popular PCI leader of the post-war era. (What happened later after his death and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R to the PCI I don’t claim to understand). But your conflating him with Trump only serves to demonstrate that you are the hardest and most retrograde of hard leftists. Congratulations! I don’t think you’ll find much competition there.

J-D @ 137:

Don’t listen to what I’m saying. A paradoxical injunction. It’s just another version of the ancient Greek Cretan liar’s paradox. I always liked Wittgenstein’s response to that: yes, one can go back and forth on that forever, but so what? Reading between the lines: why would anyone say such a thing with the aim of conveying any meaning whatsoever? If there is no such context in any natural language, then such an utterance could have no illocutionary force, which is equivalent to no semantic meaning. (Corollary: meaning is never a purely logico-semantic issue alone).

You’re confusing the SPD with Gustav Noske.

This is pathetic.

For those who find Dissent too left-wing:
http://www.businessinsider.com/macron-is-a-risky-bet-for-france-and-europe-2017-4

Faustusnotes, don’t you think that the only effectual way to destroy right wing politics is to provide an alternative so attractive that people will vote for it? So long as the alternative to the sleazy extreme right wing is the sleazy slightly less extreme right wing, the idea of destroying right wing politics isn’t even a fantasy, it’s a mental illness.

Daragh– what was Kerry wrong about? He said Russia entered to prevent a ISIS victory. He is an unlikely apologist for Putin. He also says in the tape that he lost the Administration fight for more intervention, so he isn’t some lefty Assad apologist. He also says along with some other American in the room that we and others have supplied enormous quantities of arms to the rebels and it has made things worse. Is that wrong?

To me discussions of the Mideast have gone full almost full circle back to 2002. We aren’t yet at the point of talking about full scale invasions, but I suspect mainly because the politicians know how unpopular that would be with voters.

– or perhaps is it the funny conditioning of fellow Americans to think in this funny ways of some ‘lesser evil’ – while the French -(and most other Europeans) – just have too many different ‘parties’ or socio-political choices – that they can’t bother with some foolish thoughts – which of the many ‘choices’ are lesser – and lesser – and lesser evil’?

And so the French just concentrated -(like most ‘sane voters in a democracy) on electing the dude -(or the ‘chick’?) they liked most –
Or to give the ‘politics-interested’ here their due: ‘on electing the ‘politician’ whose ‘politics’ they like most – and for sure ‘all politicians are bad, bad, bad -(or use all these funny words our self proclaimed ‘Stalinists’ or ‘Whatevers’ like to use?) – with my absolute favorite – what john c. halasz on the 04.26.17 at 7:02 wrote:

‘What I do object to is the utterly ahistorical application of fascist or Nazi to any sort of right populism, in order to forcibly align sundry leftists with the “liberal” status quo.

As the ‘liberal status quo’ in France might mean a two hour lunch with so called French ‘Communists’ – AND Wine! – we might enjoy our ‘forcible alignment’?

@ harry b even though Le Pen got through, the one candidate who can crush her […] also got through

I guess that if one believes 1) that it was impossible to defeat Le Pen in the first round and 2) that Macron was the only one able to secure a crushing victory, or at least a decisive victory, or at least a victory against her, then the outcome was the best possible. I believed neither 1) nor 2) so I’m not overjoyed. While recognizing that this judgment has no bearing on their actual truth, 1) and 2) are also incredibly depressing.

@ Daragh Thanks for you answer (and kudos on your principled opposition to nationalism).

Meanwhile, La Manif pour Tous and Sens Commun (the catholic Trumpist wing of Fillon’s electorate, for a lack of better analogy) declared it was impossible to choose between Le Pen and Macron and at the same time that, well let me quote them directly: “Pour les familles, pour les enfants, pour l’avenir, le 7 mai : Macron, c’est non !”

@ john c halasz Marine Le Pen hangs out with the old guys exchanging Nazi jokes

Your sources are right, she doesn’t hang out with the old guys as her father did, she hangs out with the young guys. Google Alex Loustau or Frédéric Chatillon, or read “Marine est au courant de tout…” That said, you are right that Florian Philippot is still something else entirely: from the souverainiste left, young, elite-educated, impeccably self-controlled in terms of racism or xenophobia, obviously clever and a talented debater…

john c. halasz@149 It was a lapse to type “Berlinguer” for “Berlusconi,” the comparison to Trump I intended. How stupid of me! But I have very little use for Berlinguer, not least because there’s no reason to think Berlinguer was an effective leader of the PCI. His “success” in holding offices was precisely because he was ineffective in policy. He basically reduced the PCI to a clean government, anti-corruption party, but how you could think he was effective at reducing corruption in Italian politics escapes me.

As for being the hardest and most retrograde of the left? Thanks for the compliment but I’m much too old to really qualify. Also, my KISS program has dwindled over the decades to “Kill all the billionaires!” This is much too crude to be genuinely leftist, even for a KISS slogan. But on the bright side, you did at least get right there is no competition for the title of “hard,” that is, genuine leftist at CT.

@Daragh 160

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Ronald Reagan open his 1980 election campaign at a town famous for the murder of Civil Rights campaigners? And didn’t he tell the attendees at that event that he believed in states’ rights? How is that any different from Trump?

Far left deplorables open door to Le Pen victory, via the NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/world/europe/france-melenchon-macron-le-pen.html?_r=0

Three options: blank ballot, abstention, or right-light. Given the level of vitriol we’ve witnessed since Brexit, it isn’t too difficult to imagine a sizeable chunk of Mélenchon’s supporters sitting May 7th out. If this happens and Le Pen attacts the centre-right and women, she could take it. It could be very, very tight. Two weeks is a long time and Mélenchon may yet change his position, but at the moment the prospects of fake reform can kicking look far less certain. The German press (sorry too tired to link) is convinced that the FN supporters will definitely show up at the polls and are also voicing fears that Macron’s frankly bizarre appeals to voters may fall on deaf ears.

Daragh: A stance shared with US left-wingers tried in both 2000 and 2016, with absolutely no negative repercussions whatsoever.

This isn’t true of either of those elections. The significant factors in 2000 were massive vote suppression in Florida and the terrible UX of the ballots.

In 2016 there is zero evidence that the left did anything other than vote for Clinton in swing states. Hillary lost due to a combination of the ineptness of her campaign (the book Shattered is a very enlightening, if depressing, read) and in ability to get working class Democrats to vote for her in swing states (which again was in part due to the ineptness of her campaign – they didn’t do the basic get out the vote stuff that Obama’s campaign did in 2008 and 12).

Daragh clearly knows little about the modern Republican party and it’s supporters. I wish I was so lucky, but I live in the South so it’s inescapable. Trump’s racial and authoritarian rhetoric was pretty bog standard Republicanism, particularly in the South. What was unusual was the economic populism (and also why he won the nomination – he was simply articulating the views of a large chunk of the working/middle class Republican party).

As for what Trump actually believes, who can say.

@167
‘The German press (sorry too tired to link) is convinced that the FN supporters will definitely show up at the polls and are also voicing fears that Macron’s frankly bizarre appeals to voters may fall on deaf ears.’

Did you mean: ‘l´appel du vide’? -(‘The Joy of Self-Deconstruction’)
As some in the German Press – ask IF their friendly French neighbors are – indeed ‘THAT desperate – that they are willing to jump off the cliff together with the:

‘I really don’t like anybody who isn’t ‘French’ and especially not those Germans and Americans – but the Americans I currently like better BE-cause they already erected the same a…hole I am!

there is no competition for the title of “hard,” that is, genuine leftist at CT.

I have been forgotten, even as a poseur.

Harry B @ 141, 166

Obviously, I too must object that polling consistently showed Melenchon to beat Le Pen in a putative second round between them; and I find your gloss on what Chris B has said a little more conciliatory than is credible – not that I need to be conciliated, and I hope that I don’t come across as though I do! Otherwise, I have no objection to what you have put as you have put it.

Ms McIntoah @ 169

Do you really mean that? It doesn’t strike me as terribly credible that Melenchon’s consultation of his voters stems from some actual principled attitude towards mass democratic participation – he hasn’t countenanced allowing his supporters to reply that he should endorse Le Pen (not that I’m saying that he should!) — the options, as I understand them, are 1) Macron, 2) Abstain, 3) Spoiled ballot, so clearly he is only seeking consensus within a window of views that he considers acceptable. Equally, it seems obvious to me that Melenchon doesn’t really change much with this ‘consultation’ – he was never actually in a position to compel his electors to turn en bloc to another candidate: all he does in offering or withholding endorsement is to provide those who care for his opinion with advice; in soliciting advice on that advice from his voters, what he has chosen to do is to render manifest and reflect back to his constituency the differences of opinion already subsisting within it.

In other words, the purpose isn’t to endorse only that which his electors advise him to endorse, out of high democratic principle; not really. The purpose is to avoid the risky business of changing minds either way altogether; and so to avoid either materially aiding the NF by actually advocating abstention on the one hand, or losing credibility as an opponent of liberalism by supporting Macron on the other.

In short, he is risking the small difference that he could make for Macron in this election to retain elements of his constituency that he would otherwise lose in the next. How you feel about that depends a great deal on how sure you are that Macron will win in any case, how you feel about Macron as a candidate, and how necessary you feel it is to keep Melenchon’s constituency intact for the future. I don’t disapprove, but I don’t think that he’s acting the noble democrat here. Insofar as it’s more than a fit of pique or an attack of scrupulosity, it’s simply a political calculation.

john c. halasz
If your aim was to convey no clear meaning to me and leave me feeling more confused and disoriented than before, then congratulations! you have succeeded admirably.

Seems like a strange hobby, though.

ultimately, I have trouble believing Ryan hates people for the colour of their skin, rather than hating them for the content of their bank accounts. Trump and his senior lieutenants appear to be true believers, who seek to proactively harm minority communities.

it is weird to trust one’s mind-reading capacity enough to determine that Trump, who worked with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on and off for years earlier in his career, and made his money in all kinds of ethnically diverse settings, is a real soul-deep racist hater while Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan just act that way for show sometimes. I mean, who the hell really knows, but I don’t see the grounds in the public record to make this kind of judgement.

Ronald Reagan and GW Bush did a lot of damage to this country. Until Trump does as much or more it seems to me the jury is out on where he stands in the Republican wreckers pantheon.

The Lenin worse than the Tsar argument of the banned Brett ignores two things —

WWI, which killed some people in civilized fashion

And the Russian Civil War in which the pro Tsar forces were as bad as the Bolsheviks. They just lost. If they had won, how nice would the have been to the losers or anyone they suspected was on the wrong side? Or to Jews?

So both sides were murderous.

“proposition that slavery was an objective good, life would be better if the Confederacy had triumphed, and minorities need to be constantly reminded of this so they know their place”

Firstly, there was always a minority of people who went along with this mode of thought. Secondly, there’s a larger number of people who have arrived at the conclusion that ‘minorities need to know their place’, either because they were nativist in some way, or they felt that ‘equality’ had gone ‘too far’.

Ultimately to the extent Trump and his coterie are able to succeed while adopting these beliefs is a reflection on the fact that there is some electoral advantage to holding these views, while simultaneously you are unlikely to get punished too badly by ‘traditional’ republicans for holding these views, as long as you go along with the orthodoxy they believe in be it tax cuts/abortion/supreme court appointees or whatever.

So in that sense, the idea that Trump is just a standard republican politician with a racist spin isn’t that much of a stretch. Chait’s article says as much:

“Trump’s ethnonationalism reverses a trend in the Republican Party: Beginning with Bush, it had repudiated its Southern strategy and attempted to craft a racially inclusive message that would broaden the constituency for its oligarchic economic agenda. ”

One reading of the above is that Trump is just a return to Republican ‘business as usual’ and to the extent that Bush was racially inclusive it was a historical anomaly (as he also points out – a lot of Trumps policies are just extensions of what Bush did while in office).

I note the cynicism on Melenchon’s motives on consulting the membership of FI. However he did stop the crowd chanting his name in Marseille and tell them they were not devotees of his but the people carrying the programme; and that he wanted to cure people of the mania of expecting the perfect man to lead them. They should count on their own strength. His position was one where the candidate commits to respecting and implementing the programme.
He would have been accused of hypocrisy if he had done anything else but seek the views of those supporting the FI programme on next steps. It may be our failing that we want to be bewitched by ‘strong and stable’ leaders who act like our Mammy’s and tell us what to do.

EM @189

Wasn’t aware that I was attacking Melenchon’s motives. I was merely noting that it’s a two-person fight in which abstention, or spoiling your vote and pretending its not abstention, is an effective vote for Le Pen. Only a vote for Macron is a vote against Le Pen. Melenchon is smart enough to know this, or at least was in 2002. His willingness to pretend otherwise is pretty cynical IMO, and that you’re bypassing the argument entirely for a rather caricatured version of your opponents indicates you might be aware of this too.

“This election is a referendum for or against France. I call on you to vote for France, not Mr Macron…who will lead to its destruction,”

La nation, ou le roi – with Macron cast as traitor/tool of les aristocrates et l’Autrichienne.

If the FN leader had a different family name she’d definitely win.

it’s a two-person fight in which abstention, or spoiling your vote and pretending its not abstention, is an effective vote for Le Pen

Why does Le Pen get to count the abstentions and spoiled papers as effective votes for her but Macron doesn’t? Seems a bit unfair…

There are plenty of stickers on lamp-posts in Paris pointing out that it was partly Macron’s fault that Hollande’s government became so unpopular, and now Macron has benefitted from the unpopularity of Hollande and the PS.

engels, le pen gets to count the spoiled votes because conservatives don’t waste their vote. They will vote for her even though she’s queen of the thugs because they have a focus and no principles. That’s why when it comes down to these crappy situations the left has to stop dicking around and behave like adults.

engels @195

Melenchon has already argued FI voters could never possibly support Le Pen and for the vast majority of them I suspect he’s right – they’re anti-fascists after all. Therefore, if they abstain rather than holding their nose, that’s one less vote Le Pen needs to win. Unless there’s an even-farther-to-the-right candidate than Le Pen urging abstaining and throwing the election to Macron that I’m not aware of, I’m happy putting the abstainers in her camp.

OldJim @196

My apologies – my post wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean to suggest you were unaware of the electoral dynamics, I meant to imply Melenchon was. One more hair off the splitting table!