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In July’s French elections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise yet again beat expectations. Its focus on leader and program have proven to be an electoral asset, but its top-heavy structure risks undermining its longer-term sustainability.
The murder of mosque-goer Aboubakar Cissé in April again highlighted the prevalence of Islamophobia in France, discrimination that is driving increasing numbers of Muslims to leave the country.
The New Popular Front represents the French left’s best chance to block Marine Le Pen’s path. But a purge of candidates in its biggest force, France Insoumise, is troubling its ranks — and highlights the need for more democratic decision-making.
The French army’s forced exit from Niger has been wistfully termed the end of an era of great-power status. We should remember what this really meant: a zombie empire that crushed democracy in order to protect French elites’ power, both in Africa and at home.
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.
France’s collaborationist Vichy regime aided Nazi Germany during World War II. With far-right candidates surging in the upcoming presidential election, it’s clear there are still people in French political life who think that was a good thing.
French right-wingers don’t yet have a leader like Donald Trump. Yet the creation of Fox News–like TV channels, harsh culture wars, and the decline of class politics are pushing France along a path troublingly similar to the United States.
In France, the left-wing parties have allied in a Nouveau Front Populaire, challenging both Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. France Insoumise MP Clémence Guetté told Jacobin about its potential path to victory.
Growing up in the US, I admired France’s secular vision of social democracy. But teaching in Lyon’s working-class suburbs taught me that, in practice, laïcité is a rallying cry for a Right desperate to exclude Muslims from public life.
Emmanuel Macron’s government is calling for a ban on one of France’s largest Palestine solidarity campaigns. The proposal is repression of free speech — and makes a mockery of Macron’s attempt to sound more critical of Israeli crimes.
This July, the New Popular Front defied expectations to beat Marine Le Pen and win France’s parliamentary elections. But the alliance now faces a split, as centrist parts of the Parti Socialiste rebel against the pact with France Insoumise.
The French left made gains in spring’s elections — but it did much better in big cities than in deindustrialized areas. Debates in France Insoumise have highlighted the need to win back the older working class without giving up on political radicalism.
Authoritarian governments like those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia have funded a boom in France’s arms industry. Now, with war in Ukraine, it’s setting its sights on rearming Europe.
In France’s former African colonies, imperialist monetary policies from Paris continue to cripple domestic economies and undermine democracy. Colonialism in Africa won’t have meaningfully come to an end until true economic sovereignty is allowed to flourish.
At home, French politicians mainstream far-right conspiracies about the replacement of whites by African immigrants. Abroad, they continue to intervene militarily and economically in the continent. Both are signs of a nation unwilling to accept its decline.
In the wake of its impressive performance in last year’s presidential campaign, the movement around Jean-Luc Mélenchon has set about establishing a new kind of political organization.
Emmanuel Macron has appointed 34-year-old Gabriel Attal as France’s new prime minister. The bid to give his government a new progressive face suffers one big problem: French people haven’t forgotten its deeply anti-social record.
Historian Camille Robcis on why debates over Judith Butler and gay marriage are engulfing France.
France’s center-right has long used its Gaullist origins to distinguish it from the heirs to Vichy. But today, xenophobes like Marine Le Pen are claiming de Gaulle’s legacy as they seek to overcome the historic split on the Right.
Emmanuel Macron’s government gave tax breaks for France’s wealthiest while counting on purchase taxes paid by ordinary consumers. Now saying it has a budget hole to fill, his administration is again expecting working-class people to pick up the bill.