EU elections 2024 live: Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap elections after huge far-right gains

When people feel ignored in a democratic country, they begin to feel like the democracy they live in is a sham or that democracy itself doesn't work.

Votes like this aren't necessarily about "we need a different direction" and more about desperation and/or anger. They want to show the elites of their country that they still have the power, they want to cost them something for treating the population like it's there to be harvested from, they want to shake up the status quo at all cost.

They want to prove to themselves that their vote still matters.

Letting it get to this point is really bad governance. Once you get here, either they win, or they don't. And of they don't, most of the people who support them have their suspicions confirmed, they don't live in a democracy, they voted and didn't get what they want, again. This creates a division that is difficult to come back from.

I just cannot comprehend how anyone can look at post brexit UK and think "yes, I want the same for my country"

The recent success of the European far right is precisely because they've revised their image to get rid of the freakshow aspects. The days when you could dismiss these people just by calling them "absolute freaks" are over.

We love copying the USA.

It makes me want to mock the EU considering how much, deserved, shit the US gets. But this is just depressing. I would much prefer the US to be mocked as we get our shit, hopefully, together. Not fucking join us.

Are they electing our Trumps or are we electing their Mussolini? Shitty people being shitty is not a US exclusive, but you’re right.

As Saint George says, garbage in, garbage out

Macron's party got disastrous results and got trounced by the far right in the European elections.

He had been selling himself as the shield that protected France from the rise of the local far right party. With these results, he has lost his credibility, and therefore his government did as well.

Therefore he's calling out-of-schedule French parliamentary elections that -- I assume -- he hopes will reelect his party and allies ahead of the far right. It might work: the far right party polls strong at around 30%, but has few allies, and may not be able to form a coalition government. If Macron himself can, that will strengthen his legitimacy.

Needless to say, this is a risky gamble.

"dissolving parliament" means they've announced a general election. Parliament won't meet any more, and all the existing members of parliament will go home and begin campaigning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_election#France

Can anyone EILI5?

Sure. A lot of people voted for bullies who can talk themselves out of consequences.

The Far Right movement is gaining momentum because many of their own people are getting tired of the "immigrants are more important" mindset their country is creating. Many of France's own people are getting ignored, so that the political parties in charge can focus on helping poor immigrants from other countries. Well, France's own citizens are getting tired of this, and have started to vote in more people who have a "French People First" mentality (similar to what Trump wanted to do, and everyone called him a racist for being "America First"). So, the party RN (National Rally) wins and now their going to get rid of all the current members in Parliament, and have a new vote to get people in. I think that's what it means?

Comparing it to Chirac's situation is downplaying how crazy te move is right now. Can you imagine how fucked up this is? Like "oh, the far right has more than twice as many votes as we got, it must be some sort of big misclick situation, lets check it out !"

And by the looks of things it seems like I was right it has (so far) spectacularly backfired. Obviously we have to wait for the second round but..

That's why they are funding and supporting far-right parties in almost any Western country. The AfD in Germany is a good example, their MPs were literally caught receiving money from the RuSSians. Their MEPs also work for the Chinese intelligence service btw

2008, the global financial crash, the subsequent shift of trillions of all the currencies towards the already-rich, then Covid hammering the final nail in the coffin of proving that governments care about the people only inasmuch as they provide value.

We’ve had sixteen years of people getting poorer and poorer, shit getting more expensive, and the news outlets they read pointing towards immigrants/gays/leftists as the problem.

The right take those messages and amplify them. They tell people that only they can speak truth to power, when the reality is far more nuanced than that. But people don’t want nuance, they just want to be able to pay their bills. The people aren’t stupid though, they know that the windbags can’t really change anything, but the status quo hasn’t done shit to help them, so fuck it, we’ll vote for the other guy.

“They’re all the same anyway”

This is more of a general answer as fascism seems to be gaining more ground globally. A book published in 1997 "The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy" theorized roughly every 80 years (or about a human life span) we face a crisis related to a critical mass of people losing the knowledge and shared values from the previous generations. Imagine the perspective of a Revolutionary War veteran who fought under General Washington to help forge the United States, who would be understandably upset to hear any mention of a Civil War between states, which didn't start until 82 years later.

We are losing that collective memory now both in the U.S. and abroad; the remaining World War II veterans are in no position to punch these fascists when they see a swastika flown at a rally. Unless we vote in numbers large enough to throw the MAGA movement into the dustbin of history, in the future we can expect younger Trump acolytes to take root in the same vacuum of thought.

From a recent article

”With these words Biden addressed the bitter irony that haunted the commemoration ceremonies. While D-Day occurred eight decades ago, America is now just five months from an election that could bring to power a man and a movement who embody and celebrate the twisted authoritarian values of the enemies we sought to defeat so long ago. Fascism has not gone away. The tactics of the Nazis to employ racism and demagoguery to divide society and enable their seizure of power and their gutting of democratic institutions currently are the playbook of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.”

All the major media outlets have been bought by a few far-right billionaires. For some years now, propaganda has been omnipresent, 24 hours a day.

Social media disinformation campaigns from the Kremlin and possibly also the CCP.

There's too many factors to name in a brief comment, but here's an interesting statistic:

In all recent European elections, all center-left parties that have tried to swing to the right on immigration to try and woo right-wing voters, have lost seats. No exceptions.

Edit: Clarified the swing on immigration was to the right.

Everything is in motion, nothing is static. As Capitalism declines and the material conditions of Europe decline, reactionary elements longing for "the good old days" rise. It's generally what happens when Social Democracy turns Nationalist, and is deeply terrifying.

This can be opposed only through strong antifascist organization, not just sitting home and hoping things get better. They won't, with that attitude.

Edit: to add, the reason Social Democracy specifically was mentioned is because both Social Democracy and Fascism are based on the idea of Class Colaboration, only the aims and results are obviously very different. Adding the Nationalist element to an existing Social Democracy can quickly end up changing to outright fascism.

Immigration policies in particular have been a hot topic in Europe, so Nationalism has been rising with anti-immigrant rhetoric.

easy emotional messaging × a lot of funding from rich assholes of all types × great means of communication that can target audiences even in isolation.

Bolloré

Technology

The left is fucking the dog, is what.

Maybe he hopes that left-leaning voters will get mobilised by the election outcome today.

My cynical take: he wants to let the far right win the legislative elections while he still has close to 3 years left in his term.

He thinks this will "show" their electorate that voting far right doesn't get you what you want.

At the same time, he can take advantage of the media bashing the leftist party has been getting for their vocal opposition to Israel's actions since October 7 2023, and run them out of Parliament. At least, it's a gamble he's willing to make.

He is just as much of a clueless, egotistical liberal as David Cameron was, so your analogy is sadly pretty accurate.

Lol, have you been following the news much?

That's called xenophobia, and it's a form of bigotry.

This is just such a false narrative. The issue is not a lack of funds to help our own citizens and refugees. The issue is that those funds are concentrated among very few very wealthy people. Those wealthy people would very much like us to blame the refugees.

It has nothing to do with "racism" and "bigotry", ... too concern with helping everyone else, and not their own.

Tell me you're racist without saying you're racist.

I'd say that's close but more like they've concerned themselves with helping the wealthy and need to import more workers due to low fertility and as a way to suppress wages.

So now there isn't enough housing and everyone starts struggling more because social programs have been underfunded for years and strain to the brink due to the greater load.

^Nationalism. AKA racism and xenophobia.

The reason the "far right" is gaining momentum around the world because of immigration issues. It has nothing to do with "racism" and "bigotry",

That’s… were you trying to be ironic? As mentioned elsewhere it’s xenophobia, which is almost certainly rooted in racism and bigotry.

The entire idea that we should “help ourselves” and not help “others” is racist.

LMAO at the hate on this comment.

We can talk about immigration drivers, all night long, but the fact is that the host country is always resentful of immigrants. It doesn't matter if that resentment is fair or true or justified, it exists.

Buncha children in here crying, "Racism bad!" Yeah. We know. Some of us grew up on Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. That doesn't change countries seeing a bunch of poor people flooding in and taking their resources. And whether they're actually sucking resources doesn't fucking matter. It looks like they are.

And for all the whiners, how about you take in a poor immigrant family and take care of them yourself? Put your money where your mouth is?

"Uh no. The government should do that for free, somehow, and I don't want to actually see or deal with it. Or I'll leave a stern downvote!"

(And for the inbound haters, my wife is a brown immigrant, not even a citizen. Trying to get her youngest moved here.)