“Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen are now fighting over the 7.7 million voters who backed Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader who earned a strong third-place finish in the first round of the election. Were they to break strongly for one of the candidates, it could prove decisive.
Nearly 70 percent of Muslims voted for Mr. Mélenchon, the only major candidate to have consistently condemned discrimination against Muslims, according to the polling firm Ifop.
By contrast, Mr. Macron garnered only 14 percent of Muslim voters’ support this year, compared with 24 percent in 2017. Ms. Le Pen got 7 percent in the first round this year. Nationwide, according to Ifop, the turnout of Muslim voters was a couple of percentage points higher than the average.
As the two candidates battle it out in the closing days of a tight race, Mr. Macron’s prospects may rest partly on whether he can convince Muslim voters like Mr. Bouadla that he is their best option — and that staying home risks installing a chilling new anti-Muslim leadership.
In Mr. Bouadla’s telling, however, that will take some doing.”
Comment: I watch a lot of European TeeVee. The quality seems better. Could be just snobbery on my part. IAW, “police procedurals,” as the Brits call them, portrays a society in which French cops of Muslim faith are fully integrated both on the job and otherwise. I do not believe that at all, but it is a noble ideal. Is Macron really like that? Probably not but we know that Le Pen is not.. pl
Who Will France’s Muslims Choose for President? – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Marine Le Pen’s vision for France: Retooling with a far-right vision (usatoday.com)
Mélenchon seems roughly equivalent to Bernie Sanders, but so much younger. I see that he told his voters not to vote for Le Pen, although he didn’t endorse Macron. And only one point behind Le Pen in the last round, I’m impressed and heartened.
Actually not so much younger. Bernie only has 10 years on him.
I am not optimistic, either outcome might end up in civil war (for different reasons, of course).
jld,
street riots? Sure, that’s a French tradition. Civil war? Highly unlikely.
It is funny. I say that while I don’t understand very well what is happening in France.
Let’s remember: “To God what belongs to God, to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.”
In Secular France, belief (faith) is a personal and non-public matter, without ostentation or proselytizing. We have had enough religious wars to stick to this least divisive conduct.
Everything works well with people who follow the New Testament. Less well with Muslims, for whom private and public life are one.
But everyone made an effort, and it worked pretty well. Because the heart of old France is integrationist. Consequently, official statistics necessarily ignore religion or ethnicity, individual or collective. I am in full agreement with this constitutional view, and I am afraid of a tendency to follow your lead.
The real issue is the susceptibility of unemployed youth to Islamic extremist sirens. Ethnic crowding and poverty should be avoided. We are not on the way.
You can find out much more with the books and public interventions of Emmanuel Todd.
d74
Secular France, yes. Religious faith may be of no interest to the State, but we must remember President Macron’s recent remark that the Unvaxxed are “no longer citizens”. To enter the county now I must declare my Vaxx status. Being Unvaxxed, I am deemed a health hazard to the population unless I can prove otherwise (negative PCR test). I do not see any meaningful difference between this form of discrimination and one on the basis of religion.
The state religion of the French Republic is the Enlightenment and it’s worship of what Ellul called “Technique”. This has now reached a point where a borderline transhumanist orthodoxy presumes citizens to be unhealthy unless they have consented to indefinite* genetic code altering treatments (the Vaxx). Yes the ‘health pass’ has been suspended – for now.
*If you don’t have the latest ‘booster’ you are considered Unvaxxed.
Unless you are a French citizen, I guess it’s their privilege to decide who is permitted to enter France. We certainly reserve a similar right in the United States.
The reviews of the only debate in the this final round was that Macron came across as more steady and experienced. The polls show Macron will get elected comfortably.
Not unlike the US there is a significant divide between urban and rural voters and blue collar voters and the laptop class.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1517114621102018561?s=21
Poll data in the link above. I think in France there’s also the religious and cultural divide among the North African immigrant descendants some who place more importance on their heritage and others more assimilated. May not be much different than race here in the US.
It looks like a choice between more of same, with a reasonable expectation of doubling down on what he did before, and ‘change’, however Le Pen is explaining that; with a certainty that the establishment bureaucracy will do to her government just what ours did to Trump.
Dead right there Fred. Can’t see her getting very far whatever the result of the election. The Euro bosses have ways of countering wrongthink that’d make their pals in the States turn green with envy.
Though one wonders what all this is about. Found it on ZH –
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21645713-2022-04-18
That’s an ingenious way of preventing opponents standing for election. Will it work?
English Outsider,
That’s lawfare in the effort to silence opposition and set a precedent. They may succeed (in the short term) in keeping one or two people they despise from being reelected, hoping that spineless ‘conservatives’ like McCarthy will not turn around and do the same thing to them with a vengence. All those posting “misinformation” about “Russia Collusion”, you could clear out most of the democratic leadership by following the precedent they are trying to establish with this trial. The rights’ strategy should be “agree and amplify” then list all the people they will target in 2024.
I would love to hear any recommendations that that the Colonel or anyone else has for good European TV – especially good police procedurals. I really liked Between the Lines(1992-1994):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103362
The Bridge. About a murder at the borderline on the bridge between Sweden and Denmark. A multi episode TV series.
Line of Duty is a great series, with six seasons under its belt so far, and a seventh is in the works. Available on Netflix here in Ireland. A great French series was Spiral, about a Paris based detective team, in French with English subs. Available on amazon – https://www.amazon.com/Spiral-English-Subtitled/dp/B00I02XV88.
Here’s episode one, series one;
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eEfHOjkxMuc
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GVByhEk6rTc
James,
If you get still free broadcast TV with a digital antenna, check out the PBS channels. I get WETA and MPT with two antennas in the attic. There’s usually a few good foreign, mostly British, procedurals and mysteries. There are also a host of other good Brit shows, All Things Great and Small (the original and remake), As Time Goes By and so many more.
If private detectives will do instead ZDF has several seasons of ” Wilsberg”.
https://www.zdf.de/serien/wilsberg
Subtitles, which is handy because they often speak in a throwaway style, and no doubt there’s some ingenious way of getting the subtitles into English.
The plots slung together in an anarchic what the hell style, verging on parody but never quite tipping over, not a hint of the goody-goody now obligatory on UK TV. Not at all what one would expect from a standard Krimi. A few episodes pretty frank about social problems that don’t often get openly acknowledged in Germany.
The characters are an assorted bunch of losers, bumbling along quite cheerfully but always getting their man. Interesting thing about them, or maybe depressing if you happen to be of a gloomy cast of mind, is the world they live in. Their world takes it for granted that the politicians and people at the top are usually bent as hell, given to strange vices, and seldom getting their comeuppance.
It’s a world the characters accept quite happily – little choice – but sometimes, as one watches them romping through the various plot twists, one wishes we lived in a different one.
Colonel
Tenez, un autre exemple de Bondy :
https://www.bondyblog.fr/politique/presidentielle-2022/un-vote-pour-souffrir-le-moins-possible/
and for those who don’t read French, here is one translation from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/21/young-muslim-france-election-lesser-evil-macron-le-pen
Usual “Axis of Good” propaganda, Le Pen is not not far-right, she is not even right.
Actually there are no more “right” in France since WWII when “la droite la plus bête du monde” fatally compromised itself with the enemy.
For another week you can catch season 1 of Arctic Circle on Prime. It’s a Finnish/German production set in Lapland. Also Season 1 of the original Danish version of the Killing. Latter is more traditional procedural while the former has elements of the Norwegian Fortitude series.
My fave Vienna Blood. Wife’s Balthazar (French
Vienna Blood is very interesting, although not much episodes. Some time ago the Danish series Forbrydelsen (the Killing) tied me to the TV.
The Bridge is good. There is also The Tunnel, a British/French police drama focused on the Chunnel Dover/Calais, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tunnel_(TV_series)
Endeavour (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/endeavour/ ) which is based on the young Inspector Morse is fantastic, in terms of police procedurals, and it has really excellent music.
Like most countries, the French are fools for having immigration without laws regarding assimilation and language and not protecting their borders.
Per the exit polls Macron has been re-elected. So it won’t be the revolution that some (including a remarkable number of voters in the overseas departments) had hoped for but it won’t be a disaster, either.
David,
That depends upon how hard he doubles down and on whom.
Anyone else notice how curious it is that both Obama and now Klain have made the exact exact same personal attack in the past few days, tacked on to any occasion including now the Macron election? Odd ,because it seemed to come out of nowhere.
The attack: Connecting the two names Bannon and Putin (Obama) – Bannon and Putin (Klain) Why bother, but what is clear for some reason today both Obama and Klain want to sear in this connection – Bannon and Putin.
Why I ask – perhaps to justify their very flimsy “predicate” to go to FISA and get permission to spy on Trump in 2016.
Now that Durham is getting closer and closer to unraveling Trump spy gate, the more Obama and team need to justify it was Russia-Russia-Russia and Bannon-Trump-Putin was so sinister it required them to investigate the links between them ….to protect the American people who just might be electing a Russian Agent to the White House.
Horowitz in his IG report on the FISA abuses claimed there was only the flimsiest of “predicates” to get this rolling and there was nothing of any merit to allow this FISA authority to continue. But it did. And Democrats made sure Russia-Russia-Russia dogged every day of Trump’s presidency.