this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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Oh, right, thanks for clarifying, I get it now. I agree, it's not happening in isolation. People are fed up with the status quo and being spectators of the policy sliding always more to the right. And when there's instability, the terrain is ripe for diverse influence and manipulation in the social media. That we've seen. Eventually people will vote anything out of frustration, lack of knowledge, and many other reasons including being nudged by bad actors, via bots as well for sure.
As for the article, it's clearly biased. It never talks about far right, not once, though Rassemblement National is officially a far right party, and it says leftists for the Nouveau Front Populaire, which is a broad alliance ranging from communists all the way to establishment social-democrats, never citing its name, not once. They also forgot to mention that no confidence was the plan all along for the left, while the far right was perfectly fine making the current government their bitch by threatening no confidence, but now, Le Pen is facing inegibility in the next presidential elections in 2027 because of misusing EU parliamentary funds, so it would be tremendously convenient for her if an early election happened next year. Calling it a coalition would mean they are working together, which they aren't.
I agree with everything you said, except for this part. Obama was way more left than Clinton, and Biden was way more left than Obama. Pardoning marijuana prisoners, investing in a big way in climate change and unions, and forgiving student loans were about 5 times more than the big project of health care that Obama took on, alongside all the drone strikes and transfers of police equipment. And bailing out the banks. Biden actually raised corporate taxes in a huge way, which basically never happens in American politics.
I would be surprised in one person in ten knows that any of that massive stuff happened. All they know is weird little talking-points that always seem to point in one particular direction... of which, and I'm not trying to be rude because like I said I mostly agree with you, "everything is always sliding to the right so what's the difference" is a huge one. In certain segments of the left. Other segments have other collections of talking points.
You're right, I actually had a second take when writing this sentence, for exactly the reasons you state. France and the US aren't exactly comparable, but to me it seems the Macron "center" and the US democrats are left leaning in social issues, and go with the times, there's that, but hard right in economy with neoliberalism, trying to run a country like a private business (yes, the education department costs money, it's public service!) , and crony capitalism. That's what I was thinking about with the sliding to the right bit. In both countries the main media belong to billionaires pushing hard the far right agenda. It's exhausting. We mobilised to avoid for the far right to outright win the legislative elections, but I can't be confident we'll be so successfull in the next presidential elections. We have a real left here, but they'll bicker and split when it matters the most. It's baffling.