And considering those fellow traveling fascists, looking at the results I’m beginning to think that “This time I know our side will win.*” against the bad guys - *Victor Laszlo in Casablanca.
And so, like Rick when he gave the nod to the band: Play the Marseillaise to drown the fascist chants!
And France demonstrates the rejection of the Putin trolls and the neo-nazi angloextreme right called “alt-right”
And shows there can be such a thing as a truly patriotic right that is willing to reject the fascist wing.
It is more shame to the American right that has not.
65,5%
A crushing.
and her father as usual showed he is a complete con.
Agreed. France, today, has provided inspiration for all who would resist the anti-democracy opportunists of the world.
I must say that, hearing the news of the solid victory of Macron over LePen, I sighed with relief. Although Macron had good chances of winning anyway, there was this niggling doubt in the back of my mind… “Everybody knew that Brexit wouldn’t win”, “Everybody knew that Hillary would win in the US”… I was a bit worried that “everybody” would be wrong again.
The (in my opinion rather desperate) dump of hacked data from the Macron campaign showed (IMHO) that they did not have really anything solid in there against Macron. Otherwise they would have made that revelation earlier. Doing it at the last possible moment, just before the media and candidate “blackout” was scheduled to begin, smelled of trying to sow FUD because there was nothing “serious” in the data. Of course, there were PDFs that apparently showed that Macron had an offshore company to launder money, but they were quickly shown to be fakes.
I confess that the result of these elections makes me happy. We do not need a return to authoritarianism in Europe. We have seen only too often what that kind of leadership tends to bring.
I am sure that the Russian government would be tremendously happy to see Europe fall into authoritarianism again, destroying the EU and losing cohesion among ourselves. It falls to us European voters to make sure that the Russian government does not get what it wants from us.
Viva la France! 
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Most Frenchmen probably already believed it, but now they have a piece of evidence to support their superiority over the Brits and us Yanks. Well done, France!
The rejoicing, however, must be tempered. With over 1/3 of the runoff vote for FN and neither of the traditional establishment parties having made it to the second round, does this mean from now on THEY will be the main contender, and elections will be about who can best stop FN?
Vive la République tolérante.
True. Hate to admit it.
Congratulations, France! Progress, open mindedness, and compassion win the day!!
Huzzah for the good people of France!
I favoured Melenchon in the first round and (with reservations) Marine Le Pen in the second, so I’m not happy, but I’m also not sad because I fully expected it. She never had a realistic chance to win and the second round was really a formality more than anything else.
One silver lining for me at least is that Macron has made clear he’ll push for a tougher line on Poland and Hungary, and maybe other eastern European countries as well, as the price of staying in the bloc. That might get them to end up leaving.
Another silver lining: if I’m right and the cosmopolitan, supra-national, ethnically and religiously diverse, neoliberal, market-orientated model isn’t really good for human happiness and flourishing, then the reaction against it in 10 years (or 30, or 50) will be all the stronger when it finally happens.
So you’re saying that an increase in the likelihood of pogroms and ethnic cleansing is a silver lining?
Any predictions for other similar possibilities, such as “if it turns out that beads and rattles really work better than antibiotics and surgery”?
Well done France! For a stronger EU than ever before.
No I don’t, but I also don’t think that a future Holocaust is a particularly likely outcome. I think something like the Greco-Turkish population exchanges of the 1920s is a more likely outcome for the long term future. It’s possible that some European societies might end up partitioning themselves into more ethnically homogeneous units, and it’s also possible we might see a sort of voluntary or semi-voluntary self-sorting going on with ethnic minorities and people who are comfortable with difference migrating to cosmopolitan cities and to the western European countries, and with people who are uncomfortable with diversity migrating to the less liberal eastern countries.
In any case, what I really hope for is a really resounding rejection of (political, cultural and economic) liberalism, and that reaction is going to be stronger the worse the situation gets.
Considering how much more peaceful, and how much less poor, the vast majority of people are in liberal and cosmopolitan countries now as compared to the past when they were much less liberal and much less cosmopolitan, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Would that be the French word?
Not necessarily. They are still some sort of family dynasty that happened to hit the spot with certain disadvantaged demographics. If Le Pen blows up for whatever reason their support might well scatter.
I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. At some point the economy will get an upturn that will be big enough that the average person will actually see it. From that point on, that “rejection of liberalism” is going to go back into the storage closet and will not play a part in the voting decisions of the average citizen.
What has mostly brought upon the “voter rejection” of the (as you call it) political, cultural and economic liberalism has been the big economic downturn of 2008 and the refugee flows of later years. Many people became scared about their future and people who are scared will tend to look towards somebody or something “strong” that is perceived as being able to help and protect them, able to shield them from the scary perceived future. The stream of authoritarian politicians that have come out of the woodwork in the last years mostly stem from those fears of an apparently dark future.
(It is interesting to see that the strong and alarmed reactions to the refugee crisis of 2015 have been calming down. In my neck of the woods, refugees have mostly adapted and integrated reasonably well, becoming net assets for the country. At least according to what I can personally see. And yes, I have dealt with refugees in person).
The economy has a tendency to go up after it has gone down. If there is no “rejection” of “liberalism” before the upswing, then that “rejection” won’t take place. People won’t feel so scared about their future, and that will reflect in the way they vote.
As a purely personal opinion, and without any kind of objective data to back this up, I have to say that I have the feeling that the economic upswing will come before a full “rejection” in the voting booths has a chance to happen.