The French school year began with a surprise announcement: schoolgirls could no longer wear a popular style of dress originating in the Islamic world, the abaya. Not longer after, the […]

France Insoumise voters were asked to express their preference for the second round on the party Web site. 215,292 did so, and 37.65% said they would cast a blank protest […]

With the passing of former French president Jacques Chirac, newspapers have struggled to pin down the man’s complex legacy. Le Monde highlights Chirac’s affable demeanor and his connection with French […]

Boris Johnson’s decision to “prorogue” parliament has set off a fresh wave of Brexit controversy. In the TLS, Philip Salmon explains some notable historical examples of past prorogations. Salmon notes […]

L’examen des résultats en France est compliqué à mener, si l’on veut sortir de l’instantané médiatique pour prendre un peu de recul dans le temps.   Le mouvement Europe-Ecologie Les […]

Jean-Luc Mélenchon contains multitudes. After the Notre-Dame fire, he was among the most eloquent of commentators, intimately familiar with the history of the cathedral. But his familiarity with the vast […]

In the attempt to hold myself to my new year’s resolution of posting here rather than in long Twitter threads, I want to flesh out my reaction to a provocative […]

I have a short piece out in Dissent exploring the implications of the gilets jaunes movement for La France insoumise and left populism in general. Part of my motivation to write this was an observation that […]

  Over the last several years I’ve tried to resist comparisons between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Bernie Sanders, mostly because these comparisons tend to posit a simplistic notion of “left-wing populism” […]

Hearing the news of the raids on the offices of La France insoumise and the home of Jean-Luc Mélenchon last week, one might have had some sympathy for the left-wing party […]

One of the most frequent criticisms on the French left of La France insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (a criticism I have addressed in other writing) is that the “populist” movement and […]

I have a long article in the new issue of Dissent examining the potential future of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France insoumise. When I first thought to do a piece on LFI, not […]

Gilles Texier est doctorant en histoire et enseignant à l’Université de Paris 1. Membre du Nouveau parti anticapitaliste, il a été impliqué dans le mouvement étudiant sur le site de […]

  This week, rail workers and civil servants in France staged a massive demonstration against Emmanuel Macron’s planned reform of the national rail service, coordinated with plans for an ongoing […]

A funny thing has happened to the French left. Jean-Luc Mélenchon realized his dream of destroying the PS, but thus far he hasn’t been able to put anything solid in […]

Gilles Perret has a new documentary out this week based on footage of Jean-Luc Mélenchon during his 2017 presidential campaign. The film, L’insoumis, has been predictably praised to high heavens as […]

This week’s Canard enchaîné reports that Emmanuel Macron—along with Richard Ferrand, the president of the parliamentary group of La République en marche—are struggling to control the left-leaning members of the governing majority who […]