Gee, the title sure is sensationalist. Nothing has been 'won' yet. The actual percentage here don't matter, the system works using two rounds in each circonscription (subdiv of France which can elect 1 MP). What really matters now is who will call to vote for who. The NFP (Left Alliance) leaders said no vote for Far Right, and Macron (in spite of how much he shat on the left) called for a 'grand coalition against the RN' (RN being Far Right here).
And I'll repeat it as many times as it takes 34% IS FAR FROM 50% (The RN is unlikely to find allies, as all the traitors of the trad right wing party have already gone to them)
Edit: forgot to mention that not all votes have been counted yet, the big cities finishing up later, which will likely drive the NFP's score up and RN's down.
34% is already lower than what they polled (and it will go down more as cities' vote get counted). Though, you are right, the normalization of Far Right IS scary af. But it's not a recent thing in France, it started nearly two decades ago, but surged to an extreme during the past few years esp with:
Bolloré (our own personal Murdock) bought more and more media, fired the journalists, and put propagandist in their place.
Macron started taking Far Right's talking points (immigration), language ('national preference', which is a concept that makes no sense) and methods (just two days ago, his party made, published and propagated on social media a fake 'NUPES' (name of the last Left Alliance) website to calculate one's future pension based on their 'program'. As it turns out, the calculations were not based off their program at all and was nearly always defavorable to the person)
Macron, when asked about the surge of Far Right, had only one response: bUt WhAt aBoUt tHe LeFt? (And goes on and on to try and sell a 'both sides' to try and make himself more popular. Spoilers: it didn't work) It's also why it's refreshingly suprirsing to not hear him bash 'theLleft' tonight, and instead call on everyone to vote against Far Right.
AI may have its uses, but the easy counterpoint to your argument is to look at FTX at its peak and where it is now (bankrupt). The stock exchange is the exact opposite of rational, and is terrible at estimating the use one can get out of tech.
French President Emmanuel Macron has dissolved the lower house of parliament and announced fresh elections after his party's poor performance in the EU elections. His party was defeated by the far-right National Rally....
His party lost hard in the EU Parliement elections tonight. The last legislative elections in France were a few years ago, and this is the one he's calling for right now.
Well, it's a risky move. Especially since just tonight, Far Right won by a landslide in the EU Parliement elections, so it's likely the results will play against him.
Many of us (in the french subs) think it might be an attempt on his part to get far right into power through the parliment to show electors that all they spout is bull, and make them to suffer hard losses in the 2027 presidential elections.
Edit: some news drop and he apparently believes he can make big wins in this one. We'll see if this bet will pay off, but personally, I sincerly doubt it will ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Honestly (that's just my personal opinion but) with the way he's been acting in the past few weeks after polls gave Far Right far ahead of his party, Macron's been looking more and more and more desperate. He tried debates between his PM and the Far Right candidate, made a big speech 2 days before the election to plea against far right (a speech in which were pointed out his many contradictions), his PM intervined out of the blue in a debate between each party's lead EU MEP (most awkward moment in a political debate I've ever seen, denounced by every journalist union).
His popularity has been dwindling (with reason) since 2017 and only won the 2022 elections by virtue of not being far right (and the people refused to give him majority in the parliement in exchange). In the past two years, he's been enacting austerity measure after austerity measure several of which with zero approval, bypassed parliement to get them into law, and barely avoided having his governement destituted (by parliement) by the skin of his teeth. And you know what's worst? His austerity measures didn't even 'save public finances' because following each of them, he gave additional tax breaks to companies, which means our budget deficit is in a worse shape than it was in 2017.
Long story short, he's been playing stupid games for the last few years, and the stupid price is that Far Right is now the first party in France and nobody has a clue on how to get them down bar them completely failing at ruling.
(Of course it isn't just his fault that Far Right is on the rise, but he IS a pretty big cause)
Ehh... a proper political analyst would probably add some nuance to that, but that's a kind of how it feels (the austerity measures were like pills forced down our throats that only made us sicker). Keep in mind there are other factors in play like:
billionaires buying out more and more newspapers/TV channels and giving far right way more coverage than any other party
beyond wealth gap increase, inflation being on the rise + the disastruous state of the housing market made people poorer and poorer
the soc-dems have messed up their presidency back in 2012 and the traditional right wing having imploded after a big scandal and Macron's surge
Russia apparently paying huge desinformation campaigns here
Remeber when Microsoft banned some Xbox players for screenshots they took in singleplayer, local games? Because it turns out all screenshots were uploaded to the cloud without properly informing users?
Microsoft's announcement: "We are introducing a new Game Pass recommendation card on the Settings homepage. The Game Pass recommendation card on Settings Homepage will be shown to you if you actively play games on your PC. As a reminder – the Settings homepage will be shown only on the Home and Pro editions of Windows 11 and...
French parliamentary election: Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) projected to win first round, beating the leftist NPF alliance and Emmanuel Macron's centrist Ensemble ( www.dw.com )
Mozilla roll out first AI features in Firefox Nightly ( blog.mozilla.org )
France's Macron dissolves parliament, calls new elections ( www.dw.com )
French President Emmanuel Macron has dissolved the lower house of parliament and announced fresh elections after his party's poor performance in the EU elections. His party was defeated by the far-right National Rally....
New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC ( arstechnica.com )
"I lost trust": Why the OpenAI team in charge of safeguarding humanity imploded ( www.vox.com )
We have to stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem ( www.theverge.com )
Microsoft is testing Game Pass ads on the Windows 11 Settings homepage ( www.ghacks.net )
Microsoft's announcement: "We are introducing a new Game Pass recommendation card on the Settings homepage. The Game Pass recommendation card on Settings Homepage will be shown to you if you actively play games on your PC. As a reminder – the Settings homepage will be shown only on the Home and Pro editions of Windows 11 and...