President Emmanuel Macron's government faced a backlash Wednesday after the centrist leader called for powers to "cut off" social media in case of widespread violence like riots over the past week.
  • MaybeItsTheLead@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I am glad that there is so much opposition to this within the French government. Because:

    1. The French people have the means and the motivation to continue protesting, and this is going to piss them off.

    2. The authoritarian country I was born in regularly does this during protests but they also have almost full control of the media and telecomms . People, also, have limited choices of social media (because almost everyone uses a cell phone because the power regularly goes out, and some social media apps use a lot of data). A lot of times people don’t know that they’ve been cut off until it’s already cut.

    I’m not saying he is authoritarian but the idea is authoritarian. Macron is clearly panicked, but this is the wildest, and most extreme reaction. Plus, once people get to know of this then they will just create groups on other platforms. This idea is very short sighted.

  • arctic pie (he/him)@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    This is the point at which the left-wing in France needs to step the fuck up and convince the centrists that the best way to beat the Nazis is not to vote for Diet Nazi.

    • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      There needs to be an alternative to both Macron and Le Pen. I would love to see Macron forced to retire, though considering his authoritarian impulses, it seems unlikely without a vote of misconfidence from parliament.

      Note that I’m not super familiar with French political process, so I’m not totally sure how that’d need to play out.

      • gaael@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Vote of misconfidence only gets rid of the government (PM and the other ministers), the president stays in place. Macron already theatened the parliament of dissolution (meaning everyone goes home and we do a parliament election) in case of succesful vite of misconfidence. It doesn’t make it impossible but it makes it less likely.

          • gaael@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yep. Our current constitution was designed by De Gaulle, who was military and not too big on parliament power. From the official presidential website “Élysée” (name of the palace where presidential powet resides in France) : While it is based on the Constitution of 1946, the 1958 Constitution is different, as its purpose was to strengthen executive power and stabilize the government, making it more difficult for the Assembly to overthrow.

            • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Sounds like it’s time to destabilize the government and overthrow the presidency.

              Maybe the Assembly can’t do it, but the people sure could.