Wouldn't matter. Trump is already a felon and should be ineligible. We have at least two parallel lehal systems in the US, probably more. The more "important" you are the less the rules are able to touch you. That's the american way.
Exactly. For better or worse, and whether or not people realize that we have basically inherited and mutated the English class system, except instead of being defined by your birth lineage, it's now defined by how much money you have. I guess you could call that egalitarian in the way that the British call their private schools, "public schools", meaning that anyone with an adequate amount of money is allowed to attend them.
The Wikipedia article has "deprival of the rights of individuals and parties from running for election" listed as a method. So I assume the prison/fine part of the sentencing wouldn't really be defensive democracy but barring her from office is. (Don't think I would feel positively about that in the U.S. but nonetheless the concept is there.)
That's the case in any working democracy. Defensive democracy is a different conception, e.g. the German constitution allows for party prohibitions. In a defensive democracy, rules like party prohibitions are ideally not applied by an ordinary court but by an independent political organ. To give an example from Germany, the German Supreme Court is an independent political organ that serves as a power division element to check the work of the two parliaments for constitutionality. The "highest" ordinary court is the Bunderverwaltungsgericht.
Hehe, now let’s wait and see how they grapple with the fact that you can’t have both! It‘s either criminal use of EU funds or defensive democracy, unless you’re drenched in kool-aid.
The verdict was clearly and unambiguously about a criminal abuse of EU funds and nothing else. It's noteworthy that a list of people was sentenced for it, not just Le Pen.
sure, and just 4 days prior to that totally neutral verdict another french court ruled that political bans were legal. what a coincidence, what a convenience. something that was never even considered legal in France just “clearly and unambiguously” fell into that judge’s hands days ahead.
No, there’s nothing noteworthy here, especially for a crime Le Pen didn’t committed herself and which every single party of France is guilty of.
You're talking to the wrong person since I would fully support a prohibition of the RN if France's democracy was as combative as it should be. I just don't think this played a role here. Politicians complaining bitterly about being persecuted for crimes they've committed is not a new thing, though, they always believe they deserve special treatment.
Excuse me but what in the hell? To come in here and redefine a corruption investigation as being in that camp is not only an insult to the reader but it an insult to everyone who both cares about civil rights and government corruption at the same time.
Defensive democracy is just marketing spin on exactly the sort of civil rights violating process that gives the establishment huge advantage over any challenger and exactly the sort of crap totalitarian regimes love and leverage to great effect.
The wikipedia page that you linked lists the following examples of "defensive democracy".
>Surveillance by the security corps (especially military and police intelligence) of activists who are considered dangerous, or after entire associations outright;
>Restrictions on the freedom of movement or action over bodies suspected of endangering democracy;
>Deprival of the rights of individuals and parties from running for election
>Outlawing of organizations considered a danger to democracy;
>Cancellation of elections as a last resort ""
Does that sound like the kind of stuff that fair, well run by rule of law, stable democracies with lots of buy in from the populace do to you? Because it sure doesn't to me. It's basically a list of stuff unpopular governments use to stay in power a little longer.
To come in and lay claim to the credibility of of something that everyone can agree is good (prosecuting corruption, equality under the law) and siphon some of that off onto a subject that is highly controversial (selective violations of civil rights, nominally for a good reason) by just falsely claiming the good thing is a subset of the controversial thing is dishonest and morally reprehensible.
You are just confused because you bought the democracy fairy tale. There is no "real" democracy. There are nation states and in this case it is the French nation state. Politicians come and go but the state (also known for some reason as the deep state) made of bureaucrats, military personal, intelligence, etc... are not going to let some random dude rule over the country just because he got 50%+ of the population electing him. That's the pipe dream of democracy but not the reality.
I'm thinking a certain level of bureaucracy is needed even in the most democratic of governments, after all we don't (normally) elect folks to argue about whats in each others underwear. We talk about "running" the country. We want laws, statutes, organizations, and sometimes the tasks and end goals are big enough with these constructs to the point where they should span election cycles. Sure, currently the US is in "burn it all down" mode but this is not efficient government at all. This "burn everything down" thing with every election cycle just spends our nations resources to no good end.
Course, the problem with democracy is that if you elect a crook, you'll get a crime ring haha but I guess democracy also means giving folks what they ask for.
>Does that sound like the kind of stuff that fair, well run by rule of law, stable democracies with lots of buy in from the populace do to you?
...Yes?
Or are you saying politicians can just barge in and say "the rules don't apply to me because I'm popular"? Because that's how you don't get stable democracies. What you get is Trump, or the Red Brigades, or the Brown Shirts running things to the ground. Because the motto of those orgs is "one man, one vote... One last time"
Are you okay with Trump having the power to do each of those quoted actions? To decide if the opposition is a threat to democracy or if elections must be canceled "as a last resort".
I read that list and it looks like instructions on how to end democracy, not preserve it
Not advocating for that specific list of actions, but the idea is that the courts have the power to do those kinds of things, not politicians. That's the whole point - you set up the legal system in a way that helps to keep democracy stable and then the courts enforce that so politicians don't have untrammelled power. That's (theoretically) why the judiciary is a separate branch of government.
Americans made their bed, now let them lay in it. Ideally those tools would have been used against him, but since they weren't... now is the time to reap the results of that inaction.
Every democracy has a failure point. The US seems to be past that now, where the executive is starting to ignore the judicial branch. In my view, if the institutions were working correctly, Trump would never have been able to stand again after January 6th, and this would have been as a result of judgements by judges appointed by the executive. But institutions are run by humans and sometimes nothing can save them.
Moot point as someone like Trump ignores existing tools and just makes his own.
Also, Trump could have been stopped by the processes in place in USA, they just were not properly used. There were several cases open against him, they just failed to do what they were supposed to.
That's not the problem. The US now effectively has a system where you don't prosecute presidents for any crime. You should note that the ongoing criminal investigations against Trump were mostly cancelled when it became obvious that he'll be the next president.
If this system had been in place when Nixon did his crimes, he would've just shrugged and kept going.
You are indeed not Europe now, not even close. Well, except for Hungary and Belarus.
You are again comparing the flawed US "democratic" system to a real democracy. Trump should not be able to gain those tools because a functioning democracy protects the rule of law and holds justice to be above all other concepts. In the US, the legal system is a sham and the levers of power are easily taken for abuse (not to mention corporate capture of the two political parties which control all political life). So while Trump should not be able to capture those tools, it is only possible because the US does not have a real functioning democracy. In places like France, the state ensures that it is not possible to easily take complete power as Trump has in the US.
In short, no, Trump should not be able to take these tools. But in actual democracies they have checks to ensure that this is not possible while in the US no such checks exist.
I didn’t ask if Trump should be able to take those tools.
I asked if you would be comfortable if he did.
Either you believe it is possible to create a perfect political system which never makes a mistake, or you believe mistakes can be made thus those tools should never be available to those in power.
>Or are you saying politicians can just barge in and say "the rules don't apply to me because I'm popular"?
I hope you misrepresent due to ignorance and not deliberately.
Nobody is saying that politicians should not be investigated. And nobody is saying that politicians should not be convicted and even put in prison.
What people are rightfully baffled about is the riddance of the passive election right - as in, inability to be elected. If a candidate was convinced and is in prison, then it's up to the voters to decide if they still trust that person and if they consider the conviction rightful and not bias.
Surely, if the conviction was pure as a tear of a newborn baby and there was no dirty persecution of the political competitors, surely voters would take that into account and there would be no need for artificial restrictions. But that requires the absence of political hunt. One needs to impose artificial restrictions only if there is fault play.
The EU is taking the tried and tested ways Putin used to destroy his opposition. First Romania, now France.
P.S. The same critique applies to the American democratic travesty of "current/former criminals are not allowed to vote".
The trouble with this is that a criminal that has enough capital to back him/her can use the media to make it seem like it's a political hunt even when it isn't. Supporters of a corrupt criminal will benefit a lot from getting them elected, whereas the opposition needs to spend a lot of money just to keep things as they are. Usually these people are friendly to capital as well, and the opposition are the "little people" who can't organize enough money to campaign against these liars and their backers. I can't see better options here other than to use the state to protect themselves.
At some point we have to trust the electorate whether we like it or not, or democracy is impossible. If the populace is easily brainwashed by the media to believe in the innocence of a corrupt and extremist candidate they could just as easily be brainwashed on any issue or candidate so what's the point of letting them vote at all?
> Usually these people are friendly to capital as well, and the opposition are the "little people"
Don't know if this is actually true, I assume capitalists generally prefer stable market-oriented politicians and not far-right kleptocrats in favor of protectionist trade wars. And plenty of wealthy people value democracy for its own sake, Kamala outraised Trump in the 2024 election for example.
Also I doubt traditional media spend plays as large a role in a nationwide contest with a lot of eyes, if I recall during Trump's 2016 primary candidacy Fox News tried to go against him but was rebuked by their own viewers (who fell in love with him on social media) and forced to bend the knee.
Cults of personalities are more dangerous than other types of brainwashing though, and the right level of protection from the state here should be other checks and balances on the office's powers.
I'm starting to think that current forms of democracy have become outdated and impossible due to the effects of social media and the levels of wealth concentration. When liars can spread their own truths through social media, and there exists such concentrations of wealth that they're able to buy the platforms, manipulate the algorithms, use bots etc. to boost the lies, it's become too hard for the average person to figure out what the actual truth is and base their decisions on that. The fact checking and bias in dispersed traditional media that we used to have was not perfect, but it was better than what we have now with the combination of concentrated traditional media and social media.
If we don't want to use the state to protect democracy by limiting it, then we either need to limit the concentration of wealth so that no small group of people has the power to spread the lies, or we need new forms of democracy that are resistant to such things.
The essential part of democracy is the right for people to make bad decisions (and hopefully learn from them).
If people are allowed to choose only from preselected candidates, then that is no democracy at all. "You can choose any color of the Ford you want as long as it is black".
That's the same reason I despise the "minimal amount of votes/percentage threshold to be elected" shenanigans that exist in many countries (including Europeans). That's exactly how Putin started to take over Russia's democratic election system in the beginning of his reign.
System needs controllers. But who is going to control the controllers? And who is going to control the controllers of the controllers? Turtles all the way. And the only reasonable and workable system is when people have the control. Even if they sometimes/often make mistakes. It's still the best system we have.
The Romania-ization of European democracies has just begun. Once Brussels sends „democracy-protecting“ tanks into the capitals of its member states, the „EU-SSR-meme“ will have successfully completed the „conspiracy“ life cycle we‘ve become so adjusted to lately (conspiracy > meme > reality). Just remember to, in the meantime, de-humanize every complainer as „Putin-Puppet“ because how else can we protect democracy if not by eliminating dissent, eh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy