I think France is generally perceived here to have more progressive social policies regarding labor, education, healthcare and the environment. The limited media coverage I've seen about French elections seemed to paint Macron as the candidate more representative of those values.

Macron is not a fan of theses social policies, he is right leaning. His governement reduced labor protections, butchered educations, worsened public healthcare, and do nothing for the environment.

Im not arguing the point. It's a sad state of affairs. But Le Pen was painted here as a female version of Trump. So that's why Macron was perceived as representative of French progressiveness.

Macron's minister of the interior, Gérald Darmanin, described Le Pen as "too soft". France is not a bi-party system, Macron is not progressive.

The vote (for president) still came down to, "Guy who thinks protecting the workers is the end of the world" or "Lady who seems way too comfortable with actual nazi parties", so americans just had a lot of empathy.

Economically right-leaning but culturally left-leaning, he's let in tens of thousands of migrants, does not expel them (cf. the "OQTF" stories pretty much every day), and on top of that, uses taxpayers money to fund them throughout the country.

> Economically right-leaning but culturally left-leaning.

Ah yes, the current political Trojan horse.

You are mixing up stuff to fit your scenario. OQTF stories are up to police incompetence, not lax imposed by the governement. Culturally left-leaning if very bold given the recent pension reform debacle, bypassing any democratic recourse. Also very bold statement given the police repression of mosts of the protests.

There is nothing Macron that is left leaning, relative to France politic spectrum.

"not lax imposed by the governement."

>> Interesting. Right-leaning governement (if not "far-right" according to some), but has no control over illegal migrants routinely roaming around committing crimes. I thought a key marker of "the right" was being (too) strict on order and ruthless implementation of the law.

A governement doing badly it's job is a marker of corruption or incompetence, not political alignement.

Macron, as so many French leaders before him, is in fact obsessed by transforming France into the US.

Sarkozy, his most alike predecessor, used to wear a t-shirt that said "NYPD" while jogging, as he was president of France; and later renamed his party "Les Républicains" as an hommage to US Republicans (!!?!)

This was 9 years ago, so right before Trump happened. At the time, 53% of party members thought it was "too American" but they accepted the change nonetheless.

Macron pushes through "liberal" reforms (liberal in Europe means the opposite as in the US: liberals here are free-market proponents) because he thinks it will make France great again, I guess.

Fear leads to support for authoritarianism. Covid, climate, nuclear war, economic uncertainty, etc.

I think it is more about fear silences sane people. Not that support for shady things increase. E.g. at work like 2 or 3 out of 20 are phsycotic war mongers to different degrees. There is always this implied "we will shoot you as a traitor if you disagree" if things turn to shit when you deal with that kind of people.

You always get only a really tiny window of information, selected by your medias, about foreign countries. (It doesn't matter which receiving country you are in, it is a general principle, not just about the USA).

In France, we almost only hear about other countries politics when there is a chance for a far right party to gain something. As far as all other domains are concerned, we may from time to time get a funny/shocking miscellaneous news item, and that's it.

Also, images/stereotypes about a country last a long time, long after they have stopped being true.

Ironically, perhaps the only emitting country that differs a bit is... the USA, for probably most countries over the planet are flooded with information and contemporary culture from the USA.

For example, to get back a bit to the original subject, people may know the American police and justice system better than their own. Like, French people when they are arrested would believe that they have enforceable rights and that rigorous processes are respected. Ah!

Once, in custody, I even had the impudence of requesting a lawyer as I was allowed to. LOL, no way. And it is not simply a problem of a rotten police: the prosecutor, the judges, they are all covering this up, it is the whole police+justice system which 'works' like this.

The answer is same as with western commies, coz the ideals speak to them but they never lived by it and are aware of the bad stuff