France: and then there were two
The election in France now comes down to a contest between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. Neither is from France’s political establishment, which is exactly in line with election results in this country, reflecting trends described in Saturday’s post. If you read that post, you might say that it’s fairly clear that Macron is the candidate of the globalists, and Le Pen candidate of the anti-globalists.
And Le Pen is the candidate I predict that the majority of French voters will end up uniting against in the May 7 runoff. Already the other candidates are lining up to support Macron, pleading with urgency and desperation for the voters to stop Le Pen and elect Macron. But you know what? I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on anything in this race, including Le Pen’s defeat.
Left and right in France aren’t much like they are in this country. There’s a general rule that the entire French system is skewed to the left compared to that of the US, but within that system it’s convoluted and I don’t pretend to be an expert. However, Le Pen and her National Front are the anti-immigration, anti-free-trade, anti-EU group (much like Trump in those respects), and Macron takes the opposite stance on those matters. Until recently Macron was a member of the Socialist Party, but he left in 2015 and later started his own supposedly-centrist party, En Marche. But when I read Macron’s Wiki entry, I see a great many statements that remind me of the left in the US.
Macron is also very young: 39 (in that he resembles the Canadian Justin Trudeau, although Trudeau is six years older). Like Donald Trump, Macron never before held elective office. But Le Pen’s not exactly geriatric, either: she’s 48.
Who is Le Pen? I mean, really? The NY Times gives its point of view right off the bat:
Not since World War II has the anti-immigrant far right been closer to gaining power in France. With her second-place finish on Sunday in the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen has dragged her National Front party from the dark fringes of its first 40 years.
Ms. Le Pen has oriented her appeal around what analysts and politicians call the “un-demonization” of her party ”” the shedding of its racist, anti-Semitic, Nazi-nostalgic roots. That strategy has scored big results. Until the last week of the campaign, when she turned even more sharply anti-immigrant, her speeches were shaped around what she depicted as regaining France’s “sovereignty,” breaking with the European Union and “restoring” France’s frontiers.
But an undercurrent of prejudice still undergirds the National Front’s fervent rallies. Anti-Muslim code still permeates her speeches. And a majority of French people, in polls, still say the party represents a threat to the country’s democracy.
Note the scare quotes around the words “sovereignty” and “restoring.” Are they there because they are quotes, or are they there because (wink wink) they’re “code” for something else? And is this “un-demonization” just a sham, as the article hints, and is the party still supposedly anti-Semitic and “Nazi-nostaligic”? Speaking of code, “anti-Muslim code still permeates her speeches” is an interesting way to put it. I’d love it if they’d offer some quotes so we could see what this “code” consists of, because it could be almost anything (from innocuous to mild to offensive) these days.
[NOTE: Both French candidates have rather unusual marital histories (although in France, we’ve grown used to unusual marital histories). First, Macron:
Macron is married to Brigitte Trogneux, who is 24 years older than him and was his teacher in La Providence high school in Amiens. They first met when he was a 15-year-old student in her class, but were only officially a couple once he was 18.
A bit like Newt Gingrich’s first marriage, by the way, only far more extreme (Newt married his high school geometry teacher when he was 19 and she was 26).
As for Le Pen, she’s been married and divorced twice, and now has a relationship (but not a marriage) with Louis Aliot, “who is of ethnic French Pied-Noir and Algerian Jewish heritage.”]
Given the riots of Muslim youths in Paris maybe being anti-Muslim is not such a bad thing.
Marcon met his future wife at his Jesuit high school.
I follow French politics and you have presented a very good summary of what is going on right now. Of our 3 close friends, 2 will vote Le Pen and 1 will reluctantly vote Macron. She will vote for Macron simply because she suspects Marine is secretly as anti-semitic as her father. I think it will be a close race. Le Pen’s daughter is a fierce surrogate for her mother and popular with a significant portion of the disaffected French millennials.
We’ll see.
As much as I pray for a different outcome…LePen, like France itself, is toast. If she gets more than 35% of the total vote next time around it’ll be a miracle. The French have already surrendered.
Her “anti-Muslim code” probably consists of publicly numbering the bodies of those killed by immivaders in the last 24 months, and having the hubris to suggest the French should try to reduce that number to zero.
My good friend in France is unhappy about the election results. I once followed French politics closely but haven’t paid much attention since divorce from French wife.
How’d that happen? Comment above beginning “My good friend…” is by me, not Guilfoyle — who I don’t know. Something strange happened.
That’s weird. My browser auto-filled the Name/Mail/Website text fields with Vanderleun / vanderleun@gmail.com / http://americandigest.org. (I didn’t bother to asterisk his email because it can be obtained directly from his website.)
What happened last night as I slept? How did that info leak into my machine?
Are we all Vanderleun now, Spartacus-style?
“I am Vanderleun.”
He would like to think so.
That’s weird. My browser auto-filled the Name/Mail/Website text fields with Vanderleun / vanderleun@**** / http://americandigest.org.
What happened last night as I slept? How did that info leak into my machine?
Are we all Vanderleun now, Spartacus-style?
“I am Vanderleun.”
He would like to think so.
Testing. My browser seems to think I am Vanderleun this morning.
miklos:
Something similar happened to one other person. I’m looking into it, but I don’t know why it happened. I hope it’s just a passing glitch that will never happen again.
Meanwhile, I can change the name of that other comment to your name instead of John Guilfoyle’s. Let me know if it happens again.
Hey Neo…and miklos…that’s just bizarre…I’ve had a few French wines…but never a French wife.
😉
Can we blame the Russians?
I am Dafe @ hjk . org
Except that I am really Tuvea.
This is being written on an iPad. Is there a JavaScript problem?
I seem to be huxley again. Carry on.
I
Safari on my iPad had me autofilled as:
Dafe @ hjk . org
I can’t wait for self-driving cars.
In the required info prior to the comment contents was Miklos’s info to include his e-mail info. I’m sure that was probably the info on Guifoyle that was on your computer. Please fix this Neo as it exposes e-mail info to everyone.
Thanks
A comments glitch just started. I’m working on trying to fix it. In the meantime, check the autofill and make sure it’s your information each time. If you don’t want your email address to possibly get out to some other commenter, just fill in a fake email address for now.
Sorry! I have no idea what’s going on, but it’s frustrating. I think it’s a wordpress problem.
And I am not Miklos, but the info input on my screen says I am. The info includes Miklos’s e-mail.
One might assume then that he knows something more than academic about what it means to live under the thumb of Koranic terror and social values.
Hello: this is not Miklos.
This is the guy who wrote that the Pied Noir guy might know a bit more or less intimately, about Muslim sensibilities.
We are all Miklos now
Now I’m Ann…I’m sure Ann’s nice…but when can I be me again?
I’m using Chrome and autofill isn’t working.
The French have a choice; survival or political correctness? If they choose… “poorly”, it will be their last choice. The irony here is that if they now choose political correctness (Macron), in less than 20 years, Islam will force them to renounce it, at least among the enslaved survivors…
It’s acting up on me. No autofil, then blanked out my comment.
The French have a choice; survival or political correctness? If they choose… “poorly”, it will be their last choice. The irony here is that if they now choose political correctness, in less than 20 years, Islam will force them to renounce it, at least among the enslaved survivors…
Macron is still a Socialist. The Socialists knew they were toast after Hollande’s term, so somewhere someone had the brilliant idea of putting forward Macron as an independent with all the attendant campaign money backing him. The only other ingredient needed was the kneecapping of the mainstream center-right candidate to make sure he finished behind Le Pen in the 1st round.
I have to give the Socialists credit- it was a well-played strategy and will keep them in power until the next election.
This is just another test.
As name, I entered “fakename”
As mail, I entered “fakename@fakewebmail.com”
After I click on the preview button, the comment display shows that the comment is by “fakename”
Also, after I click the preview button, “fakename” and “fakename@fakewebmail.com” are retained in the form’s “name” field and “mail” field.
Now, I’ll click on the “submit comment” button and view the results.
Its definitely the Russians. Hillary now has proof.
TEST RESPONSE
Anti-immigrant far right. Yup. No editorializing there.
Just testing.
The comment at 6:45 p.m. is mine, not Geoffrey’s.
What a truly weird glitch. It seems like something that might be a hack of some kind, Neo.
From what I’ve read, France is already a dead man walking, most native French just don’t realize it yet.
They’ve just let into many Muslim invaders, those invaders have infiltrated, spread, and put down too many and deep roots, and established too many centers of power in the no-go areas of the Muslim only Benlieues that apparently surround many French urban centers.
Large groups of Muslims are making intimidating moves, like occupying town squares in mass public prayers, forcing the native locals out, and the body count from Muslim terror attacks just keeps growing.
Its just too late for France, and I don’t see any way for France to actually retain it’s native French sovereignty, character, and culture.
It seems like something that might be a hack of some kind, Neo.
Yancey Ward: I enjoy your comments!
However, as a Sr. Software Engineer, I doubt it. Most people have no idea how stupid the bugs are which compromise net security.
I’m Kappa2 in this Ars Technica thread about the Heartbleed breach a few years ago. I was promoted to one of the top contributors.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/confirmed-nasty-heartbleed-bug-exposes-openvpn-private-keys-too/
I have never seen LePen’s name written without the mandatory qualifier-“far-right” leading it. Leaving aside her anti-immigration, Frexit beliefs, she’s a standard, left of center French politician.
The French election process is worse than last year’s GOP primaries.
The top 4 candidates were all within 1 or 2 percentage points of one another:
Macron 24%
Le Pen 21.3%
Fillon 20%
Melenchon 19.6%
The top two go on though 55% of the voters did not vote for either.
If Le Pen does not prevail, France will continue its slouch toward Gomorrah.
Reading about and seeing TV coverage of events in Europe from this U.S. vantage point, it seems to me that many other Western European countries are also–to one extent or the other–on that dead man walking list along with France.
In particular, Sweden, Germany, and England have also just let in way too many Muslim invaders/colonists, that have spread and taken root, burrowed in, and they will not be dislodged without a very vicious fight.
Sweden is in deep denial about it’s existential Muslim problem, as Malmo is now the rape capitol of Europe, as is, apparently, Sweden. Native women in Sweden are issued rape prevention whistles, told to walk the streets that were formerly theirs in pairs, and told not to dress too “provocatively,” so as not to draw attacks from Muslim men.
One recent story remarked that a substantial percentage of the French army now consists of Muslims. Can the French commanders order these troops to oppose their fellow Muslims, and expect to be obeyed?
Another story reports that there are now more than 500 Mosques in London, more than matching the 500 Christian churches that now lay abandoned in that same city, and that Muhammad is now the most recent name in London for newborn males.
Meanwhile, all throughout Europe, Muslim “no-go” areas spread, as Muslims claim de facto sovereignty over larger and larger swaths of each European nation.
Does anyone see a peaceful way out of this cul de sac for Europeans that will preserve their sovereignty, agency, nationality, and culture?
To quote Sun Tzu, ”Know your enemy and know yourself, and you can win a hundred battles.”
Having spent considerable time studying Islam and it’s fundamental texts and history, I realized, after awhile, that one of the central, fundamental problems that we in the “unbeliever” camp have is that we just assume that Muslims see the intellectual landscape as we do, think in the same ways, have the same goals, and play by the same rules as we do.
However, for an observant Muslim, nothing could be further from the truth, and until we realize this, and act on it, we won’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of prevailing against Islam and it’s Jihad.
Take a look at a recent article by Barron Bodissey, from The Gates of Vienna blog, titled, “The Logicians of Sacred Atrocit, “ which lays out this issue quite nicely (see, http://gatesofvienna.net/2017/04/the-logicians-of-sacred-atrocity/) .