"Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has announced that he is dissolving the national assembly, and calling for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.
The French president said that he can’t pretend nothing has happened, that the outcome of the EU election is not good for his government and that the rise of nationalists is a danger for France and Europe."
Why is the right becoming more popular? What changed?
easy emotional messaging × a lot of funding from rich assholes of all types × great means of communication that can target audiences even in isolation.
There’s too many factors to name in a brief comment, but here’s an interesting statistic:
In all recent European elections, all center-left parties that have tried to swing to the right on immigration to try and woo right-wing voters, have lost seats. No exceptions.
Edit: Clarified the swing on immigration was to the right.
Is this because they waited too long, or because the answer is something other than anti-immigrant sentiment?
For example, there’s this statistic that almost everyone dies shortly after having CPR performed on them. Paradoxically, that doesn’t mean CPR is bad: it absolutely saves lives. It’s just that they do it too late on a lot of people (and also perform it on a bunch of people who are going to die no matter what but that’s not the point of this anecdote).
Could cost them their base without attracting new voters too.
Great analogy.
2008, the global financial crash, the subsequent shift of trillions of all the currencies towards the already-rich, then Covid hammering the final nail in the coffin of proving that governments care about the people only inasmuch as they provide value.
We’ve had sixteen years of people getting poorer and poorer, shit getting more expensive, and the news outlets they read pointing towards immigrants/gays/leftists as the problem.
The right take those messages and amplify them. They tell people that only they can speak truth to power, when the reality is far more nuanced than that. But people don’t want nuance, they just want to be able to pay their bills. The people aren’t stupid though, they know that the windbags can’t really change anything, but the status quo hasn’t done shit to help them, so fuck it, we’ll vote for the other guy.
“They’re all the same anyway”
No. In the US at least, wages are up for blue collar work, and that’s where the economy was most vulnerable. Inflation has been bad but it’s coming back under control and wages can outpace it in the next couple years, median wage growth already has (yes I have a hard time believing this too, but that’s the numbers).
The last financial crisis had a flagrant cause in default-prone loans. There isn’t such a problem right now.
The largest crisis we are running into is a crisis of propaganda, where people are being told “everything is terrible” when in fact the numbers show that everything is pretty great… except for white collar tech workers (me!).
I think the tech market will rebound the second that the fed lowers rates again, because tech is fundamentally capital intensive and speculative. So you need cheap money to fuel tech. Video games deflated/corrected a bit but that’s fine, those people can work on other things.
Ridiculous assessment.
Everyone is being told its all fine, but the insane CPI massaging has gotten beyond out of hand. There are very little gains for the proletariat masses RN, mostly losses.
I’d say we are right on top of one
@andrewta so I’d say it’s deflating, right?
Central Bank rates are reducing in EU. In USA not yet or maybe growing. China is still in the crisis with signals of recovery more and more delayed
Technology
The left is fucking the dog, is what.
This is more of a general answer as fascism seems to be gaining more ground globally. A book published in 1997 “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy” theorized roughly every 80 years (or about a human life span) we face a crisis related to a critical mass of people losing the knowledge and shared values from the previous generations. Imagine the perspective of a Revolutionary War veteran who fought under General Washington to help forge the United States, who would be understandably upset to hear any mention of a Civil War between states, which didn’t start until 82 years later.
We are losing that collective memory now both in the U.S. and abroad; the remaining World War II veterans are in no position to punch these fascists when they see a swastika flown at a rally. Unless we vote in numbers large enough to throw the MAGA movement into the dustbin of history, in the future we can expect younger Trump acolytes to take root in the same vacuum of thought.
”With these words Biden addressed the bitter irony that haunted the commemoration ceremonies. While D-Day occurred eight decades ago, America is now just five months from an election that could bring to power a man and a movement who embody and celebrate the twisted authoritarian values of the enemies we sought to defeat so long ago. Fascism has not gone away. The tactics of the Nazis to employ racism and demagoguery to divide society and enable their seizure of power and their gutting of democratic institutions currently are the playbook of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.”
All the major media outlets have been bought by a few far-right billionaires. For some years now, propaganda has been omnipresent, 24 hours a day.
Everything is in motion, nothing is static. As Capitalism declines and the material conditions of Europe decline, reactionary elements longing for “the good old days” rise. It’s generally what happens when Social Democracy turns Nationalist, and is deeply terrifying.
This can be opposed only through strong antifascist organization, not just sitting home and hoping things get better. They won’t, with that attitude.
Social media disinformation campaigns from the Kremlin and possibly also the CCP.
Powerful American people/groups spreading disinformation or funding political extremism is very different from the government doing it.
Money is power. Just because that shower have the sense to sit outside of the spotlight of political scrutiny does not mean that they are apolitical nor does it make the influence they cast not strongly American in flavour.
Bolloré
I am from the U.S. so I don’t really understand how this works, or what the significance is. Can anyone EILI5?
Macron’s party got disastrous results and got trounced by the far right in the European elections.
He had been selling himself as the shield that protected France from the rise of the local far right party. With these results, he has lost his credibility, and therefore his government did as well.
Therefore he’s calling out-of-schedule French parliamentary elections that – I assume – he hopes will reelect his party and allies ahead of the far right. It might work: the far right party polls strong at around 30%, but has few allies, and may not be able to form a coalition government. If Macron himself can, that will strengthen his legitimacy.
Needless to say, this is a risky gamble.
Maybe French elections are different to American ones…but isn’t this essentially “I didn’t win, therefore I invalidate the election”?
If the people voted, and this is what they want, even if you don’t like it, isn’t that what the people want?
No, it isn’t. His party “lost” in the EU parliamentary elections, not those of the national parliament. It’s a very bold and bizarre strategy.
The Far Right movement is gaining momentum because many of their own people are getting tired of the “immigrants are more important” mindset their country is creating. Many of France’s own people are getting ignored, so that the political parties in charge can focus on helping poor immigrants from other countries. Well, France’s own citizens are getting tired of this, and have started to vote in more people who have a “French People First” mentality (similar to what Trump wanted to do, and everyone called him a racist for being “America First”). So, the party RN (National Rally) wins and now their going to get rid of all the current members in Parliament, and have a new vote to get people in. I think that’s what it means?
Russia is the biggest winner when far-right sentiment increases
That’s why they are funding and supporting far-right parties in almost any Western country. The AfD in Germany is a good example, their MPs were literally caught receiving money from the Russians. Their MEPs also work for the Chinese intelligence service btw
An unprecedented move which could backfire as it did for Chirac in 1997. Macron is playing a dangerous gamble with the Fifth Republic… 🗳️🇫🇷
Comparing it to Chirac’s situation is downplaying how crazy te move is right now. Can you imagine how fucked up this is? Like “oh, the far right has more than twice as many votes as we got, it must be some sort of big misclick situation, lets check it out !”
I think it’s more that the situation is only going to get worse the longer we wait so he’s pulling the trigger now for the best conditions he’s ever going to get. Not great
The conditions he spent years building? Yeah, I’m not falling for that.
Like I said: a dangerous gamble with the Fifth Republic…
We all know how the far right has a hard time letting go of it’s grip on power, that’s for sure. But this ils no ‘gamble’, like he’d be cornered to do this, he led us here. He is deliberately playing with the french like they’re just paws in his self-centered game.
france try not to be racist and xenophobic for one hour challenge
The reason the “far right” is gaining momentum around the world because of immigration issues. It has nothing to do with “racism” and “bigotry”, like people on Lemmy and Reddit claim. The Left and Liberals are too concern with helping everyone else, and not their own. Countries are abandoning traditional goals and support for their own citizens, and focusing on helping poor immigrants from all over the place. Sooner or later, your own citizens are going to get fed up.
That’s called xenophobia, and it’s a form of bigotry.
And xenophobia is apparently a subset of racism, since it’s discrimination based on place of origin, and regardless of what the name implies, racism also accounts for place of origin alongside ethnicity so… Yeah, it’s racism.
It’s called poverty, I don’t know how you’re missing that.
France is not an impoverished country.
And there’s nobody poor in the United States! Nice and simple.
It has nothing to do with “racism” and “bigotry”, … too concern with helping everyone else, and not their own.
Tell me you’re racist without saying you’re racist.
^Nationalism. AKA racism and xenophobia.
I’d say that’s close but more like they’ve concerned themselves with helping the wealthy and need to import more workers due to low fertility and as a way to suppress wages.
So now there isn’t enough housing and everyone starts struggling more because social programs have been underfunded for years and strain to the brink due to the greater load.
And what housing there is was bought up by investment firms during 2020/21 when people were losing their jobs, or having hours cut, and now more people than ever are paying well over the odds to rent a home because they can’t get a mortgage that would likely cost 2/3 what they’re paying in rent.
But no right leaning/conservative government is going to do a fucking thing about that because too many of them are either landlords, or have funds in those investment firms. So their tame papers run stories about an immigrant family being given a seven bedroom house in a fancy part of town.
LMAO at the hate on this comment.
We can talk about immigration drivers, all night long, but the fact is that the host country is always resentful of immigrants. It doesn’t matter if that resentment is fair or true or justified, it exists.
Buncha children in here crying, “Racism bad!” Yeah. We know. Some of us grew up on Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. That doesn’t change countries seeing a bunch of poor people flooding in and taking their resources. And whether they’re actually sucking resources doesn’t fucking matter. It looks like they are.
And for all the whiners, how about you take in a poor immigrant family and take care of them yourself? Put your money where your mouth is?
“Uh no. The government should do that for free, somehow, and I don’t want to actually see or deal with it. Or I’ll leave a stern downvote!”
(And for the inbound haters, my wife is a brown immigrant, not even a citizen. Trying to get her youngest moved here.)
You completely fell for it. The problem is not being resources sucked away by immigrants, and there not being enough left for the regular folk.
The problem is the rich not having the same burden as the poor due to wealth not being taxed. It’s called having a shitty quality of life and high costs of living.
This argument is old and tiresome. It’s the same shit they try and say in the US. “hey, who cares about the immigrant problem, let’s go after the rich!” This isn’t about the rich, this is about who’s the problem for the average, middle class citizen NOW. This is about, why are things different NOW, and what can I do to change them? Many countries are bringing in immigrants as a curtisoy, to help those in need…but it’s effecting a class of citizens differently, and now those citizens are voicing concern. The rich will always be here, and that issue will always go in circles because the rich are helping many countries sustain an economy (we always want to attack the rich in the US, but in the end, what would happen if the rich stopped paying anything, and just left?). The argument of “it’s the rich people’s fault!” has been a battling call from the Left for 100’s of years…and they will always default to this, even when it’s clear that immigration is causing problems…
You are wrong and short-sighted, and I will tell you why:
- income disparity between rich and regular folks: if you look at graphs from studies on wealth inequality, it will show you how the rich get richer, while the poor get (especially relative to their cost of living) poorer. And by poor I mean the average folk.
- Immigrants have always been there: both the US and Canada have been built on the backs of immigrants, and are also kept afloat by them. Should we slow down a bit? Perhaps. Should we focus more on the regular folks that already live there? Definitely. But immigration and better social services for those already there are not mutually exclusive. Assuming there are funds for it
- The rich are lobbying the governments to do their bidding: The few hold all the power again, just like in feudalism. And they don’t want to give that up at any cost. This creates a perpetual cycle where they make money to gain power to make more money to gain more power to make… you get the ghist.
- The rich has a lower burden in taxes: A regular folk will get taxed on their income and purchases for a cumulative burden of around 45%. However someone rich will live off of their wealth creating more wealth instead, while foregoing income and thus income tax. Additionally when it comes to cost of living, even if a rich person would pay equal percentage in taxes to a regular folk, that 45% in cumulative taxes will leave the regular folk with say $5.5k to budget for everything on a 10k/mo salary, while a rich individual will have $55k to budget on a 100k/mo salary.
- Immigrants are not taking anyone’s job: In reality new immigrants work all the shitty jobs that no one else wants to or can take anyway. They are either low wage service workers or gig workers, or are actual skilled worker immigrants that are in high demand. Either way they are likely exploited in the low wage position or as the new hire.
Let me know if I should continue. Or maybe someone else will chime in.
So, what do you suggest countries do? Allow anyone and everyone to come in, and government should instead spend all their time and resources going after the wealthy? Are you saying, that if the rich stopped having money, and just…disappeared, everyone would be better off?
This is just such a false narrative. The issue is not a lack of funds to help our own citizens and refugees. The issue is that those funds are concentrated among very few very wealthy people. Those wealthy people would very much like us to blame the refugees.
The reason the “far right” is gaining momentum around the world because of immigration issues. It has nothing to do with “racism” and “bigotry”,
That’s… were you trying to be ironic? As mentioned elsewhere it’s xenophobia, which is almost certainly rooted in racism and bigotry.
The entire idea that we should “help ourselves” and not help “others” is racist.
It isn’t necessarily racist. “Ourselves” and “others” can be simply defined by citizenship.
It’s not.
At least, not here. And it would still be bigotry regardless.
WTF, why would he do that… This gives me Brexit referendum vibes.
My cynical take: he wants to let the far right win the legislative elections while he still has close to 3 years left in his term.
He thinks this will “show” their electorate that voting far right doesn’t get you what you want.
At the same time, he can take advantage of the media bashing the leftist party has been getting for their vocal opposition to Israel’s actions since October 7 2023, and run them out of Parliament. At least, it’s a gamble he’s willing to make.
He is just as much of a clueless, egotistical liberal as David Cameron was, so your analogy is sadly pretty accurate.
Hopefully they dump this creep on his ass and elect a leftist.
