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The Guardian: Support for Le Pen surges in rural France

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A

AcademicSaucer

Member
Rift between ailing rural areas and faraway big cities is where the Front National leader looks set to make her biggest voter gains

Her party’s central message of keeping France for the French – giving priority to French people over non-nationals in jobs, housing and welfare, as well as a ban on religious symbols, including the Muslim headscarf, from all public places – has a resonance in rural communities, even where immigration is very scarce.

Nièvre, the poorest département in Burgundy, is a traditional heartland of the French left. For 40 years it was the rural power base of the former Socialist president François Mitterrand, who was mayor of the small town of Chäteau-Chinon for 20 years.

“This place has been leftwing since the French revolution,” one local Socialist politician boasted, adding that Nièvre was a focal point for the French resistance during the second world war. And yet, the Front National more than doubled its vote here in the previous regional elections, and it is here in Burgundy that Le Pen is hoping for some of her highest scores.

Le Pen’s rural target is not just farmers, who are shrinking in number in France and represent about 1% of the electorate. Her base comprises people living in modest towns and country villages far away from big cities, who have felt the sharp edge of France’s decades of mass unemployment, who have seen factories close and local shops and services disappear, in places where the population is ageing, young people are leaving and those who stay have to drive long distances to see a doctor, or sometimes even to post a letter.

Le Pen deliberately combined her vast urban campaign rallies with small-scale appearances in denim jeans at meetings in village squares and barns, appealing to the people she says live in a “forgotten France” neglected by the “globalised elite” of cosmopolitan cities. That rift between what is seen as a neglected France on the periphery and faraway “bubble” of the big cities is where she hopes to make her biggest gains.

More than 15% of people in Nièvre live below the poverty line. It has one of the lowest life expectancies in France and has lost more than a quarter of its doctors in the past 10 years as they retire and move away.


“If jobs were brought back, 80% of the other problems would be fixed,” said Didier Felzines, who owned a bike shop. “The rise of racism would be sorted too, because why do people become scared of others? Because there aren’t any jobs left … As soon as a foreigner arrives, they say: ‘Oh no, he’s going to take the jobs’. If there were more jobs, people would be happy to see foreigners, there would be no more fear.”

Across Nièvre, in the market of Fourchambault, a small town of 4,500 people, Pascal Leguen was standing at his wine stall. He voted for Sarkozy in the previous presidential election, but said he would now switch to Le Pen.

“Two-thirds of French people just don’t want the traditional political parties any more, they want change,” he said. “There’s less and less work in France, and politicians can’t keep sticking their head in the sand.”

With fewer jobs available for the French, foreigners should not be allowed in, he said. “When there’s no more bread at home, you don’t invite in your neighbours.”
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...n-forgotten-france-presidential-election-2017
 
B

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
It's going to keep happening again and again until this piece of shit species is rotting underground.
 
S

Sgt. Kabukiman

Banned
GAF is gonna need to take a chill pill on Sunday when Marine wins the first round.
Calm down, guys. It's going to be a lot tougher for her than it was for Trump.
I mean, nothing's impossible but it's a long shot.
 
X

Xando

Member
Bam Bam Baklava said:
Can someone explain this fetish the media has for reporting on the sacred rural voter?
Click to expand...
It's english media. They have a boner for everything Lepen. While ignoring her polls are tanking these past days/weeks.

She went from easy winner in first round to maybe not even reaching 2nd round.
 
D

Deku Tree

Member
Well the two phase voting system in France does work against Le Pen. Compared to the US with its horrible electoral college. Usually the left and the moderates vote together in the second round.
 
A

axisofweevils

Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
Sgt. Kabukiman said:
GAF is gonna need to take a chill pill on Sunday when Marine wins the first round.
Calm down, guys. It's going to be a lot tougher for her than it was for Trump.
I mean, nothing's impossible but it's a long shot.
Click to expand...

I feel a sickening deja vu.
 
O

oti

Banned
Xando said:
It's english media. They have a boner for everything Lepen. While ignoring her polls are tanking these past days/weeks.

She went from easy winner in first round to maybe not even reaching 2nd round.
Click to expand...

Don't forget all the undecided voters though. And the terror attack.
 
B

Bam Bam Baklava

Member
Xando said:
It's english media. They have a boner for everything Lepen. While ignoring her polls are tanking these past days/weeks.

She went from easy winner in first round to maybe not even reaching 2nd round.
Click to expand...

This is why I'll never understand people treating the media like they are the guardians of freedom. They are Trump and Le Pen's enablers with their obsessive coverage.
 
R

Regulus Tera

Romanes Eunt Domus
7Th said:
Rural areas were a mistake. Can't wait for agriculture to be fully automated.
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Urban jobs are just as threatened by automation as rural ones. There's a lot of office work that can be mechanised

Lack of job opportunities is not a right or left wing issue.
 
G

Genryu

Banned
Sgt. Kabukiman said:
GAF is gonna need to take a chill pill on Sunday when Marine wins the first round.
Calm down, guys. It's going to be a lot tougher for her than it was for Trump.
I mean, nothing's impossible but it's a long shot.
Click to expand...

600.jpg
 
A

Autodidact

Banned
Deku Tree said:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2017/04/12/the-french-ourselves/

Well Krugman says the narrative of "no jobs" in France is a false one.
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No, no, no. Can't you see? They're members of the desperate precariat conned into voting for the neo-Nazi woman by neoliberal thinking. I mean, one of them even says:

If there were more jobs, people would be happy to see foreigners, there would be no more fear.
Click to expand...

Why would these wholesome bucolic saints lie? Unemployment makes people hateful. Krugman writes le fake news.
 
D

daviyoung

Banned
Nafai1123 said:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/world/europe/french-election-russia.html?_r=0

https://news.vice.com/story/russias-fake-news-machine-is-now-targeting-the-french-election

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...meddling-french-presidential-campaign-n748541

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/21/marine-le-pens-russian-links-us-scrutiny/
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Or you can apply Occams Razor that suggests recent reported news coverage about terror action has a direct link to support the equal reaction on the political side. Rather than Russia's spreading of fake news having any similar effect.
 
T

TyrantII

Member
We're already deep into the second gilded age. I await the great wars as racism, resentment, and nationalism take hold.

Thanks Boomers. Heck of a job you did.
 
B

Bam Bam Baklava

Member
daviyoung said:
Or you can apply Occams Razor that suggests recent reported news coverage about terror action has a direct link to support the equal reaction on the political side. Rather than Russia's spreading of fake news having any similar effect.
Click to expand...

You asked for evidence, the evidence was presented, now you're talking about something completely different.
 
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