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I never said that, and neither did the article in Countercurrents. Nor do I believe that. I just think that uninformed, mindless cheerleading ought to give way to an informed and balanced view.
OK...but if you read the article closely, you'd have noticed that it was written by a supporter of the AntiCapitalist Alliance, a party that has gained no traction whatsoever in this campaign, and isn't going to.
Melenchon isn't perfect, but it's important that he get a big first-round vote, especially since he's the only candidate who is swinging voters away from the racist and essentially fascist FN. Those are voters who should be supporting a Left party, but went FN because that party was able to sound(fraudlently)like it cared more about workers than the Left did(especially than the French Socialists, a party that was Blairite a decade before Tony Blair was.
He's not just a supporter; he's a member. And he's far more critical of his own party's campaign than he is of Mélenchon's!
And have no fear: Mélenchon's first-round votes are all going to end up going to the Blairite "socialists" anyway.
Check out this ad for Francois Hollande. How come no one does anything this emotive on this side of the ocean?
http://dai.ly/HsYTmy
That's where the votes of the AntiCapitalist Alliance will go as well. That's simply the way that French presidential politics goes. I believe Melenchon has proposed a total rewrite of the constitution(to the point where France would end up in the Sixth Republic and didtch the Fifth). Would you prefer that everyone to Hollande's left BOYCOTT the second round of the election? All that would do would be to give Sarkozy re-election by default...and history proves that election boycots rarely, if ever, lead to genuine popular uprisings.
The point is, the higher Melenchon's vote total goes in the first round, the more this will push Hollande into pledging to a genuine radical programme in exchange for the votes of Melenchon's supporters.
And Melenchon's group will keep pushing as a radical social movement after the election. It's not going to fold the tents.
How much more radical do you think Hollande needs to be to get Mélenchon's voters to support him rather than Sarkozy on the last ballot?
Far-Left Ready to Back Hollande in Run-Off
http://www.france24.com/en/20120406-france-surging-far-left-front-ready-...
"The anti-capitalist Left Front Party will urge its supporters to unite behind Socialist candidate Francois Hollande to beat Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential run-off if its leader is eliminated in the vote's first round, a spokesperson said Friday.."
Would it be more radical to boycott the second round...given that there has never been an instance in any country on the earth in which an electoral boycott actually led to a revolution?
That's what the AntiCapitalist Alliance is going to do as well-they're not going to abstain and you know it.
Giving Sarkozy a second term by default could not be a radical result.
They higher Melenchon's first-round vote, the greater the incentive Holland has to embrace their agenda. He does actually have to get those people to turn up at the polls in May.
Politicians would have to give better speeches thann they've been giving, for one. I liked this; it was very effective. I don't know if the approach would translate so well considering there was no Canadian revolution with values that are supposed to be reflected in government to this day.
What Are The Politics of French Left Front Candidate Jean Luc Melenchon? - by Alex Lantier
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/mele-a10.shtml
"...Melenchon will inevitably disappoint the hopes for a left-wing policy that millions of people are being encouraged to place in him. The main risk is that if he is not politically exposed by a challenge from the left, the anger and demoralization arising from the disappointment of these hopes will provide the basis for the emergence of a powerful far-right party."
poll-mania:
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/sondage-presidentielle-2012/20120207.OBS0739/infographie-le-comparateur-des-sondages-de-la-presidentielle.html
entering the last week of first round,
Melenchon gives Marseille crowd a ringing endorsement of immigration, mixed mariage and Mediterranean metissage:
http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/04/14/a-marseille-melencon-dit-vouloir-expedier-a-terre-sarkozy_1685683_1471069.htm
&
Hollande viewed from US:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/the-soft-middle-of-francois-hollande.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
A close friend and adviser of Sarkozy's told me he still believes that his candidate will lose. But he notes that Hollande, like Mitt Romney, inspires little passion. Perrineau concurs - two-thirds of voters who say they will vote for Hollande in the runoff say it is a vote against Sarkozy. Hollande, who has run a very timid campaign, may be liked, but the French still wonder if he's tough enough, if he's "présidentiable."
This doesn't bother Hollande. He described how no one thought François Mitterrand, France's first and only Socialist president, had a chance of winning. "Often people told me, 'Oh, la, la, François Mitterrand, what charisma, what a president!' But before he became president, they used to call him badly dressed, old, archaic, he knows nothing about the economy." But the day he was elected, Hollande said, Mitterrand was transformed.
"In a moment, you are invested, you incarnate France - that changes everything."
Of course, in Canada Mélenchon would be derided as a lunatic leftist by most babblers.
Indeed, there is much that reminds me of the NDP in all this:
French Left Candidate Holds Presidential Election Rally on Marseille
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/mele-a16.shtml
"...One great contradiction underlying the rally, however: These demands are being placed on the Left Front, which is composed of forces incapable of serious opposition to the political establishment of which they are a part - the Left Party and its leader Melenchon, an ex-minister in the PS-led Plural Left government (2000-02) and the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF). The PS, the PCF and their allies have long records, when they were in government in the 1980s and 1990s, of carrying out austerity policies defended by the ruling elites.."
Jean-Luc Mélenchon's policies are no far-left fantasy
Sure they are. He's in little danger of having to implement them all. When you start dealing with real people and real money things get more difficult.
centre-left beacon the Nouvel Observateur, largest circulation newsweekly in France and unofficial mouthpiece of the Socialist Party,
highlights the differences between their social-democratic vision and that of Left-of-left Melenchon:
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/laurent-joffrin/20120412.OBS6061/melenchon-et-nous.html
In short, beyond the ideological objections, the question of funding:
[....]
Nous avons enfin exprimé des désaccords sur le programme présenté par Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Outre son financement incertain, nous avons remarqué qu'il rappelait, à beaucoup d'égards, le programme de la gauche en 1981. Voilà une critique pour le moins modérée dans un journal qui a accueilli avec joie l'élection de François Mitterrand... Beaucoup des intentions exprimées par Mélenchon sont louables, nous l'avons écrit, mais le programme de 1981, dont l'application a laissé de grands acquis pour la République, s'est aussi heurté, on le sait, à de graves difficultés financières qui ont obligé le gouvernement d'alors - où figuraient quatre ministres communistes, qui n'ont pas démissionné pour autant - à opérer le "tournant de la rigueur". Nous craignons que les mesures Mélenchon de 2012 n'obligent un gouvernement de gauche, si elles étaient appliquées, au même retour en arrière. Voilà tout. Nulle insulte dans cette interrogation, nul manque de respect. Un débat sérieux et utile, tout au plus. C'est de toute évidence ce que Jean-Luc Mélenchon, tout à son ubris électoral, n'aime pas.
[via Google translate]
.... Finally, we have expressed disagreement over the program presented by Jean-Luc Melenchon. In addition to its uncertain funding, we noticed that it recalled, in many respects, the program of the united Left in 1981. This is a moderate criticism in a magazine that welcomed with joy the election of François Mitterrand ... Many of the intentions expressed by Mélenchon are laudable, we wrote, but the 1981 program, whose implementation left some great achievements for the Republic, was also hit, as we know, by serious financial difficulties which forced the then government - which included four Communist ministers, who we recall did not resign - to carry out the austerity "shift to rigour" [in 1983].
We fear that the measures Mélenchon proposes in 2012 would require a leftist government, if implemented, to make the same U-turn. That's all. No insult in this question, no disrespect. A serious and useful debate, at most. But this is obviously what Jean-Luc Melenchon, given his election hubris, does not like.
In other words, "France is poor: we can't afford socialism."
Bullshit.
With French federal tax revs at 42% of GDP, they would already be considered a socialist country by Ottawa's standards.
And the Euro could fail at some point in the future. Neoliberal ideology for borrowing money to service debt is a fool's errand. Shrinking economies by austerity will only exacerbate the problem for debt-driven loans issued by wreckless bank lenders to their wreckless bank borrowers. It's economic warfare.
If Mélenchon really wants a socialist economy in France, then he should be proposing some percentage of government-created money and to hell with Euro banksters and their friends on Wall Street.
I'm missing the nuance here. How exactly is that different from "France is poor; we can't afford socialism"?
I think Hollande is saying that France can't afford more socialism than they have now.
We're talking about France as opposed to, say, the very ideologically-driven neoliberal countries of Canada, or the USA as depicted in Michael Moore's film, Sicko.
When students protest in France, it's not typically to oppose Quebec government style proposed tuition increases of 75%. And which government in the U.S. or Canada has ever offered to do your laundry or send a nanny to help with your newborn? Let's be serious for a moment about actually existing social democracy in France compared to Canada and U.S. where social spending has been under attack by right wing ideologues for decades.
Man I love this Melenchon guy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-86t3Yw-9bc
www.youtube.com/watch?v=67pO749EvW0&feature=relmfu
French polls now open in overseas polling places, ie Montreal and St Pierre et Miquelon:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/europe/in-france-the-fringe-emer...
GEAB No. 64: The Big Republican Earthquake and its International Impact
http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-64-is-available-Global-systemic-crisis-Fra...
"Indeed, for our team, Francois Hollande's victory will start a series of strategic upheavals which will greatly affect Europe and will significantly accelerate the geopolitical changes in progress on a world level since the beginning of the global crisis in 2008. Therein, the results and consequences of the French presidential election are more important than those of the next American presidential election in November 2012.."
Can someone suggest a couple good internet sites on which to watch the French election returns?
In English, my guess is that you can't do better and quicker than BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/europe/
Even if your reading French is very good, French sites are going to have analyis that assumes a pretty high level of understanding the peculiar nuances of French politics. For myself, I miss a lot if there are assumptions the reader knows any more than who the players are. And I follow French politics somewhat.
There is a report of exit poll results - pretty much what was expected from opinion polling:
Early exit polls, taken four hours before voting was to close and released on Belgian and Swiss media, show Nicolas Sarkozy receiving only 25 to 26 per cent of the vote, down from the substantial 31.2 per cent first-round result that helped bring him to victory five years ago.