by Ramin Mazaheri
That headline is not even a bold statement because Macron has promised austerity and…when has austerity ever worked? It is really that simple.
There has been nearly four decades of trickle-down economics and anti-socialist policies, but there has been no promised increase in the standard of living. It has only dropped since the gains of the 1970s, the era of maximum worker power in the West.
I say the West because Iran, to give a personal example, did not have maximum worker power in the 1970s, so let’s not paint everyone all with the same brush – that’s inaccurate and only aids rampant depression in the West.
The alternative headline was: “Macron and new party to do what has never been done”.
The case for Macron’s economic proposals are so flimsy, so based on faith instead of facts, that even the IMF has finally admitted their own decades of truly deadly wrongdoing by pushing austerity. With just another 40 years of failure we can hope they will also come around on “free” trade, unregulated foreign investment and the false correlation between privatization and efficiency.
But the EU and Eurozone will not give up the capitalist ghost: the ECB (now holding renminbi for the first time) is continuing with monthly banker bailouts in the scores of billions, they are continuing to “lend” Greece money in order to send it straight back to interest repayment, and Macron’s own new centrist alliance now has a roughly 62% majority in Parliament to continue with trickle-down economics.
This president is being portrayed as having some sort of massive mandate in the press of the French elite and the foreign press, but that is false and everyone here knows the emperor has no clothes:
Abstention absolutely soared by some 20% since 2012 to reach a stunning 58% overall. This is already well-short of the necessary basis of any democracy which deserves to even be classified as “functioning”: a majority. (Of course, France has been in a state of emergency since November 2015, so it is not a democracy. It is a police state dictatorship.)
But Macron’s failure to win a democratic majority is even worse: His centrist alliance won 32% of the total 2nd round vote, and that translates into just 15% of the total electorate.
Wow, win over just 15% of the electorate in the legislative elections, after just 24% of the presidential elections, and the covers read, “Jupiter in Elysée Palace”. That’s one way of looking at it…which is a way Americans politely say, “That’s incredibly stupid.”
What’s more, history shows that Macron’s legislative victory was already guaranteed: Since 2007, when France fully went off the 7-year presidential term system and aligned their legislative and presidential elections, all 3 successive presidents have been handed Parliamentary majorities; Macron’s score in 2017 is nearly identical in terms of seats.
This is basically organized collusion between two of the three branches, and how can that be good? They are supposed to be balancing each other, I thought? I don’t know how many more election cycles it takes to make this a fact to people? Is it 40 years – do all reactionaries think in 40-year cycles? Is this the light at the end of the tunnel, LOL? I look forward to my joyous 79th birthday, Inshallah.
The thing is, Hollande even admitted after his 2012 election victory that this aligned election system was not good for democracy – of course, he did nothing about it. There seems to be zero chance that Macron will change it, as he appears far less the benevolent dictator than “Flanby” Hollande appeared in 2012.
So Macron’s victory is as “sweeping” as Sarkozy’s and Hollande’s…and they both totally failed. Just like Macron will.
Back to the future of failure
The line in France and Europe has been two-fold: “Reforms” (i.e. right-wing economics) are needed. Once that is done, then it becomes: “Time is needed to create success”.
Here in France, the most glaring problem with this is: How will record high unemployment be essentially halved to “normal” by allowing bosses a freer hand to whip, I mean fire, workers? A boss cannot whip physically, so the modern whip is psychological: the threat of being fired (with no social safety set to cushion the fall, capitalists hope).
But here in France the idea or “sacred cow” is a crazy one: one should not live in fear of destitution, and therefore workers have had more rights than in their US and UK counterparts.
One of Macron’s most hated but least-discussed measures will kill the peasants’ idiotic sacred cow – with all of its dung used to provide warmth and to build huts; with all of its milk for long-term productivity; with its ability to allow more land to be cultivated for public benefit, etc. It is this: If you turn down a job twice at the unemployment office, the unemployment office crosses you off their list.
It is no matter if you do not want this job; if you are qualified for the job but it is not in your desired field; if this job does not suit your family’s needs; if this job requires a lengthy commute of 30 kilometers even though you can’t afford a car much less highly-taxed gas.
And this is what the 2nd or 3rd “most advanced” socio-cultural country in the world says “modernity” is. And they must be right? Right?
The African-Americans may have actually devised a pithy phrase for this model long ago: “Massa sez work.”
It’s hard to see how this is a model worthy of emulation, much less exportation.
The reality is that the French model of “mixed socialism” is being done away with: the US/UK model is being exported, forcibly, into France.
France calls this the “Anglo-Saxon” model, and how the English press detests that term, LOL! It even gets quotation marks, just as they do for any official statement by Iran, like “Iran ‘says’ that…(insert anything here, even “the sun came up this morning”).
Of course, they should realize that calling it “Anglo-Saxon” is at least not calling the “Protestant” model, which is a fair statement, and I think any honest, Chosen Calvinist will agree to that. Half-Catholic Germany is only semi-entrenched in the Anglo-Saxon model, after all.
Theology aside: The average French citizen knows the death of their sacred cow will not bring them any juicy cuts of beef or fine leather goods, because they are not any dumber than I am.
So why did they vote for Macron?
The only thing I can say in a positive way is: They have decimated the Socialists for their anti-austerity betrayal, but I am chagrined to report they may have 50 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, the main house of Parliament; the mainstream conservatives have their fewest seats in postwar history. This is good and justice, both political and moral.
It’s disgusting on this election night to listen to Socialist Party members talk about fighting neoliberalism and getting back to their progressive roots. Their presidential candidate didn’t survive the first round and the party secretary the second round. A “fired list” of Socialists is impressive, and schadenfreude may compel me to make that a whole article in the future. Some right-wing socialists survived, mostly those even more right-wing than the “camembert Socialists”: they made deals with Macron that he wouldn’t present an opposing candidate, and these horrid fake-leftists will remain in the Parliamentary spotlight.
But France has swept many of the liars, back-stabbers and incompetents. We all know they won’t stay unemployed long enough to run out of benefits…must be nice to have such security.
Will the French Street explode in violence?
France is never portrayed as a country which has serious, violent and authoritarian unrest, but that is certainly the case in 2017 because there has been 2 years of mass arrests of anti-government protesters (more than 2,000) and there is no sign of letting up.
I cannot report that anyone is seriously reporting that Macron is going to end this multi-year trend. Macron, like all modern Western politicians, is adding to, not dismantling, the vast right-wing powers first initiated by Dubya Bush to “fight terrorism”. His plan is to normalize the state of emergency police practices with a formal bill this Wednesday.
And even pro-austerity people (falsely) claim their “reforms need time to take effect”; clearly, unrest won’t stop in the interim because there will be no alleviation of ongoing suffering.
I can report that many believe that social unrest will get worse. It’s a fair prediction: Why should we not presume that more years of repression will not lead to intensification?
But no worries: there is no “French Street”. That’s only for gutter people like Arabs, right?
But French rues will certainly see major unrest in response to Macron and the parliamentarians they just voted in.
Should this voting contradiction be attributed to those ‘confounding French’?
Such stereotypes are obviously absurd, but they do make for interesting heds and subheds. But in the English-language press – so infected with the virus that is English tabloid journalism – this interpretation will be seriously debated.
A more intelligent analysis is: The French couldn’t vote in new ideas, so they settled for voting in new faces.
But this is another problem with the French model: The new faces should also have had different ideas in 2017.
Even though the brand-new party Unsubmissive France (real left, not far-left or hard-left) and their Communist allies won 14% of the popular vote, they are looking at only around 30 seats – just 5.1% of the 577 total seats. That is clearly a problem, and this is another reason why abstention is trending sharply upward this century.
Add in the National Front’s 13% of the popular vote and only around 7 seats (1.3% of the total seats) and this problem becomes exponentially compounded like vile banker interest.
So the French did vote in a serious minority – 27% for these two groups – but French capitalist democracy (bourgeois and not worker, unmodern, anti-socialist) only allotted them 6% worth of representation at the highest legislative level. That…must be aggravating.
But this is normal in the European Social Democratic model – simply ask the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Finnish, the Italians, and others and, until March 2019, the British. After that, the UK is on their own and can only speak from reminiscence.
There will be 2 new key faces: Marine Le Pen finally won a seat on her 3rd try. As her appallingly bad debate against Macron proved, she is now free to clown around in front of the really expensive cameras on a regular basis, which was likely her only goal all this time.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the head of Unsubmissive France, won on his first try. He’s a good orator, and the left’s only real hope, whatever flaws he is always pasted with, so this is good. The most heavily-immigrant and Muslim area –Seine-Saint-Denis adjacent to Paris – also elected a UF delegate despite the highest abstention of the 102 departments.
Who will lose: Macron the golden child of capitalist fantasies, or the people?
I get paid to crystal ball – actually, this is free – so what I’ll say is:
5:1 odds that France protests and right-wing reforms are still forced through. I.e. the status quo since the Great Recession began.
20:1 odds that France protests on the level of 1995, when a three-week general strike actually forced the withdrawal of right-wing “deforms” (only 3 weeks!). Not many horses win at 20:1, but it’s not impossible. Frankly, I’ve seen a lot of talk and no action in my 8 years in France. Yeah more social action than the US, but c’mon…that’s like being the tallest building in Topeka, Kansas.
30:1 odds that Macron and EU leaders agree on moderate but truly democratic reforms in the next 5 years. Whatever they do will be branded “democratic”, but the “2-speed solution” is already in place, so that’s not really reform, just a changed tactic under the status quo.
1,000:1 odds that Macron and EU leaders agree on reforms which are democratic enough to stop continued unrest and the slide in the standard of living. I would offer 1,000,000:1 odds, but I can’t pay that off.
The needed reforms are not Macron’s – they are anti-capitalist and pro-socialist. The right wing has failed, in France and across the West. The left has lost in the West, but succeeded in places like China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and very few others.
These are quite simple facts, and 40 years is no longer a small sample size.
No comfort can be given, due to France’s new reality
There is no opposition party.
The mainstream conservatives are technically it, and they are more pro-austerity and pro-security than Macron’s centrist alliance. They won’t stop the death of the French model.
These two groups account for about 480 of 577 seats – a stunning 83% of Parliament (with only 54% of the total vote).
Macron – as his neo-fascist bill this week proves – is both far-right on security and economics. It’s crucial to accept that the far-right wave in Europe is actually continuing – do not overrate Marine Le Pen’s loss, as the 1% wants you to do.
When it comes to real power in France there is no opposition in 2017. There is no left. There is no far-left. There is no far-right. There are only voices without power.
Sounds about right….
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.
Ramin, somebody says 70 percent of the workers did not vote.
Participation in French parliamentary elections from 1848 to 2017:
http://imgur.com/a/qJMA8
The last revolt in France only goes back to 1968 , and this will happen again , but this time with a very educated population that will run rings arounds the authorities , and with a population of 60+ million will be impossible to contain .
This will have profound effects on the EU , Euro and the world financial system , and as before there will be changes to the constitution , and this could include the demand for the banning of professional politicians
There was no viable person to vote for , and the elections should have been annulled
There was a report a few months ago that in France they are going to go ahead and demolish 2800 churches, many of them centuries old. The justification seems to be that demolition costs less than restauration.
https://archive.org/details/youtube-6zq5d-I5D5M
FRANCE: 2800 Churches to be demolished, 1868 Neo Gothic Église Saint Jacques d’Abbeville
by Face of a dying Nation
According to a report of the French senate, 2800 churches across the country, many of them centuries old, will be demolished as restoration costs exceed the cost of demolitions over the next years. This church, Église Saint-Jacques d’Abbeville, a Neo-Gothic masterpiece in Abbeville, Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie dating back to 1868, was demolished for a total cost of 350,000€ in 2013. The reasoning: It was much cheaper to demolish it than it would cost to restore.
As the number of Frenchmen in France continues to decline due to record-low birth rates, high emigration and Muslim immigration, so do the members of catholic faith, who are now at an all time low. For many cities in France, especially cities in which Christians are the minority, the lack of interest and high property value on which the buildings stand simply does not justify the cost of restoring the churches. Many mayors choose the cheaper demolitions over costly restorations. Thousands of churches are to be demolished over the next years and replaced with shopping malls, stores, apartments or parking lots.
Mosque on the other hand, flourish. The Grand Mosque of Paris recently got a modern, fully retractable Roof, as it is usually only found in football stadiums and hundreds of new Mosques are built every year for the hundreds of thousands of new Muslims born or immigrating into French society, often with taxpayer money.
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German Source:
http://www.katholisches.info/2013/09/01/umbau-der-kulturlandschaft-2800-kirchen-sollen-in-frankreich-verschwinden/
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zq5d-I5D5M
Uploader: Face of a dying Nation
Upload date: 2016-10-13
Yep, Western Europe is definitely going Islamic, as per Neo-Con NWO agenda, but at least Eastern Europe seems to be wanting nothing to do with this. While the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe seems to have left those guys with their conjones intact, the US’s occupation of Western Europe has had the opposite effect.
Eastern Europe should be grateful for the Soviet occupation.
Hi,
Mosques are not “flourishing” at all in France. There is only one real mosque in Paris, and you named it.
French cities routinely reject mosques proposed for construction. When they are allowed to be built, Muslims are extremely accommodating, and they never include minarets. LOL, no chance for that, but the Russian Orthodox church got their church, with all its unique architecture, built along the Seine and next to the Eiffel Tower (looks great, too).
Mosques are in extremely short supply – this is why you may recall Muslims praying in the streets a few years back. They need an estimated 2,000 mosques in France to meet demand. What mosques are in Paris and across France are actually just prayer rooms. Of course, anyone in France knows that Islam has been kept underground ever since the first Muslim immigrants started arriving, and that includes mosques. As I said – they are thwarted left and right. The idea that they are built with taxpayer money is a ludicrous exaggeration.
So that’s the real mosque situation. The Christian church, and problems with attendance or support, have nothing to do with Muslims in France whatsoever.
The ideal solution would be to convert some churches to mosques, or at least share space. This would keep the faiths alive and has even been floated, but some don’t want the other to succeed. I certainly know that I support interfaith dialogue, especially between two Abrahamic religions which will never be not closely intertwined.
Does the French even know what the hell is it that they are voting for? They all seem to be going through the process like robots. Why would the average Frenchman vote for someone who has vowed to destroy the country’s labor laws and press on with austerity?
Nope, the average man in the street gets his information from the MSM, and thus voting against the “ultra right” and “racist” Marine LePen makes voting for Macron a good choice. Frogging sheeple!
There’s no convincing them,not even with proven valid black on white information. I’ve been trying for many years, invain, and have given up on them.
ONLY 30% VOTED IN THE LAST ELECTION FIOR MACRON , there were no good candidates to vote for , all rubbish
Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia? Role model of socialism that succeeded – what what? I do appreciate some of your conclusions on France I admit, but please, do not compare apples with oranges. The socialist dictatorian nightmare that is Venezuela or Cuba are anything but role models Europeans would want to strive for. It’s utopian or speak of lacking knowledge of the subject matter to claim otherwise. France’s socialism worked for how long exactly? 10-20 post-war years with huge growth numbers to managed to finance an ever more bloated public bureaucracy? I’m not advocating more neo-liberalism for France, no one deserves that medicine, but socialism isn’t the solution either.
@Alexander P : have you ever been in Bolivia or Venezuela ??? Obviously not because then you would know that the majoritiy of the people in this country definately support their government and know exactly what the difference is to the US supported dictatorships before the time of Morales/Chavez.
Its unbelievable how many readers even in not MSM Forums like here fall for the absolute Propaganda against two of the only real democratic countries on this planet.
Won’t go into details, people which have not been personally at a place and have their own real experiences shout not comment in this way, at least when they know they know noth8ng than what the MSM is telling them !
Regarding China i can definately not see where they are inany way a ‘social’ construct, more the Antithesis for the West which will inevitably lead to a One World Government. China is the ‘wolf in sheep’ clothes so to speak, exactly line the minds behind Western ‘Socialism’, the Fabian Society et al, created it .
Thats what i think should the author of above article Ramin should also clearly do: Study deeply the roots of all the western ‘Socialism’ which i think will stop him for begging to much for it. The Fabian Society should be a good starting point which will lead to all other institutions (follow money,members) created from this roots. He obviously has a complete wrong picture what the western Socialism really is and where it comes from. It has absolutely nothing to do with creating a social community and beeing kind to the common people. Its a distraction to get the NWO going and at least since the 1900 they more than succeeded …..
The majority of French are brain dead, why else would they vote for Macron over LePen?
LePen is just another tool. Everything she ever said is 100% kosher. I never got the impression she really wanted to be Madame la Présidente. Was she disappointed when she lost? Non, pas du tout!
The majority DID NOT vote for Macron or any other useless politician , there was no good choice
France has been taken over by Zion in the French Revolution. Crypto-Jew Napoleon created as much havoc as he could. And now it is up to Rothschild clone Micron to fire the golden bullet. But has he enough strength in his arm to lift the revolver and is he psychopathic enough to pull the trigger? I have my doubts…
The French people, meanwhile, will do what they are famous for: press with their healthy joie de vivre as much juice out of their short stay on planet Earth as they possibly can. Cheers! Santé!
Nothing is of importance other than aligning the chess pieces as per that laid out millennia ago vis a vis Armageddon or if you will the arrival of the Messiah. Everything else is just the grease allowing the movement of the pieces. Some await the birth of a red hiefer and all of us are caught up in their game.
The fact that churches all over western Europe and North America, magnificent monuments of Christian civilization, are gradually showing signs of decay for lack of maintenance, and that little by little they may well end up disappearing, demolished, converted into shopping centers, devoured by greed… is something that can only bring pain to one’s soul, even if one is not a very religious person (my case). A couple of summers ago, on a short vacation I wandered inside the Saint Sulpice Church, the second largest in the city of Paris. The interior was showing some signs of lack of care. I shudder to think that one day it may become a candidate for demolition. Earlier this year Macron said that there is no such thing as a French culture (“il n’y a pas d’ailleurs pas une culture française” – check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlHDccvIq9o )
Amazing statement. We who love France (without even being French or living there) mainly because of the extraordinary richness of its culture, abhor this exhibition of contempt for his own country. We don’t understand how French people can elect such a person, we don’t understand how the press tiptoed around this statement of contempt trying to soften it. Because if rulers like Macron continue to be in charge of France, with the clear objective of destroying it, maybe that disgraceful statement will become true.
The French people seem to lack to see the bigger picture.
Just wait until the pensions and social securities cannot be paid anymore, and that moment will arrive. Just to compare, in Germany the pension age is now 67, and already voices have been raised to put it 69.
But I expect the coming years many attacks coming out of the hundreds of ‘no go areas’. How many thousand of returned ISIS militants do you think are there? If Macron doesn’t have an answer to that, France will slowly end up like Lebanon.
Btw, thanks for the long article, Ramin Mazaheri.
Ugh more lunatic unreconstructed Marxism. No thanks.
Macron and all the weird combinations in the french politics you are speculating about will be well understood if one thinks of reality — the election was cooked… worse, it was overcooked! .
I am not French, but I will try to explain the French situation as best as I can for those who live abroad. Many voted for FN and Melenchons party, but were defeated by the majority system like UKIP in the UK. They also knew that FN has been defeated by tactical votes in the past. Socialists voting for Republicans and vice versa. Macron and his party had the media on their side. The opinion institutes lied and had many stay at home. We also saw that happening concerning Brexit and Trump. The oligarchs rule.
Not to vote is a powerful message. The French elections had little legitimacy and there is a lot of discussion about it in France. 70 percent of the workers did not vote, but they will surely fight for their rights and their unions. Macron has never had a big challenge. How will he deal with it? Brutally?
I think Macron has wounds from his past. You may not know his wife sort of raped him when he was around 15 years old. If you are a parent, how would you react? As a boy he was educated at a demanding Catholic school and then sent away one more time to keep him away from his female teacher. His wife is the mother he might feel he never had and her influence over him is awesome.
Some call him the new Napoleon. Are they right in their heads? He is a loose cannon supported by some of the richest in the world.
Please read Ramins excellent article. I can back up a lot of what he says. The only thing I can add is the situation on the French country side. There have been problems there since before Mitterrand was elected president. Unemployment was at around ten percent at the end of the 70s and I saw the suffering. It is worse now I believe and many voted for Melenchon and Le Pen. The middle classes gave us Macron and his party.
when has austerity ever worked?
Austerity always benefits those who impose it on the peasantry.
When France fails because of austerity , it will bring down the Euro and the EU , and provoke a worldwide recession worse than the 1920-1930 one . As Europe fails , world trade will reduce massively , and trade and immigration barriers will be set up , the world will take a very long time to recover this time , as it will generate m,assive instability in many countries .