Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron has decisively won the French presidential election, projected results say.

Mr Macron defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen by about 65.5% to 34.5% to become, at 39, the country's youngest president, the results show.

Mr Macron will also become the first president from outside the two traditional main parties since the modern republic's foundation in 1958.

He said that a new page was being turned in French history.

"I want it to be a page of hope and renewed trust," he said.

Live updates: France elects Macron

Mr Macron said he had heard "the rage, anxiety and doubt that a lot of you have expressed" and vowed to spend his five years in office "fighting the forces of division that undermine France".

He said he would "guarantee the unity of the nation and... defend and protect Europe."

read more:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39839349

Slavoj Zizek is International Director at the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London, and Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His most recent book is Disparities.

The title of a recent opinion piece which appeared in The Guardian - the mouthpiece of the anti-Assange,-pro-Hillary liberal left - says it all: "Le Pen is a far-right Holocaust revisionist. Macron isn't. Hard choice?"

Predictably, the text proper begins with: "Is being an investment banker analogous with being a Holocaust revisionist? Is neoliberalism on a par with neofascism?" It then mockingly dismisses even the conditional Leftist support for the second-round Macron vote, the stance of "I'd now vote Macron - very reluctantly."

This is liberal blackmail at its worst: one should support Macron unconditionally; it doesn't matter that he is a neoliberal centrist, just that he is against Le Pen.

It's the same old story of Hillary versus Trump: in the face of the fascist threat, we should all gather beneath her banner - never mind how her side brutally outmanoeuvred Sanders and thus contributed to losing the election.

Are we not allowed at least to raise the question: yes, Macron is pro-European - but what kind of Europe does he personify? The very Europe whose failure feeds Le Pen's populism, the anonymous Europe in the service of neoliberalism. This is the crux of the affair: yes, Le Pen is a threat, but if we throw all our support behind Macron, do we not get caught in the vicious circle of fighting the effect by supporting its cause?

This brings to mind a chocolate laxative available in the United States. It is advertised with the paradoxical injunction: "Are you constipated? Eat more of this chocolate!" - in other words, eat the very thing that causes constipation in order to be cured of it. In this sense, Macron is the chocolate-laxative candidate, offering us as a cure the very thing that caused the illness.

The media has presented the two second-round contestants as representing two radically opposed visions of France: the independent centrist versus the far-right racist. But do they offer a real choice? Le Pen offers a softened, feminised version of the brutal anti-immigrant populism of her father; Macron offers neoliberalism with a human face, while his image is similarly softly feminised (note the maternal role his wife plays in the media).

So the father is out and femininity is in - but, again, what kind of femininity? As Alain Badiou has pointed out, in today's ideological constellation men are ludic adolescent outlaws, while women appear as hard, mature, serious, legal and punitive. Women today are not called by the ruling ideology to be subordinated; rather, they are expected to be judges, administrators, ministers, CEOs, teachers, police and soldiers. A paradigmatic scene which occurs daily in our security institutions is that of a female teacher, judge or psychologist taking care of an immature, antisocial young male delinquent.

A new figure of femininity is thus emerging: a cold competitive agent of power, seductive and manipulative, attesting to the paradox that, as Badiou puts it, "in the conditions of capitalism women can do better than men." This, of course, in no way makes women suspect agents of capitalism; it merely signals that contemporary capitalism has invented its own ideal image of woman who stands for cold administrative power with a human face.

Both candidates present themselves as anti-status quo, Le Pen in an obvious populist way and Macron in a more interesting way: he is an outsider from existing political parties but, precisely as such, he stands for the system per se, in its indifference to established political choices. In contrast to Le Pen who represents proper political passion, the antagonism of Us against Them (from the immigrants to the non-patriotic financial elites), Macron represents all-encompassing, apolitical tolerance.

We thus often hear the claim that Le Pen's politics draws its strength from fear (the fear of immigrants, of the anonymous international financial institutions), but does the same not hold for Macron? He finished first because voters were afraid of Le Pen, and the circle is thus closed; there is no positive vision with either candidate - they are both candidates of fear.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/05/05/4664338.htm

Paris: The French presidential runoff transcended national politics. It was globalisation against nationalism. It was the future versus the past. Open versus closed.

But in his resounding victory Sunday night, Emmanuel Macron, the centrist and political novice, won because he was the beneficiary of a uniquely French historic and cultural legacy, where many voters wanted change but were appalled at the type of populist anger that had upturned politics in Britain and the United States. He trounced far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, keeping her well under 40 per cent, even as her aides said before the vote that anything below that figure would be considered a failure.

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/greatest-stain-in-french-history-helped-emmanuel-macron-prevail-over-demonised-marine-le-pen-20170508-gw039y.html

Meanwhile at religious headquarters:

Whereas the general population was divided 65-34 percent during the elections, the communal representatives of French Jews and Muslims mobilized almost without exception for Macron.

In both communities, even clergy abandoned their carefully cultivated non-partisanship in an unusual effort, the likes of which had not been seen in at least 15 years.

On Friday, French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia co-authored, with the president of the Protestant Federation of France and a Muslim faith leader, a statement endorsing Macron. Tellingly, the Catholic Church of France, which by far the largest Christian denomination in the country, sat out the declaration.

“Fully aware that our roles require us to be non-partisan,” the three clergymen wrote, “peace supersedes all other things and only a vote for Emmanuel Macron guarantees” it.

The unusual statement followed efforts by French Jews to prevent a victory for Marine Le Pen on “a scale that was last witnessed in 2002, ahead of the runoff led by her father,” according to Philippe Karsenty, a Jewish Macron supporter and deputy mayor of the Paris  suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Originally supportive of Francois Fillon, the Republicans candidate who lost in the first round last month and who stands significantly to the right of Macron, Karsenty joined the Macron camp not because he believes in the candidate’s policies, but “to block Le Pen from ruining France,” as Karsenty put it in an interview with JTA Saturday.

CRIF, the federation of Jewish communities of France, called on all Jews and non-Jews to vote for Macron, describing Le Pen as a “danger for democracy.” And the Union of Jewish Students of France held a string of rallies against Le Pen, including a concert “against Fascism” on Friday.

While these efforts served as a show of unity within French Jewry and with other faith groups, they also cast a partisan light on French Jews and Muslims, which leaders of both communities have worked hard to avoid. And that has the potential of highlighting a distinction, favored by many Le Pen supporters, between these minorities and the general population.

read more:

http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/macron-wins-french-election-but-mari...

the revolting deep state in france...