While I would have certainly preferred a Hollande rally to a Sarkozy rally (and because I got the times wrong for the Marine Le Pen rally - which I saw via lemonde.fr was rife with symbolism perfect for my thesis, so I ought to have gone), Sarko spoke at Trocadéro this afternoon in honor of "May Day," International Worker's Day, and French Labor Day.
Here's the set "Le choix présidentiel:" my pictures from the rally and the afternoon.
It was interesting to say the least. It was held at Trocadéro, so he had the Eiffel Tour in the background. Not shabby. The theme music was really intense, almost scary. Certainly plays off the whole fear-mongering theme. It's kind of ironic, though, that his slogan is "La France forte." So under five years of your leadership, France hasn't been strong? Why is threat so much greater now than before? It's not like you can blame the Left, really, because you haven't had a cohabitation.
I was very happy to have captured some of the cheering, particularly the singing of the Marseillaise. It's certainly a rousing song. The speech today was unsurprising, but I'm always curious about the references made. Sarkozy made use of not only Charles de Gaulle, but the glorious artistic, cultural, intellectual history of France: "les enfants de Voltaire," "une langue universelle." It's absolutely fascinating to me. It was also those references that got the crowd the most excited. A couple of quick sentences about the dangers of "communautarisme" and immigration resounded across the crowd. It was then that I became extremely self-conscious for myself and my English-speaking friends.
Regardless, we did notice that the crowd was significantly older than, say, those who attend President Obama's rallies. Sure, that's the whole idea of the Obama campaign, but the fact that they came out, on their days off, in the sun, to stand in a huge mass of people, some supports with canes or rather quite frail, was impressive. I guess that's the convergence between being the president as well as the candidate.
Although I didn't get to see the screen, it was pretty cool to hear Sarkozy's voice live, especially since he chickened out from coming to Sciences Po.
Here is a very amateur splice of the better videos that I took. Please don't judge me for poor editing, I know it's bad. I think it's funny to hear what the people in the crowd are saying to one another, as well as getting an idea of what the atmosphere was like.
In other news, today Minister of Defense, Gérard Longuet, was interviewed in Minute, a weekly extreme right paper. The article was under the title "Barrage à Hollande," and the takeaway is, "Les patriotes ne peuvent pas laisser passer François Hollande." Basically, a UMP plea for FN votes. Terrifying. Especially for me who is technically an immigrant, and might want to become an official one some day.
Tomorrow night is the presidential debate. I am very excited! I actually scheduled dinner plans around it so I could go home and watch it in time.
We finally have good weather here. My host mom's daughter and granddaughter have been spending the past two days with us, which I like, because everyone is friendlier, and we have really good meals. There's lots of fun stories regarding my wonderful host family, which is another post entirely to itself. But for now, it's just la politique.
If you're interested in other pieces I've written while being here about French politics, check out La Péniche, "Trying to Explain American Politics to French People" and Educo / La millefeuille, "La passion politique" (it's in French, tant pis)
No comments:
Post a Comment