Tocqueville 21 · The Ukraine War, Europe, and Civic Duty with Alexis Carré Welcome back to the Tocqueville 21 Podcast for our first episode of 2023! This week, I sat […]

A book review of Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris From the Belle Epoque Through Revolution and War (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). Paris is “full of Russians […]

A review of George Makari’s Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia (W.W. Norton and Company, 2021).   The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “xenophobia” as a “fear and hatred of […]

Biopolitics! At the “Monument aux Mères Françaises” Some reflections on a natalist installation   Wandering through Paris a couple of weeks ago, I came across a small park just off […]

  Tribune « La Révolution a fondé une société, elle cherche encore son gouvernement. » Le journaliste Prévost-Paradol composa cette phrase en 1868, et dans l’attente des prochaines élections législatives, celle-ci n’a guère […]

French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour has neither hidden nor made much of his being Jewish. When questioned—and almost exclusively when questioned; he seldom volunteers the information—he describes his Berber Jewish […]

The French party system is in deep distress. This was already apparent in 2017, when the arrival of “neither right nor left” candidate Emmanuel Macron destructured the opposition that had […]

A book review of James McAuley’s The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France (Yale University Press, 2021). In The House of Fragile Things, Washington […]

The jaws of French talking heads have been flapping wildly since Emmanuel Macron vented his sentiments about the unvaccinated: “J’ai très envie de les emmerder.” The English-speaking media have chosen […]

Valérie Pécresse reportedly intends to devote the beginning of her campaign to “le régalien“: “Il ne faut pas lâcher cette thématique, au moins jusqu’à fin janvier, insiste le député Eric Pauget. Son […]

A new poll sheds light on the Pécresse electorate. It is essentially the Fillon electorate–older, more likely to be retired, more Catholic, and wealthier than the average voter–augmented by a […]

Just what the left needs: another presidential candidate. “Squabble among yourselves; leave me out of it,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon. One can understand his frustration. Meanwhile, the Macroniste camp called attention […]

Emmanuel Macron’s second presidential campaign will be nothing like his first. In 2016-17 he enjoyed the advantage of enigma: no one knew who he was or what he represented (though […]

Renaud Muselier, the president of PACA, has quit Les Républicains. The reason: he believes that the party he helped to found has erased the line that used to divide it […]

Ceci est la seconde critique de livre parue dans notre mini-forum sur The Anthem Companion to Alexis de Tocqueville (2019), édité par Daniel Gordon. Dans l’abondante littérature consacrée à Tocqueville, […]

  “We just cannot get a break.” Surely that is the universal sentiment of the past year. Yet in trying to rationalize a catastrophic year, there is something we can […]

  On 6 January 2021, a mob of demonstrators broke into and ransacked the US Capitol. Five people, including one police officer, died during the violence. The demonstrators had gathered […]

  This is the second review in our “Parliamentary Thinking” book forum.    Review of Parliamentarism: From Burke to Weber by William Selinger (Cambridge University Press, 2019).   Historians of political thought […]