French elections

t. Muslim who is butthurt about muh immigration.

Do people realise how difficult leaving the Euro is? Much less the EU.

Look at Greece, it has been internationally humiliated, saw its living standards cut more than half, and has seen taxes double within 6 years.

And they still want the Euro.

France is not Britain, it is a large economy but it does not have the completely post-industrial economy the UK has. Le Pen also cannot pull off a Trump and say we will become economically self-reliant and isolationists in trade.

Even if Le Pen were to introduce a Frexit plan for the euro, I doubt the French would vote out.

In the end this whole nationalist/ eurosceptic elections cycles we have been getting will be run out of energy and promises, and people will go back to square one, while still being disillusioned with liberal democracy and the economy.

People are disillusioned with Paris crawling with Agwale from Nigeria selling children drugs and dying in terrorist attacks more than anything else.

Greece literally cannot leave the EU so without seriously damaging its financial standing. It has nothing to do with the so called benefits of the Euro, which are practically non-existent for most European countries.

Yeah, but it's not Greece either, it's much more powerful. The EU cannot bully it like it bullied Greece.

Probably. Only other candidate with a real shot is Fillon and the only reason he'd win is if there's a bunch of people who want LePen lite. Even if one of the "left" candidates made it to the runoff, I doubt they'd win.

France stops taking refugees and expels current refugees, France quits NATO again and the EU, Le Pen implements some social programs like maternity leave and assistance for families with kids, probably ban gay marriage, transgender people, etc.

Then… I dunno, join whatever EU alternative Putin sets up I guess.

True, they essentially filled the role of western social democracies and in that regard they are doing it pretty well, but I doubt it may last long-term, as they are tards who cannot plan out their budget. Sooner or later shit will hit the fan.

What has that to do with the EU?

France does not want to exit, it can do it. But it will hurt more than Britain leaving. The UK's economy is the City, aircraft, and oil. That's about the only things it has. Which is why it is primarily an economy based on consumption and not production. And as such was never integrated in the EU or eurozone economy, apart from some participation in the single market.

France on the other hand is a much more traditional economy, very much focused on things like agriculture or industry,which is why it so closely interlinked with Germany. Germany is the primary exporter in Europe, and France uses this partnership so that they have common tariffs, trading policies etc.

If France was to exit the EU, it would make it isolated economically and a competitor against Germany. It would equal to them committing economic suicide.

the national front is on the Kremlin payroll

The economy is a political construction. All it needs is time and will.

I think you're getting too caught up in the practicalities of France quitting the EU, versus the emotional response FN voters have to the EU. They're not market analysts that determined "hmm without this protection from German tariffs, French wheat exports will need to increase 1.17% to keep up current GDP growth etc etc", they're people going "the EU is trying to turn us into gay arabs while austerity keeps fucking up my life, fuck the EU".

Also, if Germany needs France at all, I'm not sure Merkel is enough of a secret Maoist accelerationist to intentionally just let France leave the EU with on how to keep French trade unmolested.

Social issues in liberal democracy almost always go behind economic ones. Sure they can bring presidents up and down, but in the end the economy rule over all else. Non euros allso don't understand also how much power technocrats have in continental europe.

Yes.

Personally my money is on her receiving ~55% of the vote.

The Euro will crash hard.
The EU will either collapse in its totality or just be reduced to Germany and a relatively small number of Germany dependencies/satellites.

GOOD

Au revoir to this bitch

Feels good.

It's not sure but still not impossible.

Absolutely nothing or at least nothing good for people in general since Le Penis is just a Financial World's bitch.

Euro is harder to crash than you think, also the Manchurian candidate shit pulled of by Putin on Trump, won't work on the EU.

It is way different when you have one guy calling the shots and having a dozen countries parliaments, a gazillion technocrats and bureaucrats pulling the strings.

Love it or hate it,the architecture of the economy of the EU is a perfect pyramid, not one country can crash it.

Also the EU does not have the hate boner for Russia Obama had, which makes them much less easy to be deceived by Kremlin as Europe has very important energy ties with Russia.

Fascists winning so many elections around the world.

are you having an identity crisis?

Marine Le Pen is nothing like her father. Even if she wins, it'll just be conservatism 2.0. Nothing changes.

This is true, and a few years ago, I was one of those morons who thought SYRIZA was going to at least seriously attempt Grexit because their supporters/platform wouldn't allow for anything else. And then they turned around and went "um oh yeah Grexit can't work, nevermind I guess austerity it is". I do also think Le Pen is a more serious true believer than the SYRIZA guys, but if quitting the EU would really kill the French economy that bad, that still would mean Le Pen is a true believer faced with the choice of quitting the EU and getting 1968: Round 2, or just making a deal with Merkel to let France kick out its Muslims in exchange for staying in the EU.

Are you trying to imply that closing your borders to trade with the world, enacting massive tariffs, bringing useless redundant jobs back home and then removing all oversight from half-unbiased third parties is going to foster more trade? Because there is literally no evidence that this has ever been the case.

It's like saying Syriza and Podemos are turbocommies.

No just fully aware that the EU will not tolerate democracy if it goes against their neoliberal agenda.

Second scenario is far more probable, and even then I think she would kick only refugees/undocumented migrants. Not all Muslims.

But who knows we would be in uncharted waters.

In any case,you can bet all of the French establishment has made all the necessary contingency plans not for her not to get elected. Which is why they pulled hard economic-rightist/neoliberal Fillon over traditional right Juppe.

In a twist of irony, Le Pen is economically the most left-wing candidate bar Melenchon.

Not even France? What about the possibility of a domino effect if France goes?

That's not a translation I've heard before.

I don't understand. Are you saying Fillon is a stronger candidate?

I think you are overstating its security.
The Euro is a currency like any-other, as such people will buy into it if they feel it is rather safe and stable (like they did the American dollar after trump got in).
And in the event that the currency no longer seems so stable or loses some of the economic backing that it once had, they will sell it off.

France has the third biggest GPD in the EU if it pulls out, that will shake confidence in the Euro further and cause a crash.

UKIP seems to prove that anti-EU parties have a good shot at meeting their objectives.

The more complex any system is, the more points of potential failure there are.

Please do not further bastardize the use of that word.

Of the 10 biggest GDP's in the EU currently, 8 have anti-EU parties that have a good shot at taking power in the near future.

I think ~9.3 trillion in nominal GDP voting to leave the EU within the space of a few years of each-other will sink it quite soundly.

I disagree.
Germany is pushing the same anti-Russia propaganda that the US is.

No-one in America was deceived by the Kremlin.

Blame Zizek. The correct translation is:

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

If leadership in the EU changed, and technocrats/politicians like Schauble had less power, the EU could be a force of good against predatory speculative capitalism.

I already explained why France cannot leave, it is like a gangster making you an "offer you cannot refuse", you can ignore it, but you risk your head. So why would you take it. Also there are no mechanisms for exiting the Euro. The dismantling of the eurozone, could take a decade. The dismantling of the EU and all of its policies waaaay more.

Yeah no shit.

Short-term the solution is to break your country out of its shackles. Long term there is the possibility of federation again, but only if it is process led by leftists.

Isn't a lot of France's financial assets lying in German banks? What the fuck is going to happen to that?

If I was in france, I would legit vote for Le Pen.

As of today, it's accelerationalism if you like it or not.

That's where you are wrong, the euro is nothing like the dollar or the chinese yuan. The euro is backed by a set of economic agreements between EU countries which are also bound by EU law. Speculative stock markets cannot crash it because confidence resides in that all of these different countries are legal bound to use it by law.

Look at Greece, who do you think owns all of that debt of their banks? Other European countries. Look at all of the German private banks, and especially Deutsche bank and how it handled the 08 crisis.

The major selling point of the euro is that it cannot fall even if someone speculates against it. Even if another recession were to happen. The Eurozone would be far from collapsing.

As I said in a previous post, UK's brexit situation is nothing like a France exit or even a Greek exit from the eurozone.

Will not happen, at least not in foreseeable future.

Almost all EU countries are also part of NATO, politics wise yes most of those countries are against Russia due to Ukraine. But NATO policy is set out by the US. In terms of the economy and the energy trade nothing has changed between Europe and Russia.

Americans think Russia is way more important than it really is. EU is a far greater power than Russia and doesn't really care what it does.

What you should be asking is EU relationship with China, since that is really much,more important in terms of policy.

I'm pretty sure it started off a regular word before becoming a political movement, like Anarchy, no? Apparently it hasn't.
etymonline.com/index.php?term=technocracy

yeah I was thinking of this too. Probably the only thing Thatcher did right.

Merkel (the de fact fuhrer of the EU) and her country are obsessed with Russia's expanding influence and most definitely do see it as a threat.

Only because of NATO. If the U.S. fucked off Germany could easily see Russia as a partner

Germany doesn't do "partners." They never have and never will. Stalin was right. We really should have burned that vile country to the ground at the end of the war.

I hope she does win

Tbh, even if she doesn't the FN will have definitively supplanted the PS as the second biggest party, which is a big story in itself. The most recent polls have the PS candidate (it makes little difference who is nominated) coming fifth with

what is the flag with the gold rectangles for?

It is the flag of Franche-Comté.
A region in France.

...

Victory.

A C C E L E R A T I O N I S M

Source?

Greece is a vassel state. Britain and France together can end the EU

I thought you hated us…

t. Algerian

thephilosophicalsalon.com/donald-trumps-topsy-turvy-world/

Have you known a left wing Government not get shit out due to budgets?

I don't enjoy him calling Georgia "Russian Military Agression" but whatever

Honestly, fuck these people.

He's referring there to the official party line of the Republicans, which has held that Russia is militarily aggressing in these areas and Obama had failed to… I guess nuke Russia in response to them.

Parti Socialiste+Lutte Ouvriere+NPA+FDG+Les Verts (or hell, just PS and FDG) around Melenchon (center of the alliance relative to the alliance, politically speaking, and also the most popular candidate in polling)=KILL Macuck, Le Ben and Shillon. I don't understand why they don't do this. Is it sectarianism? Could it happen? The left in fucking Italy is more competent.

But what do I know? I'm getting cucked by Americuck of all places, as a Puerto Rican. Maybe I should just stay out of it.

PS would probably rather support Fillon.

Or around Hamon I guess.

Isn't Hamon very close to Valls? I misread your post, lol
I don't know anything about the French socialists but I'm guessing they're the type of Socdem party that has tons of pro-welfare non-socdems in it that everyone likes to bash

Probably Le Pen.

independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/marine-le-pen-french-election-poll-front-national-first-round-far-right-leader-francois-fillon-a7536451.html

She's leading the polls, but to be fair, she'll just wind up fucking over her countries economy and making it worse than it was before.

GDR was based though

Wait there's a fucking LaRouche movement in France?

Not him, but are you trying to imply freeing yourself from hostile foreign globalist trade cartels = shutting down all trade?

Yes.

Neoliberalism finally loses its left-liberal face forever and gets an ugly, more authoritarian and conservative one in its stead, but will remain rooted firmly in global capital as ever.

She's not going to win because they right and left will vote tactically, not tacitly, they will actively ask their voters to vote for their ideological opponent to stop her, which is how shit the French system is and how shit the French parties are.

Is there any hope for a Corbyn type figure to appear to lead the PS? Or is Jean-Luc Mélenchon the closest to that type?

The zizek translation is more fun though.

A Corbyn type, is that a joke?

as opposed to bringing in hundreds of thousands of uneducated turks and syrians to handle the work that the french pedestrians can do

Nope. Just questioning if there's anyone worth a damn left in the PS.

Not surprising, tbqh

Nice meme

They are in the Euro, and they did not even try to leave, so what's the point of this incoherent post?
Nonsense meme just like "decentralized planning".

Nonsense. A couple things would get more bureaucratic and they would remain a big trading partner for Germany. Do you think Switzerland is isolated economically?

What a shame, still 8/10, gets my baguette up if you know what I mean.

To have Jeanne d'Arc as a "national symbol" of "France" is completely retarded and really goes to show right-wingers' complete ignorance when it comes to history or anything that isn't muh feelings. Same goes with Charles Martel.

Why?

Fuck off Abdul.

The way the French election system works makes it unlikely since in the second round of voting, everyone is going to pile on the party opposing FN
FN will probably win the first round of votes

YES! I AM!

By this logic WW2 should have resulted in revolution
it didn't

Because it makes a completely anachronistic reference to a period of history when our contemporary understanding of "France" as a "national entity" didn't exist at all yet — you'd have to wait for the late 19th century for that.

Typically, Charles Martel was a Frankish military leader (who lived in the 8th century) who couldn't care less about any sort of supposed "clash of civilization" between a France that didn't even exist in name and Islamic civilization. He had many local Christian rivals which he considered as enemies as much as he did his foes at the Battle of Poitiers — which by the way was but a minor part of his military campaigns. The only reason this event gained any sort of historical prominence is because of the way in which it could be manipulated to mean what one wanted it to mean. In fact, you should know the Catholic Church initially hated this guy's guts for political reasons.

Similarly, Jeanne d'Arc (who lived in the 15th century) sided with the Kingdom of France not because of some sort of prototypical nationalist fervor but because she had some hallucination through which God himself and assorted saints told her to defend the House of Valois against the House of Plantagenet during the inheritance-related Hundred Years War. As for the people responsible for her infamous trial and execution, they were supporters of the Duke of Burgundy whose lands were a vassal of the Kingdom of France itself. Not even mentioning her posthumous retrial, which was an initiative of the Pope and not that of the Kingdom of France specifically. The symbolism of her martyrdom became so strong that even largely apolitical people like filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer dealt with the subject matter. Also it's funny to see the far-right suddenly shunning traditional gender roles in favor of enabling cross-dressing — not that I care, I think tomboys are hot.

Hope this helps. Never trust nationalist myths. They're nothing but cunning manipulation of historical facts designed to support their political worldview.

Is Benoit Hamon cool?

I'm rooting for Mélenchon to clutch it.
He's gaining momentum and there is the shy-commie factor.

le pen will grab another surprise victory for the far right, France will become the most powerful country in EU as Germany will be forced to do whatever they say. the EU will basically cease to exist within 10 years.

What happens if Macron wins? Would it be better in any way than Le Pen winning (whether she runs the country into the ground or brings us nationalistic welfare state)?

I think you'll find she actually kept the english english because lol at anyone with the opportunity to rule from paris staying in that shitheap london.

nobody outside of fascists who love making vague appeals to nature believes this

Nationalist movements supported by the working class can be very helpful. After they achieve their goals (national unity, no foreign economic pressure) there's room for a transitioning into straight up socialism.

that isn't a goal

that isn't a goal

the proletariat is international and there is national eonomic pressure created by porkies living inside the nation

Absolutely not, all opinion polling shows Le Pen being beaten badly by Fillon, Marcon, and Valls (assuming he wins the primary), and the difference can't be accounted for by any sort of MoE (unlike Trump).

you guy are completely out of touch with the average french.

She already gets Putinbux

The Kremlin has been financing all kinds of far-right activity in Europe, including the FN

Make 2017 look like 1917. Let's fucking do it.

is there a source for this that isn't some anti-russian propaganda blog?

Ironic because Putin and his various media mouthpieces have been whining about nazis in Ukraine almost non-stop since their invasion of Crimea.

and that's not true because "Putin said it"? are you seriously in favor of the bandera scum?

Putin literally funds neonazi groups all across Europe. He has no fucking right to talk about the evils of Nazism when he is actively aiding its spread.

The story is as follows, FN and other populist right wing parties attempt to get loans from banks in western Europe, banks refuse or get pressured by the ruling political parties to withdraw offers
Russian banks see an opportunity and offer loans to these groups

Also no electoral college nonsense. The polls in the USA were actually totally right; Hillary did win more votes. Trump just won more votes in the 3-4 states that mattered.

The polls also predicted him winning the EC mate.
The polls were less wrong than the media machine led itself to believe. They polls still made some seriously wrong assumptions, though, and as a consequence predicted a wrong result.

It's going to be the non-choice between Le Pen as Fillon, and Le Pen will win. What's stupid us that leftists outside of France will consider Fillion a victory.

Were you one of the economically illiterate people that supported Brexit because Farage said you would be eating at the golden mountain and everything would be paradise again?

top kek

Do you even know how German economic establishment works? They are an export base economy. France is nothing without the EU and German exports.

except that Fillon is way more qualified than LePen
it would be like Romney vs Trump

Everyone will vote against her in the second turn if she make it(she probably will), the hatred of the FN run deep and the right wing voter base will go with Fillon(maybe Macron for the non conservative liberal) and I'm pretty sure in case of a LePen vs Fillon second turn a lot of leftist will vote Fillon to make sure she doesn't pass, LePen will at most have 30% to 40% (depending on abstention) of the vote

The (rhetorical) question was whether Switzerland, which is neither in the Euro nor the EU, is isolated. And it isn't. The point of bringing up Switzerland is to show that the hysteria about leaving the Euro or even the EU is silly. You have failed to make anything resembling an argument as to why the difference in population size matters here.

I live in Germany. Brexit is very annoying in the short term and resulted in the British elite panicking for a while, but in the long run doesn't mean that much because it isn't precisely defined what it even means. I'm not a fan of UKIP and I think most of their program is terrible, like getting rid of inheritance tax and doing fuckall about renewable energy (we once had a thread about it here), but Farage is right when he says that Brits (the part who are in the elite, that is) can basically pick and choose which deals they liked about the EU and discard the rest.

No, I have never heard about this exotic country named Germany!! Tell me about it!!! Leaving the Euro, maybe even the EU, doesn't mean that you build a wall.

As some people have already stated here, the 2-turns system makes it so that fringe parties lose the Presidential elecions and cannot get more than 3-4 seats in the National Assembly.

This. Le Pen's father got to the second turn in 2002, and he lost with 20% of the vote against right-wing president Chirac (which led to the dissolution of the SuccDem government of based Lionel "35 hours" Jospin).

LePen is a social construct