Emmanuel Macron Is Playing a Dangerous Game.

[elleng]

'In 2017, Emmanuel Macron was “a meteor born under a lucky star.” A former banker without experience in elective office, he benefited during his first presidential campaign from President François Hollande choosing not to seek re-election, while the conservative candidate and front-runner, François Fillon, faced an embezzlement charge.

In 2022, the planets appeared to align once more, this time on account of international circumstances rather than national dynamics. As president of the European Union since January, Mr. Macron has enhanced his status as a legitimate interlocutor with Vladimir Putin, even if his attempts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been unsuccessful. All opinion polls have shown Mr. Macron leading in Sunday’s first round of the presidential election, but his lead has been swiftly declining.

In his first campaign, Mr. Macron claimed to be “neither left nor right ,” a slogan that had seduced many who are weary of the old political divisions. Once elected, however, he quickly revealed what that meant in practice. Cutting taxes for the wealthy, shrinking the welfare state and hollowing out democracy, Mr. Macron drifted rightward, to the point of shocking some members of La République En Marche!, his party.

Far from changing course, Mr. Macron appears to be doubling down. In recent months, his appeal to the right-wing electorate has become ever more explicit, orienting his platform around two of the right’s traditional themes — control of immigration and stiffening of secularism. It may deliver him another victory. But Mr. Macron is playing a dangerous game. By absorbing his opponents’ views into his own platform, he risks bringing about a political landscape hazardously skewed to the right. . .

The xenophobic and Islamophobic notes in Mr. Macron’s policies may come as a surprise from a candidate whose constituency is mostly composed of middle- and upper-class voters as well as retirees for whom immigration and secularism rank far lower as priorities than purchasing power, the health system and the environment. But with the left candidate of La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, polling third in the first round, Mr. Macron appears to have assumed that he would win the presidential election on his right, against Républicains’ Valérie Pécresse, Reconquête’s Éric Zemmour, and above all, Rassemblement National’s Marine Le Pen, in second place, with a constituency attuned to her nationalist program.

It’s been done before. In 2002, Jacques Chirac adopted a similar approach in a runoff against Jean-Marie Le Pen. Ahead of the vote, Le Pen warned that “voters always prefer the original to the copy.” He was wrong, and lost by about 60 percent. In mid-March, when his daughter Marine was polling between 16 and 22 percent behind Mr. Macron in the second round of the election, it seemed like his prediction would continue to fall short. But now, when the difference between the candidates has plummeted to as little as 2 percent, it looks close to coming true.

During his 2017 campaign, Mr. Macron presented himself as a renovator of politics and a rampart against the far right. Today, he appears to be something very different: a traditional politician, offering a bridge to the far right. For a president who promised to remake France in his image, it is a worrying legacy.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/opinion/emmanuel-macron-is-playing-a-dangerous-game.html

Here’s why France’s presidential election this weekend has ripple effects across the world:

With war singeing the European Union’s eastern edge, French voters will be casting ballots in a presidential election whose outcome will have international implications. France is the 27-member bloc’s second economy, the only one with a U.N. Security Council veto, and its sole nuclear power. And as Russian President Vladimir Putin carries on with the war in Ukraine, French power will help shape Europe’s response.

Twelve candidates are vying for the presidency — including incumbent and favorite President Emmanuel Macron who is seeking a new term amid a challenge from the far-right.

Here’s why the French election, taking place in two rounds starting Sunday, matters:'>>>

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/heres-why-frances-presidential-election-this-weekend-has-ripple-effects-across-the-world?

[Roy Rolling]

1. Right vs Wrong

It’s right as a politician to chase public opinion, it’s wrong to only listen to the loudest opinions.

[DFW]

2. That sounds like an article written by an American

It overlooks the western European view that taxes and immigration are closely intertwined. Even my wife, a very left-leaning German social worker, blew up at German taxpayer money being siphoned off to finance, in part, Eastern European and third world immigrants‘ successful efforts at gaming the welfare system. If clever enough, some of them found loopholes in the rules allowing them to live in big apartments, refusing to work, and getting crowded second apartments for their wives and kids, cell phones and cars all paid by German taxpayers‘ money. Such cases were, obviously, few and far between, but common enough to make big headlines, and fuel anti-foreigner sentiment. My office in France says it‘s no different there. As long as welfare cheating is seen as far less worthy of prosecution than tax cheating, the right wing will have an ever-renewable supply of xenophobic sentiment to exploit.

[Martin68]

5. DFW, I appreciate your insight, but I can't help but notice that the anti-immigrant rehetoric

sounds so much like all xenophobic or racist rants in America. Reminds me of Reagan's "welfare queens," and stereotypes of blacks as being "lazy" and "handouts." Are immigrants in Germany so different from immigrants to the US?

[DFW]

6. Actually, yes

The immigrants to America are mostly from Latin America. They come because they are starving or fear for their lives at home. Most of them desperately WANT to assimilate and become Americans ASAP.

This is also the case with most immigrants into Europe, but there is a far greater proportion from Muslim countries and/or Eastern European countries that brazenly and openly want to impose their religion (worst cases in F, B and NL), or exploit the (relatively) generous government help to the disadvantaged. Keep in mind that European countries are small and compact compared to the USA. If there is a problem in San Diego, it won’t necessarily stir up public sentiment in Philadelphia. In a country like France or Belgium or even Germany, anything that happens anywhere is automatically local, and makes national headlines within hours or less. Our extremist right in the USA needs a Fox Noise to make them think that people are in danger when they aren’t. In European countries, things that happen anywhere within, or even close to national borders are considered local. Welfare scam artists from countries like Romania are even legally there, as they are EU citizens. They can’t be refused entry, and the western Europeans hate it because their taxes pay for it, and their own retirement benefits suffer.

My wife worked as a social worker for decades in Germany, and the Government gives her a pension of all of €850 a month. I still work, and make enough after taxes that it doesn’t matter, but what about all the Germans NOT married to people in my position? The right wing in Europe has been handed a lot of low-hanging fruit that the US right wing has had to manufacture out of thin air.

[Martin68]

3. Excellent article. I didn't know to what extent Macron was moving rightward.

[elleng]

4. Neither did I ; haven't followed French politics.

Last edited Sat Apr 9, 2022, 07:46 PM - Edit history (1)