Thirty percent to 29 percent for the Republican/UDI coalition, with the socialists (who aren’t actually socialists), coming in at 22 percent.
Many political analysts stressed the impact of the Paris terror attacks could have on voters’ opinions. They contributed to raise the popularity of the three main parties, but the far right has also especially benefitted.
Another factor was the fact that the social democrat government of Francois Hollande has been losing more and more support among the population for failing to solve the issue of high unemployment rates while implementing measures of economic austerity (i.e. restrictions on public spendings). (sic)
There is nothing worse for the left than “center left” parties who follow right wing policies like austerity.
As I, and others, have warned repeatedly, if other groups cannot solve the very real problems exaggerated by austerity, voters will eventually hand power over to real radicals with a mandate to do “whatever it takes,” and I do mean “whatever.”
The radicals may be to the left or the right, but every time someone like Hollande takes power as “left” and then wimps out on actually fixing things, it discredits the left.
The fascist right will continue to rise as the center, right, and center-left all hue to neo-liberal orthodoxy, which got us into this mess and cannot get us out of it.
And so, the men and women on horseback are coming. In America we have Trump, in France they have LePen, and there will be many others.
A government which continually fails the people will be replaced, one way or another.
We live in a pre-revolutionary and pre-war world and the risks are ratcheting up every year. It is this that those of us who fought the ideological wars of the early 2000s were trying to avoid. We wanted changes made that would not require vast war and revolution, because we knew, and still know, the river of blood from which such change is born.
We had our chance. We failed, as those who came before us failed. Aye, and those before them.
And so the world will convulse in blood and terror. The old regimes are not yet dead, but they are bleeding out, and as they do so, they continue to loot and fornicate, pretending all is well enough.
And why not? Those who made this world are the richest rich the world has ever known. To them, this is the best of times.
They will reap as they have sown, but those who failed to stop them, or rather, their children, will reap an even more bitter harvest.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.