Hi @Fiorella_im @monalove1984 @yopasta and friends of the American left, been reading your comments back and forth on US white supremacists and how to handle them etc... if i may, let me give you my perspective as a French leftist who’s seeing similar and dangerous trends

over here. Please note that I’m no stranger to the situation in the US having spent nearly 20 years of my life in Los Angeles, New Mexico and North Carolina among mostly pope whites Latinos and blacks. So I understand the arguments.

I grew up in a middle class lower bourgeois rural white family. My grand parents were poor. Most of my family on my mom’s side were communists/socialist/union people. These were the family discussions when I was a kid (70’s). However, when I went to high school in the early

80’s, the antisemite racist far right was gaining prominence (Le Pen dad) and I fell into this trap because I was bullied as a teenager by kids of Muslim Arab immigrants. I developed hate towards them and the far right fed me the racist réthoric sadly. It followed me until

my early 20’s. Fortunately (yes!) I moved to California in 1997 and was exposed to the American melting pot. (I had not met black kids until I was 10 back in France). I was not very political until bush got into office and launched the war in Iraq. Just so you know I fell

For the WMD bullshit like many others (obviously not proud of it now). Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 is what woke me up politically. I moved left at that point. Plus I met leftists in New Mexico who largely contributed to that. However i fell for Obama’s lies too.

In 2014 I moved back to France and got politicized by the left movement (France insoumise) started by Jean-Luc Melenchon. His 2017 campaign war largely inspired by Bernie’s 2016 movement and grassroots (I was a long time fan of Bernie myself). We lost the second round by

600000 votes. People voted for Macron to avoid LePen on the second (pretty much à Biden / Trump like ticket). Macron (like Biden) turned out to be a fascist. As an extreme neoliberal he is destroying the welfare state (which communists won for us at the end of WW2).

The yellow vests were born as a reaction to the general degradation of living conditions for many people (including myself). A first the media depicted them as fascists antisemites, idiots, you name it, because they are mostly white rural folks. However the yellow vests

want social and fiscal justice, more democracy, food in their fridges. Basic leftist things. They weeded out among themselves the right wing fascists particularly when Macron’s police started brutally repressing them. They realized that people of the suburbs who are

mostly children of former colonized immigrants (brought to work in France in the 50’s) were telling the truth about police brutality and murders in their neighborhoods. It is largely similar to what black neighborhoods experience in the US. Police has always tested new

police weapons on them first. The medias has always depicted them as “racailles” or (roughly translates) garbage people. When Macron enlarged the use of these weapons to the general population therefore including unions and white yellow vests it became clear for a lot of

folks in the country (except the fascist right) that Muslims and blacks in these neighborhoods had been telling the truth about police violence for the last 30 to 40 years. In the meantime, Macron is seducing the fascist right constantly passing more and more fascist laws

like the Global Security Law which Jimmy covered on his show a few weeks ago. Call it the French Patriot Act. Far right militias are also arming up in some part of the country (remember that we don’t have a gun culture) while Macron looks away. An important factor in all

this is that more and more convergence is happening between the union sectors of public services (which Macron is privatizating) and yellow vests. The COVID crisis has made things a lot more difficult. Macron applies a litteral Shock doctrine on the country. Makes me sick.

More years of this guy and this country will be as American as apple pie because there isn’t much left of our welfare state. Public hospitals and schools are falling apart due to defunding. Just like in the US police is getting armed and funded. And it is brutal.

Yellow vests have lost lives, eyes, hands. Thousands are in jail (even though they committed no crimes). Macron doesn’t fucking care about anything people want and continues his destructive politics while appealing to the right and far right (the médias have gone far right

as well). The situation is bad. What I’m trying to say after this long thread is that many who were very weary of each other are trying to talk and unite (and there are differences). You know quickly who’s a potential fascist and who is just voting far right in anger at the

system but is not necessarily racist etc... if I can be moved back to the left (as a teenager I was actually looking at Nazi stuff!), many can be by (as Tucker told Jimmy) the force of arguments. I realize that no countries are similar but trends are trends.

When socialist Eugene Debs was put in jail for doing an anti war speech, socialist deputee Jean Jaurès was assassinated for the same thing in 1914. We have more in common than you think. You are an imperialist country. We are colonizers. On both sides of the Atlantic

we have to build a strong socialist left in order to fight the dark forces engulfing us. It’s going to be hard but it also means not to jump to conclusions with who are some people. Some will be a lost cause. Others may be convinced. Let’s not give up.

Food for thought @Fiorella_im @monalove1984 @PartyofReason @ProudSocialist @SarcasmStardust and whoever may be interested.

Just a aside but interesting note: at the end of 2018, the yellow vests got so close to Macron’s palace (600 meters) that he pissed his pants and had an helicopter ready to fly him away. His revenge was becoming brutally repressive after that.