[Juliate]

You seem to suggest Manuel Valls has also been prime minister under Macron presidency (after having been under Hollande's), which he hasn't.

Also, the "neither left not right is also a fascist meme" is both true and misleading: when you have several leftist parties that reclaim being "the only true left" for themselves, portraying anything else as evil or stupid, and rightist parties that move further and further to the extreme, and both wings being plagued with moral/financial scandals, you may as well consider that the left/right dichotomy is broken, or that the parties broke it joyfully.

So trying to pave a way with another, maybe more subtle and demanding understanding than just left/right, progress/conservatism, is not completely absurd either. And that, without going necessarily right into fascism.

[Juliate]

Another way which, granted, with En Marche, utterly failed so far (but perhaps does one need several runs for a party to gain a consistent backbone).

[southerntofu]

> You seem to suggest Manuel Valls has also been prime minister under Macron presidency (after having been under Hollande's), which he hasn't.

Thanks for correction. I thought he was prime minister of Macron, but that was in fact Edouard Philippe. I must have confused with Jean-Yves le Drian, previously Ministry of Defense (under Hollande) then Foreign Affairs (under Macron).

> and both wings being plagued with moral/financial scandals

I don't agree with all of their politics, but when was the last time you heard the NPA or LO (left-wing parties) had a financial/moral scandal? I've never heard of any.

> you may as well consider that the left/right dichotomy is broken, or that the parties broke it joyfully

Left/Right dichotomy (collectivism/capitalism) is as alive as ever, in terms of politics. But the "left" and "right" labels have lost any form of sense when parts of the left in the 80/90s started accepting capitalism, applying right wing programs (eg. neoliberalism) and then started to campaign/act on extreme-right ideas (eg. anti-immigration measures). But the media apparatus have not called them out on moving right and continue to call them "left" without any form of meaning. That's why we're so confused about the terms, at least in Western Europe and North America.

> more subtle and demanding understanding than just left/right, progress/conservatism, is not completely absurd either

Oh sure, we have to look at the measures behind the keywords. I think that was exactly my point to begin with: that just because you say "neither left nor right" doesn't mean you aren't very very very right-wing. And having a "progress party" with the leader's face placated everywhere and no actual discussions of the most pressing issues we face as an entire species is not giving me a lot of confidence.