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Cole Stangler is a journalist based in Marseille writing about labor and politics. A contributor to France 24, Cole has also published work in the Nation, the New York Times, and the Guardian.
Emmanuel Macron plans to raise France’s retirement age — but this Tuesday, well over a million people mobilized against him. One of the biggest social movements in years, it has a chance to deal a decisive blow to attacks on welfare.
Filmmaker François Ruffin has become a leading critic of the destruction of France’s welfare model. Today an MP, Ruffin told Jacobin how the Left can rediscover its purpose — and again rally the discontent of rural and peripheral France.
It’s easy to think of French public life as more highbrow than its US counterpart. But France’s top-rated talk show is fusing politics and entertainment — and it’s a key part of a billionaire-funded effort to normalize far-right talking points.
Recent oil workers’ strikes in France are at the cutting edge of a rising wave of industrial action. CGT union leader Philippe Martinez told Jacobin how organized labor can lead the fight against the rising cost of living.
After years of division, left-wing parties are in talks to run together in June’s French parliamentary elections. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strong presidential bid has placed him at the heart of the Left — and an alliance that could deny Emmanuel Macron a majority.
France has always had right-wing thinkers — but they are more prominent now than any time since World War II. A decades-long counterrevolution against the Left has led to reactionary provocateurs reshaping French intellectual life.
Emmanuel Macron has often warned that France shouldn’t imitate US-style culture wars. But ahead of April’s election, the liberal president and his far-right challengers are all obsessing about what they call an “Islamo-leftist” threat to French national identity.
Biden and European Union officials continue to help Big Pharma prevent the distribution of intellectual property rights to fight COVID.
Next year’s French election looks like it’ll be dominated by right-wing discourses around identity and immigration. Former Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon tells Jacobin how the Left can put inequality back on the agenda and win.
The European Union is weighing major climate legislation to scale back emissions across the continent. But there’s a familiar foe mobilizing to scale back the legislation: lobbyists for corporate polluters.
Next year’s French presidential election looks set to be dominated by Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, with the Left struggling in the polls. We have to unite or face certain defeat.
Pharma giants have spent big on lobbying European Union officials over vaccine waivers. It’s paid off: now key European power brokers oppose suspending global vaccine patents to fight the pandemic in the Global South.
No one on the French left wants the 2022 presidential election to be another contest between Macron and Le Pen, yet its own forces remain deeply divided. A left-wing alliance for the Hauts-de-France regional election is making parties like the Greens and France Insoumise put aside their differences — but also highlights the difficulties of forming any common strategy for national politics.
Last June, France’s second city voted for the “Marseille Spring,” a left-wing coalition that put an end to two decades of conservative rule. But difficult pandemic conditions — and now the abrupt exit of mayor Michèle Rubirola — have raised questions over its ability to put ordinary citizens in charge of city hall.
On Tuesday, France’s National Assembly passed a bill effectively banning citizens from posting videos of police officers. Emmanuel Macron is trampling on historic press freedoms in order to prove himself as a “law-and-order” president — an authoritarian turn which makes a mockery of his claimed defense of liberal values.
Eighteen months ahead of France’s 2022 presidential election, candidates are already jockeying to be the main representative of the Left. Green Party leader Julien Bayou told Jacobin that the Left can only win if it puts the ecological transition at the forefront of its program — no matter who its candidate is.
In Sunday’s mayoral elections, a united slate of left-wingers and Greens is set to win France’s second-largest city for the first time in decades. Faced with this challenge, the conservative establishment has radicalized, accusing the broad left of planning a “Cuban-style putsch” on the streets of Marseille.
Cities across France are seeing a historic wave of protest against racism and the killing of young black people. The French revolt was sparked by the demonstrations in the United States — but it’s fueled by police brutality at home.
While most politicians quarantine in safety, La France Insoumise’s Caroline Fiat is risking her life on the front lines as a health worker.
Just months after emergency room staff went on strike to protest their lack of resources, Paris’s hospitals are having to skimp on masks and thermometers. We spoke to frontline health workers about how they’re coping with the pandemic — and how years of underinvestment is making their job harder.