At the end of the 1950s, Saïd Ramadan, the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood) fled Egypt and chose Geneva to set out to conquer the West. His son Hani has headed the Islamic Centre of Geneva (ICG) since 1995. His brother Tariq was the best-known French-speaking Muslim on the planet, before vice scandals toppled him in 2017. Even today, the city of Calvin is still largely under the thumb of the Ramadan family. But there was a dramatic turn of events on September 10, 2024. While Tariq Ramadan had been acquitted in May 2023 at first instance, he was sentenced on appeal to three years in prison, including one year in prison, for rape and sexual coercion.
A recent Pentagon report indicates that the African continent is currently the focus of Moscow’s interest, as part of its strategy to compete with the influence of the United States and its European allies. According to the report, Moscow’s Africa policy has increased considerably since Russia’s ‘private contingent’ in Africa was placed under the direct responsibility of the Russian Defence Ministry and intelligence services following the death of Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The recent European and parliamentary elections show the extent to which a large proportion of the political class is out of touch with the people and incapable of delivering a long-term project that unites the nation as a whole. On the one hand, the Macronie elites, whose sole obsession is to “deliver” us from the peril of the far right, have shown no vision for turning France around. To put it plainly, they have done nothing but avoid confrontation with reality. On the other hand, the Woke compatible media, which practices Big Brother-style inversion of values, has for years been constantly telling the French how they should think, travel and consume, without imagining that they would one day make them pay for it, this overflow of inane moralizing.
Social networks had an impact on the European and parliamentary elections, as the various polls and staggering statistics showed. Much less present on social networks and very divided, the New Popular Front has nevertheless managed to turn digital tools into a strike force capable of competing with Jordan Bardella, who has become almost an influencer on young people’s favourite applications. A winning bet.
Faced with the risk of a National Rally victory, which would have brought the far right to power, the salvation came from a republican mobilisation rallying all democrats. The tremendous public outburst on 7 July curbed the ambitions of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. Except that the “glass ceiling” is coming up against an ever-increasing number of cleavages that are likely, in time, to hamper this “cordon sanitaire” designed to keep the far right out of the Republican arc.
The results of the second round of the French legislative elections on July 7 have generated an unprecedented political crisis in France. An impasse due to the absence of a sufficiently large parliamentary majority to be able to govern in a calm and lasting manner. However, despite the risks of blockage which threaten to shake the institutions of the Fifth French Republic, there are at least 4 reasons to rejoice at the outcome of this election:
Despite a deceptive victory in the 2nd round of the parliamentary elections, the campaign of the New Popular Front (NFP) was undermined by the excesses of Mélenchonism – a veritable scarecrow capable of scaring off secularists, universalists and social democrats – and weighed down by the purge carried out within LFI against dissident MPs who dared to challenge Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s divisive strategy.
This is a logbook of an election campaign consumed by the divisions and infighting that prevented the NFP from obtaining an absolute majority, despite the impressive momentum generated by the hope of a united left capable of forming the basis of a republican alternative to the perils of the far right…
Between fears and deceptions, France is swaying. Despite the rodomontades of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, at 8.07pm on 7 July, announced that the affair had been completed at the same time – he implied – as his attaché case for Matignon, nothing has been resolved. “Having avoided the worst – the arrival of the far right in power – does not protect us from another worst: the ungovernability of the country”, warns Bernard Cazeneuve, former Socialist Prime Minister (between December 2016 and May 2017), with a secular and universalist left-wing leaning.
Face au risque d’une victoire électorale qui offrirait la majorité parlementaire à l’extrême droite, le salut ne peut venir que d’une mobilisation républicaine ralliant tous les démocrates, car aucune formation politique ne peut résister, seule, à la poussée du Rassemblement national. Or, de nombreux clivages entravent le ‘‘cordons sanitaire’’ républicain. Pour les dépasser, il conviendrait de substituer au bon vieux ‘‘Front républicain’’, dirigé exclusivement contre l’extrême droite, un ‘‘tri sélectif républicain’’ destiné à isoler et bloquer tous ceux que les outrances et les dérives placent hors de l’arc républicain, de quelque bord politique qu’ils se revendiquent.
They have taken hostage the beautiful rallying cry of the Spanish Republicans during the civil war from 1936 to 1939: “No pasaran” (“They shall not pass”). That’s the title a score of rappers dared to give to an infamous video intended to mobilise against the National Rally. Under the guise of calling young people to their duty as citizens, these brilliant artists, anxious – they tell the gogos – to “get back to the essence of rap”, pour out ten minutes of calls for hatred, murder, rape and pogroms. As unbearable as it is to even mention these rants, here are a few that are more akin to the courts than to a “rather exciting variety of angles”, as Libération swoons.
