5 Reasons Not To Celebrate The Parliamentary Left Victory In "France"

« Si nous défendons la révolution sociale, alors notre critique, et l’action qui en découle, ne peut épargner cette gauche politicienne et autoritaire ».

the following is a short review of the colonial policies of the so-called ‘new popular front’.

starting with Palestine, they adopt the mainstream liberal bothsideism which is just uninteresting to comment on, calling “to immediately recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel” (sic) and notably, “the liberation of Palestinian political prisoners”. but no mention is made of George Ibrahim Abdallah, or other political prisoners.

and so with no surprise, their carceral policies doesn't make waves either. they want “to ensure dignified conditions of detention” (commendable if there existed such a thing - it's anyhow followed by an equal contradiction) “to provide the prison and judicial administration with the means to carry out its mission”

for the continent, they plan a vague “diplomacy with Africa based on sovereignty and cooperation between peoples”: they have no vision, and reform or abandonment of the hexagon's economic imperialism - now that the military has been booted out - isn't on the agenda.

on policing, and besides its pledge to increase the number of judicial pig officers, it promises to deploy teams of “police de proximité” which are forces thought to “re-strengthen ties with a population in order to prevent crime”. bullshit clarified, they're occupation troops charged with intelligence gathering and intimidation, with “crime” typically being “non-white youth existing in public space”. this policy are supposedly in opposition with the reactionaries' “shock troop” approach to policing internal neo-colonies, but the two are typical components of counter-insurgent strategy.

as for overseas colonies, regarding Maore, they introduce their reform project for “the poorest department of france” by pledging to stop making the island “a second class territory of the Republic”. by that they did not mean that the would return the island to the Comoros.
then, it proposed for Kanaky to abandon the project of granting voting rights to settlers which would have happened anyway because of the dissolution. in other words: let's go back to business as usual. it is true that the insurrection had been triggered by a failure to go back to the status quo, but the unrest hasn't stopped despite the dissolution which means the demands have escalated too, and the institutional left hasn't followed.

so here you go. maneuvers of party apparels while interesting shouldn't be the focus. the question is whether the social forces mobilized for this round can grow and maintain their momentum or if they have effectively been short-cut. keep in mind that this program is not nearly as ambitious as the communist and socialist parties program of the 80s, that the 1930s popular front this coalition emulates was forced to deliver on its electoral promises by a general strike, that union militancy in france is arguably as strong as it were during the unrest against the pension reform (which passed), and that Petain did end up in power.