It’s great for democracies that the rule of law applies to everyone and especially to those seeking office. Regardless of political orientation. The USA should sit up and take notes.
Quite. Being immune to prosecution because of views like this is exactly what the far right requires to succeed. An immunity to the application of the rule of law is what brought us the Nazis and is what the far right in the USA is, as we speak, trying to create in America.
But but but....surely the way to defeat the far-right is to let them do whatever they want and never make them face the consequences of their actions? I heard that worked BRILLIANTLY stateside!
Absolutely.
Yes, France is not the US, but also this is not what the US did. They pussyfooted around just enough to piss off his cult while convincing the wide unwashed masses that there’s nothing serious there, and then gave Trump effective impunity. Very different from this!
1/ Liberals shouldn't overthink this.
If you believe Le Pen is guilty of a crime, then she should face justice. If you think standards in public life matter, & you're worried by their erosion, you take any opportunity to uphold them. You don't weigh them against party advantage.
2/ Yes, Jordan Bardella might give the RN a poll boost or strengthen them at the next election. But he would know there are consequences for misconduct. And if parties conclude that dishonest leaders will face justice, that's good for politics.
It's not even the right question. It's whether it's better or worse for Le Pen to be convicted compared to not, regardless of whether either is good or bad relative to whatever imagined baseline.
It is easy to imagine the spin that Orban and Vance will put on it but it is also helpful to be able to highlight the difference in accountability in a court system that works and a court system that struggles to function with political appointments and government interference.
It seems wise to assess the new scenario + how to oppose French far right in that scenario, rather than assume an unpredictable situation will automatically resolve itself favourably...this is worrying reading, for example, incl. on RN/Bardella appeal to young voters. https://www.ipsos.com/fr-fr/europeennes-2024/sociologie-des-electorats-2024
The law working how it should abs showing neither fear nor favour, really shouldn’t be a big deal, but that’s how low our expectations are. But for some to hand-wring that finding MLP guilty plays into RW hands is surreal: do they get a permanent jail pass incase it encourages people to elect them?
Absobloodyexactly. The first notification on my phone after the judgement was this sorry excuse of a headline from @newsagents.bsky.social who, to fair, I’d usually expect to be far more robust: https://bsky.app/profile/stroudos.bsky.social/post/3llor6uwcec2c
It is great for the far right in France. They will be no longer so influenced by Le Pen and will have a chance to rehabilitate into reasonable human beings you might actually want to spend some time with. Their social lives will improve and they will become less angry, perhaps even kind.
Well, perhaps you haven't seen all the affairs concerning the "Macrony". The degree of corruption in politics, in France, and overwhelmingly in the centre and on the right, is unimaginable.
It's because 9 out of 10 right wing partiesxare lead by a charismatic leader. Remove the pin, and the whole thing collapses. We saw that when Haider died in Austria.
The key, surely, is to throw the book. The whole reason a certain moustache aficionado in the 1930s was able to rise to power was because the legal system treated him leniently, allowing him a cause of grievance but also to come back and take over.
Reading a history of Weimar recently, I was struck by the fact that two crucial events were the rescinding of bans on Hitler speaking to public meetings, and on the SA acting as a uniformed paramilitary.
It wasn’t prosecuting Hitler that increased his support, it was normalising him.
There is a fundamental difference btw Weimar then and France now: back then Germans were smarting at the loss of the Kaiser and in search of a strong leader. Whatever the political crisis in France, it is still fundamentally a democracy.
The 'just ignore them, don't give them attention' narrative worked out well in 1930s Germany. For years I've heard 'it's a clown outfit, no one takes him seriously, just ignore him' regarding Farage and look where Reform are now in the polls.
The issue is, of course that MSM (& BBC QT) gives so much airtime to the likes of NF and they never challenge the statements/lies he makes on air, and all (either) for clickbait or because the media org want NF in a position of power. I’m sick of it.
This has been true since 2012, yet STILL people ridicule him and dismiss the power he has, no matter who is giving it too him. Our biggest mistake was not taking him seriously, that's what I'm sick of
Unless one wants to drown in relativism this seems to me to be the formula: (A) Was it against the law? (B) did she do it? (C) is that the prescribed penalty? (D) would anyone else be similarly treated? If the answers to all those are ‘yes’ then there should be no option
Neuroticism has no place in the fight against fascism. It is self-defeating - playing into their strength. Celebrate every advance as you spit in their eye.
It isn’t random speculation though. Erdoğa was tried and found guilty like Le Pen and it helped him a lot. Same with Trump, they deplatformed him from social media and he was even became a felon before elections, and it helped him win as well.
Not believing the UK/US are capable of standing up to the FarRW isn’t liberal defeatism
It’s the cold reality of watching everyone on the RW from Farage Johnson and Trump to Tate Barton and Bannon repeatedly get away with corruption abuse violence or hate speech with no consequences
And what, therefore, is their strategy to defeat the far right, if not through tackling their corruption and graft head on? Cross their fingers and hope for the best?
Well, the likes of Schumer think that if you just let the conservatives do everything they want without much pushback, that eventually they’ll do so much terrible shit that their voters will learn a lesson and vote differently next time.
It literally has never worked, but they’ll keep doing it.
I'm more positive. It dispels some of the "all of -this- is inevitable" talk. It's not. People have choices. And it means they have to rethink. They may go hard in on the conspiracy stuff, but they have to interrupt their own flow to do it, and their opponents can use that to fight them.
I think I might have been one of those 10 years ago.
But we’ve seen what happens in the USA where there was a reluctance to go after Trump’s actual crimes. It didn’t lead to a calming of the political environment.
You gotta block the people who are contributing negatively to everything. If they want to be defeated, they need to process those feelings without vomiting them on others.
Well here is Germany’s Spiegel for you:
“This judgement is the worst way to get rid of Marine Le Pen: Those who want to keep the right out of power cannot be happy about the electoral ban on France's populist leader. The judgement will actually benefit Le Pen's party.”
Der Spiegel seems to be suggesting that a better defence of democracy and the rule of law would have been to decline to uphold the law in order to appease an antidemocratic movement that seeks to erode the rule of law.
This is simply a case of someone being found guilty of breaking the law, based on the evidence. No more, no less. If we start worrying about the "who" or the consequences of the judgement, then the rule of law is dead, with all that then entails. She chose to break the law. There are consequences.
France is not the US. Le Pen will struggle to keep her base onside when found guilty of precisely the thing she always attacked the mainstream for. And even if she could, she's out for the count.
In France the Far Right have historically had about 20% support. In the US it's much more, around 50% on the evidence of the recent election though the Democrats' habit of fielding weak candidates (Kamala Harris was never going to make it) doesn't help.
And therein is the point. Had the US managed to stop president turd from running, and preferably jailing him, the country would not now be on a high speed journey to 1930s Germany.
France have managed it. Like all cults, the far right depend on their leaders. France have neutralised theirs.
she probably is but it doesn't mean the far-right is. I think if the far-right across Europe has taught us anything it's that it responds to changes in circumstances better than the mainstream?
I think you underestimate how much the far right don’t give a shit about what is true and what is not. Le Pen base will remain unscarred no matter what they do.
She will. But the appeal won’t be heard for at least a year, (she’ll lose) and the court could have postponed ineligibility until afterwards, but decided to apply it provisionally.
She stays as MP (until the next general election) but loses any local or regional elected offices immediately.
And after that, if she loose tat appeal, she will appeal for ‘cassation’. The final one in French law, but there they judge the ‘form’, or the content( was the law applied correctly, not if she did it or not..spoiler, she did..), still will take years . (I’m an happy French today 🎉)
She’s still disqualified even if she does, and the appeal will (I think) not be heard until after the election as the wheels of the French legal system tend to grind slowly.
But while inéligibilité (disbarment from standing for election to public office) for a given period is a well-established and appropriate sanction in France, would it be acceptable in the English-speaking world?
He’s not quite a Le Pen, but he lives with Marine Le Pen’s niece.
She’s called Nolwenn Olivier - her mother is one of Jean-Marie’s daughters.
The family Sunday lunch must get really conflictual sometimes.
Also: it's ok to recognise that a positive thing has happened. The far-right are not destined for victory. Over & over again French voters have rejected them. Now they're in an existential legal crisis. It's alright to be happy. Knee-jerk pessimism does not make you wise. It just makes you a bummer.
French voters have a habit of waking up from their political voting stupor at the very last moment & are prepared to grit their teeth & vote for the lesser evil to avoid further catastrophe.
I seem to remember Farage was found to have done the very….
I'm very happy to see her condemned, but I doubt she'll have trouble keeping her base. They see the EU as a corrupt organization so her condemnation is more of a validation to them. And even if we've always rejected the far right so far, over the past decades their trend is still upward.
As we can see, deplatforming the far-right - and using force in place of 'winning the argument' - in 1945-50 actually lead to their dramatic comeback in urm *squints* 1955?
Comments
Yes, France is not the US, but also this is not what the US did. They pussyfooted around just enough to piss off his cult while convincing the wide unwashed masses that there’s nothing serious there, and then gave Trump effective impunity. Very different from this!
This is all going to turn out great. The right have no idea what to do with a martyr to the state. She will simply disappear.
Does that feel better?
That’s such a better way of doing things.
And you people wonder why you lose all of the fucking time.
They just DON'T GET IT.
Locking up paedophiles just makes more paedophilia happen.
Being rude about paedophiles just drives more people to become paedophiles.
These sheeple just want to live in the illusion that there are simple answers to complicated problems.
When - as any fool can see - we just need to all embrace zoroastrianism and lower the ag-
I wonder what he's up to? 😉
If you believe Le Pen is guilty of a crime, then she should face justice. If you think standards in public life matter, & you're worried by their erosion, you take any opportunity to uphold them. You don't weigh them against party advantage.
Is the point to make us think better not to deal with the crimes of far right criminals for fear you’ll upset their followers?
If so, what is the point of law and order altogether?
I suppose we should just throw our hands up, moan a bit and allow them free rein!
Uh, good thing, right?
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/world/marine-le-pen-french-judge-guillotines-2027-presidential-hopes/
https://bsky.app/profile/stroudos.bsky.social/post/3llor6uwcec2c
Vote in left wing government. Shit gets done.
Want to be worse off?
Enjoy the right wing clown show and vote them in...everything will get worse.
For what it's worth, when the figureheads of Golden Dawn were convicted in Greece, the whole thing disintegrated.
It wasn’t prosecuting Hitler that increased his support, it was normalising him.
Political culture counts for something.
The problem isn't random speculation, it's that the people doing it are incredibly bad at remembering that they've provided little or no evidence.
These people are not competent Frequentist reasoners, let alone Bayesians.
Paedophiles get locked up and paedophilia increases.
But if you try to tell these stuck up centrists they're all like "correlation isn't causation" and guff about cherry-picking.
It’s the cold reality of watching everyone on the RW from Farage Johnson and Trump to Tate Barton and Bannon repeatedly get away with corruption abuse violence or hate speech with no consequences
Strange how gangsters and right-wing politicians have issues with justice?
It literally has never worked, but they’ll keep doing it.
Surely some folks in France will try and twist the narrative of victimhood because it’s the tried & tested fascism playbook?
Trump is a real world example of the failure of law fare so I can’t blame people for being cautious/apprehensive.
But we’ve seen what happens in the USA where there was a reluctance to go after Trump’s actual crimes. It didn’t lead to a calming of the political environment.
It’s not the 1990s anymore.
Why do the rich and powerful stay out of gaol despite the seriousness of their crimes?
“This judgement is the worst way to get rid of Marine Le Pen: Those who want to keep the right out of power cannot be happy about the electoral ban on France's populist leader. The judgement will actually benefit Le Pen's party.”
Always folding, always being weak does not work
France have managed it. Like all cults, the far right depend on their leaders. France have neutralised theirs.
Sounds quite similar
She stays as MP (until the next general election) but loses any local or regional elected offices immediately.
But while inéligibilité (disbarment from standing for election to public office) for a given period is a well-established and appropriate sanction in France, would it be acceptable in the English-speaking world?
She’s called Nolwenn Olivier - her mother is one of Jean-Marie’s daughters.
The family Sunday lunch must get really conflictual sometimes.
Marion Marechal is the one to watch out for, I think.
How do you know?
I seem to remember Farage was found to have done the very….