The far-right Front National won the first round of France’s regional elections on Sunday, with both the conservatives and the Socialists trailing behind. The Front National’s success is a result of the terrorist attacks in Paris, some commentators conclude. Others stress that the rise of the Front National must be seen in a historical context.
After Sunday’s regional elections, will the French be able to stop FN from finally breaking through the fragile glass ceiling? And what about the renewed political world that voters want?
After regional elections marked by a surge in support for the French National Front (NF), in which the party still failed to gain any power, all eyes are already turning to the 2017 presidential campaign.
French regional election: Lessons learnt
If this was an historic deal, most of the papers clearly didn’t agree.
Only one paper led with the deal, the Observer:
We need to expand the emancipatory space for what is possible from within acontaminated and contaminant discourse, far removed from pure rationality and a theoretical superiority over ‘the masses’. Español.
Demotix/Marcos del Mazo. All rights reserved.To grasp how stunningly Podemos burst onto the political scene in recent Spanish history, one must understand and reflect upon an idea that has already been explored in politics: namely that the hitherto leading role of the working class, as well as its historical role in social struggles, should be taken into consideration alongside other emerging social forces of similar ‘critical’ relevance.
By the end of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris 196 states had agreed to attempt to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Some commentators celebrate the agreement as a milestone and praise the global village for its new awareness. Others criticise the absence of business representatives and the lack of binding obligations.
Podemos, rather than being a prosthesis for the 15-M multitude, should be conceived as a weapon it needed to be able to navigate this fluid and unstable historical conjuncture.
Podemos emerged as the instrument of a new multitude that gestated and developed in the weeks of 15-M and after. That multitude did not consist in an aggregated set of demands, or a collection of fragments, nor was it already a constituted ‘people’. Instead, the multitude that emerges with 15-M is a specific kind of invention, which nevertheless corresponds to the definition of a political multitude – something that has existed ever since Spinoza and which, contra Hobbes, sees it as a heterogeneous multiplicity with variable contours which is nonetheless capable of acting as one mind, to organise itself functionally, aggregate, disperse and take decisions. This means that Podemos as an instrument, rather than being a prosthesis for this multitude, should be conceived as a weapon, a necessary weapon for it to be able to navigate this fluid and unstable historical conjuncture.
With the closure of the Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian borders to all migrants who are not of Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan nationality, the international community has sent out a worrying signal.
Migrants stuck at the Greek-Macedonian border. Demotix/Tasos Markou. All rights reserved.With the closure of the Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian borders to all migrants who are not of Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan nationality, the international community has sent out a strong signal. Any migrant who is not from one out of three nationalities and attempts to travel via the Western Balkan route to the EU is not welcome.
As new rulers (and their voters) gradually realize that austerity cannot be simply voted out of existence, or prosperity into existence, the prevailing mood is that of a bad hangover.
‘We stay in Europe’ rally in Athens, June, 2015. Demotix/ Chrissa Giannakoudi. All rights reserved.Having spent the best part of the last six years talking and writing about the Greek crisis, I often find myself wondering what else one might add to that subject.
Whatever happens in the Spanish general election, the real story will be about a profound transformation taking place at the heart of Spanish society: generational change.
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