Marlon Ettinger is the author of Zemmour and Gaullism and the cohost of Flep24, the French Legislative Elections Podcast for 2024.
Ahead of Saturday’s mass protests in France, the government seemed almost desperate for new violent scenes. Lumping the organized left and protesters in with black bloc groups, it seeks to justify a broad crackdown on the high schoolers’ movement.
Donald Trump and J. D. Vance have called France’s protests the work of Muslim and Third World invaders. Ignoring the movement’s roots in high schooler demonstrations, they are using violent episodes to paint a dark picture of racial conflict.
For over a week, high school students and teachers in France have been protesting the state’s abandonment of the education system. The government response: send in police to subdue them.
New revelations allege French far-right leader Jordan Bardella was once an obsessive antisemite who wrote that Jews dominate and rob other peoples. While his National Rally party has airbrushed its image, the conspiratorial worldview remains at its core.
The primary in France’s Parti Socialiste will not likely pick the winner of the 2027 presidential election. But it will decide whether the party seeks compromise on the Left, or else directs its fire against rival left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
This summer, France again saw hellish heat waves and record-high wildfires. But the job of dealing with fires is increasingly pushed onto volunteers, as an austerity government refuses to invest in its professional firefighting force.
France’s first presidential debate on Thursday was hosted by employers’ group Medef. Entrepreneurs laughed when left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon called for wage raises, but he was deadly serious.
France’s political elites have made vague criticisms of Benjamin Netanyahu but refused to denounce the genocide in Gaza. Now left-wing lawmaker Rima Hassan has been dragged to trial because she defends Palestinians’ right to resist occupation.
Critics of French left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon have repeatedly claimed that he’s finished. But as he launches his latest presidential campaign, his popularity among working-class and minority voters is again making him a real contender.
The latest release of Epstein files sheds more light on his ruling-class allies. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has resisted calls for a public debate on the subject despite Jeffrey Epstein’s far-reaching relations in business and diplomatic circles.
France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy has called on his allies to stop demonizing Marine Le Pen. It’s part of a broader shift in establishment conservatism toward open collaboration with her far-right party.
Leading French automaker Renault is reportedly converting some production sites to make military drones. It’s stirred discontent among car workers in France, who say they didn’t sign up for Europe’s rearmament push.
France’s government has survived a confidence vote thanks to the Parti Socialiste’s abstention. While Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu promises to suspend unpopular changes to pensions, unions object that the retirement age hike has merely been delayed.
France’s new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has had a rocky start. Yet as armed forces minister, he has already proved himself where it counts: loyally defending Emmanuel Macron’s austerity plans while pushing for ever higher military spending.
In France, right-wingers love to pose as defenders of free speech. Yet the takeover of media by a cast of billionaire pro-Trump tycoons means that just a handful of individuals have a veto over huge swaths of the press.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise is the biggest radical-left force in Europe. Liberal opinion seethes against all aspects of the movement — but Mélenchon’s comrades haven’t been thrown off course.
European leaders have lined up to condemn Donald Trump’s tariff plans as absurd. Yet some are also using the crisis to push their existing agendas — with France’s government stepping up pressure for sweeping budget cuts.
Roubaix used to be home to France’s textile industry — but doesn’t have the same battalions of factory labor as it once did. For France Insoumise, the challenge is to rebuild the Left’s roots in working-class communities.
In recent months, Emmanuel Macron insisted on the need to slash public debt, yet now he calls for huge military spending. The call to remilitarize has become the center of the French president’s agenda — and offers a pretext for even further cuts to welfare.
Dozens of statements to a French court tell of decades of sexual abuse at a Catholic school. The case has also created a political crisis, with media allegations that today’s prime minister François Bayrou knew what was going on but failed to act.