I am glad that there is so much opposition to this within the French government. Because:
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The French people have the means and the motivation to continue protesting, and this is going to piss them off.
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The authoritarian country I was born in regularly does this during protests but they also have almost full control of the media and telecomms . People, also, have limited choices of social media (because almost everyone uses a cell phone because the power regularly goes out, and some social media apps use a lot of data). A lot of times people don’t know that they’ve been cut off until it’s already cut.
I’m not saying he is authoritarian but the idea is authoritarian. Macron is clearly panicked, but this is the wildest, and most extreme reaction. Plus, once people get to know of this then they will just create groups on other platforms. This idea is very short sighted.
I don’t follow French politics too closely, but from everything I’ve seen, this guy is absolutely DESPISED by the people. Is he not worried about getting voted out or something? Why does he seem to want to stick his finger in the eyes of the French citizens?
According to the French Constitution, the President cannot serve more than 2 consecutive terms. Macron was elected in 2017 and relected in 2022 (against the far-right candidate) so he can’t be candidate in 2027.
Before 2027, there won’t be any meaningful national election in France (European congress in 2024 and municipal elections in 2026).
Also, Macron hasn’t the absolute majority at the French national assembly, but there are tools in the Constitution which allow the government to pass laws without a vote. And the opposition is not strong enough to dismiss the government.
He’s playing the same game US democrats are, where it’s either him or a fascist.
If I was French and had to pick between Macron’s hand-picked successor and Le Pen, I would go insane. Vesting so much power in the presidency can only turn presidents into strongmen.
There is no reasonable rational analysis where Joe Biden is a fascist lol. He’s a neoliberal and I think he sucks, and I truly wish for a different candidate for the Democratic Party. But there is no comparison there between him and the other guy. Not even the same stratosphere.
I think the world’s nation-states are widely adopting the “lesser-evil” faux-choice strategy these days. This is by design
Politics has been an exercise in finding compromise from day 1, thousands of years ago. Any, ANY, system of politics that could reasonably exist, will result in candidates that huge percentages of the country aren’t happy about. Now, I would LOVE any ranked voting method for this country to minimize this effect. We definitely don’t have an amazing system of politics. But “this is by design” is literally untrue unless you believe in some weird conspiracy thing. The US constitution is mega old, most of it’s failures are related to that, imo.
This is the point at which the left-wing in France needs to step the fuck up and convince the centrists that the best way to beat the Nazis is not to vote for Diet Nazi.
There needs to be an alternative to both Macron and Le Pen. I would love to see Macron forced to retire, though considering his authoritarian impulses, it seems unlikely without a vote of misconfidence from parliament.
Note that I’m not super familiar with French political process, so I’m not totally sure how that’d need to play out.
Vote of misconfidence only gets rid of the government (PM and the other ministers), the president stays in place. Macron already theatened the parliament of dissolution (meaning everyone goes home and we do a parliament election) in case of succesful vite of misconfidence. It doesn’t make it impossible but it makes it less likely.
