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Right-wing reaction to the globalized, liberal order is starting to look less dispersed and more systematic, like 20th-century political movements like socialism and communism.
-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — In a 2018 text published in the International Studies Quarterly, academics Joseph MacKay and Christopher David La Roche asked why there was no "Reactionary International Theory." In December of that year, speaking with Crisis journal, I myself stressed that beyond Europe and the United States, international reactionism was taking root in Latin America. Then in 2019, "Reactionary Internationalism" and the philosophy of the New Right were the subjects of another paper by Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen.
As an emergent trend, the "reactionary international" is worth considering.
This international is comparable in scope to 20th-century currents like the Communist International, Socialist International and Christian Democrat International. While those were prominent in Europe, the new reaction has emerged most emblematically in Anglo-American countries and remains a solidly Western phenomenon. Its expressions in peripheral countries, eastern Europe or Latin America have effectively adopted its mainstream proposals.
Blame game
Two complementary dynamics reflect the new Reactionism's attitude to changes, both nationally and globally, over the long term. First, it has a negative, even anger-driven, populist perspective on history, politics and morality (which it believes is in decline). In general, the past was better, more orderly and safer, according to this outlook infused with nostalgia and self-righteousness.
Reactionaries want to revive a romanticized Arcadia.
The second dynamic is its choice of a scapegoat for contemporary ills. Progressive thinking, multiculturalism or diverse identities are typical choices.
In this ideology, communism and reformism are condemned, in spite of their respective states of near extinction or current weakness, and historical revolutions are blamed for establishing personal rights and liberties that have weakened society. Such notions have become attractive to people affiliated with conservative parties, religious forces or ethnic revival movements, but also to libertarians, science haters and other radicals. They resonate with people waiting for the fulfillment of the post-Cold War promise of a better life.
President Donald Trump with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach
In contrast with liberalism and Marxism, which look to the future, reactionaries want to revive a romanticized Arcadia. In several regions, it was liberal insistence on keeping the status quo that paved the way for the extreme right's electoral triumph. That extreme right has, in turn, managed to forge a "common sense" based on exclusion and violence.
International reactionism may adopt two courses of action in world affairs. It may firstly become "corrective," seeking to preserve certain aspects and institutions of the liberal order in order to "defend" the West against the apparent challenge of the South — and China particularly. Its tactics could include impeding reforms to expand the South's participation in multilateral decision-making assemblies, preferring collective agreements between states to face global challenges.
Make the West great again.
Regionalism may come to flourish in this setting, as instead of coexisting with an evolving globalization, the developed North becomes a protective wall, while radical regimes consolidate themselves in an under-developed South. Without questioning the asymmetry of global power, such regimes would embrace nationalism in their own neighborhoods.
Or, reactionism may adopt a double, "revisionist" and "restorative" character, aiming to "make the West great again" in the face of a rising East and especially China.
Here, powerful states would start to break the rules of the liberal order. The United Nations and multilateralism would become relics, use of force would increase and the deterioration of democracy would become difficult to stop. Conflict would become commonplace in the South, as the West tries to recover its one-time supremacy.
Reactionism is progressing worldwide, and will produce new alliances between states and other international actors amid fractured, discontented societies and fragile states.
China is spending more money on weapons and defense than ever. The reason is evident: Xi Jinping wants to take Taiwan. Europe should follow the U.S. and support Taipei militarily as the only way to deter Beijing from war.
-OpEd-
BERLIN — Fear is never the best advisor.
It is, however, an understandable emotion when China announces the biggest increase in its defense budget in memory. And when Beijing does so after siding with Russia in the Ukraine war with its supposed "peace plan" and justifying the increase with an alleged "escalating oppression" of China in the world.
The budget plan unveiled by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang calls for a 7.2% increase in defense spending. That's more than in previous years — and just the official figure.
Experts estimate the true spending is much higher, as Beijing finances its military through numerous shadow budgets.
The Stockholm-based peace research institute Sipri, for example, calculates that the budget is 25 to 50% larger than stated.
Claim on Taiwan
China also leaves the world in the dark as to what it actually spends the money on. What is clear is that Beijing has been working for years on modernizing its military. According to Beijing's plans, it is to be transformed into a "world-class" force by 2050.
Ideology is now more important to Xi than maintaining prosperity.
For example, a white paper published in October spoke of the "same blood" that binds Chinese and Taiwanese people together. And at this year's Munich Security Conference, chief diplomat Wang Yi blatantly denied Taiwan's independence: "It has never been a country and will never be a country in the future."
The Central Military Band of the People's Liberation Army of China at the Great Hall of the People.
The fact that the increase in the defense budget is now larger than that of other expenditures and is also higher than the projected economic growth of 5% shows that ideology is now more important to him than maintaining prosperity.
In this respect, we must expect that China will not be deterred from attacking Taiwan by threats of economic consequences alone.
The United States has understood this. They now want to station up to 200 U.S. soldiers on the island to train Taiwanese troops. Washington is thus driving up the military costs destined for Beijing taking into account what such an attack would entail.
Europe, too, should offer military support to Taiwan, because deterrence is the only thing that ultimately can keep Xi from going to war.
The Russian president has resorted to a string of changing lies to justify his war on Ukraine. He has shown contempt along the way for the Christian values he claims to defend. But like arms and ammunition, a regime can also run out of lies.
-OpEd-
BOGOTÁ — In time, lies are bound to implode. They'll crash faster than a troubled currency in a financial storm. When a deceitful government can no longer pull the wool over people's eyes, it is forced to seek more lies. That is what Russia's Vladimir Putin and his spokesmen have been doing: looking for new methods of bluster to justify his invasion of Ukraine.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
When launched last February, the official explanation was the shameless lie of wanting to liberate the Ukrainians from a Nazi-style regime. Simultaneously, Putin claimed Ukraine was no country but a mistaken gift of the Soviet Union, which had provisionally granted independence to its 40 million inhabitants and 600,000 square kilometers!
When the Nazi nonsense lost its charm — because even in authoritarian regimes, media are not entirely immune to doubt — the government had to find another lie to justify its war. As the invaded (and apparently non-existent) country had failed to receive Russian troops with flowers and songs, but fought them instead, the Ukrainians stopped being Nazis and became "terrorists."
What despots hate most
They had to be deemed terrorists after they sank one of Russia's prestige warships in the Black Sea, the Moskva, practically blew up an entire air fleet parked in the Crimea, and brought down a bridge. The invaders began posing as victims. They were being attacked. They claimed the territories being annexed were now part of the Russian Federation, and the Ukrainians were about to invade Russia.
A fantasy as ridiculous as it was short-lived. What's next?
This fantasy was as ridiculous as it was short-lived, so another lie was needed. Putin tried this one: this was a Christian crusade by Mother Russia, the home of Orthodoxy, against a diabolical West. Forget the Nazis and terrorists: Russia was facing down Western Europe's "satanic" ideology, which permits aberrations like gay marriages, the redefinition of families and recognition of sexual and gender anomalies and transitions.
In this version, Ukraine's Western allies are trying to impose on Christian Russia, through war, such abhorrent novelties as gender ideology, homosexuality, pedophilia, and any other "filth" they can dredge up.
Would-be Christian Russia
Putin says he must now defend Russia's frontiers and traditional values from an invasion of Western depravities. Strangely, Russia has had to defend these values with the most unchristian acts, such as bombing power stations ahead of winter.
The Russian parliament recently voted unanimously (and it's always unanimous with these regimes) to ban all books, films or declarations that describe or promote homosexual relations or "non-traditional sexual attitudes." As far as Christian Russia is concerned, people are somehow taught to be gay.
In the fight against lies, we are simply dealing with some plain truths Russian hypocrisy has sought to hide. Putin's battle is not a war against satanism but against what despots hate most: freedom. And the worst attack on freedom is a perverse power's bid to impose its distortions and lies as the truth.
While the rise of European right-wing populism is becoming a pan-continental phenomenon, we seem determined to miss its one common driver.
STOCKHOLM — I cast my first vote in a junior-high gym in southern Sweden. I was 13 and it wasn't a real election, but a mock civic exercise to prepare students for their coming life of suffrage. I have a clear memory, back 20 years ago now, that exactly two people in my class of 30 voted for the right-wing Sweden Democrats. They were twin brothers and perhaps best described as true locals in our small city. They were also of some true (or false) local repute, not so much for their political prowess as for their protruding Habsburgian jaws — a result, rumor had it, of family relations having become too intimate in the depths of the Swedish pine forest.
That was then, when far-right affiliation was so rare that it had to have some legend attached to it. But national support for the Sweden Democrats has since jumped to roughly 18%, as similar backing for right-wing parties grows all around Europe: those that have made worldwide headlines like AfD in Germany, Rassemblement National in France, the Lega in Italy, UKIP in the UK; but also similar formations with similar ideas in Austria, Estonia, Norway, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands too, as the political climate keeps trending far rightward.
Right-wing populism is of course not limited to Europe, but its reach across the virtual entirety of the continent, north to south, east to west, must prompt us to ask why.
In the European south, populism has often been framed as a desperate protest against corruption and kleptocracy — issues that are marginal at best in countries like Germany and Sweden. In those two countries, instead, migration has been singled out as the main issue after each received a large number of refugees during the 2015 Syria crisis. This, however, was not the case in eastern Europe, where right-wing parties made strides in countries where borders remained closed or migration was limited.
Populism always has its roots in a loss of public confidence in the ruling class
Indeed, in a place as politically and culturally diverse as Europe, it's probably not useful to view the rise of populism through either a lens of "geography" or "issues," like corruption, crime, migration. Likewise, while criticism of the many shortcomings of the Union itself is shared by European populists everywhere, that too does not actually get to the heart of people's concerns.
That leaves, if you'll pardon the very 20th-century term: economic ideology. What we have learned over the past few decades is that populism, on the left or right, always has its roots in a loss of public confidence in the ruling class that's driven by very close-to-home questions of social and economic fairness.
In my home country, that had already started in the 1980's — long before mass migration, before full European Union integration, and even before the founding of the Sweden Democrats — when economic inequality started to rise. Perhaps, for the rest of Europe too, ever since the old feudal ways of the Habsburg Empire crumbled, our societies have been fundamentally driven by economic tensions … and the politicians who know how to exploit them.
Staying updated with the news has become a way to pass time, but there are real effects on the health of the polity.
-Essay-
PARIS — In radio or TV news studios, experts and essay writers, journalists and public speakers are invited to comment on the news of the day, all the time. Is this democratic progress or ideological slippage?
What's certain is it's persistent background noise. A constant hubbub. A heady ambient music that seems to put information and opinion, reason and passion, knowledge and experience on an equal footing. From social media to 24-hour news channels, the commentariat society expands its influence across public spaces, through controversies and off-the-cuff analysis.
Does its spread represent progress for democracy that could be defined, with the framing of French philosopher Jacques Rancière, as the power of "anyone" or evidence of the tyrannical power of spoiled individuals to say "anything"? A sign of position egalitarianism or opinion relativism? Is it an ever-increasing social demand for participation, outspokenness and blunt speech or a technological-commercial injunction to display one's irresistible impulse, to create fakes and clash? The significance that has been attributed to commenting, in any case, is troublesome even at the highest levels of the State.
French President Emmanuel Macron has warned about the risks of the phenomenon: "The main problem, to me, is the crumbling of hierarchies, implicitly provoked by the society of permanent commentary: the feeling that all is equal, that all voices are equal, the voice of a non specialist who has an opinion on the virus is worth the same as that of a real scientist," he declared emphatically during a December interview for L'Express magazine.
From social media to 24-hour news channels, the commentariat society expands its influence across public spaces.
The health crisis has probably made it worse. Leveling and smoothing effects of television: On TV or radio sets — that are now filmed — the voice of an editorial writer and that of an epidemiologist are placed on the same level. "The self-declared pundit delegitimizes everything that was reasonable, and now anyone can feel free to doubt official discourses," French essay writer Christian Salmon said. "To the point where we have doubts about everything." This echoes Macron, who told L'Express, "The psychological and social consequences are terrible, because we end up not believing in anything."
The dominion of the commentariat, or punditocracy, reflects the ever-increasing influence of the media, which often occupy the space deserted by public places, political parties or even labor unions. Back in 1988, Guy Debord, co-founder of the Situationist International and author of Society of the Spectacle ("La Société du Spectacle") wrote that the media had colonized and destroyed the public spaces of the past. And today, it is precisely the pundits who have turned into a spectacle, as news becomes entertainment.
"We keep ourselves updated also to pass the time," says French journalist Jean-Sébastien Ferjou, himself a regular invité to talk shows. It might be one of the reasons why the sports model has spread to the political and intellectual sphere, with sparring matches, battles and duels that are often hatched up beforehand.
Valérie Jeanne-Perrier, Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at the Sorbonne, and head of the Celsa School of Journalism, describes the news today as "background noise," responding to a permanent drive to grab the public's attention. "It is the media ratings and especially the digital measures that are multiplying all of the commentary," she went on. On social media, "emojis' keep offering a wide range of moods, feelings and reactions. "Our digitized society is two-folded and is governed by algorithms'", Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at Rennes-II University Pierre Musso said. "Feedback dominates and the action-reaction cycle prevails, as shown by the "like" and "dislike" options on Facebook."
Public space is informed by media technology. Constantly using the emotional register and putting reason aside has created certain "Monsters 2.0" such as fake news, harassment, and the increase of violent content. "There are things one can do in a virtual space that would be unacceptable in the real world," notes Pauline Escande-Gauquié of Paris-Sorbonne-Celsa University.
The measurable society — ruled by numbers — also produces a literally limitless world. "The presence of hateful reactions should not lead to a uniform vision of commenting", Valérie Jeanne-Perrier said. "We often focus on their downfalls, but most of them call for solidarity and peer support, and help, in such a hard time, shaping an ethics of care."
But still. Many intellectuals, including Christian Salmon, think that in this commentariat society, "reasoned deliberation gives way to a release of transgression. And they are wondering how to behave in a public space that does not look so much as the one described by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, which appeared in the bourgeois salons of Europe during the 18th century, in which citizens and intellectuals shared progressive ideas, and opposed absolutism..
The figure of the "specific intellectual" was conceived of by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the researcher who engages in the public space with a determined knowledge but without meaning to say "the right-and-the-true for all". ... That is why, according to French historian Gérard Noiriel, "he can only step into the public space on issues he has already studied for years. However, this figure seems today stuck within the continuous flow of discourses for which we have to share our opinion at every opportunity.
There are things one can do in a virtual space that would be unacceptable in the real world.
The conditions for intellectuals and journalists are quite similar today. What is the point of claiming legitimacy based on an ethics code and an occupation if the figure of the journalist is reduced to that of a commentator who randomly gives his opinion on TV? "There is a high risk, indeed, that the whole profession might lose its credibility, particularly when commentators neglect facts, as we see far too often," media historian Alexis Lévrier said. "Especially since news channels often deem ‘editorial writers' people who have nothing to do with journalism." Yet most of the time, you do not become an editorial writer without having worked as a reporter and having had experience in the field.
There is the risk of disrupting the journalistic function but we also see the art of political diversion. "The increasing importance of the commentariat is a blessing for those in power, who can more easily manipulate the news cycle by instigating topics to divert attention or direct it to issues they control," says Cécile Alduy, semiotics specialist and Professor of French Literature at Stanford University.
From ideological manipulation to the logic of discrediting truth, the reign of the pundits may represent a bona fide threat to democracy. But what if it was the other way round? "A commentariat society is a democratic society," said French sociologist Arnaud Esquerre. "Social media have made public some of those conservations that had been confined to the private sphere," they said.
We can acknowledge the democratic virtues of sharing opinions without falling into the trap of the punditocracy. And to avoid this flow of words and images that can look like a comedy of the "I know nothing but will say everything," that French actor and director Pierre Richard made fun of. "The problem now is no longer about allowing people to talk, but to provide them with the empty spaces and silence of solitude where they would finally find something to say," wrote French philosopher Gilles Deleuze back in 1985. And what if the arrival of the commentariat society became an invitation to learn the importance of how to keep quiet?
A strategy for fighting the pandemic, national confinement morphs into a dangerous ideology if it uses the pretext of health protection to target migrants.
-Analysis-
PARIS — For some, the main lesson from this health crisis may be that we should have closed the borders a long time ago. But close them to whom? To migrants alone or to all international travelers? In our brains, the opening or closing of borders has automatically been associated with migration policy.
Yet, we see that this virus makes no difference between a migrant and a tourist or business traveler. It has no ideology, it obeys the law of large numbers and one basic fact: that immigration accounts for a tiny proportion of border crossings — less than 1%. A policy of national confinement that would use health protection as a pretext to target migrants while neglecting 99% of border crossings would be repeating the mistakes of the past, well described by historian Antonin Durand in an article in the online journal De facto.
In 2018, the total number of border crossings worldwide for stays of less than one year reached 1.4 billion, according to the World Tourism Organization. Despite the boom in telecommunications, this number has increased by 50% in ten years. A large part of the travel is for leisure, but also includes visits to relatives, study trips, pilgrimages, business trips (internships, missions, seasonal work). Unsurprisingly, half of all border entries are concentrated in Europe. However, the world record is held by France: More than 89 million people have entered the country in 2018, migration not included. France is followed by Spain (83 million), the United States (80 million), China (63 million) and Italy (62 million).
Without foreign customers, entire sectors are bound to suffer.
It's more difficult to estimate the number of entries for permanent migration, but the order of magnitude is one hundred times smaller. Each year in France, approximately 540,000 entries are due to migration, which is very little considering the total of 90 million temporary or permanent entries: only 0.6%. Even with a large margin of error, this is an indispensable figure for health control. Border controls aimed at slowing the spread of epidemics are legitimate, but there is no justification for reserving them for migrants only, when there are 140 to 200 times more international travelers. We can't disguise migration policy as a health policy.
Yet, such confusion is common. In a recent interview for Le Figaro, Philippe de Villiers rejoiced: The epidemic has sounded the death knell for globalism. As if globalization was to blame for "four deadly crises: health, migration, economic, and soon financial." Clearly, the ideology of national confinement is not a matter of genuine national interest.
The crisis made us realize that professions with a high social utility mobilize immigrants more than others. It is also clear that, without foreign customers, entire sectors are bound to suffer. The 89 million entries in 2018 produced 140 million overnight stays by non-residents — just as many as the number of overnight stays made by French customers! The Louvre would not be the world's leading museum if it did not sell 75% of its tickets to foreigners. And so on and so forth.
The dream of a world closing its borders to all foreigners is a ruinous nightmare.
Did you dream about a world flawlessly applying the ideology of "national confinement"? The border closures brought about by the epidemic give you an empirical proof: A world without migrants and foreign visitors is a world at a standstill. It is a world in which citizens of Northern countries — a bitter irony — can in turn become undesirable foreigners in Southern countries.
It is good that sovereign states seek to guarantee certain strategic productions on their territory for defense and health. But any hint of nationalism reaches its limits when it meets the ruinous effects of national confinement and sovereign decisions of other countries. We do not lose our independence if, instead of baking our own bread, we buy it from a baker; we become interdependent and this is what we call the market, involving cooperation, exchange and regulation. The same applies to international relations, including European integration or international conventions on mobility, migration or asylum.
The tendency to constantly and increasingly cross borders is neither a fad nor an anomaly. It is a groundswell. Under what pretext would we want to dissuade young people, workers or retirees from traveling the world? Migration, on its modest scale, is part of this movement. This mobility must be regulated, it is inevitable, but it is hard to see how we can reverse the increasing globalization of international travel, unless we dream of perpetual confinement.
The dream of a world closing its borders to all foreigners is a ruinous nightmare. Once restrictions end, the world will continue to move — and there will be everything to see.
*François Héran is a sociologist, anthropologist and demographer, holder of the chair of migrations and societies at the Collège de France, former director of the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) from 1999 to 2009, moderator of the Institut Convergences Migrations. Latest published works: "Avec l'immigration. Mesurer, débattre, agir", (La Découverte, 2017) and "Migrations et sociétés' (Fayard, 2018).
It's hard to find a starred halal or kosher restaurant, but scattered about the French capital, such upscale restaurants do exist.
PARIS — At first glance, Le Médaillon doesn't look like much. This French restaurant, with its menu derived from organic and halal products, sits across the street from a gloomy set of hospital buildings in a not-very-glamorous sector of Villejuif (Val-de-Marne), a suburb south of Paris.
A warm handshake from the boss, Djamel Bouhadda — better known on the airwaves as Chef Voilà — helps put as at ease. But we only really settled in when a waiter arrives, lifting a silver plate cover to reveal a wonder of culinary inventiveness.
There before us is an Aubrac fillet, enhanced with tuna sheets, served with a stuffing of crayfish and shrimp marinated in red pesto. Placed on it, like a headdress, is a purée of Noirmoutier potatoes combined with an Alba white truffle cream. We take in the aroma and then, finally, it's time to taste the elegant, award-winning dish.
Is high-end halal or kosher cuisine possible?
Except Le Médaillon is not listed in any guide. "I received a visit once from a Michelin inspector… but, since then, nothing," Djamel Bouhadda confides. "Someone told me that we are not distinguished because we don't do wine pairings," the proprietor adds. "Obviously, we don't offer alcohol!"
Which raises the question: Is high-end halal or kosher cuisine possible? Gwendal Poullennec, international director for the Michelin guides, dismisses the question altogether. "As long as a restaurant can present quality cuisine, whatever the type, it has a place in our guide," he says.
"The judgment of our inspectors is based on five criteria: the selection of products, the mastery of cooking, the harmony of flavors, the chef's personality portrayed through their dishes and consistency of performance," Poullennec adds. "Any chef who is capable of refining kosher or halal products and who can offer gastronomy of quality will naturally be awarded a star."
Rules and restrictions
And yet, truth be told, it's incredibly difficult to find a starred kosher or halal restaurant in the guide. Without referencing specifically, it's necessary to look page by page until you stumble upon the rare gem. Or not.
Michelin, to this day, does not mention any cuisine of either type in the Île-de-France, the region of France that includes Paris. And it's no better when it comes to Gault & Millaut or Fooding. Jewish and Muslim "foodies' must, therefore, use other resources. For halal cuisine, there's the website PLSB. Kosher connoisseurs can also go online — to 123cacher.
Upscale dining does, of course, exist in both categories, but they don't tend to attract traditional guides. And a big part of the reason why are the dietary restrictions imposed on chefs in these restaurants.
Chef Julien Sebbag — Photo: Alma Hotel and Lounge מלון עלמה/Facebook
"Recently, I even turned down a strictly kosher restaurant venture because I feel like it would have been more about serving a religious cause than doing creative cuisine," he adds. "And it's all too exclusive: 99% of the people eating in kosher restaurants are Jewish."
But it was during the summer months, on the rooftop terrace of the Lafayette Galleries, that this enthusiast for Mediterranean flavors seemed to have really found his niche. There, he decided to offer only vegetarian fare, with dishes based on eggplant, house-made hummus, and strawberry salad with mozzarella.
Sebbag may very well be on to something: Vegetables — already emerging as the new icons of contemporary cuisine — as a way to unite gourmets of all creeds. Pourquoi pas?
Laurence Orah Phitoussi, author of the book La Cuisine Du Shabbat En 30 Minutes, reminds us of the basic principles of kosher food: You can only eat animals that are ruminant and have split hooves (forget about pork and rabbit, in other words); the animal must be ritually slaughtered; and its meat is heavily salted to lose as much blood as possible. Also, meat and milk are not mixed during cooking or consumption (farewell creamy cutlets). Only fish with scales and fins are eaten (so no ray or turbot). And wine must also be kosher, which sadly excludes some excellent wines.
On the halal side, meat is also slain ritually and drained of its blood. Many Muslims forbid the consumption of raw or bloody meat (so long carpaccio and tartare). Pork is off limits too. And of course, alcohol is a no-no.
These guidelines heavily impact the menu… and the bill. The starred chef Simone Zanoni estimats that when he ran Rafael, a now-closed gourmet kosher restaurant in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, his prices — because of ingredients and necessary inspections — were 20% to 30% higher than non-kosher restaurants of the same standing.
Tricks of the trade
To get noticed, therefore, high-end kosher and halal chefs must prove themselves to be highly inventive. Such is the case with Les Grands Enfants, an excellent halal place that seats 85 and is just few steps from Paris' famous Père-Lachaise cemetery. In this family restaurant where turbans, scarves, and bare heads mix in gargantuan numbers, the chef, 40-year-old Kamel Djellali, strives to offer a convincing halal version of French specialties, despite the ban on using any type of alcohol.
Marinating liver in armagnac or cognac, for example, is not allowed, even if the alcohol evaporates while cooking. And yet, there on the plate is homemade duck foie gras (14 euros) and something that is very close to a classic liver pâte. It could pass as the real thing: The texture is identical, and if the taste is a little less elevated, the illusion is perfectly maintained when you pair it with its onion and red fruit chutney.
It's good that today practicing Muslims can afford a fancier dining experience too!
"I needed to experiment a lot, and I've had a lot of failures," says the chef. So what's the secret? Djellali keeps that to himself, but does tell us one of the key ingredients — honey, for flavor. "Some people are discovering French dishes for the first time with us, things that they've fantasized about forever," he adds. "We don't want to mess that up!"
The restaurant manager, Nazim Mazari, 33, opened two other places, including one in the chic 6th arrondissement of Paris. "Today there are Muslims who have the means and the desire to taste dishes that were inaccessible to their parents," he says. "Non-Muslims have been enjoying couscous for a longtime. It's good that today practicing Muslims can afford a fancier dining experience too!"
On the kosher side, we find a similar craze for new restaurants and a clientele tired of ordering the same slab of salmon in classic French brasseries. Just look at chef Julien Sebbag's phenomenal success! The 27-year-old, with his edgy style, specializes in pop-up restaurants.
Currently, he's set up shop in the Bus Palladium nightclub, in the 9th arrondissement, where, in a party atmosphere among friends, he electrifies the kosher kitchen. "I use kosher products, but I didn't ask for certification," he explains sprinkling crumbled spices on broccoli (32 euros for two people).
The Islamic State is now on the run in Syria and Iraq. Following the terror group's defeat this summer in its self-declared Iraqi capital of Mosul, ISIS has now been driven from its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. This comes more than four years after ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his "Caliphate" from the pulpit of the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul.
ISIS's aim was a break from the more amorphous strategy of al-Qaeda, with the Caliphate meant to be a reestablishment of the Prophet Muhammad's theocratic state that would now extend out from the territory it was rapidly conquering in the war-torn areas of Iraq and Syria.
Now, the territory is being ceded just as quickly, a major blow to al-Baghdadi's ambitions. But ISIS was always more than just a land grab. The movement has simultaneously been invading the minds of Muslims around the world, inspiring unflagging devotion to the Salafist cause. Through social media and the Internet, al-Baghdadi's message has given rise to ISIS offshoots in all corners of the globe, where local military forces have had varying success in defeating jihadist insurgents.
In the Philippines, where for decades Muslim insurgency groups based predominantly in the southern islands have challenged Manila's authority, government forces have been battling ISIS rebels in the city of Marawi since May. Last Tuesday, the military declared victory.
Even when fighting together, Afghan and American forces are "not enough" to defeat the rebels.
The win came at a high cost. According to the Indonesia-based media outlet KBR, the violence in Marawi displaced some 400,000 residents, approximately 90% of the city's population. The displaced will have difficulty returning to their homes, as the city now lays in ruin. Moreover, the long-term battle against Islamic insurgency is bound to return to the region.
A similar story repeats around the world. It's the result of the franchise model that the Islamic State adopted and expanded from al-Qaeda. It surprised many Americans, in the midst of the media circus surrounding the deaths of four U.S. soldiers in Niger, that ISIS had taken up residence in the West African nation.
To bring it full circle, the French daily Le Figaro features a reportage on the fortunes of ISIS In Afghanistan, the former home base of al-Qaeda. There, a branch of the group is gaining ground in the mountainous zone of Tora Bora, where Osama Bin Laden had sought refuge after orchestrating the 9/11 attacks.
"We're dealing with an ideological force that wants to expand at any cost," a Western diplomat told Le Figaro, adding that even when fighting together, Afghan and American forces are "not enough" to defeat the rebels.
Indeed, beyond what we call it or how it looks on a map, it is the idea of the Islamic State that is the hardest to defeat.
As his words and public gestures confirm, Francis is a people's pope, not a populist, and as genuine as he is popular with ordinary folk.
-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — The Argentine Church has made a point in the past few decades to distance its thinking from both Marxism and capitalism, and this explains in part its sympathies for "Peronism", that overarching national movement that combines ideological elements of both Left and Right.
It would otherwise be difficult to explain why so many priests in our country have felt (and still feel) sympathy for this "third position" represented by General Juan Domingo Perón and his political successors. Many Argentinian Catholics feel in their hearts that Justicialism — the mother doctrine of Peronists — helps maintain certain Christian values dear to patriots who are otherwise lukewarm to some of the movement's other values, like cultural pluralism, democratic politics or the separation of powers.
Also, Peronism understands relations between the Church and politics in an integral manner close to the views of some Catholics.
But it would be misleading to cite this relationship in order to explain the discourse of our Argentine Pope. Previously when he served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio took his distance from liberation theology for the Marxist outlook it often revealed in analyzing the social realities of its time. The matter is further complicated by his tendency to equate liberalism with capitalism, which he in turns views as essentially unfettered and lawless capitalism.
If Pope Francis seems ambivalent in his references to populism, one must first consider how he understands the "people," a recurrent term in his thought and the theological thrust he has espoused. Words may not necessarily coincide in different minds, and one can misinterpret those uttered by the Pope by slotting them into predetermined categories alien to his own particular conceptions.
One may usefully refer here to the two theologians closest to Francis's thinking. One, Carlos Galli, the former dean of the theology department at the Argentine Catholic University (UCA), and member of the International Theological Commission, was recently interviewed in Madrid. Asked about the populism often attributed to the pontiff, he responded that the Pope is "popular because he loves God's people. He is not populist. He is popular for the warmth of his treatment. It is where the Latin American culture of showing affection and making gestures appears. He is popular because he speaks in simple terms. But you have to see the spiritual and doctrinal depth of his writings."
A populist instead, Galli says, is a "rhetorical demagogue who throws slogans at people and simplifies things to create simple formulae with which to manipulate people." The people's theology that Francis preaches, and which is widely given Latin American origins, is not "just a theology to express the reality of the Latin American Church ... but one that comes out of the pages of the Old Testament to land in (the reformist doctrines of) Vatican II and express the Church's social and historical dimensions."
Separately, Víctor Manuel Fernández, an archbishop and dean of the UCA, insists the word "people" is one the Pope uses with "gleaming eyes." He values the people as a collective entity that should be the central concern of the Church and any other power. That is not said lightly, when certain sectors in Church and society view the people as a flat mass of defects to be rectified through the educational efforts of "wiser," more prudent individuals.
We must recall that as archbishop, Bergoglio always insisted on priests not just being merciful but adapting to people who followed neither a strict morality nor any regular church routine. He told them not to complicate people's lives with norms imposed from above. "We are here to give the people what they need, we are instruments of God for the good of their lives," he always insisted.
This, I am convinced, is not opportunist populism (though they can call it what they like), but a conviction that the Holy Spirit works through the people and often in frameworks and patterns that enlightened or comfortable sectors of the population cannot perceive. Bergoglio believed these sectors tend to show the same irrational authoritarianism they like to criticize.
Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni shows us a little of this thinking in The Betrothed ("I promessi sposi"), which Bergoglio has read and reread. The people are the book's central character, seen from a truly religious and social perspective. Is it possible then to open new dialogues and debates on Francis, with different perspectives and new languages that could help us understand his complex personality?
Arriving in Rome, one is particularly surprised to see how much sympathy and admiration this Pope arouses in the most varied people, almost in contrast with certain Church personalities and officials. People tend to see him as close and affectionate, human and able to understand existential situations — and a friend of the poor and suffering. The time he devotes in each audience to the sick, to children and young people outlasts that granted diplomats, politicians and prelates.
His voice is heard, and his gestures are made to reach the faithful wherever they are.
The latest in the perilous liaisons between pro-Russian Germans and Vladimir Putin is taking the propaganda war on the West to a whole new level with a think tank relocated to Berlin.
-OpEd-
BERLIN —It was only a matter of time before the grand Russian performance arrived in Germany. And it did, at the Berlin Bühne theater last Friday. It was the official opening of the "Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute" in Berlin.
Moscow has always seen the longstanding Russian House in the German capital, with its gigantic entrance hall and small display cases, as a sarcophagus of late socialism — not nearly enough to satisfy Putin's ambitions of "a Russian world."
Instead, the grand opening of the Institute at the Humboldt Carré and a representative branch in central Berlin are aimed at the heart of a city in which decisions of European importance are made.
Until recently you would not have been able to imagine that, at the end of the long and difficult decades-long process of de-escalation between Russians and Germans, the reins could be handed over to a former KGB general, who is a member of "Putin's kleptocracy" (in Amercian academoc Karen Dawisha's words, taken from her brilliant research). Intelligence services, orthodoxy and oligarchy —all rolled into one person.
Your astonishment at these developments, however, only demonstrates that you have not been keeping up with Putin and his think tank, whose policy is one of escalation in both military and ideological terms. They certainly know with whom they are dealing, namely with a Germany that has become tired after all the turbulence and crises of the last few years — Greece, Europe, war in the Ukraine, Brexit — and just wants to be left in peace and resume business-as-usual.
You do not need to be an advocate of conspiracy theories to know that the relocation of the think tank from Vienna to Berlin was carried out with precision timing. Russia's rich men, who stigmatize and persecute independent newspapers editorial, journalists and all sorts of initiatives, have had the audacity to take the war for "cultural hegemony" to foreign soil.
There is no lack of money seeing as the oligarchs made sure to transfer their holdings overseas. And they learned that everyone and everything, from the Nord Stream pipeline to Kensington real estate, is for sale. Sometimes it is even given to you for free.
Their success in Germany is nearly a given due to the fact that this country is the home of a singular "culture of discourse." In Germany, the belief to continue to try and solve the world's problems with people who have long since left the negotiating table, is irrefutable.
Putin fans, Russian standards
The institute's choice of personnel is telling: a former head of the most notable German political trust to promote social democracy; a qualified university lecturer from Rostov-on-Don, Russia; a "talk show general" (who can't even read maps); diplomats who cannot keep their temper under control and want to take advantage of their nobility to take their place in the historic relations between Germany and Russia.
The Institute's opening last week in Berlin — Photo: DOC
They are all clearly Putin fans, who are more in love with Putin rather than Russia, who loftily "reassure" Russia that "it is not ready yet" and that "no Western standards" should be applied. In short: They claim that Russia is too backwards to be able to tolerate democracy. The West's age old arrogance hidden behind the façade of russophilia.
There were of course good reasons to have moved the institute from Vienna to Berlin. Vienna is too remote and Austria already has plenty of Putin sympathizers. But most of all, Berlin is seen to be, strategically speaking, more important. It seems that Berlin is the place where they could, with very little effort on their part, make the breakthrough needed to see the West and EU crumble once and for all.
Putin's think tanks have read the signs in the West. Coalitions that no one would have thought possible four years ago have become reality. A political left wing that invokes Liebknecht and Luxembourg but does not mind supporting the warlords in Donbass or Russian bombs hitting Aleppo. The right-wing German movement Pegida displaying posters stating "Putin, save us!" and welcoming the Russian President's black Nightwolf Motorcycle Club. And last but not least an incalculably wide field of those victimized and offended now eager to take revenge, revenge on the West and, most of all, on the Americans. For them all: Putin, the avenger is there.
And then you have the surrounding Russian community of more than 200,000 people and several Russian-speaking newspapers. We don't even have to mention the appointed Putin fans who remind us of their presence with hate mail sent to critics on a daily basis.
Putin's friends, such as Gerhard Schröder, Gabriele Krone-Schmalz and Edmund Stoiber, would have us believe that criticizing Putin proves a renaissance of Russo-xenophobia, racism and the subhuman ideology. I have been traveling Russia, this wonderful and large country, for too long to be intimidated by this.
Russia's being a part of Europe means having Putin fans all around you. As if we didn't know. They always assault us by mentioning Russia's outstanding culture, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Pasternak. And they always imply that to attack Putin is to attack Russia. They would have us believe that we "demonize" Putin and that, actually, it is always someone else's fault. May it be the armed aggression against Ukraine or the exclusion and disqualification of doped athletes from international competitions, it is always someone else's fault.
The Putin apologists claim sole monopoly of Russophilia, although they are probably mostly thinking about their male-bonding sessions, having shared a pint of beer and possibly scored a lucrative job posting. That is perfectly fine, they can do whatever they want to but not "in our name."
Those who know a little about Russian culture also know what happened to the great men of literature Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak. There always has been a Russia of the lords and of those who did not want to be their slaves. The guilt felt by Germans towards the Russians (but not towards the other countries of the former Soviet Union). The gestures of a powerful nation, always preferring to cultivate "German-Russian" relations rather than those to other Eastern European countries. Sentimentality and kitsch and, last but not least, the feeling that we Germans want to be left alone. Despite the fact that a war is raging less than a two-hour flight from Berlin.
German soldiers during Battle of Stalingrad — Photo: Wikipedia
The normalization of German-Russian relations had advanced so well because generations of people demonstrated their good faith despite geographical borders that divided them. And they did so in Berlin, of all places. Russian Berlin, a place where, like nowhere else, you are able to see the German-Russian embroilment during the "century of extremes." A place that has become a stage for a former KGB general who is supposed to lead the "Dialogue of Civilisations." This is, for me personally, the biggest defeat I had to suffer in my life, scientifically as well as politically.
Berlin does not deserve to become the seat of a neo-imperial, anti-European Internationale after having been the prospective center of a world revolution between the wars, and, later on, Stalin's Komintern, which is nowadays the sanctuary of a community of refugees that encompasses hundreds of thousands of people. Germany's Social Democratic Party, located in Weimar and sister party to the Russian Social Democrats, who are in exile in Berlin, should take a close look at their own history. Only then, should they decide if they want to play this Russian card in the upcoming poker game of national elections.
*Karl Schlögel is a German historian whose work focuses on Russian modernism and Stalinism.
One expert warns of a new "wolf pack" tactics for sowing terror with small, coordinated attacks like those seen this past week in Istanbul and Dhaka.
WASHINGTON — Massacres attributed to the ÂIslamic State have struck on four continents this year, reflecting how the appeal of the group's ideology is growing even as the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria has receded, according to experts.
The slaughter of civilians in three large attacks in the past week alone — in Istanbul on Tuesday, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Friday, and in Baghdad on Sunday — suggests that militant actions beyond the caliphate's borders are taking place more frequently and not necessarily with any overt direction from some caliphate headquarters. Even more alarmingly, a growing number of attacks, starting with those in Paris and Brussels, were conducted by gangs of assailants instead of by an individual gunman.
"What's striking to me about the Istanbul and Dhaka attacks is that both weren't done by lone wolves at all," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA counterterrorism official and Brookings Institution analyst of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS). "These were done by teams of terrorists working with a very thought-through attack plan. I call them ‘wolf pack' attacks. They are rapidly becoming the Islamic State's signature."
Last week, to mark the two-year anniversary of its self-declared caliphate, ISIS created a chart showing its influence, stretching from the moderate control it claims in the Philippines to a "covert" presence in France, with 15 other countries in between. Even countries not on the list are fearful. In India, the government says dozens of Indian Muslims are being monitored after they have undergone some kind of training with the Islamic State, but Indian officials acknowledge the actual number may be much higher.
While the core of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria has been pummeled by coalition airstrikes and by armies and militias fighting them on the ground, Islamic State soldiers have spread throughout the Middle East and far afield. Attacks in Turkey, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and several European capitals, and the lone-wolf attacks in Orlando and San Bernardino, show the Islamic State's potency as an ideology.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday that the Islamic State is "vicious and adaptive" in what he called a "global terrorism campaign."
"It's very much losing territory, but at the same time, expanding its global presence," he said.
U.S. intelligence officials say battlefield setbacks in Iraq and Syria appear to have driven the Islamic State's leaders to speed up their timeline for attacks abroad. Many intelligence officials and terrorism experts think that recent terrorist strikes in Paris, Brussels, Turkey and Bangladesh are a reflection of that strategy.
"We judge that ISIS will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda," CIA Director John Brennan said in testimony before the Senate last month.
While the Islamic State had been primarily focused on building and defending its caliphate, the group has long expressed ambitions for attacking targets outside the Middle East. The jihadists' English-language magazine, Dabiq, regularly includes discussions of plans to conquer Rome and other cities of symbolic importance, in addition to capturing all lands that were once part of the Islamic empires of history. In Dhaka, foreign customers at the Holey Artisan Bakery who were from "Crusader countries" were singled out for death.
A "news bulletin" radio broadcast that the Islamic State disseminates on social media recently provided a rapid-fire listing of attacks conducted by its fighters, which it characterizes as the "forces of the caliphate."
The group's aspirations date back to its earliest days, when it was called al-Qaeda in Iraq and led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"We perform jihad here while our eyes are upon al-Quds Jerusalem. We fight here, while our goal is Rome," Zarqawi famously said, in a line frequently cited by the Islamic State's leadership.
The group's highly regimented structure includes a unit dedicated to facilitating attacks on foreign soil, U.S. and European officials say. Former ISIS fighters now in custody have told investigators that the unit, called EMNI or AMNI, has been active in Europe for more than a year.
One jailed French recruit named Nicholas Moreau recalled meeting some of the EMNI operatives in Syria and described them as part of the "secret service for the exterior of the Islamic State," according to notes of the interview obtained by The Washington Post.
"The external mission is to send people all over the world to do violence, to kill or recruit young people, or to obtain cameras, or chemicals for weapons," Moreau said, according to a translation of the French investigators' notes. He identified as an EMNI operative the Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the reported field commander of November's terrorist strike in Paris, and said at least four others had traveled to northern Europe to make preparations. It is not clear whether the four have been identified and arrested.
"They are dangerous and know the background about weapons," Moreau was quoted as saying. "I think they are in Europe. I do not know where they are exactly."
Secretary of State John F. Kerry has frequently said that attacks, whether conducted by or inspired by ISIS, are a sign of the group's desperation as the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria is chipped away. Nevertheless, the group apparently remains rooted enough that it recently issued its own caliphate dinar currency, embossed with the words Islamic State.
But increasingly, it's the idea of the Islamic State, rather than the group's control of any territory, that has taken on greater significance.
"As Dhaka and Istanbul demonstrate, the idea is being translated into a tactic that is much more dangerous than inspiring a single individual to go out and carry out an attack," Riedel said. "As horrific as Orlando was, had it been four guys in the bar, think how much more complicated it would have been.
"It's making the challenge of defeating it more and more urgent, as well as more and more difficult."
Souad Mekhennet in Frankfurt, Germany, and Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi contributed to this report.
From London to Latin America, the extremism featured on the news and political speeches in vogue belie the rise of pragmatism as the new dominant shaper of policy.
BUENOS AIRES - The world is changing so fast that the ideological divisions we've known are getting swept away. It's a reality that at least in our country, Argentina — and no doubt, others too — is rarely acknowledged.
It's not that ideologies are dead, or that history has ended, as they said after the fall of the Berlin Wall. What the ideologies of the 20th century sought was to establish how to best or most fairly distribute social assets, and that debate will continue for a good while. It is more the all-encompassing theory debate that is moribund; for beyond issues of distribution, fewer aim to give an answer to all social problems which had long provoked ideological confrontation with opponents.
The changes happening in the world today have even seeped into some of the ideologies that claim divine mandates.
In Iran, the ayatollahs who have installed a reactionary and repressive regime practicing misogyny in God's name. Yet in 2013, the country's then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted indignation at home when he was seen embracing, in sympathy, the widow of Hugo Chávez at the late Venezuelan leader's funeral. The clerics reminded him he could not touch any woman who was not his wife or immediate relative, including shaking hands or kissing on the cheek.
Three years later, in last month's general elections, Iranians voted in 14 female parliamentarians. They are young and exude rebelliousness. One of them is envisaging a revolutionary project, to abolish the laws obliging women to wear the hijab headscarves, which God supposedly expects women to wear for decency. The 14 legislators have in fact pledged to fight all discriminatory norms that turn a woman into her husband's or father's property.
In Qatar, another confessional state that follows the arch-conservative Wahhabi school of Islam, a generation of women is already occupying prominent positions in the state and private sectors. One is Ilham al-Qaradawi, a physicist of international standing now enjoying great prestige at home, and another, Aysha al-Mudahka, heads a top business incubation center.
Meanwhile, a man of Pakistani origin Sadiq Khan was just voted mayor of London, the first Muslim to lead a major Western capital.
The rise of Islamic extremism in the world does not contradict, but confirms this tendency. Terrorism is the last resort of those who seek, or have lost, power. ISIS wants to forge an Islamic state in Iraq and Syria because existing Islamic states no longer constitute an international threat amid the swing toward moderation even as the Tehran regime curbing its nuclear plans.
In France, the increasingly popular Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron has recently declared that he is both of the Right and the Left. He is conjugating, not dismissing, the ideologies.
Call him an iconoclast, but Macron believes the times of cosmic visions and dogmas are over. Today, conservatives can back pragmatic decisions that include key progressive elements — and vice-versa. The trend, says Macron, is in evaluating the merits of decisions taken in power, whatever the political affiliations of those taking them.
French Economy Minister Emanuel Macron — Photo: Le Web
In its recent "prehistory," politicians like Tony Blair would describe this trend as "the third way." It is a perspective that denies supremacy to either state or market, promotes a deepening of democratic mechanisms and favors development plans combining interventionist and pro-market components.
The softening of ideologies can turn out to be good or bad, but for now the rules of the game are changing. Macron is not an exception. A recent poll in France for example shows that a third of all Socialist party voters opposed the building of more mosques in France, and more than half favors banning the Islamic veil in public spaces. These are postures usually associated in other countries with the right.
Another poll showed that between 40% and 50% of French under the age of 35 declare they are neither of the Left or the Right, and can evaluate policies from an independent position.
Here in Latin American, our country remains tied today to old ideological prejudices. Its political discussions are a reiteration of those that prevailed 50 or more years ago. For many, raising wages to maintain purchasing power is a "left-wing" argument. Cutting spending, necessarily, to reduce the budget deficit is on the other hand described as "right-wing." Privatizing firms is again described as right-wing, even when the state no longer knows how to run that firm. And so on.
Adopting a mixed economy, with elements of the Right and the Left, is less laborious and risky than facing the ire of fanatics forced to lift the veil of Islamic women. It is about replacing intellectual absolutism with serious thought and common sense. One can dissent over measures that may "fairly" or "unfairly" increase or reduce wealth in a particular sector, but we can already agree on so many measures that are of benefit to all of society. The truth has never been just one side.
*Rodolfo Terragno is a writer and the former Argentine Ambassador to UNESCO
