it’s complicated…

Yesterday saw a first round of the regional and departmental elections in France, with a terribly low participation (around 30% of the voters, except in Corsica where 56% of the voters voted)…. [The map here is about the departmental elections, with departments being delineated in white and the subdivisions corresponding to the cantons. Corse/Corsica is “missing” because it is now a single entity. Same thing about Paris.] The only nice surprise about this outcome is that abstention particularly impacted the lepenist votes, which almost uniformly went down compared with the previous regional elections. And hence that the ill chances that a region gets a nazional majority are lowered. Although it is difficult to analyse why: polls were predicting a brown sludge tsunami, the gilets jaune movement (or morass) is not yet over and mostly aligned with the populist themes of the RN, and (some) people  seem unhappy with about any decision taken by any level of authority during the Covid-19 crisis. It will be interesting to watch the second round final results, next week, but I doubt we will see a voting surge happening, esp. since the frontist danger is now downplayed.

quote of the year

“J’ai eu une vie assez droite, je ne me suis jamais conduit comme un salaud” [I have lived a rather righteous life, I never behaved like a bastard]

Jean-Marie le Pen [condemned for apology of war crimes (1969), contestation of crimes against humanity (2009), Holocaust denial (1988, 2006), antisemitism (1986), racial hatred (2005, 2008), provocation to discrimination against Muslims (2004, 2006) and Roma (2017), and insults (1993, 1998, 2018), demoted of his European parliamentary immunity (1997), suspended from the European parliament for assault (2000), suspected of misappropriation of public funds (2019) and of torture in Algeria, founder of the extreme-right Front National (1972), &tc., &tc., speaking on France Inter]

God save the Queen, the fascist Marine [hopefully the last quotes!]

«I want to destroy the EU, not Europe! The EU is deeply harmful, it is an anti-democratic monster. I want to prevent it from becoming fatter, from continuing to breathe, from grabbing everything with its paws and from extending its tentacles into all areas of our legislation.» M. Le Pen, 3 June 2014

« …the European flag, the one I will banish from official buildings.» M. Le Pen, 18 April 2017

«The issue of [the existence of] gas chambers [in Nazi concentration camps], I think we should be allowed to also discuss this issue.» Jean-François Jalkh [temporary president of Front National] April 2000

«But you think that there is real freedom of the press in France [when compared with Putin’s Russia]? Ninety-nine percent of the journalists are leftists!.» M. Le Pen, 3 June 2014

non, toujours non

God save the Queen, the fascist Marine

«”Je déciderai d’un moratoire sur toute l’immigration légale pour arrêter ce délire (…) Moi présidente, le rétablissement des frontières sera mis en place dès le lendemain de ma prise de fonctions. » 17 Avril 2017

“…si par malheur il était élu président de la République, M. Macron accélèrerait encore davantage la dérive multiculturelle dans laquelle s’enfonce la société française, et aggraverait un communautarisme déjà malheureusement en pleine progression” 15 Avril 2017