Love the 180 from “the French left did the right thing by voting and strategically dropping out to ensure the far right doesn’t win seats” to “ it’s the left’s fault that macron is a power-hungry reactionary who spits in the face of democracy because of ideology.”
Still confused as to why France isn't, like, on fire right now. These people march in the streets and throw molotovs at cops because of a proposed 3 year increase in retirement age, but the sitting government entirely ignores their votes and nothing happens?
Because the Left-Centerleft coalition only won a plurality, not an outright majority. More people voted for Macron's center right party or one of the right wing coalitions.
These people march in the streets and throw molotovs at cops because of a proposed 3 year increase in retirement age, but the sitting government entirely ignores their votes and nothing happens?
I admire that they value three years of their life mkre than the civic religion.
The new prime minister has also spoken in favor of raising the retirement age, so it's even more confusing
I would loooove to hear her explain "the point of the post". some sort of hand-waving about rAiSiNg aWaReNeSs and treating social media like a vision board for "The Secret" style change-making. if you corner a liberal in debate they will eventually crack under the repeated introduction of information they have never encountered in bourgeois media, and then cling to historical idealism.
Her entire blog was just a mix of Moo Deng posts and how important it is to vote
It's funny in a sad kind of way
Every time someone disagrees with a lib they cover their ears and eyes while chanting psyopsyopsyop like a magic spell to make the boogeyman disappear
Psyops are when people tell me voting doesn't work because my government did the opposite of what we voted for
Liberals really are fucking toddlers
"Willfully seeing past the point of the post"
Here meaning "not ignoring reality hard enough for this to be a good point"
Whoops, turns out there's this obscure anti-democratic mechanic liberals can use to keep the left out of power. Oh well, don't hate the player, hate the game. I guess you'll just need to get a super-duper majority to do anything. Better luck next time!
The secret mechanic is liberals agreeing with the fascists on economic and foreign policy.
this could have all been avoided if people just voted harder
The left has won! Thank God! Voting works! President Hindenburg is going to set up the exact government that we voted for! This kicks so much ass!
As someone who used to vaguely believe in electoralism, it's insidious how the bourgeois class pretend it's all fair voting, until it goes the way they don't want. Then the rules change and you're voting wrong and the imperfections of the 'imperfect system' get used 100% in favour of bullshit.
I'm not that old, and in my adult lifetime I've seen it happen in at least a few western countries (eg Recent France, state mandated fraud in the US, or the UK's internal disinformation campaigns (including cooperation by state media) - The people vote for the "let's minorly improve things" candidate, then bourgeois class solidarity causes shit to come out of every aspect of the woodwork to make sure that candidate cannot win. Even if everyone votes for the best candidate every time ever, there's a 99% chance it'll never matter (so long as the working class are doing nothing else to ensure it does).
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.
- V. I. Lenin
Every time I feel I've made any observation of modern society, Lenin and/or Marx already made it over a century ago. Makes me very mad at how enduring this bullshit has been.
Throw this one the pile too https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/24/coup-j24.html and https://jacobin.com/2022/04/kevin-rudd-cia-us-embassy-julia-gillard-alp-coup
(I'm not 100 percent convinced on this one)
At this point I'm just going to spoil a ballot in my name and hopefully get Dem canvassers to realize I'm a lost cause to them; and maybe check the local ordinances trying to go through. Literally it's just a spite move that costs more energy than it's worth to me at this point but my roommates are liberals whose brainworms are very resistant to the brands of brainworm killer I keep in stock and it's even more energy expended to have the argument about 'why didn't you hit the polling spot'
"Voting" means different things in different political systems and it's disingenuous (whether you're a blue no matter who dem or an online communist) to equate them
Yeah, but French people voted for actual leftist/socdems, with ideas and ideologies most voters agree with. The Democrats wants the USians to vote for them just because they are not Trump.
Macron has appointed a far right prime minister (?) instead of one from the left majority resulting from the recent election. In effect ignoring the voter intent. Legality is not very clear to me but it's at minimum in defiance of convention and expectations
Edit: looks like I'm wrong
The New Popular Front only got 180 seats out of the 289 needed.
In terms of the popular vote, the will of the
people was the far right.
outmaneuvered both the left and slightly further rightMy mistake then. I'm certainly not an expert on this, was just trying to summarize because I thought the context was missing
Googling around but not seeing anything - did something happen in France?
left coalition won election, Macron ignores result and appoints right-wing PM
How does that work? What's the point of a parliment if the president just appoints whoever they want?
The left won but it didn't have an absolute majority, not even close, macron got second place and the far right got third. Ultimately, the president has to appoint a prime-minister (a government) to be approved by the parliament.
How it usually goes in france is that even if the president is not of the same party as the largest party in parliament, he'll still appoint a PM from that party and you have what's called "co-habitation" between the president and government sharing power.
Macron instead of doing that made a deal with the far-right to get their votes in appointing a center-right (not from the far-right party) prime-minister instead. So, ultimately yeah he probably has the right to do that legally but when you see people calling that outrageous they're making a political statement that macron preferred to share power with the far right than with the left
The outrageous part is that Macron was using the left/socdem front party to stop them getting seats, and then turns around and forms government with them
134 NFP and 82 Ensemble candidates withdrew despite qualifying for the run-off in order to reduce the RN's chances of winning an absolute majority of seats
to give an illusion of democratic representation while making sure the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie always has a veto on movement to the left
the fifth republic orbits around the president (no surprise, it was created by de Gaulle), it's not a real parliamentary system
Chuds. Its a psyop!!!!!
