Scandals in Communist Frenchystan
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Herr Wache. In 1918, France regains Alsace and they just "correct" the way his name is written to match how it's pronounced and he (or his descendant) becomes M. Vache (which phonetically is close to the German Wache, but also means "cow" in French).
Wait, I thought that it's pronounced like "Wasch"? Indeed, online resources say that it is. So whoever declared this "phonetically close" was either completely incompetent, or just a made a joke at the expense of Mr. Cow.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
just a made a joke
That was a joke told by a high school teacher to her students. A German teacher. Trying to get some attention from bored high school students. So yeah, it was skewing things quite a lot to get to the bad pun she wanted to get at in the end ("couille" also isn't really pronounced like "Kuh", but it's close enough that
-prone high school students (but I repeat myself) would get it).
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@HardwareGeek said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
He found church records of the family in one particular town going back continuously to the 1600s, and with a few gaps back to the 1400s
That's... pretty damn good. Going back to the 1600's (or so) is already rare enough, but adding a couple of centuries to that is even more so.
And there's one notable gap in my paternal line, my great-grandfather. I know who he is, who his parents and children were, and where he was born, but not when he was born or died. I could almost certainly find some more details of his life if that warthog would get out of the way.
Sometimes you get hard to explain gaps quite close (in time). We have one ancestor from the end of the 19th century (IIRC) that my father probably managed to track back, but we're not sure (and never will). She happened to be born out of wedlock, and her mother moved to Paris from whatever countryside village she was born (probably, but we're just speculating, in part because of the child-out-of-wedlock thing...), which made filling the gap pretty hard. Her marriage and death certificate did mention her place of birth and mother's name, but that couldn't be positively matched to any birth records.
My father reckons that the wrong birth location was recorded on the death certificate (after all, who was going to prove she actually was born in Bumfuck?) and that a large-ish village close-enough was used instead (probably something like "oh yeah, mum always said she came from around Bumfuck" so that's what the officer wrote down). He spent a lot of time trawling records from all nearby villages, around the suspected birth date, to try and find something that would match either that ancestor or her mother. He ended up finding someone who may match, but it's not absolutely sure. Names are close enough but not identical, which could or could be a problem, it's a name that's quite common in that area anyway, and the reason to assume it's the right person is based on some coincidences on the names/occupations of relatives named as witnesses on the acts!
Meanwhile, some other lines can easily jump back a couple of centuries back by just reading the records.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@HardwareGeek said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
He found church records of the family in one particular town going back continuously to the 1600s, and with a few gaps back to the 1400s
That's... pretty damn good. Going back to the 1600's (or so) is already rare enough, but adding a couple of centuries to that is even more so.
And you don't need to worry about 30 Years' War when half of the places were literarily burned to the ground. Although the Reformation before that was quite a bumpy ride in France, too. Some parts of Bavaria are among the few places that avoided that.
And there's one notable gap in my paternal line, my great-grandfather. I know who he is, who his parents and children were, and where he was born, but not when he was born or died. I could almost certainly find some more details of his life if that warthog would get out of the way.
Sometimes you get hard to explain gaps quite close (in time). We have one ancestor from the end of the 19th century (IIRC) that my father probably managed to track back, but we're not sure (and never will). She happened to be born out of wedlock, and her mother moved to Paris from whatever countryside village she was born (probably, but we're just speculating, in part because of the child-out-of-wedlock thing...), which made filling the gap pretty hard. Her marriage and death certificate did mention her place of birth and mother's name, but that couldn't be positively matched to any birth records.
That reminds me about one of the oldest records in my family tree, which are
- 1698: A is born to parents X and Y
- 1700: B is to parents X and Y
- 1701: X and Y marries
And this is middle-class, town patrician families. Apparently the whole "born out of wedlock" was not taken that seriously, even in the hardcode totalitarian catholic regime. I guess that X and Y always had their communion sticker books in order.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
That's... pretty damn good. Going back to the 1600's (or so) is already rare enough, but adding a couple of centuries to that is even more so.
My earliest record is even older than that, although it's for a collateral branch (relative by marriage, not direct ancestry), and it's unsupported by any actual evidence, or at least I don't have any.
I mentioned that my paternal line can be traced to New England in the mid-1600s. Although I don't have any ancestors (that I know of) who arrived on the Mayflower, it is perhaps unsurprising that some aunt or cousin or something married into one of those families (again
to open up my database to check the details). That family can be traced back to some 12th Century baron.How accurate that record is is questionable; such minor nobility (or the people researching the records on their behalf) were sometimes known to take creative liberties with their genealogies in order to make themselves seem a little less minor. Also, I have only a list of names, not dates or places, and the source from which I got it seems to have left off at least a couple generations, because the list isn't long enough to go quite that far back in time, unless they were consistently having children rather late in life. Nevertheless, it's the earliest record I have, and I have no evidence it's not accurate.
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@HardwareGeek said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
How accurate that record is is questionable; such minor nobility (or the people researching the records on their behalf) were sometimes known to take creative liberties with their genealogies in order to make themselves seem a little less minor.
Even major nobility did that. Until at least the 17th century, it was "widely known and accepted" (quotes because of course that's just a legend...) that the king of France was descended from Aeneas (see this Wikipedia page, which is quite extensive, though sadly there is no translation in English).
Not everyone tried to link to Aeneas, however almost all nobility in Western Europe officially descended from Charlemagne. Well, they probably actually did, with all the generations in between and the limited marriage opportunities of nobility, but their claim to be descended from him were almost always highly fanciful. But hey, it looks better on your
CVgenealogical tree!Also, I have only a list of names, not dates or places, and the source from which I got it seems to have left off at least a couple generations, because the list isn't long enough to go quite that far back in time, unless they were consistently having children rather late in life.
It doesn't help that there are long lines of nobility that used the same name generation after generation (and giving them numbers or nicknames only happened much later), so it's almost impossible to know to which one a document refers to... And of course dates are also highly unreliable before AD (rather than years of reign) started to be widely used.
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@HardwareGeek said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I mentioned that my paternal line can be traced to New England in the mid-1600s.
I may have mentioned this before, my paternal line can be traced back to the early 1700s in New Jersey. (That might explain a few things about me...)
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@dcon My ancestor's brother moved to New Jersey in the mid- to late-1600s and started a branch of the family there. I wonder if we might be related very distantly.
Then one of his descendants moved to New York and started another branch. Each branch tends to use a different spelling of our last name. (I think I've mentioned in the past that my ancestor and his brother are mentioned in the town records of the town they helped found in the 1600s, and their last name is spelled three different ways on a single page of the records. Spelling in general wasn't exactly standardized back then.)
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My family has
- (paternal grandfather's line): an outright lie in the records--my legal great grandfather died 2 years before my paternal grandfather was born. We've since tracked down the line of the real father, but much more recently. His mother is better known, but her line disappears into somewhere in Germany (I'd have to look up exactly where, but I believe the ancestors before that were from somewhere in the former Czechoslovakia area) in the mid 1800s and we don't have further info on that. Maybe one of these days I'll take a trip over there and dig around.
- (paternal grandmother's line): Relatively well-attested back quite a ways (earliest records in late 1600s in Germany, then into the US)
- (maternal grandfather's line): Bits and pieces way back, because it intersects with one of the better-researched Scottish lowland clans that then connect to King James (via illegitimate descent, I think).
- (maternal grandmother's line): earliest records (of dubious validity) have names going back to the 1400s. Those ones I doubt are actually accurate that far back. Although I'm also not so confident in any of the records before about 1800.
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And to think that all of this mess could have been avoided if our ancestors had just used version control software and done regular backups.
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@HardwareGeek said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
a town in Germany "on the Rhine"
"Am Rhein" does not need to mean directly at the shores of river Rhine - it could be a few kilometers into the hinterland. E.g. while Rüdesheim am Rhein is directly at the river, Rüdesheim an der Nahe is several kilometers away from Nahe river.
Another thing to consider is grwoth of nearby settlements, and minor settlements may just become part of the bigger towns. So, your ancestors' home town might now be a quarter of a bigger town.
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@BernieTheBernie said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
"Am Rhein" does not need to mean directly at the shores of river Rhine - it could be a few kilometers into the hinterland.
Yeah. I didn't find anything anywhere in present-day Germany, near the Rhine or not. The town I decided was the most likely candidate is a bit west of the Rhine. But the name of the town I was looking for is also a fairly common given name for a person, so that didn't exactly make it easier to search.
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@Zerosquare said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
And to think that all of this mess could have been avoided if our ancestors had just
used version control software and done regular backupsput their family records on The Blockchain!!.FTF2021
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@BernieTheBernie said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
"Am Rhein" does not need to mean directly at the shores of river Rhine - it could be a few kilometers into the hinterland.
Thinking of that, and that probably does not apply quite as strongly to "on
<river>", but places that are named from a region (in a vague geographic sense) are very often on the edge of that region. After all, if you live in a middle of a region, there is no point telling people you meet that you live in that region. That only matters when you start encountering people from other regions, where the region isn't obvious, or where there might be border disputes.It's hard to find an example that would make sense if you're not familiar with local geography, but e.g. "Roissy-en-France" (where Paris' CDG airport is located) is on the edge of what was, back in the middle-ages, the "France" region (also called "Parisis" and you might get a bit more results from that, as search results for "France" or "Roissy" are obviously dominated by more recent things... -- try matching the "pays de France" from the first map on that page with the modern geography).
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It's been a while and the campaign is gearing up so I should make an update, but actually there isn't that much nice stories to tell... Still, that's not going to stop me from living up to my wall-of-text
.Starting on the (far-)right, because this is where most headlines are. There are 3 main candidates, the polemicist (Zemmour) who wants to ban non-French first names (whatever that means), the "established" far-right candidate and last-time second-best runner (Le Pen), and the "mainstream" right (Pecresse, she's probably totally unknown outside of France but she's president of the region that covers Paris, so not a total nobody).
Some fun happened with the right as they had internal primaries where a rather far to the right candidate came surprise first in the first round (and lost in the second). This candidate even said he would consider supporting Zemmour, so that puts the winner of the primaries in a bad place as they have to accommodate this wing of their party, while still making themselves different from Zemmour (otherwise they'll just be seen as copies and will loose votes to him!). Steering too far to the right will loose them the centre-right vote which will go to Macron, so that's not good for them either.
On that side, the current shit-show is about getting the 500 signatures from elected officials that are needed to officially run for president. Le Pen/Pecresse have a wide established support base so they'll obviously get it. Zemmour doesn't have such a base and says he's struggling to get them, but of course small candidates always say that to play the "I'm a poor man hounded by the system" card, so who knows? The big question is whether the conventional right (Pecresse) will secretly give him a hand. They'd never admit to it, of course, and would have to do it discreetly enough to not tank their own campaign, but a Zemmour candidacy would reduce the vote share of Le Pen, and thus by contrast make it more likely that Pecresse will go through to the second round. Of course, that assumes that a Zemmour candidacy also would not eat too much into Pecresse's vote, which isn't a given because of the primaries stuff (see above). Still, as long as Pecresse would come in front of Zemmour and Le Pen, she should be able to get to the second round.
In the centre, there is Macron. Still officially not declared as a candidate, which opens him to criticism that he's "cheating" by using his position as president to campaign without saying so. Which is obviously the case. Still, playing president (and not candidate) allows him to dictate what the public debate is about (see "emmerder les non-vaccinés"), i.e. topics that are more favourable to him. It's not all plain-sailing for him, but he still enjoys pretty good polls.
Now the dilemma for Macron is about the second round. Against Le Pen (or, better for him, Zemmour), he's almost guaranteed to win (though maybe not by a huge margin). Against Pecresse... that's much less sure. So his interest would be to get Le Pen in the second round (Zemmour is extremely unlikely, at the moment). Which means blocking a Zemmour candidacy, if he can. But there's little he can do about that. Except maybe trying to shift the public conversation away from Zemmour's preferred topics, so that he'll get less popular support, and thus will struggle even more to get his 500 signatures.
Finally, on the left, they are trying very hard to be less and less relevant. There are 5 or more candidates, all polling ridiculously low, and the only debate at the moment is whether they should have an inter-party primary to pick a single candidate. The two better-placed ones are dead-set against it, the smaller ones are more willing, and the latest shit-show is one minor candidate who entered the fray saying "we need a primary to reduce the number of candidates and to prove it I'll add my candidature!" (see xkcd about standards...). Of course all that prevents them from talking about policies and thus the overall share of votes (shared between even more candidates!) is shrinking ever further.
The only other fun tidbit I can think of is Mélenchon (far-left), who had made headlines and even became something of a meme in 2017 for using holograms to hold a meeting in several places at the same time (it was a gimmick, but a nice one, and it kinda worked since people still remember it!), and who tried something new this year by having scents during one of his meeting, but since I only ever saw a couple of articles about it, it's apparently as big a failure as the rest of his campaign.
Polls are still swinging around quite a bit since the campaign is just now getting into its stride, but Macron is still comfortably ahead (25%), with Le Pen/Pecresse switching places as 2nd (15-20%), and Zemmour third (10-15%, currently heavily trending down). The rest are just background noise, no one breaking the 10% mark.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
non-French first names (whatever that means)
Gaul is divided into 3 parts.
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@Gribnit One of which being B*****m.
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@Gribnit said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
non-French first names (whatever that means)
Gaul is divided into 3 parts.
I see you also have read the Gaulic dog.
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@remi
So I count Belgium, the Asterix village and the DOM/TOM thingies ... I seem to be missing some Gaul ...
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@Luhmann said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
the DOM/TOM thingies
since 2003 you're supposed to say "DROM-COM."I seem to be missing some Gaul
There are some pills for that, although if it lasts more than 4 hours etc.
Filed under: awful multilingual puns
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Steering too far to the right will loose them the centre-right vote which will go to Macron, so that's not good for them either.
What's considered centre, and what's (extreme) right-wing?
Like, say, would deporting all illegals be considered extreme right-wing politics here? I remember France overall polling towards "get the muslims out before they overrun us".
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Steering too far to the right will loose them the centre-right vote which will go to Macron, so that's not good for them either.
What's considered centre, and what's (extreme) right-wing?
That's a question that could spawn full mega-threads and walls of text, about how things are not on a single axis and how things depends on people and countries etc. But I guess you're more interested in the specific question below than on a wide philosophical debate.
(in my posts I'm using the mostly widely accepted classification in France, but even that is subject to discussion... for example Macron initially objected to being called anything than "centre" (his 2017 campaign was about "I'm neither left nor right"), but his policies and who supports him clearly point to him being more centre-right than centre nowadays -- and the left call him right-wing. Also the extremes (mostly right, but sometimes left as well) often object to being called "far" as it's mostly derogatory.)
Like, say, would deporting all illegals be considered extreme right-wing politics here?
On the face of it, deporting illegals would be somewhat right-wing, but not extreme. In practice, even left-wing governments in the past have done some deporting of illegal immigrants. But the thing is that nobody talks about that, or rather that when they do "illegals" is used as a code-word for "poor foreigners" (mostly Muslims, but not only, Eastern Europeans in general and Romanians more specifically have a rather bad press, and they're not Muslims). Which leads into the next point:
I remember France overall polling towards "get the muslims out before they overrun us".
You remember badly (though it's of course possible that one poll might have said that, but you know how reliable one single poll is...).
It's a common topic from the far-right, but this time it's indeed strongly linked to extreme right. Typically, the "great replacement"
theory is a staple of Le Pen and now Zemmour, who are firmly classified as far-right (though they object, but see above). What I called the "mainstream" right (Pécresse, and for context that's the party from which Sarkozy was) does not support this kind of views (though they support more controls on immigration).Which isn't to say that these views haven't got some significant support -- Le Pen + Zemmour poll at 30% together, and it's possible (likely, given what I said earlier about their primaries) that some part of Pécresse's base also supports this. But that still doesn't make it a majority view, and it's still seen as, at the very least "strongly right-wing", if not "far-right."
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
You remember badly (though it's of course possible that one poll might have said that, but you know how reliable one single poll is...).
Two thirds of French believe Muslim migration is a threat
Pollsters asked the question to test French belief in the concept of a 'Great Replacement', which has been touted by Eric Zemmour - a far-right candidate to take on Macron in the election.
The poll, carried out by Harris Interactive, aimed to test whether or not voters believe in the concept - despite it being widely panned by experts.
More than 90 per cent of supporters of Le Pen's RN party believed it was a likely scenario, while just 30 per cent of Green said the same.
Perhaps worryingly for Macron, 52 per cent of his own party's supporters believed it was a likely scenario.
One poll is not definitive. But I'm going to have to ask you to counter with another one. Specifically one that measures opinions on the subject. Not just support for the politicians.
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@remi The definition of “center” is a bit weird when all the relevant politicians are right of it.
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@acrow The poll you're quoting is indeed saying so. Looking a bit further, there are a couple of other polls that go in the same direction. I would have put that number a bit lower, seems I was wrong. Timing also matters, the poll was made at a time when Zemmour was dominating the campaign with these topics (and that's also why the poll was made at that time!), though it doesn't seem to be hugely different from other polls.
But as always, the devil is in the details and when you look at the exact wording of the questions they don't always say the same thing as what the newspaper headlines do. I'm also always wary of polls that don't offer a "neutral" option, and then group all the "mildly agree" with "strongly agree" (as this one did), as it artificially polarises opinions. I can't find the full poll result split by political affiliation, only the aggregated results, but I suspect that the strongly/mildly agree ratio is much lower in the left-wing supporters, i.e. that they would have been more likely to pick a "neutral" answer, if there had been one.
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@Bulb said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi The definition of “center” is a bit weird when all the relevant politicians are right of it.
At the moment and in France, yes, that is indeed weird. But the situation is that the left has been unable, for the past 5 years, to gather in any significant way, which makes them irrelevant -- not because of lack of overall support, but because of fragmentation.
If you were to define "centre" as where 50% of voters are on each side, then you would have to put Macron as firmly left, which definitely doesn't match the internal view. Looking at polls, Le Pen + Zemmour + Pécresse (i.e. those that nobody would dispute are "right-wing") = 45%. Macron = 25%. Sum of all irrelevant left-wing candidate = 25%.
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Also polls don't take into account abstention, which is obviously very hard to poll, but it will certainly contribute to diminish even further the left's share, given how disorganised they are.
One poll about it that I found says for example that "more than a third" of left-wing supporters don't intend to vote, but only 10-15% of Macron's/right-wing supporters. Also 30% of voters declare not caring at all about the campaign -- these may answer about anything when polled on other topics, as some sort of mega-lizardmen constant.
(remember that the Yellow Vests was in part about people who feel totally excluded from public life, and not properly represented by any party, including extremes ones!)
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@remi The "view" tends to be whatever is used by the mainstream media to describe the people in question. It's not fixed to anything. We talk of a left-right axis, but it's never officially defined. So people on the "right" see it as a "socialism-individualism" axis, whereas people on the "left" see it as a... "liberalist-racist" axis, let's say.
And painting your opponents in the worst possible light is the basics of politics. But few notice that it will always push the painter in the opposite direction. So true centrism in active politics turns to be an impossibility. And in stale politics centrism is fighting to keep the status quo, usually for reasons of corruption.
So... Macron may be further to the left than anyone inside France realizes. So, this:
If you were to define "centre" as where 50% of voters are on each side, then you would have to put Macron as firmly left, which definitely doesn't match the internal view.
This would mean that a quick re-aligning of views would be needed to keep internal turmoil at bay. Because if a person firmly on the left is seen as a centrist, then soon more than half self-identify as extreme right. And when that half get angry enough for any reason, there might be a collective thought of "we're considered extremists anyway, so might as well put it in action". And that's a way to start civil wars.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
(remember that the Yellow Vests was in part about people who feel totally excluded from public life, and not properly represented by any party, including extremes ones!)
So, free extra votes to the first politician that makes some of their biggest concerns as a campaign promise? What were their demands again?
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
the polemicist (Zemmour) who wants to ban non-French first names (whatever that means)
Oh that's easy.
- Did that name exist in 18th century?
- Is there a Catholic saint with that name?
- If there was some French person in 18th century with that name, would the English translate it to a local counterpart rather than keep original spelling (e.g. Pierre -> Peter)?
If yes to all, then it's a traditional name; otherwise it's some new age made up shit. Works with 99% of names in almost every European country.
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
So... Macron may be further to the left than anyone inside France realizes.
Meh. I kind of disagree, mostly because this is one case where words don't mean anything other than what we want them to mean (which is actually always the case, despite regular
about shifting meaning, but let's not go there). The definition of left/right is so contingent to the context in which it is used, that it's meaningless to use some kind of abstract outside context to define it. I mean, yes, Macron and the whole of French politics is obviously muuuch further to the left than e.g. American politics (for example, absolutely no one in France wants to significantly reduce public healthcare, to pick just one example), but saying so is of no interest when discussing internal French politics.Internally, Macron is not seen as left-wing, so he's not. That's about all you can truthfully say.
If you were to define "centre" as where 50% of voters are on each side, then you would have to put Macron as firmly left, which definitely doesn't match the internal view.
This would mean that a quick re-aligning of views would be needed to keep internal turmoil at bay. Because if a person firmly on the left is seen as a centrist, then soon more than half self-identify as extreme right. And when that half get angry enough for any reason, there might be a collective thought of "we're considered extremists anyway, so might as well put it in action". And that's a way to start civil wars.
Arguably, that's already in progress (well, not civil war part, but the rest). The fact that Le Pen + Zemmour + maybe half of Pécresse (remember the first round of her internal primaries) poll at 35-40%, and that Le Pen has polled at 30% for years clearly indicates that a lot of people don't mind identifying as far-right (deprecating meaning of the word aside). That's not half, but not that far.
But also arguably that's all just
, because again the left/right split isn't really the only thing that matters (typically Macron is seen more economically liberal than either extremes (right/left)!). In fact, Le Pen is in a weird place when trying to make international comparisons, as her program (inasmuch as she actually has one) combines a lot of economic left with societal right ideas. If we were in the Garage I'd even take a cheap shot by saying she mixes some nationalism with some socialism, if you see what I mean nudge nudge wink wink. So yeah, there is clearly a lot of extreme right support, but maybe not to the point to worry about "putting it in action."The fragmentation of the left also makes them look less relevant than they really are. I don't think a huge shift in French politics happened in the last 10 years and yet in 2012 they got 45% of votes in the first round, against a projected 25% now. See my comment about abstention.
(remember that the Yellow Vests was in part about people who feel totally excluded from public life, and not properly represented by any party, including extremes ones!)
So, free extra votes to the first politician that makes some of their biggest concerns as a campaign promise? What were their demands again?
Eh, good luck if you can find out. Part of what made them fizzle out is that they refused absolutely any form of organisation/representation, but part was also that their "demands" were all over the place. Basically "life is too hard" and "we feel left out", which I'm not denying is how they felt (feel), but doesn't make for a campaign platform.
Which actually makes them a bigger problem than right/left politics discussion. There are maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the population that not only feels that the political system doesn't work for them (that's pretty common everywhere and maybe close to 1/2 in the US at the moment), but also feels that they share little to nothing with society as a whole. So it's not just a matter of buying their vote with the right promises, as they simply don't care/want to vote -- at all.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
obviously muuuch further to the left than e.g. American politics
Left on which axis, exactly?
Yes, I am asking you to define the axis, because otherwise the whole statement is void of meaning.If we were in the Garage I'd even take a cheap shot by saying she mixes some nationalism with some socialism, if you see what I mean nudge nudge wink wink.
That'd put her on the left, historically. Unless this is one of those axises that loop around somewhere.
Edit: axle -> axis, on popular demand
Edit2: found one more
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
obviously muuuch further to the left than e.g. American politics
Left on which axle, exactly?
This one:
I think you meant "axis"
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@Rhywden Fixed.
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@Gąska said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Works with 99% of names in almost every European country.
Have you met
?
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@Gąska said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
the polemicist (Zemmour) who wants to ban non-French first names (whatever that means)
Oh that's easy.
- Did that name exist in 18th century?
- Is there a Catholic saint with that name?
- If there was some French person in 18th century with that name, would the English translate it to a local counterpart rather than keep original spelling (e.g. Pierre -> Peter)?
If yes to all, then it's a traditional name; otherwise it's some new age made up shit. Works with 99% of names in almost every European country.
Almost =~ neither UK nor Russia?
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Also polls don't take into account abstention, which is obviously very hard to poll
Why is it hard to poll? The poll should start with question whether you plan to vote/would vote if there was election now/how likely you are to vote.
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@Bulb said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Why is it hard to poll?
Have you met any humans lately?
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Yes, I am asking you to define the axis, because otherwise the whole statement is void of meaning.
Well that was kind of my point before. Left/right is more or less meaningless unless very narrowly defining it, which only works within one specific context. So saying that Macron is "more left than French people realise" is, as you put it, void of meaning.
If we were in the Garage I'd even take a cheap shot by saying she mixes some nationalism with some socialism, if you see what I mean nudge nudge wink wink.
That'd put her on the left, historically.
You would think so, wouldn't you? And yet absolutely no one in France would ever call her (or her father before her) left-wing, including herself (she might object to being called "far" right, but not right-wing). It's almost as if, wait for it, left/right has widely varying meaning according to context and thus using it only makes sense if you clearly define that context
(though to be somewhat fair (?) to her, she has widely swinging economic policies, basically saying to people what they want to hear, so she can almost in the same sentence argue for more subsidies to hard-working working class, and tax cuts for large businesses, which makes it hard to define where she stands on that axis! That's not unexpected since it never really was one of her main topic, and is just something she has to beef-up since she started becoming more than a fringe candidate, and did so a bit randomly -- the same happens with environment policies where she wants both more (organic food in all school restaurants!) and less (no ugly wind turbines!), again because it's not a topic she historically cared about so she just says whatever pleases the crowd)
Unless this is one of those axises that loop around somewhere.
It sometimes also does, there are some fairly well-known historical examples of people who switched from far-left to far-right (usually this way round, I think) without going through the middle, but that's not what we're talking about here.
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@Bulb said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Also polls don't take into account abstention, which is obviously very hard to poll
Why is it hard to poll?
Is that a serious question?
The poll should start with question whether you plan to vote/would vote if there was election now/how likely you are to vote.
The problem is that by nature of making a poll, you've already selected the people willing to make the effort to answer your questions, and also that you've already sort of cornered them (kind of the equivalent of driving them to the polling station and only then measuring if they're going to vote or not).
And people will lie, both to you and more importantly to themselves. "Oh yes, I would totally vote" and on the day "meh, I'll go a bit later... oh well I missed it, too bad." Or tons of other reasons.
It's the same reason you don't (only) ask users what they want.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
It sometimes also does, there are some fairly well-known historical examples of people who switched from far-left to far-right (usually this way round, I think) without going through the middle, but that's not what we're talking about here.
A prominent German example would be Horst Mahler who first became infamous for being the legal defender of left and far-left people and later on was one of the founding members of the RAF.
In 1997 he did a sharp about-turn and now is considered to be an antisemite and on the extreme right.
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@Rhywden The far-left has a long history of anti-semitism, see Labour party in the UK a few years ago. So that makes shifting to the far-right rather easy.
If I really cared about trying to define what right/left means in (Western) European politics, I'd say that it's some sort of weird wiggly line that starts on a nationalism axis on the right, and progressively shifts to an economic axis on the left. For example (not exhaustive, just what popped in my mind) "far right" usually means anti-immigration (with unspecified economics views) and "far left" usually means anti-capitalism (with unspecified immigration views).
It's not quite true, but it probably helps to try and avoid putting too much specific meaning into right/left!
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Gąska said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
the polemicist (Zemmour) who wants to ban non-French first names (whatever that means)
Oh that's easy.
- Did that name exist in 18th century?
- Is there a Catholic saint with that name?
- If there was some French person in 18th century with that name, would the English translate it to a local counterpart rather than keep original spelling (e.g. Pierre -> Peter)?
If yes to all, then it's a traditional name; otherwise it's some new age made up shit. Works with 99% of names in almost every European country.
Almost =~ neither UK nor Russia?
According to this page, the 3 most popular Russian names right now are Alexander, Mikhail and Maxim. All three very traditional. And is the UK part a joke about Muslim immigration or what?
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
"far right" usually means anti-immigration (with unspecified economics views)
This is actually an important point. The economics:
The economic views are usually a variation of "the immigrants are taking our money". Which is both true and not. The root cause of the lack of money is typically in failed policies and corruption, and the immigration is just a symptom. The lack of money causes frustration, which is in turn a breeding ground for extreme action. Nothing spurs people to action like fear of their children starving.The far-left has a long history of anti-semitism, see Labour party in the UK a few years ago. So that makes shifting to the far-right rather easy.
I'd like to note that the National Socialist party was economically socialist all the way to the end. And being on the "left" typically means socialist policies, AIUI. But the current understanding of left-right is colored by said party being labeled "extreme right". Which is in turn used in politics in all kinds of funny ways.
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@Gąska said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Kamil-Podlesak said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Gąska said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
the polemicist (Zemmour) who wants to ban non-French first names (whatever that means)
Oh that's easy.
- Did that name exist in 18th century?
- Is there a Catholic saint with that name?
- If there was some French person in 18th century with that name, would the English translate it to a local counterpart rather than keep original spelling (e.g. Pierre -> Peter)?
If yes to all, then it's a traditional name; otherwise it's some new age made up shit. Works with 99% of names in almost every European country.
Almost =~ neither UK nor Russia?
According to this page, the 3 most popular Russian names right now are Alexander, Mikhail and Maxim. All three very traditional. And is the UK part a joke about Muslim immigration or what?
Can you also quote the relevant Biblical names in English? Because for those of us who don't speak East-European languages, the connection isn't that obvious.
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@acrow saints aren't biblical. Most of them at least.
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@Gąska Oh, right. Well, I don't know the Russian saints either. But I assume that's covered by your link, so carry on.
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@acrow FYI, the Catholic Church translates (or used to translate until 100 years ago?) each saint's name to local languages. For example, Jeanne d’Arc is Joan of Arc in English, Juana de Arco in Spanish, Giovanna d'Arco in Italian, Johanna von Orléans in German, Joanna d’Arc in Polish and Zhanna d’Arc in Russian. And if there was no translation available, they'd make some shit up and centuries later it'd become as traditional as the others.
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@Gąska said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Jeanne d’Arc is Joan of Arc in English, Juana de Arco in Spanish, Johanna von Orléans in German, Joanna d’Arc in Polish and Zhanna d’Arc in Russian.
What do Germans have against Arc?
(also they're wrong, she's definitely not "from" Orléans)
(also also she was canonised very late (1920's IIRC?) so she's not necessarily a good example of how "traditional" saints names' evolved)
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@acrow said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I'd like to note that the National Socialist party was economically socialist all the way to the end. And being on the "left" typically means socialist policies, AIUI. But the current understanding of left-right is colored by said party being labeled "extreme right". Which is in turn used in politics in all kinds of funny ways.
Not that easy. The Nazis were rarely consistent in their policies and Hitler, for example, always stood for private ownership and liberal competition, but not due to liberal views but more grounded in social Darwinism. At the same time, they also proclaimed that the economy had be under the complete control of the government.
