France: Arnaud Bertrand sees a coup

We will go through the work from Arnaud Bertrand, a Frenchman living in China and running a business dealing in alternative Chinese medicinal herbs.

He sees a coup in France and it may be called that, but the issue is Macron is not moving, despite having lost the previous election. If one puts it together, it may well be that Pavel Durov was nabbed to change the environment yet again for Macron to buy time. Or, it may be just one of the slew of reasons.

Let’s hand over to Arnaud for the first one, and thereafter will copy and paste the content of the tweets:

Quite an incredible move in French politics today that might reveal that we’re in fact witnessing nothing less than a coup by Macron.

Let me explain 🧵

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) August 24, 2024

You’ll remember that on the 7th of July France held elections that Macron lost badly, and which the left’s “New Popular Front” won.

We’re now 48 days afterward and Macron and his government are still running the country, they’ve basically ignored the election results which is unprecedented in the history of the French 5th Republic.

Normally, as is the rule set by precedents, Macron should have nominated a Prime Minister from the New Popular Front, the winners of the elections 🤷‍♂️

At first Macron argued that it wasn’t convenient to change government right before the Olympic games and argued for an “Olympics truce”.

This is a bit bizarre because he’s the one who decided to hold the elections right before the Olympics 🤦‍♂️

Anyhow we’re now almost 2 weeks after the end of the Olympics and the situation is still the same so everyone is starting to ask “wtf?”

Especially given that the New Popular Front has a Prime Minister ready: Lucie Castets, a senior public servant.

Now the excuse by Macron’s camp is that they refuse a government with anyone from LFI (“France’s unbowed”, Mélenchon’s party), the main party on the left and therefore the main party in the New Popular Front coalition (Lucie Castets is not from LFI but some ministers could be).

Macron has been demonizing LFI in a very similar fashion to the way Jeremy Corbyn was demonized in the UK, with accusations of antisemitism for their support of Gaza.

Except that unlike Corbyn, LFI doesn’t bow – they’re “France unbowed” after all – and fight back the accusations.

This brings me to what happened this morning, an incredible gamble by Mélenchon who asked an open question to Macron: “Say we committed to no LFI members in the government, would you nominate Lucie Castets Prime Minister?”

This forces Macron’s hand: if he says “no”, as Mélenchon himself wrote, it’d show that Macron’s refusal to have LFI in the government is “just a pretext to deny the election results”.

In effect if he says no, he openly admits that he just doesn’t accept the election results.

Olivier Faure, who leads the Socialist party (the other big political force in the New Popular Front) backs up Mélenchon and says the “pretext of the presence of LFI ministers” isn’t valid anymore.

In a way a New Popular Front government without LFI would in itself a denial of democracy because most voters voted for them *because* LFI was part of the coalition.

But this is also an act of political courage by Mélenchon and a way to put Macron in front of his contradictions.

We’ve already had some of Macron’s lieutenants reply such as Benjamin Haddad (former spokesperson for Macron’s party in the French parliament) who literally says that a New Popular Front gvt is unacceptable either way because it’d be bad for France.

They get to decide this? 🤔

Let’s see what Macron ultimately does but we’re truly witnessing something extraordinary that demonstrates how undemocratic France has become: the people voted and the result of their vote is so far simply rejected because those holding power don’t like it…

One of the comments: So Macron called snap elections. The left won. Macron refuses to honor the election results. How is this not a coup? How is France not now a dictatorship? Where the f**k is our so-called, famous free press on this? Not a peep.
—

This reminds of me of Zelensky, who is simply not calling elections and remains as president in his own mind. When I was still studying, I saw such people in the clinics for the insane, thinking they were what they were not. It used to be quite a joke.  Do we analyse Napoleon today, or Hitler?

This is also similar to Netanyahu, who is throwing a mass killing of Palestinians to hold onto his leadership job.

—

Arnaud continues to say:

What’s so fascinating about what Macron has been doing these past few days is how contradictory and bizarre everything is.

1) The arrest of Durov. Macron’s flagship economic measure was to make France into a «start-up nation». He’s been rehashing this over and over since the start of his presidency. And then he goes arrest Durov: the first time ever, in any country, that the founder of a major app is arrested for the content on his platform. No matter what you think about the move, it’s unarguable that it’s suicidal for his «start-up nation» concept, with tech founders the world over 👇 now saying they’re afraid to even want to set foot in the country for fear of arrest.

2) His refusal to accept election results. Macron has always loved to present himself as a defender of “democracy” and he called an election in early July – even though he didn’t have to (!) – because he wanted “to give the French a voice again and clarify the situation”. The French voted massively against him and the only thing he clarified was that he doesn’t actually want to respect the French’s voice when it doesn’t go his way…

Macron’s political strategy has always been called “en même temps” (“On one hand… on the other hand…”), meaning he always argues one thing and its reverse to try to make everyone believe he’s on their side.

The past few days are in some way the logical conclusion of this: the country is imploding under the weight of Macron’s contradictions. When you don’t have any other ideological backbone than to tell people what they want to hear the facade crumbles, revealing the hollow core of your leadership and the fact it’s based on nothing more than power for power’s sake.

—

So Macron does not appoint the new president which is his job, because he does not like the party that won the elections.  This is the same as in Venezuela, where six or eight Latin American countries do not accept the president, ’cause they don’t like him.

The west is now on huge insane asylum where people who think they are the president are not in insane asylums but in the governments.

These types of actions used to be concealed in the past.  Now these kinds of draconian measures are open for everyone to see.  There is no shame, there is no secrecy.  They are proud of themselves for playing with their and world citizens.   It is almost if they want to saturate the dissidents, so that we don’t even see it any longer.