RSS
Time and again, we are somberly warned of the grave threat to democracy posed by Marine Le Pen as the leader of a quasi-fascistic party, the National Rally (Rassemblement National or RN). Yet, what the French politico-media class seems to fear most is a bit of genuine democracy, unmediated by slippery politicians and smarmy journalists.
Le Pen recently announced that her first measure if elected Présidente – an increasingly-plausible scenario – would be the holding of a “great referendum” on immigration. She told France Inter radio:
My first decision will be the organization of a referendum on immigration. Because it’s now been decades that the various governments have been taking decisions on immigration without the French people ever being heard or questioned on this topic. According to opinion polls the French people has disagreed for decades with the policy that is being conducted on immigration.
Le Pen was somewhat vague on the content of the referendum, mentioning “several questions” that would be posed, including presumably one on the FN/RN’s years-old signature promise: a reduction of net immigration to a quasi-negligible 10,000 per year.
She also presented two other main planks. One is the partial suspension of the Schengen Agreement, which ensures check-free circulation between EU countries, to longer apply to non-EU nationals. Somehow French borders would have to be tightly monitored for non-EU nationals while letting European citizens through. How this would be done is unclear, but in any case it’s very common for national governments to temporarily/semi-permanently reinstitute border checks despite their Schengen commitments.
The last plank would be a tax break for the “middle classes.” Le Pen’s economic policy, once defined by a protectionist and anti-EU social nationalism, now seems decidedly fluctuous.
In other news, the liberal-globalist establishment paper Le Monde is really fretting about a potential Le Pen win.
According to several polls, around half of left-wing voters (defined as those voting for the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the center-left Anne Hidalgo, or the Green Yannick Jadot) would abstain from voting in the event of a Le Pen-Macron second round presidential election. The paper claims that voters are less likely to see in Le Pen a fascist menace and many are tired/disgusted of voting for Macron, “president of the rich,” as a lesser evil.
What’s more, the French left is extraordinarily divided with currently around a dozen candidates. Le Monde laments these “kamikaze” candidates make a Le Pen-Macron runoff more likely and, naturally, urges in an editorial for a revival of the “republican front” to disenfranchise and exclude nationalist voters through a cartel of all the other parties.
Finally, we are witnessing a racialization of French politics as increasingly colorful and woke youths reject the old generation’s quaint commitment to colorblind secularism as the bedrock of national identity.
Controversy is now focused on France’s main student union, the National Union of Students of France (UNEF), has been openly organizing coloreds-only meetings so participants can talk about their feelings without the oppressive glare of white people. There is talk of defunding or even abolishing the union, but it is being backed by various left-wing leaders like Mélenchon and the Socialist Benoît Hamon, who are increasingly giving up on the principles of the secular colorblind left.
Ethnic and religious polarization provides fertile ground for Le Pen. If she wins, appeal to direct democracy seems like a worthy gambit. Referenda are a regular feature of democratic life in neighboring Switzerland and have ensured that the Swiss people actually have some say over their national destiny. The British referendum on leaving the European Union – whatever one thinks of that – has ultimately been acted upon despite the kicking and screaming tantrums of vast swathes of the establishment and traditionally-dominant “educated” strata of the population.
While there are natural risks of misfire, the referendum is a powerful means for Le Pen to appeal to yellow-vest voters and sanctify policies with the blessing of the Popular Will. There is no surer way of blowing through the inevitable and systemic attempts at sabotage by the legacy politico-media class. En avant !
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
My idealistic side says that if you truly value democracy, a referendum is the way to go.
My cyncical side says “right, like the fairly and accurately counted popular vote of the 2020 US elections?”
Funny, referenda occurred to me recently out of the blue.
I notice that everybody denigrates democracy in the latter day. I understand. The average person is epically uninformed, uninformed on a heroic scale. And democracy depends on an informed electorate. At least according to I believe the monster Jefferson it was.
My counter-argument: if it’s so bad, why are they so afraid of it? Why do they go out of their way to subvert it at every juncture like a house afire. Why do they pull out the big guns whenever anybody suggests more of it?
Suddenly, democracy started looking better to me. No matter how dumb the electorate. Especially referenda. Put every question to the people, I thought. Why not? How could it be worse than what we got? And wouldn’t it be a hoot. I think the media, the politicians, and the average news-consumer might be unpleasantly surprised at the outcome.
Of course, in order to do it right, you’d have to do it whole-hog. Paper ballots. Abolishment of gerrymandering and electoral college. Proportional voting. The “none of the above” checkbox. Equal government funding of each candidate, no private funding whatsoever, the way they do in Europe. Equal government-mandated free access to media for all candidates. Access of marginal parties to media, debates, etc. Etc.
Best of all, democracy-boosting is innocuous. All-American and yet diverse. Nothing contentious about it. Nothing cancel-worthy. Just advocating all-american, all-inclusive, diverse democracy, ma’am, that’s all. Move along.
Let the people vote about something actually important?
HAHAHAHA.
Guillaume, you crack me up!
Canada and Australia are alike in that they try to appease their aboriginal populations with apologies for colonization.
You would think that aboriginals, encouraged to think of themselves as the heritage owners of the American and Australian land masses, would have the greatest interest in halting the immigration juggernaut from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Alas, that avenue has been blunted by woke propaganda.
The mechanism for this is dark funding to create a black-aboriginal alliance, where abos and blacks are united against whitey. Most aboriginal public figures are brainwashed globalist, leftist products of liberal colleges. Stand with whites against immigration? Never.
I was thinking the same thing about “voting.” Of course we all know that the election fraud of 2020 was big lie cooked up by Trump and conspiracy theorists. We know this because that is what (((they))) told us.
First off even IF the elections were legit which they aren’t, is there any leader in sight who has the balls to make a difference in America or Canada and stand up for Whites?
I meant to type America or Europe, instead of America and “Canada.” Canada? No one cares about Canada. hehe. Only kidding.
People of all nations have an inherent right to decide how the nation shall be constituted. Marine Le Pen simply wants the people to express themselves directly. That means of expression probably ought be done in all nations.
And do Muslim-French and African-French get to vote in this referendum? Why should they, when the vote is about the legitimacy of THEM being granted French citizenship and added to the voting register?
Damn! Obwandiyag once again leaves me with little to disagree with. For a contrarian like myself this is annoying when and only when somebody has actually said something meaningful.
All I can say is that you can have problems with the people who decide the words in a referendum. That has occurred in Australia with the government of the day deciding the wording. Perhaps Switzerland has a better system that I don’t know about.
Referenda make little difference in California because legislation there is made by Jewish lawyers; neither elected representatives nor the people as a whole are relevant if corrupt judges always decide on the basis of their own political opinions. [email protected]
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
If voting made any real difference, they wouldn’t allow it.
Possible French referenda on immigration remind me of what Hitler proposed for the Sudetenland and the Polish Corridor in 1938 and 1939, plebiscites in which the people living there could decide for themselves what country they wanted to belong to. French Premier Daladier nixed the first one, fearing the Ruthenians and Hungarians and the rest would also opt out of the artificial entity called Czechoslovakia. The Polish military dictatorship adamantly refused the second, even while claiming that there were no ethnic Germans in the Corridor, although it had been German territory until 1919. Austrians overwhelmingly voted to rejoin Germany earlier in ‘38, so it’s easy to see why powerful international interests opposed expressions of popular democracy. As Kissinger said after engineering the bloody Chilean coup in 1973, democracy is too important to be left to the people – under capitalism, at any rate, unlike the oh-so evil “fascists” who do not fear their own people.
This is probably her best shot. People want it and it puts the establishment in the terrible position of opposing a referendum. Two dangers: (1) Le Pen gets Trumped during election night; (2) The establishment co-opts the idea of a referendum and then pulls a “European Constitution”-stab in the back, thus gaining 5 extra years.
Perhaps it would be too complicated, but instead of a simple up/down on immigration, how about letting people vote on the level … that is, 10,00-50,000 per year, or 50,000-100,000, or …
Therein lies a Great Truth. Would you a) like us to neuter you, or b) cut off your testes. Choose one, pleb!
Anyway, is there a referendum of the past ten years that was not just bluntly scrapped as being “unconstitutional” every time They lost? Brexit? That was just a way to establish America’s “Airfield One” without Euro interference.
“… legislation there is made by Jewish lawyers…”
Jewish or not, the entire concept of an “independent judiciary” makes a joke of democracy.
But, like Obwandiyag, I have considered these two things, referenda and lawyers, and came to the conclusion we have to subject lawyers to the constitution, and the constitution to ubiquitous referendum.
If there is one thing I’d change, it is this: No-one shall ever give a speech in parlement again, and parlement shall make no laws. They are supposed to be civil service managers, and they will spend their time in parlement giving account of their respective departments, and delivering specific requests for assistence from other departments.
Okay, that was two things, but you get my drift.
https://www.greenpets.co.za/index.php/en/12-paranoid-goy/187-judicious-democracy
https://www.greenpets.co.za/index.php/en/12-paranoid-goy/171-free-democracy
In theory, it seems like a good move, making some people (e.g. the yellow vests) think they have a say.
In practice, it will not change anything and may even backfire.
First, letting the immigrants vote on immigration is ridiculous and letting only “Français de souche” vote is impossible.
Second, the French could have voteed ‘anti-immigration’ since decades, at least since Jean-Marie LePen. They voted for immigration boosters like Giscard, Mitterand and Chirac instead.
And last, but not least: what makes Mrs. Marine think, the same biased media, which decide on normal elections, will not as easily tweak referendums?
Let the average person have an input to government policies aimed at maximizing population growth? Ridiculous!
That’s as absurd as letting the cattle on a farm decide how much they shall be bred!
(Remember, the issues is not ‘immigration’, it’s forced population growth. Always a mistake to use the terminology of the enemy).
I have met many Canadian “First Nations”, over the years, from all levels of their internal politics. You are correct. Most of the “leaders” are terrific at putting on the righteous indigence act while living high off the hog, but won’t go anywhere near immigration. Those at the lower levels, like we are, are overwhelmingly opposed to immigration and immigrants – particularly non-White ones.
If they are citizens, they have a right to vote. They aren’t going anywhere, unless their citizenship is revoked. I have never blamed immigrants for immigration. They exercised a right to apply. It was/is government policy that allows them to enter and become citizens. I purposefully use this approach to magnify the gap between public opinion and government action.
Surely that would be safer for her than proposing a referendum on remaining in the EU.
Le Pen family is one good example why Western nationalist never win. People of France voted down Le Pen family for 40 years and they still keep touting about immigration.
They failing 40 years and never able to learn. There were many election last 40 years so immigration is one of the most voted issue. Western voters rejected every single candidate running on anti immigration platform and they still keep pushing this issue.
This referendum is dead on arrival, because Madame Le Pen will lose like she always did. Sad but true.
Just might get her in there, I sure hope so.
This is clearly her best shot. It will draw in people who otherwise do not like her. The French system of having a second-round vote of the two leading candidates has previously meant that everyone gangs up against Le Pen.
She floated the idea of Frexit and/or abandoning the Euro last time which was too much for most uncommitted voters to swallow (and she was badly mauled in debate on economics by the clever Macron).
The League in Italy made huge gains by simply saying the previously unsayable about immigration (but then shot themselves in the foot by breaking up the coalition government).
Brexit showed the power of populism.
Yes, but will the Rothschild Reich, that is pushing the anti white mass immigration agenda, permit an honest, popular referendum? Remember, they believe that the mass of humanity are mere cattle to be herded by their Zionist Supremacist Cabal to the abattoir.
The Polish military dictatorship adamantly refused the second, even while claiming that there were no ethnic Germans in the Corridor, although it had been German territory until 1919.
Germans were a minority in 1919 in every district within the Polish corridor other than Neustadt, Bromberg, and Wirsitz, where they had a modest plurality. Their minority got smaller as time went on as ethnic Germans migrated to the Weimar Republic.