Bad reviews killed the poet Keats, so the story goes. Even though the tale has been debunked, it remains popularly repeated. We enjoy the éclat of unjust criticism, especially of the famous, even as we relish pitying the weakness of the oversensitive. The great film director Akira . . . . Continue Reading »
As Chekhov conveyed boredom without being boring, so Michel Houellebecq conveys meaninglessness without being meaningless. Indeed, his particular subject is the spiritual, intellectual, and political vacuity of life in a modern consumer society—France in this case, but it could be any . . . . Continue Reading »
Macron was legitimately elected in the sense that there was no fraud to account for his victory, no constitutional rules broken. As representative of the people’s hopes or wishes, Macron has little legitimacy; and yet he has immense power. Continue Reading »
Nathan Pinkoski joins the podcast to discuss Eric Zemmour and his recent First Things article, “The Most Controversial Man in France.” Continue Reading »
This year, France’s presidential election is being fought almost entirely on the terrain of national identity. Not on the question of who is best suited to govern France, but on the question of what France even is to begin with. So much public discourse circles on the same questions: Are we . . . . Continue Reading »
The planned redesign of Notre-Dame de Paris’s interior is an atrocity that will turn the cathedral into little more than a Catholic Disneyland. Continue Reading »
Nathan Pinkoski joins R. R. Reno to talk about French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour. Continue Reading »
Éric Zemmour is the most important media personality in France today. He is also the most controversial. So, in February 2021, when he hinted on television that he was considering running for president, he sent shock waves through France’s chattering classes. Despite widespread denunciation, and . . . . Continue Reading »
The miscarriage of justice in the Sarah Halimi case demonstrates the decay of France’s political institutions.
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Looking back on his time as a Cuban-trained communist revolutionary, the French writer Régis Debray recalled that Chile’s Marxist president used to display on his desk a photo of guerrilla leader Che Guevara, inscribed: “To Salvador Allende, who is headed to the same place by a different . . . . Continue Reading »
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