Worldcrunch
France may look like a paradise from the outside, with free education, early retirement, and working healthcare, yet its people protest as if trapped in hell. President Emmanuel Macron’s failed middle path and Europe’s fragile currency expose a deeper malaise shaking the continent.
After Italy and the Netherlands, Austria has also broken a post-War taboo in choosing the far-right party in Parliamentary elections. It is a direct challenge to the European Union’s founding ideals at a moment when global uncertainty requires a strong democratic voice.
It is the right-wing movements internationally that have used hate speech as a political weapon, inciting political hatred as a form of fuel to create consensus. But that strategy can backfire, as the attack on Trump showed.
While the French left managed to unify and win parliamentary elections, Italy’s left appears stuck in a situation of constant conflict and uncertainty. And that leaves right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni firmly in control.
-Analysis- The W-word has been dropped. The first to mention it was France’s far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in an interview with Le Monde. He was quickly followed by his far-right counterpart Marine Le Pen. And soon enough, journalists around the world, from Germany to Latin America by way of Portugal and others, were joining in: […]
For decades, economists scorned protectionism as a losing proposition. Now some have begun to admit that not everyone benefits from open markets.
-Analysis- PARIS — A wave of popular revolt against the establishment, globalization and immigration is washing over the West. And as the recent election results in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic suggest, it won’t be ending anytime soon. After the staggering victories of Brexit and Donald Trump in 2016, Western elites, always eager for […]
-OpEd- PARIS — Upon returning from exile in 1870, legendary French author Victor Hugo declared that “the instinct of the people always matches the ideal of civilization.” That very instinct swept away the worst among us in electing Emmanuel Macron as the new French President. And what a victory! Very few had thought he could […]
In France’s presidential campaign, like last year’s race in the United States, protectionism is being used to woo the struggling working class. But workers would be its first victims.
COULOMMIERS — In the working-class outskirts of Paris, people are counting. They count the number of houses now occupied by people from an immigrant background. “There are four Arabs opposite my house, four others at the end of the street, on the right-hand side, and one Black guy to the left,” says 88-year-old Micheline, who […]
Emmanuel Macron is the youngest candidate to be France’s next president. That’s not the only feature that sets him apart from the rest of the field.
-Essay- BERLIN — “No other place recalls so vividly the fragility of democracy in Europe in the 20th century.” On the streets of Berlin, passersby may notice this line etched on a building plaque in German, French and English. It can be found in the finance ministry complex that used to house Nazi Germany’s Ministry […]
-Editorial- PARIS — The electoral surge was on scale with the threat at hand: The rise in turnout from the first to second rounds of France’s regional elections was so strong that it prevented the conquest of several regional governments by the far-right National Front party, which tallied the highest number of votes in its […]
FRENCH FAR RIGHT FALLS SHORT Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Front party failed to win even one of France’s 13 regions in yesterday’s second round of elections, despite finishing first in almost half of them a week ago. It was ultimately the victim of alliances formed by other parties and of higher voter […]
OP-ED – A German newspaper recently published a list of the “ten most dangerous politicians in Europe.” When something bad happens we immediately start looking for someone or something to pin the blame on. It makes no difference if the “bad” thing was the capsizing of a cruise liner, a war that ended in a […]