BTW, I'm pleased that NR lost in France.
But it's pretty tough to celebrate the ascendancy of a guy who called French Jews “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest” in a 2017 speech.
Attal is going to be the next PM under cohabitation in all odds. Macron gets to invite him to form a government and NFP will not agree to be a junior partner as the largest party unless it becomes clear that Attal will coalition with LR and RN, which will not happen in any world.
In other words the French government is gonna do very little domestically except on completely uncontroversial things and their foreign policy won’t change much. This is… not ideal for the Jupiterians
The other thing to remember is that, under France’s strong-man constitution, it doesn’t matter all that much who the PM is—certainly not nearly as much as in parliamentary democracies. Which is one reason why the NYT “oh, dear, there’s no majority party & no obvious coalition” piece is overwrought.
Mélenchon hasn’t exactly ruled himself out but has done everything but. He knows he could win every seat in the Assemblée and still Macron would not ask him to form government.
Amusing that people are running the Jeremy Corbyn trick again; sincere good luck with this but the French can’t hear you.
He said no such thing incidentally. He said this:
« En tout cas, je ne céderai jamais, pour ma part, aux synthèses. Retraite à points, Europe allemande et néolibérale, capitalisme vert, génuflexion devant les ukases arrogante [sic] des communautaristes du Crif : c'est non. »
He named an org.
Translated into American, he said he would not genuflect before the arrogant ukases of the ADL. “Ukase” is far too intellectual a ref for an American politician to even get, let alone utter, and it isn’t nice (and he’s not) but you could and do easily see Jewish politicians saying similar.
CRIF, which is functionally similar to the ADL and is in spirit I think similar to the Board of Deputies but I’m a little vague on its history. It makes grand proclamations to speaking for French Jewry, which some might use a descriptor for.
It’s not a nice thing to say, Mélenchon’s not nice.
Look, French Jews mostly don’t want this guy to be PM and I don’t blame them one bit. I don’t want to defend the guy on his words, I want it to be clear what he said.
The Democratic People’s Republic of French Jews huh. Well if it’s in the title! So let me ask you: you’re a lawyer too. Is it accurate to say he was speaking of the Jews of France? Would you look a judge in the eye and say he did not mean CRIF is arrogant, he meant that French Jews are? Yeah?
