Mitterrand’s War
For François Mitterrand, France's atrocities in Algeria were stepping-stones to power.
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For François Mitterrand, France's atrocities in Algeria were stepping-stones to power.
Forty years ago today, François Mitterrand became the first socialist president of France’s Fifth Republic. But after his early attempt at left-wing reforms was defeated, Mitterrand’s tenure helped turn the Parti Socialiste into a pillar of the political establishment.
Before Alexis Tsipras, Europe battered François Mitterrand's reformist ambitions into a sweeping neoliberal program.
France was once the heartland of revolution. Today, its left is battered, and its far right is rising. To understand why, we have to look at François Mitterrand’s socialist government’s turn from radical reform to neoliberal austerity in the 1980s.
Despite Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strong showing in the recent presidential campaign, France’s left was defeated again by the neoliberal center and far right. The roots of that weakness lie in the Mitterrand government’s capitulation to neoliberalism in the 1980s.
As we reach a midway point in François Hollande’s presidency, let’s put his staggering unpopularity and political difficulties into context.
In the 1980s, François Mitterrand brought the French Socialists to power. A generation later, they’re in danger of extinction — and they brought it upon themselves.
For a few brief weeks in France, not just a government but an entire system was called into question.
The National Front hasn't changed. It just learned how to articulate its longstanding racism and xenophobia with mainstream French republican discourse.
Le Pen is in the second round, but Sunday showed us that the French left isn't dead after all.
Alain Badiou and Stathis Kouvelakis in conversation on Syriza and whether a radical break from the eurozone is possible.
What makes this perennial sad story worthy of another reexamination?
Le Monde Diplomatique’s Serge Halimi dissects the collective suicide of France’s center-left — and how its new far left can pick up the pieces.
History shows that the capitalist class will do whatever it can to undermine our reforms and oust the Left from power.
It’s eighty years today since the notorious Vichy regime took power in France under Nazi domination. Vichy-style fascism wasn’t simply a German plant on French soil — it drew on powerful reactionary currents in French politics and society.
France’s Socialist Party has announced Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo as its candidate to take back the presidency. Yet far from reconnecting with working-class voters, her candidacy illustrates how France’s established parties have lost their roots.
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.
The French historian François Furet sought to to discredit the revolutionary tradition. Since then, history has been busy discrediting him.
At his funeral last week, former European Union chief Jacques Delors was hailed as a left-wing architect of the EU. But far from realizing the Left’s hopes for a “social Europe,” in the 1990s Delors built a new European order in thrall to free-market dogmas.
Margaret Thatcher was made by her era more than she made it.