Polls are not reliable anyways, I found a French website showing the polls before each election since 1980. They were all wrong, except for 2007 (kinda). And in the current context, they are even more inconsistent. Look at the Brexit.
Yes, the FN's political weight is not new. JM Le Pen was even the opponent of Chirac in 2002, but he lost by far. But he was a well-known anti-semite, surrounded by anti-Semite old assholes. His daughter is different. She campaigns differently and she finally managed to distance herself from her father's image. And the current situation, which is unprecedented (Brexit + refugee + terrorist attacks), sets a perfect ground up for her. So yes, the FN is not new, but it's gaining power. They have the majority in the European Parliament. They scored really well for the first round of the departemental elections, although they didn't win any departments in the end. It still is shocking.
Also, Hollande gained popularity with the Euro 2016... ^^ Opinions are changing so easily. With the newest attack, people are angry. The first one shocked and the second one saddened mostly, but now I feel like anger prevails. It happened on our National Day moreover. Hollande says that he will continue striking Islamists in Syria - that's one of the reasons why he gained popularity the first time - but now that a third attack has happened, I really feel like it's just for show and that it won't solve the problem. And that's why people might vote for the FN, because if the politics we know fail, then we try something new.
Well, I'm no specialist, but that's the overall feeling that I have.
Oh, alright. the german polls were always very accurate when it came to Electing the parliament, that's why i actually do follow them (it's always hard to poll something like the brexit which never happened before because you have no baseline).
Yes Hollande's reign really was not under a lucky star.
But i give him that i think he did a better job at keeping the country together after the terror strikes than sarkozy would have done.
As you said, the problem is that people do not see FN as a right extremist party anymore.
I am really afraid to think about what someone like le pen would do after shocking happenings like this.
I agree. It started with the global economic crisis, then the euro crisis and now the refugee crisis as you say. The terrorist attacks are just part of the scheme. People fear for their national identity and that's the one common point of all the countries where extreme right parties gain in popularity have. And in Europe, the EU has become the perfect scapegoat unfortunately.
BTW, most of the countries criticize Germany over the policies they impose on the EU, but what do Germans think about it?
Well, germany, at the moment, is a 3/4 to 1/4 divided country, roughly speaking.
You have the same voices here who claim the EU is forcing germany to do things (which is quite funny).
Talks about the EU doing silly economic rules (which turn out to be useful), enabling evil thieves from poland and the netherlands and romania to steal and flee the country and the EU forcing us to not do laws (which in fact does happen, the german maut was FORTUNATELY stopped by the EU), those are all pretty old claims.
What is new is that the anti EU forces in germany adopt the claims from other countrys: They now claim that basically the opposite: Merkel is evil because she wants to force countries in the EU to adopt her stances, which is why evil merkel has to go because she makes europe hate us.
The AFD is the german counterpart to the FN. They are not quite as succesful, but they work the same way: They deny being a right extremist party and focus a lot on economy instead and have a woman as a headfigure to make them seem more tame. They were almost gone from the political landscape until the refugee crisis happened.
And they stand for the part of germany who thinks putin is right in the ukraine conflict, think merkel is a left extremist and think that germany is better off without the EU (and of course think that the refugees have to go and it is fine to shoot them down on the borders).
All rightpopulists in europe basically work the same way here.
When it comes to the government and the actual german public however, the picture is different.
Germany does not actually want to lead, not its government and not even its people.
This is why Germans were really frustrated with eastern europe and many other countries in the refugee crisis (in which much more countries felt like germany was dictating them than in the financial crisis imo).
The refugee problem seemes like something which had to be done and thus most germans, at least initially, accepted it.
It felt natural that the rest of europe would do their share of the problem, exspecially the eastern european countries which do receive a lot of EU funding.
But this crisis worked differently than the financial crisis for one very small reason: Sarkozy was gone.
For all his flaws, sarkozy was probably merkel's biggest and most important partner.
The two didnt even like each other initially and ha da lot of spirited discussions, but once merkel had an agreement with him, she knew that sarkozy would follow through with it.
When germany and france speak with one voice in the EU, the other countries usually fall in line pretty quickly (which can be seen as a problem, but for merkel it is much easier to have hard discussions with one person and then be done with it than to have hard discussions with 20 people and then have 10 to go back on their words later).
In the financial crissi sarkozy did not share a lot of her views, but they still supported each other to end the crisis.
Sarkozy was more of a EU politician than Hollande is.
As it stand now, the only person who tries to play a leading role in the EU is merkel (and maybe, if we want to count them, junker and schulz, but those are not countryheads).
And that is bad and it is not a situation merkel actually wants, in my opinion.
I think she would be really happy if someone else sticked his head out.
The problem never were different opinions in the refugee crisis.
The problem were politicians heckling down Merkel for personal gains in inner politics, in my opinion (exspecially orban is a great example of this).
And the problem also is not germany imposing anything on other states.
States like slovakia, Hungary, chech or finland were quite happy about merkel playing tough on greece in the greek crisis.
And Merkel was fine with going back on things she initially said after discussing with Sarkozy (they played a striking good cop bad cop team on that one).
With all those things considered, it feels very frustrating for germany (who in the latest time, as i said, really has no intention to trample over other countries, even if it does so sometimes due to carelessness) to face accusations like that when it actually tries to do useful EU politics.
I personally think that while germany's stance on greece was too harsh back then, its stance in the refugee crisis was absolutely necessary.
What would have happened with the one million of syrians who are in germany now if they had not been let through when a good chunk of them was already in eastern europe?
Throwing them out again with weapon force? It is sad really that europe had to run to erdogan of all people to play bumper for them.
Also, the attempted coup d'état in Turkey... Who saw that coming? but it's good that the Turkish people seems to stand for its democracy. The situation is still confused though.
Well, i sure didnt. I was pretty shocked when i saw that, came absolutely out of the blue.
i thought Erdogan controlled the whole military force by now. It seems like he controls enough of it to handle it, tho.
