Guerrilla History - Upcoming French Elections w/ Marlon Ettinger: Dispatch

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Marlon Ettinger to talk about the imminent French elections! We discuss the candidates, the prospects, and how French history plays into what we are currently seeing in France. An episode that will catch you up to speed on almost everything you need to know in advance of the elections! The first round takes place on April 10, the runoff second round is on April 24.   Marlon Ettinger is an independent journalist currently covering the French elections from within France. He is also the author of the soon-to-be-released book Zemmour and Gaullism, which will come out from Ebb Books. You can follow Marlon on twitter @MarlonEttinger, and can read his work and support him at https://footnotesnews.substack.com/ and https://www.patreon.com/marlonjettinger.   Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail].   Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media! Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory. Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed!   To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995. Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/. Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod. Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.   Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. The podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

This is one of our guerrilla history dispatches where we talk about current events and try to ground those current events using historical analysis so that we can get a more full understanding of what's going on in the world. I'm your host, Henry Huckmacki, joined by one of my two usual co-hosts. We have Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-hosts of the Red Menace podcast here with us. today. Hello, Brett. How are you doing? Hello, I'm doing good. How are things going in Nebraska right now? Okay. Springs wanting to arrive. I want to get out there and build my garden, but it's not quite time yet. So I'm waiting for that. I'm looking forward to updates on your garden because I know you've been talking quite a bit about it recently. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how that's going. Unfortunately, we're not joined by our other usual co-hosted Nan Hussein, of course,

historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, as he had prior commitments that he had to attend to. But we have an excellent guest today to talk about something that is going to be coming up in the very, very near future. And that topic is the French elections. And our guest is Marlon Ettinger, who is author of an upcoming new book, Zemore and Gaulism from Eb Books. He's an independent journalist in the country of France right now ahead of the election covering what's going on. So, Hello, Marlon. How are you doing? Good, thanks. I'm well. I'm in a room in Oberville, A, which is a suburb to the north of Paris.

And I'm just finishing up that manuscript and laying some groundwork for starting to see what's actually going down here as opposed to just reading about it. Yeah, very interesting stuff. And I've seen some of your other writing before. And I'm very happy to connect with you finally in a little bit more formal setting. I know we're in some chats in common, but it'll be nice to actually have this conversation kind of digitally face-to-face. So why don't we just start basically at the top? We have the French election coming up. Can you lay out for people who are completely unfamiliar with the French election system,

how this election is going to be run, the two different parts to it, and then perhaps a brief overview of the main candidates that are going to be running within this? I know that that's obviously a huge question, but it'll at least lay some groundwork for us to start to dig in afterwards on. Yeah, so France has a two-round election system. So the first round will be on April 10th, and then the second round on the 24th, two weeks later. The first round, the top two candidates, you know,

if someone doesn't get over 50%, which really never happens, the first two candidates go off to the runoff and they have a debate between them. And, yeah, then the one with the most votes at the end wins. And they happen every five years now. They used to happen every seven years, but that got changed because they thought that was too long after mid-orand. And for a long time, no candidate has been re-elected under the five-year system. You know, it's always been one term. So Lawton had one term.

So Cozy had one term. So now the main candidates are really a manual Macron. the president and looks like he might be re-elected looking at the polls. And against him, you have a whole bevy of characters. There's Jean-Luc Malin, who's sort of the perennial left-wing candidate. He's running for this third time. He had his roots in the Socialist Party, and he split with them over questions of Europe and, you know, of sort of right-wing turn in the party under Francois Hollande.

He's been surging in the polls recently, which has happened in 2017 as well. near the end, it started to look like he might have a chance. And then you have, but he's in third right now. And then you have Marine Le Pen, who again is the perennial far right-wing candidate. Her father, of course, was Sean Marine Le Pen, who made the second round in 2002 against Shaq, unexpectedly, and though he didn't come close to winning, and she's carrying on his legacy of reaction, mainly racist, anti-immigrant sentiments. their sort of other policies are malleable.

Everything is subordinated to the idea of protecting France from immigration and the wave that's submerging, you know, white Christian Catholic traditional France. And then that's sort of complicated that flank of the election by this new candidate, Eric Zamor, who I've wrote this book about partially. And Zamoire was a long-time columnist for La Figuero, which is the mainstream conservative paper in France. And then he became a TV pundit, and he shares the same obsessions. He says that France is facing a great replacement where its population is being replaced by, you know, Arabs and Muslims. And every other party on the right and figure on the right has betrayed the French people, including Marine L'Intyreux. pen and gone soft on this and only he can actually stop this wave of immigration. He's going to do this through a zero immigration policy.

You know, he sort of riffs on zero COVID and says zero immigration. That's his goal. He's going to do this through remigration, which really means mass deportations. He's committed to deporting a million undesirable immigrants in his first five-year term. And he's also going to do this by, you know, this. a policy of revitalizing rural France, one of his main things is offering 10,000 euros every French baby born in the countryside. And for him, a French baby means French French. And he is, you know, he's at 15% of the polls a couple of weeks ago. He's descended now because some of his

support, they say, for Vladimir Putin before the war has made him fall in the polls. But, you know, that's only because people think Le Pen has a better chance of winning. His ideas are very popular. And so that's the right. There's also Valerie Pecrest, sort of the more traditional center-right candidate who seems, pretends to not be as, you know, firm. But if you look at her her record and governing Ilda France, which is the region that contains Paris, you know, she is, it's like that traditional, oh, I'm the good one, but really they implement all the bad policies. She has sort of fell to and doesn't have much of a chance. Outside of those five, There's some smaller left-man candidates, like the Green Party's Yanich Chetto, who's more pro-European.

He has leaned in big on condemning the war in Ukraine and saying, you know, we need to get off a gas to punish Vladimir Putin's regime, that type of critique. And then there's Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, at a whopping 1.5% in the polls. She's not really known outside of the capital. And there are, you know, some other smaller left-wing candidates like Philip Boutou from the new anti-capos party, Natalie Artoe, from the Trotskits party, a couple of eccentric right-wingers like Sean LaSalle, who is most French-looking man in the world, and he had an enormous nose and craggy features. But those first five are sort of the main players, and it's narrowing now, and it looks like some type of race between Macron, Le Pen, I don't know. and possibly Zamoire, as we go into their final couple of weeks. Brett, unless you've got something, I have kind of a quick follow-up on this. So you've laid out some of these candidates that you think have a pretty good chance at winning.

And I think that at least some of them, the listeners of guerrilla history, are going to be somewhat familiar with. And I'm going to highlight one of them, which I think will be more familiar to most guerrilla history listeners, but not all, which is Jean-Luc Melancher. Sean, who, as you mentioned, is this kind of perennial left-wing figure within French electoral politics. He's not affiliated with the Communist Party, but he's kind of the left wing of this kind of presidential and parliamentary push.

And he's been running time and time again. And in the past, I feel like he hasn't gotten very much press, whereas this time I'm starting to see quite a bit more. written about him. I'm starting to see more things in the media, both in terms of kind of television media, as well as print media, about him. And I am wondering, as somebody who's in France right now, are you seeing that on the ground there, or is this something that I'm just seeing as a result of my own kind of bubbles that I'm enclosed? And of course, as being kind of the leading light of the French left as it is right now, the circles that I traips around

and are going to be, you know, obviously pushing for him within this. And so I necessarily see a lot more written about him than I would if I was just in a, you know, mainstream liberal center circle. So I'm wondering, like, in the streets of France, is this also something that you've been noticing? Is there a lot more about him out there this time around? Or is it just because of the circles that I'm in that I'm seeing it a lot more than there was in previous elections. Yeah, I'd say you do see posters from him everywhere in Paris and in the suburbs. Part of that is the fact that, you know, parts of Paris, when I say Paris, more east Paris, West Paris is like the rich section. I'm not often there. And there's posters

everywhere, which may be a testament to, you know, how engaged his campaign team is. I saw them on the bus coming in from the airport. I saw them by the station. I see them around here in Oberville, which is a suburb to the north. And I know I've had a couple of conversations with people, and everyone knows. So he has, he's not like an obscure figure by any means. He's a completely mainstream figure. Not that everyone is a left wenger in France, even though, you know, sometimes out of the country, everyone thinks everyone in France is. I think the reason he's getting more attention this time. I think he has a better chance of making the second round runoff. Last time, Marine Le Pen was sort of firmly going to make the runoff and she beat Melanchang

by like four or five percentage points. Now Eric Zamora is splitting the right-wing vote, what they call what Zamora and Le Pen people call the patriotic camp. You know, he and that honestly gives Melanchang a better shot of winning or not winning the whole thing necessarily, but getting into that second round you know he the same dynamic is happening where everyone on the french left is sort of having a come to jesus moment not even 50% of the other left-wing candidates are sure of their vote whereas like 80% of the left-wing candidate supporters whereas 80% of on chan's voters are sure they're going to vote for him so he really just has room to keep picking up points and he doesn't need as many votes this time we get to the second round so that's

probably why you're seeing more of articles about him because there's starting to worry about him. He's on a bunch of magazine covers, you know. I remember in 2017, there was a moment in the French media when they thought he might actually get to the second round and the same sort of thing happened. There was an editorial in the Figuero called Maximilian Illich Melanchin, warning that Melanchin was going to turn France into Cuba without the beaches

and, you know, and that he was an admirer of Robespier, which honestly, he was an admirer, he is an admirer of Robespier. my love Sean. He's written a whole lot about it. So that's probably why you're hearing more about him. And I agree with that analysis. I would say the same thing. I sort of, some of the circles I'm in are more left wing. So I, you know, I've had conversation, long conversation about him even being here in the past couple days. But maybe that's a self-selecting thing. For largely American audience, and this is kind of a stupid question, but just to kind of help orient some people who might not have a lot of insight into, you know, French politics in particular,

Would you say that Melonshaw is sort of a Corbyn, Bernie Sanders-type figure for the left in France? And after you answer that, can you talk about some of the core issues he's running on this time? Yeah, maybe spiritually in the sense that he's like a left populist type. But I think there are a lot of significant differences between Melanchard and Corbyn and Sanders. One of them is his political style, which is much more aggressive and, you know, uncompromising. You know, after Corbyn lost, I don't know, I don't sure would a blog post how, you know, one of the reasons Corbin lost was he kept apologizing with me.

I'm not going to apologize every day for the project I'm bringing. So, in a sense, you know, this is getting into a whole different debate, but everyone talks about left populism as being this thing over the past five or six years. I don't think Corbyn or Sanders were left populace. They didn't run populist campaigns. I think Melanchard is much more of a traditional populist.

He calls himself a tribune, you know, this idea of the tribune that speaks for the plebeians, not in a taxonomic sense, not a derogative sense. So he is that, and he's an incredible speaker in a way that Corbidden or Sanders never were. Corbyn and Sanders, of course, have a perception of being passionate and stubborn, but not exactly the most exciting speakers in the world. Melancho is, you know, I've talked to plenty of people about Melancho over the years, even if you hate him politically, he's acknowledged to be like this formidable figure, very intelligent, very charismatic, which is why they worry about him so much here. As for his project, you know, he mentioned, it mentioned that, you know, he seems like a Communist Party figure or associated with the Communist Party. And he was, even though he was the Socialist Party politician in 2012 and 2017, the Communist Party supported him for the presidency.

That's why they haven't had a candidate until that. He, his program, you know, people say it's not even as radical as Mitter Ron's program was in 81, which is true in a sense because world politics is just different. balance of power between whether, I mean, there is no really significant communist camp in the world now that has the same heft that there was then. The big premise of him and what I like a lot about him, and I think a lot of people on the left, what or should like about him, even though he isn't a Marxist or a communist, really, is that he, part of his program is instituting a sixth republic. France right now is in the Fifth Republic. And the Fifth Republic was created by Charles de Gaul in 1958.

It dissolved the Fourth Republic, which was considered, you know, to behold into the whims of parliamentaryism and the instability that provoked. And so the Fifth Republic has this very monarchial presidential system. It used to be a seven-year presidency. Now it's a five-year presidency, but still the president has enormous power. You can propose laws, you know, that can then be adopted by the legislator or the National Assembly here. And it's just this, this, it's a system that really prevents democracy, which, of course, a lot of Western governments do. But the reason they, the fifth, the Fourth Republic really was dissolved.

And this is a whole star question, which we could get into a little, is that the communists were getting strong within the Fourth Republic. They had power that they had never had before. And so the Fifth Republic is sort of a reaction to that. And Melanchon, he takes a lot of inspiration. from the pink tide movement from Hugo Chavez and from Refo Correa in Ecuador. And he wants a citizen's revolution. So he calls for a constituent assembly where they rewrite the Constitution and the Institute of Sixth Republic with a lot more governing by referendums, which they call the refutative citoyen.

So the citizens referendum initiative where you can pass laws without having it be proposed to one of the houses of the assembly, et cetera. you know, he's going to lower their retirement age to 60. It's all the traditional raft of radical social democratic policies. He calls for, you know, moving away from nuclear power, which might actually hurt him in France because, for instance, are dependent on nuclear power. And the Communist Party candidate at this time does support nuclear power.

So there's like four or five percent of voters that may have supported Milashon at one point and may not vote for him this time. He got around 20 percent last time. He was pulling around 15 now. But that's, I think, the distinguishing. future of him from someone like Sanders or Corbyn. You know, Sanders would talk about a political revolution, but that just meant, you know, elect more Democrats who are a little more left-wing. Melanchot really wants to change the political system of France. That's very, very interesting.

Earlier, you sort of talked about some of the reactionary appeals to certain elements in rural France. And I was actually just watching the other day of some basically like geography of France and the importance of the rural area and the push over the last century, specifically the pushing of people into peasants into, over the last several centuries, into the major cities, and even one fifth of all French people live in the Paris metro area, which was pretty stark to hear that, especially coming from a very big country like the United States. It's interesting. And here we definitely have a very big urban, rural divide.

So I'm wondering if that same, if there is a rural urban divide and if there is what some of the the core issues in that divide are and you know who's appealing to what side there yeah well they sort of say that the whole chile jean movement was based in that that you know what started that was the implementation of a new fuel tax by Macron's governments and you know those who were against it said well that doesn't even stop to think about people who live in the countryside you know they can't just take public transport they have to drive to work every day um and you're right about that that demographic fact of a fifth of the population being in the Paris metropolitan area, there's a, I think it's an even larger percentage of their economy that's based in the

Paris metropolitan area, which includes all the yield of France. It's not just Paris, because Paris itself is actually quite a small city, but in terms of other world capitals. And before the industry sort of was hollowed out in France, all the, you know, the Renault factories, that's where 1968 started. It was in car factories in the Paris metropolitan area. It was a strike for high wages expanded. There was tons of industry and production there. So the capital really does play this role in French political life that's even more outsized than in other countries. Obviously, in every country, the capital dominates the country to some degree, but in France is particularly pronounced. So I'm going to jump in now and talk a little bit more. I want to shift

just towards the history a little bit, because after all, this is a history podcast. So you mentioned the Fifth Republic. I think that it would be important for us to orient the listeners into the kind of early origins of the Fifth Republic, a little bit more than you already kind of did. So you mentioned the Fourth Republic. The Fourth Republic was in existence from 1946 to 1958. And particularly in those later years, it really was a very wobbly, very weak institution. a set of collective institutions, you could think of it as. We had previously had an episode on the Battle of Dien Ben-Fu. That disaster went a long way into weakening the Fourth Republic.

And then from the French perspective, the fiasco in Algeria, really was the death now in the Fourth Republic. And of course, we obviously are very strongly in support of everything that happened in Algeria from in terms of the independence of Algeria not in terms of the terror of the French within Algeria um so the fourth republic fell in 1958 and then as you mentioned Charles de Gaul who had been basically sitting away in retirement for um at least 10 years 10 or 12 years at that point he steps back up and kind of takes almost dictatorial power in uh 1958 and I think think that this is really a thread that I would like you to expand on because there's more

that I could say on it, but I'm not an expert in French history. So why don't I turn it over to you to kind of give a little bit more detail and fill in that historical grounding of kind of the fall of the Fourth Republic. You mentioned the Communist Party within the Fourth Republic, which, yes, there was significant sway held by the Communist Party during the Fourth Republic. Can you talk about the fall of the Fourth Republic, the construction of the Fifth Republic and how the vestiges of de Gaulle's, like I said, somewhat dictatorial regime at the beginning of the Fifth Republic, kind of has shaped French politics going forward because I think that there is quite a bit of those vestiges that are still left, even in maybe not so explicit,

but kind of implicit ways within the system. Yeah, I think to make it even a little more complicated, to really understand that story. You have to go back to the end of the Third Republic, which was, you know, when France signed the armistice with Nazi Germany, and de Gaulle fled to England and set up his government, the free French resistance. And you have to really understand the reasons why he did that, because it's that time where de Gaul draws all his historical legitimacy from.

That's how he became de Gaul and how he was able to take power in France, even dictatorially. It was with, you know, approval by most people. It was a sort of bonapartist move. And the reason he did that was because de Gaul's problem with the armistice was never so much the Nazi part of Nazi Germany. It was the German part. De Gaul was a traditional, he was like a 19th century man. He was a French imperialist, not just like in a derogative sense, but in the sense that he believed France was an empire, and French greatness was diminished by being occupied by Germany. And so he led this resistance from, The colonial possessions of France, he went to debt. He spent a lot of time in Dakkar, spent a lot of time in Brazzaville,

just shoring up the rent, like the parts of the empire that he wanted to preserve. And when he entered into resistance, he named the, you know, the organism that would prosper the struggle, the council for the defense of the empire. So when France finally was liberated, you know, he had been playing this role and making sure that the empire stayed whole. You know, he would spar with the British about, you know, because he was worried they were going to try to take bites out of the French, Apple, the French Empire, using the war as a pretext. And, you know, they did play a role of the free French, no doubt, a military role. But of course, there was the resistance, which it was on French soil and largely was communist, his resistance. And so when de Gaulle comes back to Paris and the beginning of the Fourth Republic story begins, he gets to contend with,

the reality that now the Communist Party of France has this legitimacy on the ground because they were there and they were the ones who were liberating the towns and setting up, you know, you could even say little many versions of communes and they wanted to, a lot of them wanted to establish a popular republic, another popular front with them at the head, of course. but de Gaulle was really the only alternative to this. There's a book called The History of the Fourth Republic by guy called Jacques Vovet. And he says, you know, there were only two forces in France at the end of the war that could oppose the communists. And that was the socialists and de Gaul. And so when the fourth republic was formed, it was not the form that de Gaul really wanted. He was only briefly leader of France after the war. He resigned in 46, as you mentioned.

and he even said, you know, the Fourth Republic was built in opposition to me because it was democratic, really. It was parliamentary for all its, and the Fourth Republic, let's not like over-emphasize its sanctity, or even the Communist Party at the time, the Communist Party voted for war credits to fund the war against the Vietnam. They preserved the empire to a real degree. But you mentioned the instability of the Fourth Republic,

And I think that that was partially to do with the fact that it did have to respond in some way to democracy of the Fourth Republic. So there were these constantly falling governments and these new coalitions that came into play because it was a confused time. And it was really a time of struggle within France for which force in society would control France. And obviously, we know who won. It was not the communists or the proletariat flank. But one of the big reasons why they didn't win was de Gaul. Because, and now I'll get into Algeria a little, which stop me if I go on for too long about it. But that's what a lot of the book is about, this period between 1958 and 1962.

Algeria was a crisis for the French empire, specifically the French empire. You know, its defenders would say it's a crisis for France because Algeria was French, you know, for 130 years. Algeria was France before Nice was France even. And so if Algeria is no longer French, then what is France? It's no longer an empire. I used to call like the Mediterranean, they would compare the Mediterranean to the Sen running through Paris in the sense that it was just a river you got across to get to the other part of France.

And then obviously there was this nationalist revolution in Algeria at a national liberation movement, really. And no section of the French ruling class knew how to handle it. And they thought the only figure could really handle it was the Gaul who had been lying in wait to come back to power. He had never, you know, it's not like he just retired. He always wanted to come back to power, but he didn't think that he could in the Fourth Republic.

At one point, a few years before he even came back to power, he said, you know, France is prosperous. There's no way. He can come to power now. You need a little chaos. And so in 1950s, this was all coming to a head. Basically, you know, France had lost Algeria because, of course, the people of Algeria didn't want to be French. But the French ruling class hadn't accepted that in any way.

And even de Gaulle hadn't accepted it. So when he came back, he went through this series of compromises. And it was an impossible thread to actually, impossible needle to actually thread because nobody in the French ruling class because of their racism actually wanted full Algerian integration into France you know that would mean as de Gaulle said 80 Muslim

deputies in the National Assembly but they really wanted was a preservation of like this apartheid rule that France held over Algeria and of course the mineral rights to the resources in Algeria so eventually de Gaul had to accept

that Algeria was more trouble than it was worth And that was sort of viewed as a betrayal by the far-right powers that brought him back to power, the far-right forces. And, you know, they tried to assassinate him at one point. And that was Jean-Marie Le Pen's rise to power. He was a politician down in the south, and he would give speeches condemning de Gaulle's Algerian policy and, you know, in favor of the Pierre noir, which were the French settlers. They, well, they had been born there. They were the descendants of the original French settlers, and they fled the country en masse to the south

and then formed this sort of base for people like Jean-Marie a plan. And still in the southeast of the country, you know, it's a very, there's a sort of a far-right stronghold because those forces never got over their nostalgia for empire as part of their national narrative, the narrative of their national identity. and I think to sort of awkwardly draw a threat all the way back to what's going on now a lot of those forces you know birthed the National Front

which was Marine Le Pen's party this reactionary current that France has been so degraded over the past 50, 60 years and first it was because we lost her empire and now it's because we're being colonized ourselves ourselves by immigration and the only way to end this is to stop being humiliated and to stop apologizing and to deport all these people and Eric Samore is a product of all this because his parents were Algerian Eric Samore is as he you know says to defend himself against any charges a fact of racism is he's a Berber Jew from North whose family is from

North Africa. And he is. And he's a product of the French Empire. I think he's a classic example of like a national minority in an empire being elevated to rule. You always see this. They try in empires and colonies, the colonizers, they raise up an elite minority. And they have them be the truest representatives of the home country. There's no no one has zeal like a convert. Right. So, you know, Eric Seymour says, I'm glad. glad that Algeria was colonized by France because it allowed me a chance to become great. And there's a lot of that sentiment, you know, I was just in England recently, and obviously England has a crazy relationship to its empire. But there is not anything like the level of shame about a French empire in France. And it's hardly even acknowledged as anything beyond a tragedy. Like Emmanuel Macron famously said that, you know, colonization was a crime against humanity. or something to that effect.

But his government produced a report on Algeria, and they said, no responsibility is going to be taken. We'll acknowledge that these massacres happened. We'll acknowledge that there were atrocities. But, you know, there were atrocities on both sides. And what happened was really a tragedy, not a crime. So I know Brett has a follow-up on, yeah, de Gaulism and going up to the present table. But I want to just stick for one quick second.

in that end of the fourth republic period. And something that we had briefly mentioned before we hit record was the failures of the French Communist Party at that time period and how that relates to de Gaulle. So, you know, you talked about war credits and whatnot, but can you just briefly, before I let Brett take over then, discuss some of the other failures that you would like to highlight of the French Communist Party, keeping in mind that, you know, a lot of the audience. of the show are going to be communist for a, you know, pretty explicitly socialist communist history program. So it's, it's worth keeping in mind that just because something has communist tacked on their name does not mean that they're infalliable and everything that they did was good. As you already pointed out with war credits fighting against the Vietnam, you know, obviously terrible, terrible, terrible. So just keeping that in mind, I think it's important

for our audience to hear about some of the other failures of the French Communist Party at that period of time. Yeah, sort of the moment that is like the most, you know, the most clothes are rended over it and in debates and what could have, what could have been if we had acted differently is that moment right when the war was over, but de Gaulle was not yet in power. The communists were at the peak of their influence in France. They had set up all these, they had set up like militias as alternatives to police forces. And, you know, De Gaul is sort of trying to send out commissioners to govern the regions of France, but a lot of them were acting independently and under the pressure of local communist forces.

There were nationalizations that were beginning, which DeGal hated, of course. And then, you know, the communists basically took the risk or decided to pursue the strategy that both were in government. We have a better chance of taking state power, even though at the time the right. recalls of forming a popular republic and continuing a struggle to revolution, they chose to align behind Charles de Gaulle. You know, in Charles de Gaul's first government, there was a socialist minister, there was a moderate minister, and there was a communist minister. The line they used to say is that the interior is moderate and the air is communist because Charles Tillan was the

minister of air. And that produced a lot of the mythologies. around France today because of course de Gaulle had to concede to them on on many things and even more so in 1968 you know de Gaulle there were huge expansions of uh you know salary wages pardon me salary raises and that was because of communist influence on society but what it did was it just made them no longer able to pursue so much of an independent line i think they they became captured by de Gaulle and de Gaulle I think knew this and he was very sophisticated

and the French ruling class was very sophisticated that you know there's a it's always hard to pin down DeGal's ideology but one good definition is that he's the pragmatic wing of the French bourgeoisie he really was able to adapt to any situation that threatened the French ruling class in the French empire

and he could implement things that you know some left members would say all that was good but he only ever did it as a momentary concession and the communists yeah they abandoned they basically became a parliamentary party and their role during their resistance was completely different and it had made them popular and they maintained a high level of influence and sway over french political life but that all sort of changed in the 90s I did with a lot of communist parties not only because of the fall of the Soviet Union but because of the fact that they were no they disavowed

their revolutionary origins. They took out of their founding documents that they were a revolutionary party and they became just a parliamentary party like any others. And since then, they've had really no influence on national politics. So they do control a lot of local governments. You know, it seems like a lot if you're not from France

and you're like, oh, God, it's how strange you have a Communist Party mayor. What that really means is just, you know, there's a well-maintained public pool and there's a movie thing. or where the tickets are kind of cheap. Yeah, that's a really great summary of a lot of history, and we appreciate that. So, like, with all that history in mind, and to give you a chance to kind of talk a little bit

about your book on this topic, can you talk about how Gaulism continues today, sort of how it's picked up, what it means today? And, you know, like, you talk about Zamor, I think how you pronounce that, and his embrace of it, if you can talk a little bit about that as well. Yeah, Gaulism is embraced by every. single candidate on in every single party on every single wing of French politics because de Gaulle is basically

like a sacrosanct figure. He's like George Washington or he's like, you know, Castro and Cuba to sort of mix metaphors there. But he has this huge level of legitimacy. You know, if you walk around Paris,

there's Charles de Gaulle eto. There's a Charles de Gaulle bus stop on my old bus line in Montoya. There's a Charles de Gaul. This subway metro station, you know, he basically is the most legitimate figure in French politics. And I think a lot of politicians embrace him because they just know he's so popular, not out of any necessary affinity with him. I mean, Melanchin, you know, says he's a Gaulist. Zamor says he's a Gaulist.

Macron says he's a Gaulist. Le Pen doesn't say he's a Gaulist because Le Penes have always had a history of Gaul. but her father specifically Fabian Roussel will even say, you know, pay tribute to de Gaulle Macron, you know, when he posts pictures of his desk, there's de Gauls memoirs on his desk. But what Gaulism

really is, and I think the best definition of Gallism is that sort of definition of him being the pragmatic wing of the French bourgeoisie. Let me stop trailing off there and go to this point that I think the fact that he's considered so legitimate wanders

a heavy dose of conservatism into politics today because if de Gaul is so sacrosanct then every decision he made is sacrosanct

and de Gaul was a conservative he was a classic partisan of the empire he was a racist you know the reason he didn't want Algeria to have full

integration into France was because he didn't want Algerians coming to France you know, he said once, I want more French babies and fewer immigrants. It sounds exactly like de Gaul, like Seymour, there you go. That's a little slip of the tongue, but it makes the point. And so Zamoire, when he says that he's a Gaulist, he says, I'm a Gaulist of reconquest.

And his party is called Leconquette, which is reconquest, which is sort of obviously a very thin allusion to their reconquista when the Muslims were driven out of Spain. And this gallism, I think, is actually true gallism. I don't think left when gallism is real. I mean, it is a real trend, but it's sort of this attempt to rehabilitate history, to grab little pieces from De Gaul and derive that legitimacy from him. De Gaul was not a leftist. Like I said before, any concession you made was under influence. Zamoire is real gallism.

And what that means is a union of the right. Samarly talks about this union between the patriotic bourgeoisie and the popular classes. And it's classic collaboration. And they really think this can happen. And that was Gall's big thrust. He would pretend to say, well, I'm searching for an alternative to capitalism and communism. I want a harmonious relationship between labor and capital. He would invite the trade union for discussions.

but I don't think they really signified any sympathy for them he was just a trusted interlocutor with them he could handle them and he would never allow them any political rights or he didn't want to allow them any political rights shortly after the Fourth Republic was founded and he was the way of the government that the head of the CGT came to visit him and he dismissed them he said you know that's not your role

unions can't have political roles unions have to negotiate with the government So before we really shift topics, I want to take a step back towards the beginning of this recording that we had, where we discussed the candidates themselves. And I want to just have you discuss what you think might be the implications of each of them being elected. I mean, like, this is kind of like the ultimate question. We really could end on this question.

But I also think it might open up some really interesting lines of further discussion. So what would the implications of each of the major candidates, at least, being elected be? Like, what would the implications of Melanchon being elected? Like, what would we hope to see from that? What would we realistically see out of Melanchon being elected? What would another term of Macron mean? What would Zamor being elected mean? What would Marine LePan be being elected mean?

What would the implications of this from like a very every day as well as a kind of grand scheme of things geopolitical perspective be? Because I think that there really is divergences between these candidates, like much more so than we see in many other elections, particularly in places like, you know, the United States where we have Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Like, yes, Donald Trump is a far right figure, but Joe Biden is also pretty far. far on the right himself, by most international standards anyway. In France, there is quite a bit more divergence between, say, Melanchon and Zamora Lepan and Macron, and Macron being somewhere, you know, kind of this amorphous middle almost. So I think that would be interesting to discuss what the implications of each of them being elected would be. And like I said, maybe that will bring up some interesting ideas for how to continue the conversation before we shift to a little bit more

esoteric topics. Yeah, I think a second Macron term would look similar to a first macroan term, but because of the circumstances, be very different. A lot of what Macron wanted to get done, it wasn't able to because of two crises. There was the Yellow Vest protest movement, and then there was the pandemic. Right before the pandemic, the first lockdown, you know, the National Assembly was set to debate reforming the pension system, which would change it to a points-based system, which would vastly decrease the pensions for most people and for raising their retirement age. And obviously there were distractions to that, big ones. And he was sort of forced by circumstance into pursuing policies of much more social spending. But at the same time,

He did take a very hard turn on immigration because of the political reality of the country. And he limited a lot of asylum applications, him pointed a man named Gerald Darmannin to his Ministry of Interior, Darmannin once debated Le Penh and accuser of being too soft on immigration. So I think you'd see that turn continue. There's a reporter named Mark Endelwald who wrote a book on MacRoll. he's one of these sort of gossip, not gossipy, but he always has the inside sources, you know, what they're supposedly saying, and he says McRan, is himself obsessed with the idea of the great replacements. He believes that he shares the same analysis as Amor or Lepin.

So I think you'd see a continued right-wing turn and sort of the policies of the far-right continue to be implemented in France, but with less, you know, thunder. And then so if Lepin was elected, I actually don't think there would be a huge change. It would obviously be a lot more explicit. You know, McRill-Pen is a racist, an open racist, at least, although she'd, of course, denies it, as they all do. But, and there'd be a change in the climate, for sure, in terms of racism. But when you actually look at what policies would go through,

I think you'd see a pretty coherent continuation of those policies. is the more, even though he's very similar to Le Pen, I think would obviously be very explosive and shocking for a lot of people. And although both Macron Le Pen want to deport people, I think Zemmour would unleash a lot of forces in French society, which are not even hidden, really. You know, France is notoriously racist. Anyone who spends any time with France knows that French people are notoriously racist. So Samor, for that type of change, I think he would, it would feel very different. And these mass deportation campaigns would obviously engender a lot of, I think, would not, sorry, I mean it to say the opposite, would not engender so much of distance. This idea is very widespread in France, that French people were replaced.

And he sort of mainstreamed that fascist discourse in a way, know what the candidate has, because now Lepen is viewed as being the soft alternative to him. There was a cartoon in Le Canard-Nes-N-A paper like a year ago that said, Rift on that, and they had a flyer that said, you know, vote for Le Pen to prevent the right, far right from getting into power. So he's really shifted that being acknowledged. If Melanchang was elected, everyone, you know, everyone says, you know, everything that Melanchang wants to do would be blocked by the constitutional court. Maybe that's true.

I think it obviously, as it so often does with politicians like this, depends on, you know, how straight that iron rod at their back is going to be. And I can only prophesize about him on his character and his personality, but I think he would not capitulate as easy as someone like Sanders or Corbyn if they were elected. I don't know what your viewers think really about this, but I do not think Corbyn or Sanders would have represented any sort of. of radical break with, you know, it would have just been a slightly lower left wing. I think Melanchang could. I could be wrong. But I think he could because, like I said, he really does want to restructure the political system. I think there's always really interesting opportunities there. Like, you look at, you know, the Bolshevik revolution was prefigured by the constituent assembly. The constituent assembly wasn't the revolutionary

moment, but it created the conditions for it. I don't know if Melancho is the revolutionary man. But I think any time when you start to question, well, what does a constitution say? What should a society, you know, provide its citizens? What should the state look like? It does open really interesting possibilities. So in that sense, I think there is a chance for break with him. And then on the more sort of day-to-day level, you know, he'd lower the retirement age to 60. he'd freeze gas prices at one euro 40 a liter he says he's going to have price controls on you know items of first necessity which include a lot of staple foods so that stuff i think he could get through he has powers supposedly under the commerce code the presidency has these

broad powers in france where he could implement a lot of that stuff yeah i just want to touch on really quick the idea of sanders and what would have happened if you want i think uh it would have went one of two ways. If Sanders tried to keep up the rhetoric of political revolution and try to maintain, you know, his, his stubborn militant, or not really militant, but stubborn labor politics, I think he would have just been completely neutralized by both the Democratic and the Republican establishment coming together, plus the media teaming up to stop him. But as we've seen after Biden's election, Sanders has been completely cucked and reduced to just a handmaiden of the Democratic party. And so I think that would actually have probably been more likely that he would have

capitulated to internal pressure and we would have got something just like a more or less like another Biden or Obama in practice even though perhaps in rhetoric he might you know say some things that they wouldn't have said. So I think you're right about having the iron bar in your back, the iron rod as a spine because anybody from a left populace or further left perspective engaging in this really globalized, you know, narrative discourse will have to be able to just not apologize for anything. You know, like a, you know how Trump just never gave a fuck at all about the activist class or anybody saying anything bad about him or criticizing him? He just plowed through. I think that was to his credit because if he started apologizing and saying, okay, I'm sorry about

this. You're right about, like he would have just been completely destroyed. So I think that's a lesson for left populists of any sort. But my question for you, especially around the context of immigration is these two huge issues looming. And I want to know the role that they play in in the election debates right now, which is Ukraine and the climate crisis. And both have some implications at least for some level of immigration. Certainly with the climate chaos, it's just no, no question. We're going to have unprecedented mass migration from, you know, the equatorial ban and the global south and general northward. And so I'm wondering what role that whole conversation plays in this. And then with Ukraine,

you know, because they're white, there is some like, there's, there's this hypocrisy and this double standard with the way Europeans and Americans talk about Ukrainian refugees as opposed to even Syrian refugees. So with Ukraine and climate and their immigration implications, what role do those topics play in this election? Yeah, Ukraine has definitely taken the wind out of some more sails. He was in second place in the polls now. He's like falling down to fifth because of this idea that he's an apologist for people. Putin, you know, he once said France needs a, needs its own Vladimir Putin in a sense of like a guy who in sort of that right-wing sort of admiration for Putin that exists so much, this strong national conservative figure who rejects Western liberalism. So that's, I mean, yeah.

And yeah, the point about the immigrant immigration from Ukraine, there was a lot of, you know, disgusting statements that came out in France right after the war started, you know, some guy said, well, they're well, educated. so we'll be able to profit well from them. There's a lot of this, of this is sort of neurosis on the far right right now that Ukrainian immigration is just being used to smuggle more African and Arab immigrants in France. There's all these reports that say they're Ukrainian, but they're actually from Algeria. They're students from Algeria or they're Ukrainian,

but they're actually from anywhere else in Africa. So that, you know, some people who run some more have been accusing ruling, Marine Le Penne of going soft on immigration now because she said that she supports Ukraine immigration because, and the sort of discourse they use is, well, you know, when there's a crisis in the Middle East, Arabs should take in Arab immigrants. When there's a crisis in Africa, Africans should take an African immigrants. But when there's a crisis in Europe, yes, we will take in European immigrants because they're part of the same civilization as we are. It's natural that we do this. Civilization is a word that's just a lot nowadays. So,

Moore always says, you know, my fight is, it's a civilizational fight. If there's two different civilizations in the same circle, you can't have a culture. He says, you know, if you don't agree about how France, that French should not change, you're not a brother, you can't have any of this mixing. And the only way immigrants can come to France is through assimilation, not integration, but assimilation where you become the same, where you appreciate French literature and French, even down to the French countryside, which is unique, according to him, when the French countryside is beautiful, but there's beautiful countryside all over the world. So that's Ukraine.

Obviously, Macron went up in the polls because this was a sort of rally around the leader effect, I presume. But he started to come back down a little bit, and it hasn't really hurt Marine Le Pen, who obviously famously took a loan from a bank in Russia, I think, very close to Putin. And this was almost a little less than a decade ago. She took a loan from them when her party had some financial troubles. But it doesn't seem to have affected her much. And your other question was about climate change.

Yeah, it is acknowledged. And there is this sort of eco-fascist trend on the far right that says, you know, we can only preserve our climate if we preserve our borders. We can only have clean energy if we were just. alternative energy and use nuclear power, which is France's great richness. And that's, you know, nuclear power is obviously a whole big rabbit hole of a debate. But I think the reason France has cheap nuclear power is it has uranium from Niger. You know, there's a reason why France has so much nuclear power.

And it isn't just because of the genius of French industry. It's because they have the right of the first refusal at the market of uranium from Northern Africa. So I think whatever you think about the science of nuclear power, The actual debate is not just about the science. It's about, you know, the politics and the resources involved in nuclear power. Malin Jaz is always the case. He does reject nuclear power. He does massive investments in all the standard laundry list of things to fight climate change,

including, you know, renewable power, insulation, of housing, et cetera, et cetera. But one thing that I think that he's done really well, which he hasn't done in the past, and people listening who are familiar with Melanchang, we'll probably notice the absence of it being mentioned before. Melanchon, 2017, ran a sort of chauvinistic, you know, campaign. It was a very French campaign. It wasn't even necessarily a left-wing campaign. And he's made comments in the past about, you know,

the Kosovoire community had a problem. There was these riots. Um, sorry, not the cause of the Chechnine community in France has a problem with violence, which was not just like a naked attempt to try to fander to these sort of anti-immigrant forces. And he has dropped, he has dropped that now, I think. And he's spoken about something called Creole de la Sjean, which is really the only honest response. I've seen anyone in French politics give to Marine Le Pen or Zemore. And clearly, all these estion comes from this idea that of a blending of culture,

cultures, you know, he sort of rejects the idea of the great replacement and says, this is like you say it's a demographic fact. And it is a demographic fact that France is becoming a more mixed country that other cultures have come to France and change France. But, you know, there are more important, not that they're more important subjects, but, you know, religious wars and ethnic conflict are never of root to solving the problem that France, that, that, the French, you know, the popular classes actually face. And he's gone on, he's debated Zamor, which is a hotly contested topic on the French left. They say, well, you shouldn't give him a platform. But people like Melanchon will say, well, he has a platform. You know, he's had a platform for the past 20 years. It's time to confront what he says and reject what he says.

And I think that sort of goes to the idea of the great replacement, which is omnipresent. here. You know, the far right will say climate change is a pretext for the Great Replacement. They just talk about climate refugees to try to get us to accept these refugees here when they're really all economic migrants and they're here to replace us. And like, as I've been reading a lot about this, I haven't doubted the idea, but I think I've, you know, I formulated a standard response to it. The Great Replacement isn't true. Like every, like, That's sort of obvious to me, and I think a lot of people of our political persuasion. But what does it mean?

Like, why are the people this racist? Is it just politicians pandering? I think that's sort of a cop-out. I don't think politicians are pandering because I think something is changing in France when immigrant populations come in. And that's, even though no one's being replaced, you know, there are more French, you know, real, quote-unquote, real French people than ever before in history. it's not like French people are disappearing but there is this other

group of Zamor would say another civilization Melanchin would say in addition to the process of realization in Melanchin's right and what they represent is a threat to political power there's this word in French politics

separatism where they warn that there are neighborhoods that are being separated from the Republic the Republican French community and they're these ethnic enclaves or these places where sharia law as being implemented or where women were the veil. And it all goes back to Algeria, I think, because Algeria was the original separatism. And it was much, you know, it was actual, it was an actual separation. Algeria became its own country. Algeria was separated from France. These areas of

the Republic War lost and the diminished, the greatness was diminished of France. And that was the whole process of decolonization. And what decolonization really represented to every figure in France who wanted to preserve it, to preserve the colonies was communism. Whenever there's this change in who the people are, I think political opportunities are opened up. And I think the far right and the ruling class see that they don't want any political opportunities opening up. So I think they are authentically anti-immigants. It's not just a pretext. I think they are authentically. authentically see this idea where the nature of what France is being questioned is dangerous. So I haven't thought, Brett, you want to jump in?

Just really quickly, just to add, you know, we hear the great replacement here in the U.S. a lot. And it's just worth noting that the actual concept itself comes from France. So it's not like it originated in some other country and then the French picked it up. It originated in France and people across Europe and the U.S. right-wingers have picked it up from France. So just worth noting. Can we go ahead? Yeah, I'll say real quickly, a philosopher called René Camus, who's more very close. Then in his latest book, he quotes this little vignette of he met with, I forget the guy's name, but he's a rap producer. He met with this guy who produces rap music, and they disagreed about everything, of course.

Then he met with René Camus, and he said, oh, it was great to meet with René Camus. It reminded me of, if it was 1942, I had coffee with a collaborator, a collaboration, a collaborator with the Nazis, and then how to convert resistance, putting a kamu member of resistance. And he's going, the guy who produces rap music and Nazi. It's just a perfect example of how the fart has adopted the legacy of resistance for their own. Yeah.

So, very good point. I want to kind of follow up with something that was said earlier. You mentioned Niger and Uranium, and that is something that I had actually looked up in the passed really huge amounts of uranium coming out of Niger to fund, or not fund, but to power France's nuclear power plants, as well as the reverse is happening. The spent nuclear fuel is being shipped back to Niger and is polluting large swaths of that country, which I find to be particularly obscene, but not necessarily surprising that, you know, France is extracting the valuable uranium.

and then is sending back the toxic, radioactive waste to go to Najair. It almost reminds me of that old Larry Summers memo where he was like, yeah, we should send all of the toxic sludge and radioactive waste to Africa because those people don't live as long anyway. So, you know, you're not really causing as many years to be lost if you put all of the toxic waste in Africa because those people were going to die young anyway. Utilitarianism. Exactly.

From Larry Summers, right, who at the time, I believe he was the head economist of the World Bank when he wrote that memo. But then, of course, was in several U.S. cabinets and was an advisor to Bill Clinton and Obama, that Larry Summers. So you mentioned Niger and something that I'm curious about because it's not something that I've been seeing been reported on in the English media. which is what I have access to and the ability to understand is how each of the candidates in this election are talking about former colonies. So there's a lot going on right now in some of the West African former colonies, particularly. So places like Mali or Burkina Faso, there is a lot going on in Mali and Burkina Faso right now. Like we should be devoting entire episodes to them soon to talk about all of the things that are going

down in Mali and Burkina Faso. Oh, yeah. So in lieu of talking about what is going down in places like Mali, Burkina Faso, as well as some of the other West African countries, but not quite to the same extent as those two at the moment, instead of talking about the events that are going on there in really great depth because you would need a very, very long time to get to, you know, what's really happening there. Is there any sort of discussion amongst the candidates and the press as.

what the relationship between France and its former colonies should be like. Because, you know, logically thinking, you would expect there to be some divergence between the candidates on how they would view the relationship of France to those former colonies. Though, again, not as much as it might hit you at first glance. Like, people might think, oh, yeah, you know, Zamor, super far right. Macron, centrist. But like, we've talked about, Macron is, you know, he's an imperialist. He's an implicit racist. You know, he doesn't come outright and say racist things that often, although on occasion he does, absolutely. But, you know, he's one of those classic centrist French imperialist racists.

But, you know, I would think that perhaps there's some divergence still between at least some of the candidates on the relationship between France to any of the colonies, former colonists. former colonies, I should say. So is there any discussion about that that you've seen? Because I have not seen anything like that, but it kind of struck me when we were talking about Niger and then all of these thoughts about the kind of tumult in the former colonies in West Africa, just kind of jumped into my head. Yeah. Well, I think the defining feature of France's relationship with its former colonies is, you know,

the monetary system in West Africa, which is the CFA. Frank, which is a currency. We have an episode planned on that, just so you know. Oh, extra. So that will be coming up in the semi-near future. Well, a brief, you know, a couple of sentences about it. Basically, France controls their monetary policy. France prints their currency.

And, you know, they can use that to control, you know, what type of spending the governments do. They can't run too big deficits, et cetera, et cetera. And it's always talked about, you know, They call the system France-Afrique, reforming this system. And they, you know, because of everything that's going on in West Africa, specifically, which, you know, particularly Mali, we could get into that forever. But there is this, they've noticed in France.

They, you know, they've noticed it, even though it isn't really reported outside of the region. And they need to adapt to it. And so I believe it was 2017. I'm not certain. But it was a couple of years ago. They decided that they were going to introduce a new currency called the Eco, which is short for Eco West, which is the French acronym for the community of West African. Oh, no, that's actually the English economic community of West African states.

And part of it is like, you know, okay, well, some of your reserves won't be held in French banks, et cetera, et cetera. But if you look at the language of the reform, of course, it actually says, Well, the principal stakeholder, which is France, can still make veto decisions on anything too ambitious. And it hasn't come up a lot in the election, but when Zamoire introduces defense policy, where he promised to spend more money on defense, I don't get the idea that Zamoire is in any way anti-war, which some people do in the sort of confused populist mode because Zamo says he's against NATO. He wants to take France out of NATO, the military command of NATO, just like DeGaul did. Zamoire actually wants to increase the military budget and the only reason he wants to get out of NATO so that they can have an you know arms industry back in France and he wants to put he wants to double the number of soldiers on French bases in West Africa so I don't know what his motivation

exactly is for this but I can divine that it's not just fighting terrorism which is some often a pretext rare I mean the whole reason there are French troops in France a allegedly is because of this terrorism fighting mission, even though when France went into fight terrorism, there weren't so many terrorist attacks. Now, the amount has gone up 10 times. Curious. In fact, this is something I don't know too much about, but the Prime Minister of Mali recently accused France of training terrorists that are based in the Kedal region in northern Mali. And that was just never followed up on as far as I know by any journalist. And you wonder why he would say that. maybe you'll get into that in your episodes coming up on it yeah absolutely uh yeah that's something that also i was going to bring up is that i never saw any follow up on that either that's something that you know you'd hope that somebody like nick ters would would pick up on that and kind of dig into

but i haven't seen it i even pitched a couple places on it and i didn't hear back from it but we'll see i know a lot of malian people actually because i used to live in montoy which is a We're up to the east and there's a big Malayan population, like something like 15% of the population. That's a city, 130,000 strong. So that's most of what I've heard about their policy towards West Africa. Melanchin has, you know, a tradition of, you know, having, speaking a good talk about it,

he would end the Franc, Africa relationship. He would give back monetary control to, you know, individual states. He often speaks out. in support of opposition politicians in some of these countries who are persecuted by their essentially French installed leaders. He'll even do that in, you know, closed little parliamentary meetings that nobody hears. They don't get a lot of play outside of unless you're very interested in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly of France. So again, I think Melancho would change

that relationship. But who knows, you know, you can never prophesize that. Too many, there's been too examples in history of, you know, even the Communist Party having power and then using it to back the empire in Western countries. Yeah, I'm just going to shout out a book quick before I turn it over to Brett to give us the final questions for this episode. So if anybody is interested in learning more about the CFA Frank, you should definitely check out the book, Africa's last colonial currency, the CFA Frank story by Fannie Pizhou and Ndongo Samba Sula, really great book. And that is the guests that I'm trying to get for that episode on the CFA Frank.

So definitely worth checking out. And, you know, since your devoted guerrilla history listeners, if you want to get the jump on kind of prepping for that episode and getting the background information, you can check out that book ahead of time. And then you'll be all ready for when that episode hopefully comes out, just assuming that the authors will come on the show. So Brett, I'll turn it over to you now for the last couple questions of the episode. yeah just two more ones very very quick and these both of these are kind of random they're not

necessarily attached to much of what we talked about this one is sort of personal interest on my part which is you mentioned earlier that melanchin has a certain sympathy and love for robespierre so obviously you know you're talking about the impact of the french revolution on a leftist like him i'm wondering if the paris commune still has any you know we talk about de gaul and his historical legacy the french revolution does the paris commune still hold a lot of sway on the Radical Left? Is it ever brought into mainstream politics? Yeah, what role does that historical event play in modern France? I think symbolically it does. Every time the anniversary comes around the radical left politicians and groups will pay homage to it, they might even have a little

protest out front of the Sacruc Cathedral, because that was built after the commune, sort of as a repudiation of the commune, which is a shame because I actually love that church. But then when I learn the history. It's not a great thing. I don't know how much of an effect it really has beyond this sort of French capacity to integrate its revolutionary heritage into the mainstream. I was walking the other day, just today actually, and I saw a bus, and it was going to a stop called Front Popular. You know, the National Front used to be this big, radical moment, supposedly in French politics, and when you read about it, sometimes you can still get excited, but now it's just a bus station, you know?

And so I think you will find in, I think there's a Rue de commune in Montre where I used to live, which is still governed by the French Communist Party. There's even a Rue Lennon of Rue Marx. And so it's nice to sort of see some of that red cultural stuff. But I don't know how much of an effect it actually has on the beliefs and opinions of people. Yeah, interesting. I appreciate that. So my last question is just something that comes to mind. because I listened to a bunch of different stuff across the political spectrum.

And sometimes I listen to like, I don't know, like new right voices in Europe specifically just to kind of see what all parts of the political spectrum are doing and developing and thinking about in these very troubled and uncertain times. And one thing that they mention a lot is this, how they frame it is like this exportation of American culture wars. So, you know, like Me Too, Black Lives Matter, gender identity issues, you know, what reactionary is called wokeism and the reaction. action to it. I'm wondering if those American, largely American culture wars, although I think Me Too kind of is broader than that, have any, I know they have some, some relevance in France, but how much is that relevance? And is it driving French politics in a similar way that it's driving American politics? Yeah, you know, they call Wikizma here, which is always funny to hear. But it really more manifests itself in this idea of Islamogoshism in France, which is

Islamal leftism, this idea that there's an alliance between the university and the left and radical Islam to Islamify France. That's, and even, you know, Emmanuel Macron's education minister asked for an investigation to Islamogismah in French universities and this sort of American ideology that's being exported. Yeah, it's a live wire. One of the, I think it was Blancourt, Jean Blancre, I can't think of his name, so I'll embarrass myself what I try to say, But one of Macron's ministers even launched a think tank, you know, devoted to combating this wokeism and this American export. And if you talk about me too, I think more recently was accused of some of these types of incidents of sexually assaulting some women. But France, unfortunately, leans into its stereotypes.

I don't think that stuff has as much of an effect here. He denied them all, of course. And in his book, his recent book, most recent book before the election, France hasn't said its last word, he lamented that trend. And he's lamented that trend for a long time. You know, he said he used to be a political journalist. And he did, and he followed, like, Chirac's campaign, and he followed Nicholas Sarkozy's campaign. And he followed Domney Strauss-Camp's campaign. And he said the journalist class has been infected with this American preoccupation with reporting on the petty sexual foibles of candidates, which is none of the.

of anyone's business, and he said, you know, even Dominic Strascon, who he hated politically, it was like, he said every French man had been castrated by what happened to Dominic Truscon, who had been accused of rape by a maid and a New York hotel. And it is sort of as a Morse fixation reeling against the American ideology, but it's a very gallous move again. It's the more de Gaul, but he even decried American imperialism in Cambodia, which has another classic example of one of those moments where you think, oh, this guy seems interesting. But de Gaulle is a turnerative, of course, is French imperialism. It's sort of a combat between imperialism.

I think a lot of France's stature in the world is its culture, and they do feel threatened by some of this so-called American ideology. The mood in France, funny enough, is very similar to, you know, America during the Iraq war. One of the presidential candidates in the Lae Republic Cam primary, which is the traditional right-wing party, said he wanted to open a Guantanamo Bay in France. There's constant warnings about jihad. So they're not wrong that an American ideology is being exported into France. If you look at it from that perspective, it's not the one they might be identifying.

So you mentioned Islamal leftism. I know that I said that Brett could have the last question, but I want to make sure that I mention this, since Adnan is not on the podcast. It's not a question. It's just a statement. And Adnan will be happy to hear this because it will prove that I listen to every episode of his show, The Mudgellis. So, episode nine of the Mudgellis, which came out on March 1st, 2021, so just over a year ago, was on Islamo leftism, Macron's bogeyman in French and global context. It was a really excellent episode. So for people that want to hear more about Islamo leftism and the myth of Islamo leftism, really, within France, from a left-wing Islamic

perspective, you should check out Adnan's podcast, the Mudgellus, which I also found out, this is just as an aside, and I don't even know if Adnan knows this, but if you Google the Mudgellus podcast, there's really two that come up. There's one that is hosted by Arco, hosted Nahn, and one that is hosted by, like, radio-free Central Asia or something like that. The Central Asian version of Radio Free Europe, which I find very funny because obviously Adnan would be aghast to know that his podcast has the same name as a podcast by the CIA cutout ghouls at Radio Free Central Asia or wherever that was. But you should check out episode 11 of the Mudgellis on Islam al-Leftism. It was a really excellent episode. So Marlon, as we close out

now, I'm going to have you do a one minute pitch for what the listeners should look out for in this election. I know we've talked for, you know, an hour and 15 minutes already. But if you wanted to summarize in the broadest terms possible for people, maybe to summarize to somebody who hasn't listened to the episode, what should be the key things to look out for in these upcoming French elections? And then at the tail end of that, tell the listeners how they can follow your work so that they can keep up with all of the things that are happening as the elections unfold. Yeah, I think the election is unique in that it's an opportunity for something different, but also it might not be.

You know, there's this real opportunity that Melanchang could break through, and that would be an election that hasn't, an election like that wouldn't have happened in a long time where suit to such starkly opposed visions of the world confront each other, Macron-Milla Shaw. And though it's looking increasingly less likely, you know, elections, politics is full of surprises. The more could bounce back up. And that would be an incredible election cycle too. I think the real question that determines that is who French voters on the left and the right determine is the useful candidates. You know, there seems to be this movement away from some more because people on the right think that Le Pen is the only one who has a chance

getting through. And at the same time, this is moving toward Melanchang because they all think that there's this moment where Mel and Sean can get through. And if either of those candidates do get through, well, if Le Pen gets through, I don't think it'll be that much different. It could be a rerun of last time, though with a much closer margin that will scare some people. But if Melanchang gets through, it'll turn that inter-tore, enter the round moment, those two weeks into a very interesting time period because Melanchon is an excellent campaigner and one of the things I always think is too bad is that he does he is French and people don't get it who don't understand French don't really get a chance to hear him as a speaker I've heard him speak in person once and

there's oftentimes where you meet politicians or figures and they're not very impressive he is impressive and hopefully people can get a taste of that and the whole world will get a face of it sometime soon. And then, so to round that off, I'll be going around, covering all this. I'm just finishing up this manuscript over the next day or two. That's called Zemorengalism from Eb Books. It should be out pretty soon, honestly. But to hear about it, follow me on Twitter, M-A-R-L-O-N-E-T-I-N-G-E-R. Everything is there. And from there, there's a sub-Sack newsletter we'll be doing some reporting. You can get the link on the Twitter. And then I have a GoFundMe, trying to raise some more funds so I can get trains instead of buses, you know, as I

crisscross the country. And that's about it. Excellent. And I highly recommend that people that are listening to this podcast that enjoyed the conversation with you, enjoyed your insights into the upcoming French election to, if you have the financial means to, to contribute to Marlon, so that he can continue to cover the election in a way that is very useful for those of us on the far left. So. And I'll say this, if you liked any of what I said but found it a little incoherent, the book's a much better place to see it, because obviously, as you know, when you write something, it all coheres very nicely. Yes, yes. And I've seen your writing before. And yes, I can agree. You were completely

coherent on the podcast as well. Let me stress that. But your writing is excellent. So I highly recommend that the listeners check that out. So, on that note, Brett, can you tell the listeners how they can find you and all of the excellent work that you continue to put out on Revolutionary Left Radio and Red Menace, which I also listen to every episode of. I will let you know. Thank you so much, Henry. I appreciate that. Yeah, you can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com.

It has all three shows, all our socials, Patreon for support and all of that. So that's where you can find me. Excellent. And of course, the listeners should already be doing that. Those of you who are not shame on you. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at. Huck 1995. You can find the show on Twitter, which is a lot more relevant than the random stuff

that I generally put out at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Skore pod. We still have a lot of people writing in that make the mistake of only putting one L and then not being able to find the show. Sorry, one R. You can also support our show financially if you have the means to do so. And of course, it's always worth stressing that. in this unprecedented time of economic downturns and quote-unquote special operations in my case

at patreon.com forward slash gorilla history again, G-E-R-R-I-L-L-A. So until next time, listeners, solidarity. We're going to be able to be. Thank you.