by Ramin Mazaheri
It’s the second-largest drop in postwar French history in the first 3 months of a presidency – only Chirac plunged further.
Macron’s approval rating currently stands at 54%, and while that would be (shockingly) good in 2021, it’s terrible for a new president, said this here journalist who insists on context for statistics.
Francois Hollande’s approval rating after 100 days was the lowest in postwar history, at 44%. This means Macron has 5 more weeks to lose 10 points, and that is certainly possible.
Because how is Macron spending his summer vacation? He isn’t taking one. He’ll be at work in August, as his priority is to quickly write a massively unwanted (and second) roll back to the labor code. His goal is to get it passed by Parliament as soon as possible in September, when France is still knocking the sand out of its sneakers.
Of course, Macron has already said he would bypass Parliament to save time, should democracy prove cumbersome.
If the actual contents of his labor code law gets leaked by a conscientious whistle-blower, by the time Macron reaches 100 days in office on August 22 his popularity could be below 44%, and in this way “Hollande Junior” would be besting his no-doubt proud Papa.
One would think that the reality of immediate and record voter disapproval would be enough to immediately deter Macron from his plans, as France is an allegedly well-run democracy, but…Macron simply does not care what you think.
This is a politician who claimed, in the most reactionary sense of “reactionary”, that the progressive rupture of the French monarchy left “a deep emotional abyss” …and now that Macron is in power he is going to rectify that by acting like a king. This is also a politician who claimed, in the most blasphemous sense to pantheists, that he aspires to a “Jupiter-like” presidency.
Despite his clear aversion to popular democracy, Macron is Europe’s new hope, the new leader of the European Union and Western democracy’s golden boy.
Clearly, foreigners don’t know Macron, but who can blame them? The 39-year old political neophyte was as vague as possible during the election campaign. The French knew better, but voted him in anyway.
My take is that now -with the smoke settled and Macron’s plans clearly far more to the right than what he campaigned on – the French see a president who is not here to make friends or maybe even to get re-elected.
Macron reminds me of that boy in school who gives bullies a good name.
Nobody likes a teacher’s pet, especially one who apple-polishes the economics teacher who is clearly in the wrong. Or who apple-polishes the drama teacher who does not explicitly reject accusations that she committed statutory rape of a student, as was the case with Macron’s future wife.
(“Nobody will ever know at what moment our story became a love story. That belongs to us. That is our secret,” she was quoted as saying. Ahhh, what an elegantly French response! I’m sure if she was a man she would have gotten the same treatment and avoided prison.)
When Macron breaks Hollande’s record for unpopularity – and he inevitably will, because the guaranteed failure of austerity means dissatisfaction can only intensify – I’m certain that Jupiter will remain unmoved.
But that doesn’t mean Jupiter won’t accept, and certainly does expect, your material sacrifices.
Do shotgun marriages take honeymoons?
Because if I was forced to marry I think I’d save my money for something – or someone – else.
It’s false reporting for me to say that the recent approval rating poll shows that Macron’s “honeymoon period” is over, because there never really was one among the French public – he is truly a “president of the minority”, and I don’t mean the Rothschilds: take out huge abstention and the percentage of voters who said they chose Macron just to block Le Pen (43%) and the real percentage of the electorate who genuinely chose Macron for his personality or his platform drops to just 24%, exactly his score in the first round.
That means 76% of the electorate intelligently saw Macron for what he is – someone to be avoided, especially when seen leaving the teachers’ lounge.
The mainstream media, however isn’t even close to ending their publisher-ordered romance. The mainstream response in France to Macron’s approval rating tumble was a very public row he had with the head of France’s armed forces. That is idiocy, but confirming and re-confirming idiocy is what gets you places inside the mainstream media.
What would it take for the media to get it right?
They would have to stop laughing at the 34% of voters who gritted their teeth and voted Le Pen; they would have to actually realize that the “man on the street” is not an idiot.
Here’s a “man on the street” quote I got for my Press TV story on Macron’s popularity drop. Sure sounds reasonable to me:
“With Macron’s proposals we will have even more poor people in rural areas than ever, and that will be tragic. For people like me who don’t have a college degree – we will be condemned to a life of poverty. I voted for the National Front because I detest bankers and those who work only for the rich, like Macron.”
This guy had more quotable stuff, and it was delivered with a palpable anger. There was revulsion, and not resignation.
This is the type of person who is mocked by the mainstream media in the West, who is accused of being hateful and reactionary, and is constantly not just ignored but disrespected. His main crime was to be talking about rural poverty in Paris: “Must be his first trip to the big city – what a dumb hayseed!” would be a common reaction in French newsrooms, I can tell you from experience.
But he is actually quite brave: It took guts to admit that he didn’t have a university degree and that he had plenty of fears for his future.
This is the type of person (and I’m speculating here) who lacks money or connections, and who looks at Macron’s future of decreased government assistance and sees himself condemned to a life in the service industry with its horrible pay, worse conditions and societal disrespect.
This is a guy – and I am not at all trying to be cruel or to throw him under the bus – who is perhaps 30 years old, has hair which is perhaps thinning, could perhaps stand to lose a few pounds, doesn’t dress in the latest fashions, and is realizing that French society wants to pit him in a lifetime battle against his peers for crumbs rather than extend the social safety net in a time of economic crisis. He has every right to look at the 1% – to look at those with luck, money and connections (and perhaps less morality or sense of responsibility) – and to turn to the far-right instead of Macron.
Unfortunately in France, as across the West, the Left has had nothing to say to, or even for, this person since the 1960s. It is no wonder he has gone to the far right, but that does not make his concerns, fears and demands any less valid in the slightest.
But, I can guarantee you from personal experience as a reporter in France, not only do mainstream journalists mock this guy for how he voted, they also mock his pain, his concern for the future, his understanding of the past, his appearance, his rural culture, his regional uniqueness and even his god, as it is not Jupiter.
I try to explain to my fellow journalists how this approach is morally incorrect, as the duty of our craft is to help our fellow citizens understand each other, even when we disagree with them on political/moral/social issues (and we inevitably will).
All I can say is: I hope you have better luck with such crusades in your neck of the woods…but don’t stop crusading.
Regardless, the reality remains that the 34% of those voters who chose Le Pen (and those who abstained) haven’t disappeared, and still deserve to have their needs, demands and concerns included in our coverage of France.
The French are not stupid, as they’re happy to tell you
The Americans are not stupid, either: A new poll shows that Hillary Clinton’s popularity is still lower than Trump’s, and that’s after an 8-month Russophobic witch hunt that truly is just a witch hunt because they have still provided no proof.
We can extract two important correlations from this poll for France: the media will not turn on Macron anytime soon no matter how non-existent the evidence, and the French people are not going to be duped into liking Macron.
Trump would probably win again if the vote was held today and, personally, that’s enough to restore my faith in the American people and my proposed historical trend of a White Trash Revolution.
Some have asked me “Why use a derogatory term like ‘White Trash’, when you could use ‘Redneck‘ or ‘Peasant’?”
It’s because, historically and today, rednecks and peasants work too damn hard and ask for too damn little. White Trash may hold the worst jobs which require the least brainpower, but they pay into the system and, dammit, they deserve repayments in the form of government assistance that rednecks and peasants are too proud/indoctrinated to accept for themselves or others.
And what do the 1% call society’s janitors, store stockers and sandwich makers? Do you think they admire anyone who does the vital but mind-numbing factory work, or the drudging toil of farm work which allows us to actually have things to eat? If you don’t have a college degree you may as well be trash to be recycled, with all your value sucked out and reused for the benefit of the 1%.
What I am absolutely certain of is that the phrase “White Trash Revolution” is a far, far better term than “Workers’ Revolution”, which is totally outdated: We are all workers now – Dads, Moms, kids, everybody.
The difference is that 50 years ago you could raise a family on one worker’s salary, but you can’t now. In 2017 everybody works and, in the US, everyone has been yoked to a lifetime of debt peonage no different than the serfdom or sharecropping of yore.
In France, thanks to a better socialist safety net, it means being condemned to life on the margins and a social snobbery which would certainly get you lynched in far-nicer Middle America, whatever color you are: Paris is built on public contempt. And stolen slave wages.
And White Trash is dangerous: Both the US and France are two countries which are full of anger, massive support for foreign and domestic military intervention, and suspicion of any meditation which does not include alcohol.
Again, the only people who aren’t working their backs crooked are the 1% and the uncaught criminals.
Look at size of a schoolkid’s backpack today and tell me he’s not drudging in a salt mine, with 100 times the personal oppression to boot.
Unlike in 1917, we know today that being a housewife is extremely strenuous work, and the proof of that is that it’s very hard to find a woman who wants to sign up for that job, at least with me as her comrade-in-arms.
But one thing the Western Left does not try to do is actually succeed with anyone but their own sense of superiority, and so they hold on to nostalgic terms which don’t resonate with anyone anymore, like “Workers”.
White Trash Revolution in France shaking off a standing 8 count after Le Pen’s loss
There is no need for you to read much further than this, which I’m sure only reiterates what you said yourself just after France’s presidential vote in May: Macron’s election rectified none of our White Trash problems caused by the 1%, and will only aggravate them further.
So of course he’s unpopular…already.
Trash isn’t as dumb as they think, whatever the color. How do you think Trash Revolutions succeeded in places like the USSR, Iran, Cuba and China?
But I can’t tell you how unpopular Macron will get, if he will be impeached, if there will be civil war or if France will invade Germany to get back their money/divert attention from the social looting by the 1% (a modern term which actually does resonate).
But I can say with certainty that the strength of the White Trash Revolution lies firmly in the reality of chock-full, 1%-led inequality which continues to grow. Until that is resolved, demigod wannabes like Macron are simply temporary stopgaps.
Obviously, from a theoretically standpoint, Macron’s victory was the equivalent of a Hillary Clinton victory in the US, and therefore social awareness in France will probably be retarded by several years. However, nobody can predict any revolution.
Trump’s victory was a bourgeois revolution, as it was done through the vote of a bourgeois system, but France is far more likely to have an actual social revolution via demonstrations and strikes, and even possibly as soon as September. It’s unlikely, yes, but far more likely than in the US, where naïve trust in their system will defy any reality, statistical or personally endured.
France obviously needs its own French solutions to French problems, but, like all the West, their Left cannot and will not provide any real solutions to the “worker class” they hold in a contempt which is totally unmodern and yet never so chic.
One must look to truly revolutionary countries like Iran, Cuba and China for modern solutions to our modern, shared problems.
The first thing to learn from them is that contempt is not chic. The second is that Jupiter can never lead the 99%.
**************
One unrelated note…
People ask me: “Why don’t you report on any good news?”
I respond: “I’m not smart enough to write for the Science section.”
I wanted to pass on this report I did – which my Press TV bosses deserve the credit for suggesting to cover it – on the 9th International AIDS Conference on HIV Science, which recently concluded in Paris.
Check out these partial quotes from the person I interviewed in our report:
“…people who are successfully treated are no longer infectious.” – on new HIV treatment.
“…it virtually eliminates the possibility of them becoming infected.” – on a new HIV prevention drug.
It really is a revolution in both the treatment and prevention of AIDS.
Who would have thought we could get this far, this soon? When I was a kid in the early ’80s we thought you could get AIDS from touching your lips to the water fountain, LOL, and I don’t think you had to be 8 years old to have thought that back in those early days of the epidemic!
So, I just wanted to spread the word on this story, because ending the cultural stigma of AIDS is the best way to prevent new cases…which are now treatable, and thank Jupiter for that.
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–It is a very good thing you have such a wicked sense of humor as you write about these very serious issues. Years ago as a nurse in training I was doing my clinicals in an emergency room, and observed things that came close to churning my stomach. One of the old timers sagely observed (after extracting a BB from a child’s head, shot at very close range) that “it wouldn’t be any good if we were all going to pieces at the same time”. How true. The child was screaming bloody murder, as you well can imagine. People in similar stressful situations develop a certain bizarre sense of humor that can at first seem cruel to the uninitiated, but it is a form of self-protection. Tears won’t wash out the bullets. Somebody has to do the dirty work, and the “thank-you’s” are often infrequent. The working people can become honestly cynical. I will add to your comments about the White Trash Revolution the following: along with having a lot more ” feet on the ground” life experience and “horse sense” than the elite will ever give us credit for, the “Trash” can also count, as in “who is the latest Judas who sold us out for thirty pieces of silver”, and we also have very good memories as to who those “sell-outs” are. … We may even use their silhouettes as target practice over at the shooting range.
Hi Chad,
Glad you liked it. That’s a good story about the doctor and worth remembering.
And, certainly, you are right that journalists have to develop this sense of humour in order to protect ourselves…ya gotta laugh to keep from crying!
I wouldn’t want working people to become “cynical”, but less naive about their possibilities of success in the current American system would be quite a good thing. I don’t know anyone who has won the Powerball lottery, but I know many who think they will!
Keep practicing that gun safety and happy shooting!
Macron leads the effort of the Western neocolonialists to make a deal on looting Libya’s resources
http://bit.ly/2tJsVvT
You skipped the part where the USSR (former), Cuba, Iran, etc., kicked out the Rothschilds. Perhaps our white trash fellow human beings, you know… the kind that have ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, two ears, a nose (sortta like a certain curly haired journalist)… just might get wise to that strangely omitted fact also.
A leader who wants to be equal with Jupiter and has a -well, to be discoursed- lovelife; the first equation that jumps to my mind is Caligula (who also adored Jupiter and slept with his sisters): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula
Maybe the laws in France are different, but in my country a teacher that has a relation with a pupil goes into jail. It is considered as serious misuse of professional trust between people that are emotionally unequal.
Macron is just another bankers boy with smooth talk. He has no answers to the real problems. France will regret that they have chosen this idiot. Again.
Btw, thanks Ramin, for sharing your colourful insights.
+Rob,
But Macron will get the entrance to the super rich, if he doesn’t screw his master’s orders to be executed. He is the kind of aspiring mid-tear managers who confess to you in a Bar after some drinks what they think about life – it’s all about money and fun – they will reply. In Macron’s mind there are no french people. His strength is that he gives a damn about France, Europe or whatever beside his career, and for that he will work hard. Himmler and his alike were their forerunners although the latter still had some kind of moral codex, the former have left that behind a long time ago. In fact they are coming from what Jünger ascribes to the worker in his so named book. They don’t operate simple industry machines, no they operate complex social machines, Banks, Investment Funds. Having no principles however they are bad fighters, usually cowards, that could be a weakness which could be exploited IF there was an enemy, but of course there is none. The outlook for France is very bleak as for the whole of Europe, because Europe has chosen wrongly and the moment of grace has slipped through their hands some years ago. The tribe will now finish them off as they do with the US to the level that a ‘revolution’ – a far right revisionary move will be produced – which then furnishes the march towards Stalingrad. Remember every time Russia has been attacked the catastrophe for the attacker was multiple the one before, and this will remain that way.
Sigh- the ‘look at their low ratings’ garbage is for the most thick sheeple- the old psy-op of making the sheeple think if they can mock their masters, they somehow diminish their masters’ control over their lives.
The arch demon Tony Blair, the foul stasi East German neo-con Merkel, Clinton 1 and Obama were all mocked the same way after they reached high office to make the sheeple feel a little ‘better’ about the absolute power these monsters were wielding after their elections.
Macron, like Obama, was groomed by the Deep State for years as a ***potential*** for the highest office. It is not irrelevant that Macron was seduced by and married his teacher. The psychology of key demonic servants is paramount. Ordinary people have ‘ordinary’ morals- ie are inherently good and decent. The Deep State cannot recruit useful people from that pool.
So we have the usual ‘useful idiots’ telling us not to worry about the latest round of Deep State apointees- or trying to get you to laugh at them- because the Deep State in Britain learnt many many centuries ago that the most powerful despotic forces don’t punish the sheeple for mocking their ‘betters’ but actually encourage it. Why? The ‘safety valve’ principle where the sheeple, by having a good laugh, allow their righteous anger to dissipate and lose interest in actually doing anything to remove the monsters from power.
Britain is the centre of the spider’s web, and the source of all real advancements in Orwellian societal control methods. When the horrific Margeret Thatcher became PM in the UK- a TV show called ‘Spitting Image’ magically appeared every Sunday on the zionist ITV network. Using brilliant puppets and biting cruel satire, it ripped Thatcher and her followers to bits once a week. The result was that Thatcher became more and more powerful, as the sheeple chose to laugh rather than back political activity against her. The zionist controlled opposition- the Labour Party- was thus off-the-hook, and never had to explain why it was so utterly hopeless when so many people hated Thatcher.
Today, J K Rowling has attacked Trump with the foulest of lies- accusing him of disrespecting a disabled boy in a wheelchair. Thus Trump gets demonised in the minds of the neo-liberal and neo-con favouring sheeple. But the ‘awake’ sheeple will see the full video from the White House, and thus loathe the luvvie Rowling even more, and feel tempted to like Trump more.
***But*** in the meantime, while all flavours of sheeple miss the real point, Trump signs off on the sanctions against Russia, Iran and Korea (purposely conflating all three in ther minds of most) and continues to be a perfect Deep State president. This is how the game is played. Articles like the above encourage you to take your eye off the ball.
And today, Trump stated that Russia and China are to ‘blame’ for North Korea.
Macron’s most significant act as leader is to state the jews are the ‘master race’- only ‘crimes’ against jews in French History matter, and that France must do everything in its power to follow the instructions from Israel. When I was a kid, the ‘recent’ crimes of the nazis were treated as if they were very distant memories. Today, Blair and co ensure that it is as if the nazis were operating only yesterday- and the ***only*** significant events in Human History were the crimes of the nazis. So in the UK, if someone goes to a fancy dress event dressed as a nazi (which wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow here in the 1960s, 70s or 80s), it is front page news,and the police get involved.
Why? Because perception is everything- ***not*** reality. Sine 1945, the jews have massively grown in power decade by decade, and suffered no significant attacks (and the astonishingly tiny number of attacks have dimished decade by decade). And, of course, powerful jewish groups have been directly responsible for the murder of millions of innocent Humans since WW2.
Yet to listen to Blair, Macron, Clinton, Trump et al, you’d think ‘jews’ had never been in greater mortal danger. According to the West, they are the ***only*** ‘ethnic’ group in significant threat. Like I said, perception is everything. Reality is nothing.
Libya and Syria were put to the sword by Israel and its allies- especially the British and French in Libya, and Saudi Arabia in Syria. Jews aligned with Israel are directly responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in both nations- but the zionist controlled mainstream media- and Soros controlled fake indy media, actually boasts about this. While you can’t dress as a nazi for a party in the UK, or mention the zionist holocaust in Gaza in France, you can certainly cheer the murder of the nations of Libya and Syria publicly in Britain and France.
France is a nuclear, biological and chemical weapons partner of Israel- like the UK and Germany. (and the US army has just started asking for volunteers to provide genotype biological material from ethnic Russians so it can better create targeted viral weapons- go google it). Macron’s psychology is that of Norman Bates- in other words when it all gets ‘too crazy’ he’ll say ‘let the planet burn’. Yet I have to read articles- supposedly from ‘our side’- mocking the guy so you’ll feel ‘better’ about him.
All excellent points.
RE “Macron, like Obama, was groomed by the Deep State for years as a ***potential*** for the highest office. It is not irrelevant that Macron was seduced by and married his teacher. The psychology of key demonic servants is paramount. Ordinary people have ‘ordinary’ morals- ie are inherently good and decent. The Deep State cannot recruit useful people from that pool. ”
I do see an odd glint in Macron’s eye.
Not so much shifty as . . . .Kind of like the mad Jack Nicolson weird glint in the eyes.
As for Obama and his cara sposa, to me there has always seemed to be something a bit weird about that pairing. I admit to operating on stereotypes. It just looks weird to me. She looks weird! Maybe it is because she basically seems to dress like a little girl. Oh, well. But the Brigitte-Emanuel situ is really weird!
Katherine
Very, very well said, twilight.
Funny you mention J K Rowling. Miles Mathis has outed her as a British Intel asset and the Harry Potter franchise as a large scale ZionIntel social engineering project.
http://mileswmathis.com/potter.pdf
Well, that certainly is a wild ride.
Certianly an interesting read.
The bit about the Regent’s Canal is interesting.
Always loved to walk along that in Little Venice, etc., along the tow path. Great atmosphere. But it does connect up with a lot of other waterways.
And who am I to say the theory couldn’t be true.
Actually, I was always a bit surprised that a huge hit like the Harry Potter books ended up at Bloomsbury.
Of course, the name Bloomsbury itself refers to the London neighborhood just south of King’s Cross, where the uni, the Tavistock nonprofit, etc. are located. I don’t think the author of the linked article mentions that, or perhaps I missed it.
Katherine
There may be some merit in using the term White Trash, but really for this to be useful, we would have to include the Brown Trash and the Black Trash, as well as the Yellow Trash and the Native American Trash. Otherwise, it covers too few people and leads to divisiveness. And I don’t think people want to call themselves Trash, no matter what their skin looks like.
But your larger point is that people need to be proud of being who they are, and I agree.
There are several problems arguing against using the word “workers”. One is that it drags in an obsolete worldview and a trashbag of discredited fake-left organizations. Second, much of the world is turning into lumpen-proletariat, idle or wasting away at useless jobs and wishing they were enjoying the wages of slavery. People should be proud to work, proud to work for their livlihood, and ashamed if they don’t. But this white-black-brown-yellow-beur-native stuff is a side-show that’s perfect for distracting the public from the fact that they are all screwed, even if they are not evenly screwed, by the 1% or even the .01%.
Hi Cosimo,
I’ve talked about the White Trash Revolution for some time in the West, and I definitely link it with the Cuban Trash Revolution, the Iranian Trash Revolution and other modern Revolutions which have stood the test of time because they were built on the support, muscle and brains of the average person.
“Trash” is not exactly flattering, but that’s not always a bad thing. Hey, if Blacks can reclaim the word “nigga” or lesbians “dykes”, why not call ourselves “Trash” if it builds class unity? I think the main test is: If you totally think it’s absurd that you could ever be called White Trash…then you are in the arrogant 1%, LOL!
But you caught the main point – divisiveness is bad, and not my goal.
The French missed their queue this last election and so did the Dutch. Belonging to the “white trash” myself although in a neighboring country of France, vast peoples of any color are still asleep and completely adjusted to the nihilistic religion death cult of the elites. No great unrest will happen in Italy, France, Spain, minor whoopsie daisies steered thru every faction with an agenda, at best, is my humble prediction. EU citizens have lost the capacity of strength thru unison.
The future belongs to the Chinese/Russian alliance and what they are building right now if they can stay ahead avoiding the Neocon death cults destruction of the whole planet that is. I hope you are right and I am wrong however.
France is a country that never fails to double-down on it’s past mistakes
I think most any candidate other than Clinton could have beat Trump. Macron didn’t win the elections. His victory is the result of failing system which needs urgent change. In both cases, the press has shown total disdain for the “deplorables” and this could come back and bite them in the ass. Journalists know their petty privileges come from serving the system that serves the rich. By the way, your predictions look a lot like the scenario I wrote last May. We seem to be on the same wavelength.
Thanks for the article Ramin, enjoyed that. Not so long ago, we were discussing about Macron in the Cafe and just asking if you will be kind and write an article about that person – Jupiter. Here we have it. Thanks.
Ramin, somebody at syrianperspective.com linked to you piece. I especially liked, “rednecks and peasants work too damn hard and ask for too damn little…. [and] are too proud/indoctrinated to accept [repayments and assistance] for themselves or others.