Tangle - Macron wins in France.

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen in France's presidential election, becoming the first French president in 20 years to win a second term. Plus, a question about far-left and far-right news outlets.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's edition, we're going to be stepping out of the U.S. a little bit, covering the election in France, what it means, Emmanuel Macron's victory, and a little bit of some U.S. opinion making and lens and looking through the story from over here across the Atlantic. Before we do, as always, though, we'll start off with some quick hits.

First up, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Chief Lloyd Austin met with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time in Ukraine. Number two, Congress returns to session this week after two weeks of Easter recess, and they're expected to start work by passing another aid package for Ukraine. Number three, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, died on Saturday at the age of 88, two years after retiring. Hatch is remembered as a staunch conservative on social issues who also worked with Democrats on children's health insurance and disability rights. Number four, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill stripping Walt Disney Company of its self-governing authority at its Orlando area parks

in retaliation for its opposition to the parental rights bill dubbed the Don't Say Gay Bill in Florida. Number five, Twitter is now openly pursuing a deal to sell the company to Elon Musk with some reports that an agreement could be finalized by Monday. Elation underneath the Eiffel Tower tonight. The people of France have spoken. Emmanuel Macron will serve a second term as president. Early results show he was re-elected with about 58% of the vote. Speaking in the last hour, Mr Macron thanked his supporters, but said after recent divisions he would oversee a new era in France in which no one would be left behind.

Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen in France's presidential election, becoming the first French president in 20 years to win a second term. Macron delivered a victory speech with 97% of the vote counted and a 57.4% majority, in which he acknowledged a deep dissatisfaction with his first term and promised to address these concerns going forward. Many in this country voted for me not because they support my ideas, but to keep out those of the far right. I want to thank them and know I owe them a debt in the years to come, he said. Macron's victory prevented what could have been a major political upheaval on par with Britain's exit from the European Union or the

election of Donald Trump, one that would have reshaped global alliances and France's place on the world stage. Le Pen is France's most popular far-right candidate, and she campaigned on plans to give national preference to French citizens over immigrants, regardless of their legal status, in seeking jobs, welfare, and housing. She also proposed a ban on Muslim head coverings in public. Yet, in defeat, her increase in vote share from 34% in 2017 to 41% this year was viewed as a warning sign for the French government that frustration over rising costs of living, immigration, and COVID-19 mandates were driving high rates of dissatisfaction among the French public. If Le Pen had won, it also would have had a profound impact on the

Western alliance against Vladimir Putin. She had pledged during her campaign to dilute French ties with the European Union, NATO, and Germany, although she had recently backed off her initial promise to leave the European Union entirely. She has also criticized the sanctions on Russian energy supplies and faced criticism for her past admiration of Putin. As the head of a nuclear power and perhaps the second most powerful nation in Europe, her victory could have seriously reshaped the outcome of the war. While Macron's victory was still wider than expected, it was far less convincing than his 32-point drubbing of Le Pen in the 2017 election. Below, we're going to take a look at some commentary about the election and what it

means for France, the world, and the U.S. in particular. Hey everyone, it's Isaac here. So, as I mentioned not long ago, we are trying to start experimenting with ads on the podcast, and in order to do that, we are choosing things that we like here at Tangle. We're choosing real, genuine recommendations here at Tangle as our advertisement partners. And we want to start off with a great new podcast called Let's Find Common Ground. This podcast is built in the ethos of Tangle. It is a space where you'll hear remarkable, innovative people who are working to bridge differences and reach an understanding with those who see the world a

little differently than they do. You'll hear from politicians, scholars, activists, journalists, and just everyday people sharing personal stories about finding common ground on race, the environment, criminal justice reform, and many other controversial topics. New podcast episodes are released every two weeks, and you can join hosts Richard Davies and Ashley Milne-Tight for Let's Find Common Ground. You can find episodes at commongroundcommittee.org slash podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. That's commongroundcommittee.org slash podcast. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left celebrated Macron's win, saying it was a blow to Putin and the far right.

Some called it a win for democracy, and others said it was a warning shot that politicians like Le Pen are becoming mainstream. In CNN, David Anderson said it was a major blow to Putin. France, Europe, and the free world have survived a substantial challenge to their collective well-being, Anderson said. While some 1,200 miles away, Russian President Vladimir Putin suffered a profound blow as Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, a Putin ally, to become the first French president in a generation to win re-election. Macron observed that he wants a rainbow France, a nation receptive to new ideas at home or abroad, one that is comfortable as a leader of the European Union, NATO, and the free world,

that is prepared to stand up resolutely at any cost to tyranny abroad and at home. Le Pen's France would have sought a path toward accommodation with Russia that is a pariah to much of the free world and looked inward, pulling back from Europe, Anderson said. pariah to much of the free world and looked inward, pulling back from Europe, Anderson said. At the same time, she would have enforced the ban on headscars for women or yarmulkes for men in stage referendums to disempower a legislator and judiciary she has never succeeded in dominating. She outlined at the same time a tempting prospect of lower taxes and broad social expenditures, almost appealing to many in a nation where inflation has soared to levels not seen since 1985. But, as Macron pointed out repeatedly, you have to find a way to pay for

all of this. In the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne Jr. said Macron won one for democracy, but the right still looms. The defeat of far-right leader Marine Le Pen dealt an important blow to nationalist forces in Europe focused on limiting immigration and marginalizing immigrants, particularly Muslims. It was thus a victory for democracy as well, Dion Jr. wrote. It reflected Macron's success in making the dangers of a Le Pen presidency more salient to key voter groups than their frustrations with inflation, their sense that he is out of touch, and a conviction among progressives that while he promised five years ago to be neither right nor left, he governed more from the center right. To woo the left, Macron softened his stance on economic questions, notably his proposals to raise the eligibility age for social security. Macron was especially effective in tying Le Pen

to Putin, he said. While Macron's quest for better relations with Putin brought him criticism from the Russian dictator's adversaries in the West, Le Pen's closeness to Putin and her party's financial ties to a Russian bank gave the incumbent a fat target, which he hit squarely during their debate last week. Macron's insistence that Le Pen's proposals were racist, divisive, or unworkable did the rest. Still, Dion Jr. warned, Le Pen's efforts to transform herself from a dangerous far-right zealot to a friend of the French working class bore fruit. Exit polls showed her especially strong among working class voters. The fact that so many are now willing to support a candidate of the ultra-right

suggested how economic distress bred anger over social and economic change has eroded what the French call the Republican Front, the alliance in support of a tolerant and democratic republic. Rimsera Alouane said Macron's flirting with Le Pen's politics is doing damage to France. During his first term in office, Macron's administration flirted with the same right-wing themes that have powered Le Pen's rise, including Islam, security, and immigration, she wrote. Indeed, the entire political landscape in France is not immune to the appeal of policies that have profound effects on anyone who is not born white and on French soil. The effects of creeping acceptance of the premises fueling Le Pen's rise will be profound. The focus on French Muslims, in particular,

has been marked by a steady increase in fear-mongering for votes over the past 30 years. As successive waves of terrorist attacks in France galvanized public opinion since the mid-1980s, state authorities have been trying to create a framework to oversee Muslim religious practices and organization through the idea of creating a French Islam. But in the past 10 years, the threat has expanded from public safety to include Muslims being seen as an existential threat to the cultural identity of what is being called traditional France. Seeing an opportunity to ride a wave of discontent, politicians have pushed measures instrumentalizing the once liberal concept of laïcité, France's form of secularism, including banning full-face coverings and bikinis in public spaces. While Macron is seen as an

alternative to the far-right, he has also attempted to play both sides, putting on a liberal face for an international audience while quietly embracing the very policies that the far-right has championed at home. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right sees the race as a sign of Macron's failures. Some are relieved to have avoided the implications of a Le Pen victory on the world stage, but said the discontent was important. Others asked why elites continue to ignore the working class uprising against the left. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said Macron is getting a second chance. French President Emmanuel Macron won a second five-year term on Sunday over Marine Le Pen, and the Western alliance against Russia's invasion of Ukraine can breathe easier. The question is whether Mr.

Macron will do more in the next five years to make France great again, the board said. The youngest French leader since Napoleon, Mr. Macron defies traditional political divisions. In his first term, he appointed center-right figures to key positions and made progress with tax and labor reform. He headed off a more robust challenge on the right by promising to take on Islamist separatism and stand up for French values. Mr. Macron took on the third rail of French politics, reforming the country's Byzantine pension system, but the COVID-19 pandemic halted the promising effort. He took a heavy-handed approach to the virus with lockdowns and vaccine passports, using colorful language to describe his desire to make

life difficult for the unvaccinated, the board said. But life in France now is returning to its pre-pandemic normal. France will always be a high-maintenance NATO ally given its strain of Gaullist nationalism. Recall Mr. Macron's meltdown over losing a submarine contract with Australia. But he deserves credit for saving the world from Mrs. Le Pen. A longtime apologist for Mr. Putin, she wants to withdraw France from NATO's command structure. Although she condemned the assault on Ukraine, Mrs. Le Pen is already calling for accommodating Moscow, even as it bombs Ukraine's cities into rubble. Gerard Baker asked, when will the political, corporate, and cultural leaders of the West finally understand the level of discontent with the direction of political travel in their

countries over the past two decades? The discontent of a rising share of the populations of Western democracies has not come close to being assuaged, Baker wrote. This discontent has complex and manifold roots. There is the cultural alienation of a progressive hegemony in the West's major political, academic, media, and artistic institutions. Anger at the vast economic inequalities produced by globalization. A loss of morale from reversals in foreign wars and the rise of alternative civilization models, unease at an officially sanctioned uncontrolled immigration that changes the character of nationhood and citizenship, frustration at the failure to address the rot exposed by the global financial crisis,

resistance to the new religion of universal climate change compliance with its costly implications for energy consumers, and most recently, seething fury with the little autocrats in government and health bureaucracies decreeing lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates. Multiple and divergent causes, but underlying it all, righteous indignation at the arrogance of the unaccountable elites who dismiss opposition to their authority as the product of bigotry and ignorance and denounce anyone displaying it as a traitor or a domestic terrorist, Baker concluded. Every time the people take to the ballot box to signal their desire to change course, the reaction of these elites is to dismiss the vote as a result of some combination of

deception and foul play. When the British people voted for Brexit and the American people elected President Trump in 2016, we were told it was the work of Russian interference, racism, and voter stupidity. In Spectator, Veronique de Rugy said Le Pen is everything her opponents say, but it doesn't follow that her opponent represents liberal governance even if he compares favorably to her, she wrote. Under Macron, the French have lived in a state of permanent emergency, she wrote. When he was elected in 2017, he let expire some of the emergency powers put in place after the terrorist attacks of November 2015. But other anti-civil liberty police and military powers were made permanent. These new powers were deployed when

the police fired rubber ball-shaped projectiles, a practice forbidden by other European countries, and dispersal stingball grenades against yellow vest demonstrators protesting another green tax on gas. Under Macron, the Avia rule forbade any speech deemed hateful without any legal definition of what hateful means. The concealed constitution voided it for being anti-constitutional. The concealed constitution voided it for being anti-constitutional. Macron also favors the fake news rule based on the idea that voters are wise enough to distinguish a good politician from a bad one, but too naive to make a similar distinction when it comes to news. In 2020, COVID-19 gave Macron another excuse to re-up the state of emergency. As a result, the French endured curfews for months on end, restrictions ongoing more than

three miles from home, without filling out a form, indoor and outdoor mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and an explicit commitment to make the lives of the unvaccinated miserable. Some of these measures were enforced by French police and punishing fines. minds. All right, that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take. I don't follow a lot of French politics too closely, aside from, you know, how their leadership and shape of their government impacts U.S. policy, but I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous about this election. It's not just that I find some of Le Pen's worldview abhorrent, it's also that France has long been a north star for little-l liberalism, free speech, and tolerance, the kinds of values that I believe are key to both American success and global prosperity.

So, to see someone garnering increasing support on a platform that called for, say, prohibiting certain religious expression or legally treating documented immigrants differently than natural-born citizens was disheartening and scary. Macron, however flawed, is truly closer to a centrist in the American sense, one who has tried grasping at the various good you can find on both sides of the political aisle. What I also found interesting about the framing of this story in our press is the intersection of Le Pen's politics and American right-wing populism. Many in the U.S. media, in my opinion, are right to frame her as far-right, but that descriptor really applies to her views on immigration and Islam or other social issues. On the economy, Le Pen actually ran on what

Americans would understand as a more left-wing platform, an anti-elite tax the rich and protectionist on trade. It's not hard to imagine a similar formula having political success here in the US. I'll leave the more nuanced commentary to the Francophiles, but in the end, it should be noted definitively that this race was not close. As much credit as Le Pen is getting for turning a 32-point landslide into a 17-point landslide, Macron pulled away the moment the race went from 12 candidates to two a few weeks ago, and probably would have won by a wider margin if there had been a larger turnout. Alright, that is it for my take. That brings us to your questions answered. Nathan from San Diego, California said, what's the furthest left-wing source you regularly consume? What's the furthest

right-wing source? As someone who tries to read both sides regularly, how extreme are both sides? So when it comes to the media space, I'm not really sure how to quantify which side is quote-unquote more extreme. Far-right websites like The Federalist, Breitbart, and The Gateway Pundit get more attention from the left than far-right websites like The Palmer Report, Alternet, and Daily Kos get from the right. Both publish a lot of misleading work or conspiracy theories in the name of scoring political points, but also occasionally they hit the nail on the head, either in their framing of a story or in how they're representing the mood of their respective political bases. If you're looking at national politics and analyzing it from a

political science perspective, it is pretty much indisputable that the right has gone further right than the left has gone left. There are very few moderate Republicans remaining, and they're getting fewer by the day. There are a lot of moderate Democrats. The progressive left may be a majority on Twitter or in pop culture or at academic institutions, but they lack substantial power in elected office. When grading media, though, it's a lot more difficult. On the one hand, the top 10 right-wing news outlets are a lot more popular than the top 10 left-wing news outlets. That stat lacks context, though, because the entire point of the right-wing media is to push back on the institutional bias many conservatives see in America's mainstream press. So, by nature, you'd expect that backlash to carry more partisan overtures than the left-of-center corporate press, or even the attempts from the left to respond to that right-wing media with websites like Huffington Post or The Young Turks.

Anyway, I read The Gray Zone, Jacobin, and HuffPost for a lot of my most far-left political views. I read Breitbart, The Federalist, The Sun, and The Epoch Times for my most far-right political views. I stay away from websites like Newsmax, OAN, Infowars, Wonkette, and the Palmer Report, Alternet, and the Daily Cost, all of which are pretty much unreliable to the extreme. All right, next up is our story that matters for today. The fight over abortion rights is moving to state ballots. With onlookers expecting the Supreme Court to pare back or overturn Roe v. Wade altogether this summer, state legislators are working to codify abortion rights as quickly as possible, setting off a state-by-state battle. In Vermont, for instance, a ballot initiative would enact a state constitutional amendment

declaring an individual's right to personal reproductive autonomy. constitutional amendment declaring an individual's right to personal reproductive autonomy. In Montana, a ballot measure would require medical care for any infant born alive and classify the fetus as a legal person. Axios has a story on the way states are looking to preemptively address abortion rights. Next up is our numbers section, and today we're focusing on the election. The percent of the vote Emmanuel Macron won in yesterday's election was 58.5%. The final percent of the vote Marine Le Pen won in yesterday's election was 41.5%. The number of French voters who cast a ballot for Macron was 18,779,641.

The number of French voters who cast a ballot for Le Pen was 13,297,760 people. The percentage of French voters who cast a ballot in the election overall was 66%. The percentage who didn't vote was 28%. And the percentage who submitted an invalid or blank ballot was 6%. All right, last but not least, our have a nice day story. Daryl Bidner had a unique way of getting sober. Tattoos. The Vancouver man had dropped out of school, struggled with addiction, and ended up homeless.

After years of trying and failing to get healthy, Bidner, on a whim, decided to get a tattoo. That night when he came home, he realized he didn't have the urge to use. He just wanted to look at his new ink in the mirror. 40 tattoos and a few months later, he was sober and stable. Then he took up barbershop school and now he's the owner of Little Barbershop of Horrors, where he gives free haircuts to people at a nearby homeless shelter and donates to many local bands. Vancouver Island has a story about Bidner and his journey and the barbershop he is now running.

There's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for the podcast. all right everybody that is it for the podcast as always it's monday which means you should be i don't know supporting us go to readtangle.com membership become a subscriber to tangle keep this podcast this newsletter this website running help support us your support is literally the only way we really make money i know we have some ads on the podcast now, but they are not super lucrative. So do what you can to keep us pushing forward. Thanks so much. And we'll see you tomorrow.

Same time. Peace. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo.

The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com