Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 08:03:04 PM

Login with username, password and session length

So... Them French Protests, eh?

Started by Blumf, December 03, 2018, 11:50:14 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Ant Farm Keyboard

#300
Mélenchon hasn't been able to take advantage of the protests. He's tried a couple of times to reclaim them for his political party, but nobody's found him very convincing. He has however a few lieutenants, like François Ruffin, who are much more active (Mélenchon, outside of major campaigns, is quite lazy, and doesn't do much of a groundwork). But it hasn't resulted in a coherent statement or program, mostly ad hominem attacks against Macron. The party, LFI, would get 8% of the vote in the European elections of May, a far cry from Mélenchon's 20% two years ago at the presidential election.
The left is indeed awfully divided this year, with the socialists at 6% (barely above the 5% threshold that would grant them MEPs), the new party of their 2017 candidate Benoît Hamon, Génération.s, at 3, the communists at 2, and the Green Party (which managed to put an antivaxer at the second position of their list) at 7 or 8.

Blumf has indeed put the finger on one of the Yellow Vests' major weaknesses. Outside of getting Macron out, they don't have much of a coherent platform. They want fewer taxes and more allowances.They don't have designated leaders, but they have a few influential figures like Eric Drouet or Maxime Nicolle, big mouths that don't hold well under scrutiny.. And the constitution of the fifth French Republic puts emphasis on the personality of the President, rather than on the Parliament elections. As unpopular as Macron is these days, there's no political figure in the polls that who would defeat him. The conservatives are weak, and Le Pen would get a majority of the voters against her.

The unifying claim in the protests is actually the citizens' initiative referendum, the RIC, which would be able to bypass the presidential bias in French politics. It is expected to work like it does in Switzerland. Yet, the current situation in your home country shows that a referendum by popular request is far from settling major issues in countries other than Switzerland.

So, currently, the protests can get a regain in turnout with two things:
- rioting, looting, and strikes on symbols of the "oligarchy", with some help by the Black Bloc or the far right
- police brutality targeted at the demonstrators
Every Saturday without major issue is followed by a smaller turnout. The Yellow Vests are now betting on April 20 as the next big day, as March 30, April 6 and April 13 are expected to bring smaller crowds.

Blumf

Yeah, that's what's bugging me. I'm seeing similarities to the Occupy protests which fizzled out. There needs to be a solid push for something, as opposed to just being against.