Latest from Phineas Rueckert
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.
France’s Most Famous Astronomer Was Also a Ghost Hunter
At a time when spirit mediums, levitating tables and haunted houses were wildly popular phenomena, Camille Flammarion, then France’s most famous scientist, sought to separate fact from fiction. His research still holds lessons for today’s world.
How Argentina’s Disappeared Took Center Stage in Paris
More than 30 years after the French Resistance had found its foothold in Buenos Aires, the Argentinian Resistance found its own in Paris. This iteration was bold, colorful and — in perhaps stereotypically Latin American form — theatrical, and the artist and intellectual-led movement would soon engulf the continent.
How Exiles in Argentina Shaped France’s Resistance to Nazi Occupation
After the Nazis marched into France in 1940, a French veteran living almost 7,000 miles away in Buenos Aires started a small bulletin to counter fascist ideology — and sparked what would become one of the largest Free French resistance movements in the world.
When Palestinians Crossed the Chilean Andes by Mule, a New Diaspora Was Born
Chile is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in the world — one that has mobilized in support of Gaza in the face of Israel’s full-scale invasion.
In the Shadow of Paris’ Olympic Village, Migrants Are Pushed Into the Cold
The expulsion of the Unibeton squatters falls in line with an aggressive policy — often using mega-events like the Olympics as a catalyst — of urban renewal, which prioritizes development over human lives and disperses vulnerable populations, like migrants and people experiencing homelessness, further from big cities in the interest of “sanitizing” them.