News from France

Hello there! I wanted to tell some like-minded people about what's happening in France, and it felt natural to choose this sub. I may be a bit rambly so forgive me.

So, the pension reform. You may have heard that French people already enjoy a low retirement age compared to the rest of Europe, truth is you have to have worked a longer time and it pretty much evens out. But even if we actually went to retirement earlier, it's... good, right?

But Macron, the neo-liberal that he is, wanted to destroy that system. The first plan was to transform the system from solidarity to capitalisation. He couldn't do that because of covid. And so now he's trying again, another angle (raising the age) but still the effect is less rights for workers. His plan is obviously to destroy our greatest collective treasure, the Social Security (which consists in unemployment insurance, health insurance, and retirement). SS was implemented by a partly communist government after WW2 and was supposed to be managed by the workers, not the government. I'm no expert in how it gradually changed from its origins but that is not how it works anymore.

So, the first sly maneuvering the government tried to push its reform is to package it not into a Social Security reform but as a Social Security budget correction law, which allows for a more speedy examination in the Assembly, where the macronists are the most important group but do not reach 50%. Then, after already weeks of protests and scrambling by the traditional right (les Républicains), they figured they'd lose if it went to a vote so they used constitutional measure 49.3, which bypasses a vote, but can trigger a censure motion (think impeachment of the First Minister). The censure did not pass, by 9 fucking votes. So then it goes to the Senate, and they kinda voted on it but could not vote on the separate articles and had to say yes or no to the whole thing. Again, rushed. Again, it's legal, but everyone can see its undemocratic. Speaking of which, apparently no contact happened between the government and the unions for months before and during all this kerfuffle.

I want to take a paragraph now to talk about Macron. He's definitely a bastard, but NOT an interesting one. He's just a jumped-up banker who thinks he can manage a country like its a big start-up, he's basically the kind of rich-kid, business-school asshole who ends up running these companies. He's extremely arrogant and even insulting, he speaks like a mix between a Catholic pastor, a bad theater student (funny when you know how he met his wife) and a jesus camp counselor. He and his whole government lie all the time and his electoral base is retired boomers. He stole his two elections by ensuring the fasch party was his only competition to trigger a "republican barrage", where everyone agrees to vote for the one that is not a fascist. Whether or not you wanna call himself a fascist is at least up for debate in my opinion. We'll get back to that.

So, after the 49.3, things shifted. Its not just about the pension reform anymore, it's about democracy. Gullible people had a last hope : that the Constitutional Council would reject the law, based on the spirit of the constitution rather than the letter. They did not. Macron ratified the law and it's now supposed to be in effect I think? That's the gist of what happened in the executive and legislative world.

Now, the protests. Surveys have been remarkably consistent : 90% of workers and 60% of the general population don't want to work two more years, and even if all of them don't participate in the protests, they support the movement. Things became gradually more violent, especially after the 49.3. The police do what police do : protect property and the status quo. It culminated in an event that was not even about the reform but about ecology. Google "Sainte Soline" for details but to give you an idea : 3000 protestors and 2000 grenades launched, occasionally from moving quads. 200 hundred hurt, 2 in a life-threatening coma.

Parallelly the macronists have betrayed the republican barrage by treating the Rassemblement National (the fascists) as more responsible interlocutors than the unified (lol) left, who they call far-left and intellectual terrorists, even the fucking SOCIALIST PARTY, who just remembered they were supposed to be on the left to join the NUPES (allied left) in time to not be crushed in the legislative election last year. Macron had a communication op where you can see him singing in the street with far-right younguns. The interior minister (who's in charge of the police) is a fascist rapist, a sheer delight of a man. And there's talk of him for prime minister. And everyone's talking about how the silent winner of this whole debacle is Marine le Pen. But I digress. I wanted to talk about the protests.

It's kinda beautiful to see so many people agreeing and acting, but in my humble opinion, the unions have not been hard enough. Basically there's a strike day every two Thursdays or something, and they hoped to "put the country to a stop", but because there has not been a call for multiple, consecutive strike days, that last part has failed. What's encouraging is that the movement does not seem to falter and, as I said, public opinion still supports it. The last form all of this has taken is the casserolades. You take pans and spoons and you bang them together as a group, in front of city halls and wherever a member of government plans a visit.

So, it could go either way. Hopefully we could have a peaceful revolution, make the situation untenable enough that the fuckers resign, and maybe we'd have a sixth Republic. Or they could crush us and we'd become Hungary.

I hope it was interesting. I'd love to discuss.

S'il y a des Français hésitez pas à me corriger ou apporter des précisions, en nglois pour en faire profiter les autres.

Bisous !