The France Thread: Oui Oui, Bonbons and all that bad stuff 🇫🇷

[Liu Kang]

As @Liu Kang said, it's mad complicated lol

Basically,

1) Far-right gets 50% of the seats +1 => absolute majority and their own Prime Minister, who will name most of the other ministers. At this point, the Far-right can basically do whatever they want, except what's unconstitutional... But from their own admission, they plan to destroy or limit the Constitutional Council charged to block unconstitutional laws.

2) Far-right gets less than [50% of the seats +1] but more seats than other groups => relative majority, so to make a law pass, they're forced to make alliances with other groups (or try to force it through with executive orders which is not appreciated).

First scenario is terrible, 2nd scenario is very bad because beef runs so deep between the different groups that alliances may be impossible, making the country impossible to govern (in the sense of making laws pass) for a full year at least (up until Macron can dissolve the Assembly again). This would increase the risk of tensions, that are already high, ramping up.

With all the candidates dropping to avoid 3 ways with RN, the estimate for them seems to be maxing out at 240 seats out of 577. RN already talking more about option 2.

I watched a show today that said that Macron may even accept a RN PM, if they have 260 instead of 288 seats but that looks very unlikely right now. We never know but if they score lower than 240, they would greatly be limited but I don't know how the government will work lol

 

[mbewane]

I agree with you but I am not sure the average French person thinks like this. Look at how easy most of France folded to the Nazi regime during WW2. All of that Art & Culture is a mask, they are asthe other Europeans.

Oh for sure. What I mean is that the media attacks on the NFP is at an insane level that has increased the level of even more, and the fact that the President himself has participated in it is wild

 

[Liu Kang]

Definitely but I think that you also must take into account that with Melenchon fading away, the NFP gets less support from the inner city which was moved by his loyalty to antiracism and anticolonialism (and criticizes Ruffin who they perceive as a class reductionist essentially). With him in the background or straight up refusing to be prime minister, they lose part of that electorate and I also doubt you'd get such a high participation rate, especially among the youth.

I definitely agree that Melenchon draws turnout for the left and the youth. But he equally draws repulsion from anywhere else... They gotta run the numbers but at one point he has to be a net negative for LFI.

A couple of years ago, I read some INSEE stats that said there were like 6M people living in housing estates so it's probably 7M these days.

Number of voters in France is 50M out of 70M. Say 70%. The population of the quartiers is younger than average so that number is likely lower but let's say there are 5M voters there.

Is it worth it for LFI to maximize those 5M rather than trying to make gains with the remaining 45M ? I feel they are creating their own ceiling and greatly limiting their potential and Melenchon seems hell bent on fighting that fight and honestly I don't get it.

Sunday, RN got 10M+ votes out of 33M (66% overall turn out). They swept the countryside and are sweeping the post-industrial North which should vote left.

 

[DrBanneker]

I definitely agree that Melenchon draws turnout for the left and the youth. But he equally draws repulsion from anywhere else... They gotta run the numbers but at one point he has to be a net negative for LFI.

A couple of years ago, I read some INSEE stats that said there were like 6M people living in housing estates so it's probably 7M these days.

Number of voters in France is 50M out of 70M. Say 70%. The population of the quartiers is younger than average so that number is likely lower but let's say there are 5M voters there.

Is it worth it for LFI to maximize those 5M rather than trying to make gains with the remaining 45M ? I feel they are creating their own ceiling and greatly limiting their potential and Melenchon seems hell bent on fighting that fight and honestly I don't get it.

Sunday, RN got 10M+ votes out of 33M (66% overall turn out). They swept the countryside and are sweeping the post-industrial North which should vote left.

I know France by law does not collect statistics based on racial categories but who do most Blacks/metis or Arabs vote for?

 

[Liu Kang]

I know France by law does not collect statistics based on racial categories but who do most Blacks/metis or Arabs vote for?

It's impossible to say directly but you could indirectly find where most immigrant/african-born people lives and have an quick estimate.

To make it short, they would very likely vote for the left, on average LFI first then Socialist party. That's if we have a look at the European elections early june when people actually voted for a party because for the snap elections LFI, Socialist party, Greens and Communist party are under one banner called NFP.

In my county, there is a run off and the first candidate is NFP and the second is Macron's party. My county has plenty of housing estates and is on average more black/arab than France. You could extrapolate this to all the banlieues around Paris, Lyon, Lille ou Marseille where there are some RN pockets but it's mostly NFP.

The real divide is city/countryside because cities are mostly a mix of banlieues/middle class/educated people (with licence/master degrees I mean) while the countryside has very low immigration yet less middle class/educated people. It's a very rough picture obviously but it would be to complicated to go into details

There was this reddit post 2 weeks ago that makes it very clear tho


Red = LFI
Pink = Socialists
Brown = RN
Yellow = Macron
Blue = Republicans

You can see all the metro areas quite clearly :
Paris in the center, Lille up North, Bordeaux and Toulouse southwest, Lyon and Marseille southeast. Nantes and Rennes in the West. Strasbourg in the East

 

[trap101-ETHout-Allegri-In]

As @Liu Kang said, it's mad complicated lol

Basically,

1) Far-right gets 50% of the seats +1 => absolute majority and their own Prime Minister, who will name most of the other ministers. At this point, the Far-right can basically do whatever they want, except what's unconstitutional... But from their own admission, they plan to destroy or limit the Constitutional Council charged to block unconstitutional laws.

2) Far-right gets less than [50% of the seats +1] but more seats than other groups => relative majority, so to make a law pass, they're forced to make alliances with other groups (or try to force it through with executive orders which is not appreciated).

First scenario is terrible, 2nd scenario is very bad because beef runs so deep between the different groups that alliances may be impossible, making the country impossible to govern (in the sense of making laws pass) for a full year at least (up until Macron can dissolve the Assembly again). This would increase the risk of tensions, that are already high, ramping up.

How much media influence does the RN possess? I ask because when I was there all the newsstands I walked by for the most part had posters and cover stories about "fighting for democracy" in some iteration or another. Same with the little bit i saw in TV. I think it was TF1 that I had my tv tuned to....

 

[Liu Kang]

How much media influence does the RN possess? I ask because when I was there all the newsstands I walked by for the most part had posters and cover stories about "fighting for democracy" in some iteration or another. Same with the little bit i saw in TV. I think it was TF1 that I had my tv tuned to....

We have two types of free TV channels, the 6 historic ones (TF1, France 2, and 3, Canal+, France 5 / Arte, M6) and the TNT ones which were created in the 2000s and were 100% digital.

Of the 6 main ones, TF1, Canal+ and M6 were private channels and the others were public ones. TF1 and M6 were always right wing while Canal+ was mostly left wing. The public channels were government backed so they kinda were centrist though I feel they had a left bias.

These days, the issues are coming from Bolloré owned media that he has been purchasing slowly and steadily to pull a Murdock strategy of using his media (TV, radio and newspaper) to push his far right ideology.

He is a christian conservative billionnaire and this past 10 years, he has bought Canal+, almost bought M6 and got 2 channels on the TNT network that are C8 and CNews. He backs RN HARD with it and doesn't hide it.

C8 is simply the top TNT channel and CNews is the top 24/7 news channel there so they are very popular though not as much as the historic ones. TF1, France 2 and M6 being the top 3 in that order.

CNews is basically a mix of Fox News and Newsmax as there truly is some batshyt stuff being broadcast there.

I don't watch TV these days but when I was younger, TF1 was clearly backing Republicans so I'm a bit surprised they are talking RN down.

 

[MischievousMonkey]

I definitely agree that Melenchon draws turnout for the left and the youth. But he equally draws repulsion from anywhere else... They gotta run the numbers but at one point he has to be a net negative for LFI.

A couple of years ago, I read some INSEE stats that said there were like 6M people living in housing estates so it's probably 7M these days.

Number of voters in France is 50M out of 70M. Say 70%. The population of the quartiers is younger than average so that number is likely lower but let's say there are 5M voters there.

Is it worth it for LFI to maximize those 5M rather than trying to make gains with the remaining 45M ? I feel they are creating their own ceiling and greatly limiting their potential and Melenchon seems hell bent on fighting that fight and honestly I don't get it.

Sunday, RN got 10M+ votes out of 33M (66% overall turn out). They swept the countryside and are sweeping the post-industrial North which should vote left.

For sure. I figured approximately the same thing about the real weight the hood holds as an electorate; it's significant but not a crazy number.
And it's probably a calculus all parties do.

(I also think that on one hand, the youth go beyond the hood and it seems to me Melenchon strikes a chord among them all over. The Palestinian cause, for example, also resonates for young people outside the inner city, and he's by far the most prominent political figure that doesn't dance around on the topic.)

But besides that, how many out of the 45M that aren't already convinced by LFI are really only deterred by Melenchon?
I believe he may just be a good excuse for a substantial opposition to the principles LFI holds, whether it'd be anti-imperialism/anti-racism, social justice or going beyond a soft soc-dem approach when it comes to fighting neoliberalism.

When it comes to RN or even Macronists, I don't think people vote for them because they hate Melenchon or because they think he's antisemitic. They altogether despise what LFI represents.

I mean, just look at how the media and the rest of the political spectrum attacks Rima Hassan or other members of the party. Don't you think that there's a significant chance that if he was to move away, they'd just focus their attack on the next person? (with the reassurance that they CAN make people disappear from the political landscape?)

So all in all, I doubt there's that much to gain in him disappearing, but there's definitely something to lose. And as marginal as it may seem right now, I don't think LFI wants this growing and solidifying electorate to get disenchanted with the party before it has time to develop.

 

[MischievousMonkey]

How much media influence does the RN possess? I ask because when I was there all the newsstands I walked by for the most part had posters and cover stories about "fighting for democracy" in some iteration or another. Same with the little bit i saw in TV. I think it was TF1 that I had my tv tuned to....

A lot.

The thing is, they have a huge control of the Overton window when it comes to the topics and angles discussed in mainstream media. So even if a TV channel for example is not directly committed to their cause, it follows their agenda.

This is the result of the privatized rightwing/far-right media racking up numbers and the rest of the state-owned media companies having to compete with them (with decreasing resources). Another consequence of neoliberalism.

What you're seeing with TF1 and the cover stories is pretty much the same thing the Macronists are doing: after playing up the RN, talking about their candidates and ideas more than any other and participating directly in normalizing their ideas, in the last moment, they try to stand against what they talked up for years.

Btw, one of the priorities of the far-right is to completely privatize media, so that rightwing billionaires swoop in and collect. They know how important it is for their ideas.

A significant part of the media is owned by rich conservatives that have no qualms about pushing their agenda. Several large TV channels like CNews for example, which would be a Fox News equivalent, but also a lot of popular journals and magazines, are owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré whose companies make bank in Africa in transport and port concessions (and have been making money there since the XIXth century colonial period).
He doesn't shy away from influencing the editorial direction of his media which caters to the far-right.

But he and other lobbies don't deserve all the blame imo since even state media, another large part of the media apparatus, also delves into far-right/right-wing perspectives in the same fashion the government does.

All in all it seems like it's the far-right that dictates, even indirectly, what cultural wars will be discussed in the media, which puts the rest of the political spectrum in a defensive position at best.

 

[88m3]

the panels on F24 I've been watching are pretty concerning

 

[mbewane]

@Liu Kang @MischievousMonkey where y'all at in France? I moved out a couple months ago, back in Brussels now

 

[MischievousMonkey]

@Liu Kang @MischievousMonkey where y'all at in France? I moved out a couple months ago, back in Brussels now

I'm in Paris, grew up in PACA though

Yeah I remember you saying you lived in Belgium. A Belgian told me they had no far-right in the Francophone part and that we were welcome to come in if the RN gets the win

 

[mbewane]

I'm in Paris, grew up in PACA though

Yeah I remember you saying you lived in Belgium. A Belgian told me they had no far-right in the Francophone part and that we were welcome to come in if the RN gets the win

Yeah I was in Paris for 11 years and moved back in March. Indeed no far-right in the francophone part but the one in Flanders is very potent...also the "regular right" party in the francophone part taps into that far-right mindset and just won quite convincingly in Wallonia, but less so in Brussels

We fully expect a lot of french people moving here if the RN goes through

 

[DrBanneker]

I know this may sound like a dumb question but what are the most frightening platforms the RN is pushing? I understand the immigrant hate but is that all that has kept them out the mainstream? How far has Marie moved the party from her crazy daddy's ideals?

 

[trap101-ETHout-Allegri-In]

I know this may sound like a dumb question but what are the most frightening platforms the RN is pushing? I understand the immigrant hate but is that all that has kept them out the mainstream? How far has Marie moved the party from her crazy daddy's ideals?

She hasn't she is just better at using euphemisms to "massage" the messages.....