Comments by "" (@titteryenot4524) on "French parliamentary elections: is Macron’s majority at risk?" video.

  1. What’s happening in France can be correlated with Brexit and Trump. Instead of looking at this in terms of traditional left versus right, David Goodheart’s thesis of two distinct ‘tribes’, the ‘Anywheres’ and the ‘Somewheres’, with irreconcilable differences may be applicable here. Brexiteers, Trumpeteers and Le Penistas fall into the ‘somewhere’ camp and they may be seen as rooted in geographical identity - the Scottish farmer; working-class Geordie; Cornish housewife - who find rapid changes to the modern world unsettling; are socially conservative; are likely to be older and less well educated and less mobile. This manifests in supporting anti-mass-immigration policies; strong support for the Armed Forces; suspicion of the EU, and more widely ‘other’ cultures; strong support for strict law enforcement (including the death penalty) and a general authoritarianism, with the notion that the primary job of Britain’s leaders is to put British interests first. ‘Anywheres’ are footloose; often urban; university educated; socially liberal; egalitarian and meritocratic in their attitudes to race, sexuality, and gender; are able to migrate and integrate comfortably into other places; are often strong supporters of the EU and globalisation; are lighter in their attachments to larger group identities, including national ones, valuing autonomy and self-realisation before stability, community and tradition. What’s happening in France may be seen as a battle between the Anywheres and the Somewheres just as Brexit and Trump’s election may be seen in these terms. Melenchon’s core base appears to be a curious mixture of the two: ‘Somewheres’ and ‘Anywheres’; traditional left-leaning working-class folk rooted in their specific communities, and a more metropolitan strain, found in the big cities, and while left-leaning, also more likely to fall into the ‘Anywhere’ tribe, principally due to a higher-level of education.
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  2.  @thomasc5443  You appear to have completely missed the point; Goodheart’s thesis dispenses with Left and Right altogether, in traditional terms. He doesn’t talk of this farmer or that farmer as being Left or Right, but rather as being a Somewhere or Anywhere. That was the whole point; to do away with these traditional binary terms.
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