Front National wins European parliament elections in France

[Bosonic]

Source: The Guardian

France's far-right National Front was projected on Sunday to win European parliament elections in France with around 25% of the vote, with President François Hollande's Socialists in third place behind the centre-right UMP, three exit polls showed.

If the Front National score is confirmed, it will be the first time that the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party led by Marine Le Pen has won a national election.

The UMP was projected to score around 21% while the ruling Socialists were seen as scoring 14%, down from the 16.5% won last time in 2009.

Le Pen immediately called for the dissolution of the French national assembly after the exit polls showed her anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic party winning .

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/25/france-national-front-win-european-elections

[frazzled]

1. I'm so incredibly sad

It's hard to believe that this is happening in France. I thought this kind of sentiment had been suppressed sixty years ago.

[CherokeeDem]

2. My Friend lives in Paris....

she said the only good thing about today is it's Mother's Day. She is sick about this election. She called it a sad day for France.

[mylye2222]

3. hello. I am french too

And tonight I am in tears. My country has falled to darkness. ....

[BlueEye]

4. I was in Paris last week.

I was really shocked at how unpopular Hollande has become. France is better than this party's far-right extremism.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. French National Front alleges 'massive fraud'

France's National Front has issued a statement accusing the government of "industrial scale" vote-rigging, in order to try to prevent the party winning France's election to the European Parliament.

The party said in many polling stations voters were given incorrect papers or did not get ballots including the National Front. "Everything points to massive fraud," a statement said.

It accused Interior Minister Manuel Valls of trying to prevent the National Front winning "by the most odious means".

http://www.bbc.com/news/events/vote2014 (20:15 BST)

The populist Danish People's Party may have beaten PM Thorning-Schmidt's ruling Social Democrat party, 23.1% against 20.5%, a Danmarks Radio exit poll shows. The Liberal party is third with 17.2%. The Danish People's Party has confirmed talks with the UK conservatives on forming joint a political group in the EP.

http://euobserver.com/tickers/124314

Preliminary results from Poland

The Guardian's Remi Adekoya in Warsaw has just sent provisional exit polls from Poland: the pro-European ruling party Civic Platform looks ot have won the day with 33% of the vote, while the more euro-critical, conservative Law and Justice party is in second place on 32%. (The fiercely anti-EU New Right, whose leader Janusz Korwin-Mikke has said that if his party won seats in the European parliament they would put the parliament building to better use by turning it" into a "whorehouse", won 7.2%)

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2014/may/25/eu-election-results-live (8:18pm BST)

[iandhr]

6. When I studied the EU.

I felt that it had a real democratic legitimacy problem. Most people with power in Brussels aren't elected. The far right has been able to tap into that anger and main stream political parties haven't been able to answer. This election result is terrible. As a Jew I am horrifed But I have the sense that it will keep happening unless main stream parties can answer why power is in the hand of people who weren't elected.

[polly7]

7. I think you're exactly right.

I saw this article today that seems to say the same things:

Inside the Troubling Rise of Fascist Parties Across Europe

As Europe’s depression continues six years after the financial collapse of 2007-2008, watch for far-right parties to make big gains in this week’s elections to the EU’s European Parliament. And why not? The establishment parties of Europe’s center-right and center-left have put austerity policies and the interests of banks ahead of a real economic recovery for regular people.

More than 20 years ago, when the European Union created its constitution in the form of the Treaty of Maastricht, the hope was that Europe stood for a social compact that put citizens first. Europe, especially northern Europe, was a model of decent earnings, universal social benefits and regulation that prevented wealth from swamping citizenship.

In Europe, proto-fascist parties that are anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-Semitic and anti-European Union are now the second or third largest parties in a belt of formerly liberal societies that runs from Norway and Finland to the Netherlands and France. In Hungary, where the anti-democratic nationalist Fidesz Party already governs, the more extremist Jobbik Party is making even bigger gains.

As economic oligarchs run roughshod over the livelihoods of working people, despairing people give up on democratic government as a counterweight and turn to ultra-nationalism and the far right. There is a bizarre alliance between plutocrats and the downwardly mobile. The elites laugh all the way to the bank.

Full article: http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/inside-the-troubling-rise-of-fascist-parties-across-europe/

Very sad for the people of France.

[Texas Elvis]

8. No wonder they are all Ok with the nazis in Ukraine.

They have become nazis themselves.

[iamthebandfanman]

15. Folks would be shocked to find out,

if they did a lil research, that after ww2 we (the allies) left a lot of low level Nazis in their positions for the transitional government.. as to make the transition smoother(since the Nazi leaders were knowledgeable about their departments)...

way way way WAY too many were let go or kept in power for the sake of speed in the face of those darn commies :p

in fact, that was reasoning given when Russia built the berlin wall...
to 'keep the fascists and Nazis out of east europe' ...

hell, it didn't take long for those folks to even influence our policies and government once they had spread throughout the world...
look at every war after WW2.. look at the types of governments we installed...
fanatical nationalists every time.

[24601]

18. But put it in context. In the early 1980s, I lived in a small town in (then West) Germany. My

landlord's father had been the mayor before the Nazis came to power, and when they did, his choice was join the party or lose his job, or as a local leader, worse.

I also worked with an electrical engineer who had been a enlisted direction-finder in the Wehrmacht's Heer (Army). I had asked him about his service and his reply was that, "Lieutenant, you just didn't understand. In those days, they just shot you" if you didn't follow orders. And that wasn't about following orders relative to war crimes, just what was (and is) considered routine & lawful military duties.

On an other occasion, I was in a small gasthaus in a small village arranging a group reservation with the owner. Four "regulars" saw I was American (my Army uniform was a giveaway) and invited me to sit for a drink. After I had downed two, one of them put his hand on my shoulder and said in English, "You know, Hitler vas not such a bad guy." The guy next to him jumped in, "Nein, Nein, Hitler vas scheiße (shit)!"

It was really time for me to get the scheiße out of there....

[iamthebandfanman]

21. i guess you hadnt

watched this film, brought to you by are armed services

[24601]

23. Of course I've seen it. But I also know we have learned that everything in the post-war training

films weren't always accurate, not by intent by by what we believed at the time.

If we had training films in 1850, they would have said slaves were inferior forever.

[dipsydoodle]

9. Same in Denmark by the look of it.

Common issue seems to be misplaced immigration policies.

[onehandle]

10. Wow. Le Tea Party.

I weep for my family there.

[Bosonic]

11. Anti-EU UKIP takes early lead in Britain in European vote

Anti-EU UKIP takes early lead in Britain in European vote

London (AFP) - The UK Independence Party (UKIP) of Nigel Farage led the European parliament election in Britain after the first two of the 12 regions declared their results on Sunday.

Nigel Farage's party, which wants Britain to exit the European Union, gained one seat in North East England and won three seats in East of England.

The early results put UKIP on four seats, one ahead of the three won by the Conservatives of Prime Minister David Cameron and the three won by the main opposition Labour Party.

http://news.yahoo.com/anti-eu-ukip-takes-early-lead-britain-european-214643981.html;_ylt=AwrBJR7YZYJT_WcAkBTQtDMD

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Syriza (left, non-govt) wins in Greece; neo-nazi Golden Dawn comes 3rd

Greece’s main opposition Syriza party placed first in elections to the European Parliament without winning by a big enough margin to destabilize Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s government, projections showed.

“In the short run there is no problem of government stability,” Dimitris Sotiropoulos, associate professor of political science at the University of Athens, said in a phone interview. “While both governing parties have lost several percentage points each, their combined popular support is above the popular support of the main opposition.”

Syriza, short in Greek for Coalition of the Radical Left, got 26.5 percent of the vote yesterday, compared with 23.3 percent for Samaras’s New Democracy, according to an initial projection based on a count of 33.4 percent of ballots posted on the Interior Ministry website. Samaras’s junior coalition partner, Pasok, running as the Elia alliance, took 8.1 percent of the vote, the projection showed.
...
The Nationalist Golden Dawn party, whose leader and five other lawmakers are in prison pending trial on charges of running a criminal organization, was projected to jump to third place, with 9.3 percent of the vote, from a fifth-placed showing in general elections in 2012. The result gives them a projected three seats.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-25/greece-s-syriza-leading-in-eu-elections-exit-poll-shows.html

[roomtomove]

14. I expected this for some time

because the European Union is essentially a non-democratic (autocratic) organization that does NOT reflect the wishes of it constituents (not its constituent states). This vote is not necessarily a vote for the far right but their was no other vehicle currently for people to object to the failure (yes it is failing and will ultimately self destruct) of the European Union. Switzerland's vote(s) (which was not for a 'party' but a referendum, indicates the true trend)

[blkmusclmachine]

16. Incredibly bad news.

[DeSwiss]

17. K&R

[ucrdem]

19. WSJ: France's National Front Seen Gaining in European Election

Journalists surround Marine Le Pen, France's National Front political party head, who reacts to results after the polls closed in the European Parliament elections at the party's headquarters in Nanterre, near Paris on Sunday. Reuters

PARIS—France's far-right National Front appeared to score a historic victory in the European Parliament elections on Sunday as voters delivered a strong rebuke to mainstream parties many blame for leaving the country's economy in the doldrums while propping up the European Union's unpopular technocracy.

Exit polls showed the National Front, led by firebrand politician Marine Le Pen, garnering an estimated 25% of the vote nationally, with the party scoring as high as 28% in some territories. The ruling Socialist Party received 14%, according to the polls, trailing both the National Front and the center-right UMP.

"The sovereign people have declared they want to take back the reins of their destiny," Ms. Le Pen said on Sunday, moments after polls closed. "Our people demand just one politics. The politics of the French, for the French."

Over the past four days, about 400 million citizens across the European Union's 28 member states had the chance to elect a new European Parliament. Here are the live projections and results from the European Parliament.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304587704579584114139656096?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304587704579584114139656096.html
.................

scary but not a surprise

[tabasco]

20. Yuck.

[uhnope]

22. I have many French clients. They are ashamed and embarrassed

It's the equivalent of an off-year election when only the very opinionated, the extremists, and xenophobic old people who watch TF1 (the French equivalent of FOX News or RT) go to the polls.