France
Church Bells and Whistles
In Minneapolis, whistles warn of ICE agents’ approach. How far do they echo the church bells that guided resistance in occupied France? History does not repeat, but in the details from the ground in Minnesota and the work of historians of wartime Europe, parallels emerge that may be instructive.
France Has Been Robbed
For years, successive governments have celebrated France’s heritage while quietly starving it, reducing budgets, staff, security and maintenance until the guardians of the country’s treasures could no longer guard much at all.
After France Outlawed Brothels, Its Army Kept North African Women Selling Sex in Secret
After World War II, France outlawed prostitution and shut more than a thousand brothels within its borders. But the army, which had thousands of North African troops to demobilize, set up its own secret brothels and trafficked women, often against their will, to service the troops.
Four Decades After His Imprisonment, France Can’t Stop Fighting Over Georges Abdallah
“Once a terrorist, always a terrorist?” The question has hovered over Georges Abdallah during his four decades in prison — not least because many do not believe he ever was one. With his release, France is once again fiercely debating what his incarceration means.
The Radical Roots of Frantz Fanon’s Psychiatry
The project to reform an asylum in the French Pyrenees — and the quirky Catalonian doctor behind this movement — served as the inspiration for one of the world’s most renowned postcolonial thinkers, Frantz Fanon. Its lessons are still relevant today.
How the Battle of Algiers Made Jean-Marie Le Pen
In the first three months of 1957, Jean-Marie Le Pen, later the founder and president of France’s far-right National Front party, participated in the battle of Algiers as a paratrooper. Witnessing France’s dying empire in Algeria inspired his unlikely — and precipitous — political rise.
The French Left Is United, Not for the First Time
Just a few days after Macron’s explosive dissolution of the National Assembly, 25 parties on the French left chose unity, forming the New Popular Front to counter the risk of a far-right majority. But what, if anything, can be learned from the first Popular Front of the 1930s?