The Social World

Tag: France

  • Are America’s women heading for the exit?

    Life is apparently so disagreeable in Donald Trump’s America that 40 percent of women aged between 15 and 44 want to leave. That is four times higher than the 10 percent who wanted to quit the US in 2014. According to Gallup, which conducted the poll, nearly half the nation’s younger women have “lost faith in America’s institutions.” This disenchantment accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which enshrined the constitutional right to abortion.

    Younger American men are bearing up better. Only 19 percent share women’s distaste for the Donald, a 21 percent differential which is the largest recorded by Gallup since it began asking the question in 2007.

    As they point out, the question is about the “desire” to relocate, so probably only a minority of the 40 percent will leave. Nonetheless, concludes Gallup, “the data indicate that millions of younger American women are increasingly imagining their futures elsewhere.”

    And where might that be? Canada is the first choice (11 percent) while 5 percent dream of a new life in New Zealand, Italy or Japan. Canada has that nice Mark Carney as its Prime Minister but be warned, women of America: our northern neighbor isn’t the same country that it was a decade ago.

    A report last year in the National Post was headlined “Sexual assaults, robberies surging in Canada’s cities.” The Trudeau administration had tried to blame soaring crime on the aftermath of the harsh Covid restrictions, but the Macdonald Laurier Institute’s “urban violent crime report” rubbished that theory.

    Crime of all types had been on the rise since 2016, particularly sexual assault, which had increased by 77 percent between 2013 and 2023. The Canadian media is curiously reticent to examine what is behind this surge, which has coincided with record levels of immigration. A clue perhaps might be found in the response to a parliamentary question asked earlier this year by Canadian Conservative MP Blaine Calkins. Troubled by the 31 percent increase in foreigners incarcerated in Canadian prisons, he wanted to know where they came from and what crimes they’d committed. The majority had been convicted of violent and sexual crimes, and the two countries most represented among felons were Jamaica and India.

    Something else that has increased in Canada in recent years is the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood. A report in June by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy warned that Canada was facing a “rising national security risk” from the shadowy Islamist organization. Its goal is to establish a global caliphate, and the institute expressed its concern that Canada has allowed the Brotherhood to “grow and spread radical Islamist ideology, often benefiting from federal funding.”

    With this in mind, if some American women find themselves going cold on Canada, what about Japan? In 2023, Japan was ranked 125th out of 146 countries in terms of gender equality (the US was 43rd and Italy 79th). The World Economic Forum report noted the low female representation in Japanese politics and industry.

    Furthermore, cases of sexual harassment on public transport have risen sharply in recent years — what the Japanese call “chikan,” or groping. Most incidents are committed by Japanese men against foreigners.

    So if not Japan, what about the dolce vita of Italy? Unfortunately, Italy is also experiencing a wave of sexual violence. Incidences have increased by 50 percent in the past five years, with crimes peaking in 2024.

    Some 43 percent of men convicted of sexual crimes were foreigners, prompting Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to state that, “I will be called a racist, but there is a greater incidence, unfortunately, in cases of sexual violence, by immigrants.” She added that this was particularly true of those “who arrived illegally.”

    There are other options in Europe for American women. What about Paris, the City of Love? The smell of fresh croissants, the sight of Gallic heartthrobs. Oh la la! Alas, the real Paris bears no resemblance to Emily in Paris.

    Earlier this year, a French government report revealed that seven in ten women in the greater Paris region have suffered some form of abuse while traveling on public transport. Recently, an Egyptian man allegedly tried to rape a young woman on a train just outside the French capital and, as a result, a petition has been launched demanding women-only train cars.

    One could always try London, but women there are also demanding greater security on the city’s Tube network. Another phenomenon on the rise in both Britain and France is the segregation of the sexes as the Muslim population grows. In October, a Mosque in London organized a fundraising run that was open to everyone except women and girls over the age of 12. In November, a poll was published in France that revealed that 45 percent of French Muslim men and 57 percent of women under 35 practice some form of segregation, such as the refusal to shake hands or receive medical treatment from a person of the opposite sex, or to visit a mixed-gender swimming pool.

    In December 2015, Trump lamented what had become of Paris, making his remarks a few weeks after Islamist terrorists had slaughtered 130 people during the Bataclan attack. “Look at what happened in Paris, the horrible carnage, and frankly… Paris is no longer the same city it was.”

    He was right. Paris is no longer the city it was, and nor is London or some Italian cities, such as Milan, where, according to city councillor Daniele Nahum, “the antisemitic situation is becoming unmanageable.”

    The 40 percent of American women who dream of starting a new life elsewhere should take note. The grass in Trumpland might actually be greener.

  • Monet’s Venetian moment

    If you crave art that will envelop you, book a ticket, pronto, to Monet and Venice at the Brooklyn Museum. Enveloppe was the term the French impressionist artist Claude Monet (1840-1926) used to describe the “beauty of the air around” the objects and landscapes he painted. “Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat… I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, and the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible,” he said.

    And yet on his 1908 trip to Venice he succeeded in capturing the atmospheric mix of air, water, light and shadow that suffused the floating city of islands known for its distinctive bridges and canals and singular mélange of Byzantine domes, Gothic churches, Moorish-style balconies and Renaissance arches and arcades. Equally significant, the exhibition argues, it was this visit that rescued the 68-year-old artist from the depressive block that took hold of him after his long-time art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel voiced doubts that a market existed for the cycle of water-lily paintings in which he had been so deeply immersed.

    With what lame irony Durand-Ruel’s critique resounds today. But the exhibition wisely focuses on the additional masterworks that Monet created in the wake of his impasse. This perspective allows the curators – Lisa Small of the Brooklyn Museum and Melissa Buron of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum – to document the artist’s emotional mindset and creative focus before, during and after his stay in Venice.

    The story of how the Venetian sojourn itself came to be also provides a glimpse into the workings of the Monets’ marriage. After Monet angrily vowed to abandon the water-lily project altogether, his glum and listless demeanor so distressed his then-wife Alice Hoschedé that she persuaded him, despite his grumbling, to accept the invitation of the art patron and society hostess Mary Hunter to stay with her in Venice at the exquisitely appointed 15th-century Palazzo Barbaro, situated on the Grand Canal.

    Alice’s plan may have begun as a caring (and perhaps exasperated) gesture to divert her husband’s mood, but her resolute insistence led to his creative restoration. Monet begrudgingly assented to a two-week stay, but the trip eventually sparked his mood so greatly that the journey was extended to a two-month working vacation. During that time, the revitalized Monet produced 37 paintings, some of which were exhibited to acclaim in 1912. Nineteen of those canvases appear here, as do several paintings from the water-lily series.

    Those lily-pond paintings benefited greatly from the artist’s journey. “My time in Venice has had the advantage of making me see my canvases with a better eye,” he said. “There’s only one step, there and back, from the water-lily pond to the lagoon where the colorful palaces bloom.” For evidence, look to “Water Lilies” (c. 1914-17), a canvas aglow with pink flowers accompanied by shadows cast by foliage and hints of watery vegetation below.

    Monet’s reinvigorated Venetian palette announces itself in the joltingly vivid red brushstrokes of “The Red House” (1908, see p41) It is also seen in the more precise daubs used to capture the dappled waves that transform from blue to green to rose and gold and cream and back again, as the water washes against the stony facades of the distant palazzi. Monet painted these scenes en plein air, as was his custom – but in this case from a floating gondola, an adaptation of the floating “studio boat” he’d once used on the Seine. Édouard Manet depicted this practice of Monet’s in “Claude Monet Painting in His Studio Boat” (1874). The scene endearingly shows Monet accompanied on board by his first wife, Camille. Monet’s attention in this painting is focused not on her but the canvas in progress. We see its finished version “Sailboats on the Seine,” painted the same year, mounted nearby. 

    In Venice, as he had in both London and Paris, Monet also captured another element of the open air: smog, produced by the coal-burning engines of the world’s increasingly industrialized cities. The advent of pollution almost certainly contributed to the hazy blend of colors Monet observed and depicted in such paintings as the 1903 canvas shown here, “Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect.” These are the same kinds of atmospheric enveloppes that nearly enshroud in shadow Venetian views such as the alluringly mysterious “The Palazzo Contarini” (1908).

    Gallery by gallery, visitors also get to see the storied city as viewed over the centuries through the eyes of myriad artists, photographers and visitors. Seeing historic sights through the differing artistic sensibilities of Canaletto, J.M.W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler and Pierre-Auguste Renoir is a discourse itself on creative perception, demonstrating the wide array of angles, styles and personal slants each artist brought along on their travels – and subsequently shared with us.

    Unfortunately, as you enter the exhibition – before you see a single Monet or even a postcard – you enter an introductory gallery filled with giant videos of Venice in an immersive montage that may please some but struck me as superfluous.

    Far more relevant are the exhibition’s archival reels, recorded by the Lumière brothers and others in the 1890s and early 1900s. These snippets show canals bursting with gondolas and piazzas crowded with tourists. Numerous prints, postcards and other works on view also attest to the sightseeing throngs abroad throughout the city. Canaletto’s precisely rendered scenes similarly capture the commotion of the harbor, where sailors and workmen busily ply their trades. In a subtler vein, Sargent’s series of evocative watercolors from 1903-04 (standouts include “La Riva” and “The Bridge of Sighs”) present scenes that suggest calm and beauty can be found even amid the bustle.

    But in contrast to the buzz and the busyness portrayed by others, Monet’s Venice is nearly devoid of human presence. His is a floating world enlivened instead by radiant colors and shimmering brush strokes and yet marked by emptiness. One striking example is his “Palazzo Dario” (1908) in which a darkly shadowed empty gondola rests in place on the rippling water just outside a monumental marble structure.

    This emptiness was no accident. When the Monets came home from Venice, they were already hoping to plan a return to the city. It was not to be. Alice became ill and died in 1911. Monet’s grief was great, his melancholy expressed in the motif he returned to several times, seen here as well in “Le Palais da Mula,” of a lone and empty gondola, a poignant commemoration of the loss of the companion with whom he had shared so many days together in his floating studio.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.

  • A poultry affair at the White House

    A poultry affair at the White House

    The call sheet for this afternoon’s event at the White House was as imposing as ever:

    WHO:

    The President

    Mrs. Melania Trump, First Lady of the United States

    Gobble, Turkey

    Waddle, Turkey

    Putin at 10, turkeys at 12, home to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving by nightfall. A typical day in the Trump presidency.

    This year’s birds, Gobble and Waddle, hail from Wayne County, North Carolina, and will return to live out their days at North Carolina State University. Luckily they aren’t from Venezuela, else Pete Hegseth would have turned them into a cloud of red vapor and feathers already. Cockburn helped himself to a cup of hot apple cider from the White House staff and settled in at the back of the press area.

    Through a spattering of light rain, President Trump began his remarks in the Rose Garden by pointing out the excellent paving job that had been carried out under his direction. “You’d be sinking into the mud,” he said. Interrupted by the occasional gobble, the President said he was delighted to mark “a pardon day for a very important beast” and praised the “two handsome Thanksgiving turkeys.”

    That’s as apolitical as Trump managed. As he spoke from the podium, alongside the Presidential Wall of Fame with its Biden autopen portrait, he went on to declare, “last year’s turkey pardons are totally invalid” – before repardoning them himself. He noted how well he’d performed in the birds’ county of origin – “I won Wayne County by a lot” – and mentioned other turkey names that he had considered. “I was gonna call them Chuck and Nancy,” Trump suggested, “but then I wouldn’t pardon them.” The President mentioned that RFK Jr. – not in attendance – had declared the birds “the first ever MAHA turkeys,” then treated the audience to a diatribe on urban crime in DC and Chicago. “The governor is a big fat slob,” the President said of J.B. Pritzker. Shortly after, he said, “I don’t talk about people being fat, I refuse to talk about the fact that he’s a big fat slob.” Food for thought ahead of your Thanksgiving discussions on Thursday.

    Spotted in attendance: Vice President J.D. Vance and Usha, with their daughter Mirabel; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; FBI Director Kash Patel; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; HUD Secretary Scott Turner; EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin; deputy assistant to the President Dr. Sebastian Gorka, and Jason Miller.

    On our radar

    MTG BRB President Trump laid down the gauntlet to Marjorie Taylor Greene following her resignation announcement. “It’s not going to be easy for her” to revive her career in politics, he said, adding, “I’d love to see that.”

    KELLY CONSPIRACY? The Pentagon has launched an investigation into Senator Mark Kelly following last week’s video in which he urges active-duty military to ignore “illegal” orders. President Trump accused Kelly of “sedition,” which he states is “punishable by DEATH!”

    GET STUFFED Several major airports are experiencing serious delays heading into the Thanksgiving holiday due to inclement weather.

    Candace in the crosshairs?

    After the death of her friend Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens spent the fall warning the public of alleged conspiracies behind his assassination… involving, you guessed it, Israel. Now she is concerned for her own safety. On Sunday night, she shared with her 7 million X followers that she had received “credible” evidence of a plot to kill her. “I even have names,” she wrote. The most important name: Emmanuel Macron. The French first couple has been a subject of Owens’s concern for a while now. The podcaster is being sued for making a documentary branding Brigitte Macron secretly transgender. If President Macron employs French assassins to kill her, in a 21st-century retelling of Luc Besson’s Leon, it would be a mistake. Per “comic” Dave Smith’s post on X, “taking out Candace Owens will turn all of us into Candace Owens.” Perish the thought.

    Subscribe to Cockburn’s Diary on Substack to get it in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.

  • The tragedy of France’s palm oil croissants

    The tragedy of France’s palm oil croissants

    Occasionally, a French person reveals – without any malice or superciliousness – that they run on an alternative operating system from us Brits. And on an entirely different motherboard from our American cousins.

    Over the years of gathering supporting anecdotes, a surprising theme has emerged: butter. Take my first visit to Paris, more than 30 years ago. I innocently asked for butter with my croissant. Simple answer: “Non.” Naturally, I remonstrated. The waiter retorted: “A croissant eeez butter!”

    And, in fairness, he had a point. Upon biting into said viennoiserie, I had to concede: it was nothing like the dry grocery store versions I was used to. Moments later, a small pot of raspberry confiture was graciously placed on my table. (To this day, it remains the best service I’ve ever received in Paris.)

    Fast-forward 20 years. I’m in rural Brittany, ordering a ham and cheese baguette. This time, the young woman behind the counter asked if I’d like butter. “Mais bien sûr!” Clearly irritated by my overconfidence, she spread it thinly, added the fillings, and was about to wrap when I piped up with a final request. Mayonnaise? “But you already ’av butter!” Her revulsion was palpable.

    Still smarting from my Paris humiliation decades earlier, I instinctively dug in. After all, I knew what I wanted. Butter and mayonnaise are hardly strangers in a sandwich – and I happen to be an expert in my own taste. She resentfully slopped some on, gratis. I asked for mayo on my wife’s sandwich too, if only to normalize it.

    When we moved to France permanently, we rented a tiny house in the center of a small Catalan town. Our British landlord drew our attention to the croissantière just around the corner. Assuming this was a veritable French term for “croissant specialist” (it isn’t), I investigated the next morning. The croissants did not disappoint – still warm, they transported me back to that Parisian revelation. So naturally, I returned the next day. And the next…

    “You’ll get fat,” the croissant-maker’s wife warned, deadpan, as she handed over the bag. I looked up, expecting a smile. There was none. I tried to hide my offense, but her comment bounced around my head for days. It wasn’t just the bluntness – it was the complete lack of commercial instinct. In the UK or US, such patronage would earn you loyalty points and a branded tote bag. In France, you receive an aesthetic warning.

    Ashamed but still addicted, I tried to ration myself. Mercifully, a few years later, we moved to a nearby village with its own boulangerie. A fresh start. The next morning, brimming with anticipation, I bit into my new dealer’s wares. Gone was the delicate shatter of buttery lamination. Absent was the fragrant plume of warm dairy. What I tasted was more like… wax. Hydrogenated, seed-oil-infused wax. It stopped me mid-bite.

    I soon learned the truth. Many bakeries, faced with high butter prices and early mornings, have outsourced croissant production to industrial suppliers. These “croissants in waiting” arrive frozen and full of margarine. A croissant pur beurre can contain up to 30 percent real butter by weight. The industrial kind? Next to nothing. But thanks to the slippery language of au beurre versus pur beurre, no one’s technically lying. Roquefort has a charter. Camembert has a lawyer. The croissant? No such protection.

    I now conduct covert pastry runs to our neighboring town. I smuggle them home in unmarked bags, slipping them past my own boulangerie like a man hiding dinner receipts from his wife – except the mistress is covered in egg wash.

    It’s tragic, considering the way the French can deify food, to witness them quietly debase it. The croissant, that most sacred of breakfast icons, is now often a margarine-infused counterfeit.

    Frédéric Roy, a Nice-based baker, has tried to sound the alarm. His campaign to label industrial pastries has gained traction, but little legal weight. Meanwhile, “butter blend” croissants made with palm oil and diacetyl are increasingly sold as au beurre – just without the taste or conscience.

    Healthwise, it’s a grim spectrum. On one end, the artisanal croissant – a golden coronary wrapped in charm. On the other, the industrial version: trans fat-free, yes, but with all the digestibility of a scented candle.

    If you want to evaluate the prosperity of any French neighborhood, buy the most expensive croissant you can find. It will tell you the real story.

    And perhaps that’s the truest measure of where France now finds itself: a country still wrapped in the golden flake of tradition, but filled more and more with something else entirely. The croissant was once a luxury. Then it became a daily pleasure. Now it’s a performance – ersatz, over-rehearsed and mostly margarine.

    A rich pastry for a country that can no longer afford the substance, but insists on maintaining the form.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Did the Louvre robbers want to get caught?

    Did the Louvre robbers want to get caught?

    It is more than a month since thieves stole the crown jewels from the Louvre and the chances of recovering the loot, worth an estimated €88 million, diminish with every passing day.

    The robbery was initially dubbed the “heist of the century,” a brazen theft in broad daylight as visitors strolled through the world’s most famous museum. There were up and down the ladder and in out of the museum in seven minutes, giving the impression that this was the work of villains well-versed in daring robberies.

    But soon details emerged that suggested the gang of four weren’t quite of the caliber of the thieves immortalized in the Hollywood movie Ocean’s Eleven. They left behind a trail of clues: the two disc cutters used to open the display cabinets, a blowtorch, gloves, a walkie-talkie, a yellow vest, a blanket and the truck with extendable ladder. In their haste to escape, the thieves dropped Empress Eugénie’s crown, festooned with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds. In total, explained Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, the police found “more than 150 DNA, fingerprint and other traces” at the scene.

    Within a week two men were in custody, who swiftly admitted “partial” responsibility; for their role in the heist. A third was arrested a few days later. All were petty criminals from the Paris suburbs. “It is a type of delinquency that we do not generally associate with the upper echelons of organized crime,” said Beccuau.

    One of the suspects is allegedly a former YouTube star famous for his motorbike stunts that he showed off on social media. According to media reports, his real name is Abdoulaye N, a 39-year-old with a rap sheet for petty crime stretching back two decades. Friends and associates claim that since he became a father he had settled down, and one told the New York Times: “He’s really the last guy I would have thought of for something like that.”

    One of the three men in custody – not identified – was described at the weekend as a “good Samaritan.” Apparently he once came to the aid of a stranded motorist on the Paris ring road in September, offering a “calm and reassuring” presence to the distressed driver.

    The fourth member of the gang has not been caught. Is he the one with the brains, as well as the booty? The thieves certainly knew what they were after. Rayan Ferrarotto, the commercial director of the French diamond merchant Celinni, says the jewels were stolen to order. “When you look at major art thefts, it is almost always the case that private collectors or enthusiasts commission the thefts to own a unique piece… it’s all about prestige and exclusivity.”

    Beccuau says she is keeping an open mind about the theft. “We are examining all the possibilities on the parallel market for selling this jewellery… it could be used for money laundering, it could be used for trade; all leads are being explored.”

    Is one possibility that getting caught quickly was part of the thieves’ plan? It subsequently emerged that the truck used in the robbery was stolen nine days earlier by two men who threatened the driver. Furthermore, that incident took place in Louvres, a town north-east of Paris. Perhaps the thieves had a good sense of humor. Or did they want to draw attention to themselves?

    Knowing they had left behind so much incriminating evidence, why didn’t they flee France immediately instead of returning to their stamping ground in the suburbs of Paris?

    Unless their bungling was all part of the plan. The maximum sentence in France for theft without violence is three years in prison and a €45,000 fine. In the case of aggravating circumstances, such as a gang robbery, the maximum sentence is five years in prison and a €75,000 fine. This increases to seven years when the theft involves “cultural property that is part of the public domain.”

    With good behavior, and a willingness to “demonstrate efforts towards reintegration,” a prisoner can have six months per full year of incarceration reduced. In other words, even with a seven-year sentence, a well-behaved prisoner would be released after half that time.

    In 2009, an armored cash van and its driver disappeared as it made a drop at a bank in Lyon. Initially it was feared the vehicle and its €11.6 million in deposit boxes had been hijacked. Eleven days later the driver, Tony Musulin, gave himself up and police retrieved €9 million of the money. Unfortunately, he said, €2.5 million had been stolen from him. He was sentenced to three years in prison. The missing money has never been found. In 2019, Musulin was briefly arrested in London when he tried to convert £75,000 into Euros at a bureau de change. He was released without charge after explaining that the money came from the sale of his Ferrari.

    Musulin became something of a cult hero in France. Mugs and T-shirts were sold online emblazoned with “Tony Musulin, Best Driver 2009.” The Louvre thieves have also been feted in some quarters; a German company has used the robbery to promote its trucks with extendable ladders, telling customers they’re perfect for “when you need to move fast.”

    Are the alleged perpetrators of the Louvre heist happy to go to prison for a few years knowing that when they get out they’ll get some of the proceeds? Or perhaps they are just opportunistic thieves who got lucky because the Louvre security was even more amateur than they were.

  • A decade after Bataclan, France is more divided than ever

    A decade after Bataclan, France is more divided than ever

    Ten years ago on Thursday, Islamist terrorists massacred 130 people in a coordinated attack across Paris. It was the heaviest loss of life on French soil since World War Two, and those who perished – as well as the 350 who were wounded – were remembered yesterday in a series of commemorations. Emmanuel Macron visited the six sites where the terrorists struck, among them the Stade de France and the Bataclan concert hall, and the President inaugurated a memorial garden at Place Saint-Gervais, opposite Paris City Hall.

    According to the Élysée Palace ahead of proceedings, the day would be an opportunity for the nation “to honor the memory of those who lost their lives… and reaffirm its ongoing commitment to the fight against terrorism.” Since 2015 the DGSI have thwarted 80 Islamist terror plots but 50 attacks have been launched, 19 of which were fatal, nearly one every six months.

    The organizer of the day of remembrance is Thierry Reboul, who oversaw the opening ceremony of last year’s Paris Olympics. He said the commemorations would honor “the dead and the living, but also our culture, which was attacked that evening, with a moment of collective unity.”

    To bring France together is an admirable aim, but is it achievable? It has been tried before without success. A week after Islamists murdered the staff of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, schools in France held a minute’s silence in their memory. In over 200 establishments students refused to respect the silence. A similar request for silence was made in 2023, in memory of the teacher Dominique Bernard, who was fatally stabbed in the schoolyard by an Islamist. Some pupils in 350 schools chose not to comply.

    These acts of rebellion should surprise no-one. A comprehensive study published in 2021 reported that 65 percent of Muslim students in French schools consider Islamic law superior to Republican law.

    The figure wouldn’t have surprised François Hollande, who was president of the Republic in 2015. He described the assault on Paris as “an act of war.” The following year a book was published, A President should not say that, in which Hollande confided in two journalists. “It’s true that there is a problem with Islam,” he told them. “No one doubts that…we can’t continue to have migrants arriving unchecked, especially in the context of the attacks.”

    If vast numbers of migrants from Africa continue to arrive unchecked, Hollande warned, “how can we avoid partition? Because that’s what’s happening: partition.”

    Since Hollande made those observations, unchecked immigration into France has reached record levels, prompting other significant politicians to warn of partition. “Today we live side by side,” said interior minister Gerard Collomb in his resignation speech of November 2018, “but tomorrow I fear we will live face to face.”

    In the two years since Hamas attacked Israel, anti-Semitism in France has reached “alarming” levels and a recent poll disclosed that 31 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds believed it acceptable to assault Jews because of the Gaza conflict.

    Synagogues have been burnt, Jews beaten up in the street and last week four pro-Palestinian protesters stormed a Paris concert hall, letting off flares and shouting threats as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performed. 

    On Monday, a package bomb exploded in the Montlucon agency of the German financial services company, Allianz, injuring one employee. Days earlier, the Toulouse branch of the company had its windows smashed. An extreme-left group claimed responsibility for the Toulouse attack, justifying it on the grounds that Allianz insures an Israeli drone manufacturer.

    The intimidation of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra drew scant comment from far-left MPs. A minority, such as Thomas Portes of La France insoumise (LFI), celebrated the intrusion, declaring: “We must multiply these actions! We are on the right side.”

    “Islamo-Gauchisme” is now de rigueur among the far-left. Another LFI MP, Nathalie Oziol, stated earlier this year that it was wrong to blame the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty in 2020 on “a Muslim fanatic.” Rather, it was an issue of “resources, hierarchy, and how the government views national education.”

    In an op-ed in Tuesday’s Le Figaro, the academic and expert on Islamism, Gilles Kepel, expressed his fear that the Islamists were exploiting the left’s useful idiocy to win the “cultural battle.” Certainly they are winning the hearts and minds of a growing number of young French Muslims.

    The Islamist attack last week on the holiday island of Oleron overshadowed the revelation that three women aged 18, 19 and 21 were charged with plotting to bomb a concert venue “in homage to bin Laden.” This is not an isolated case. Nearly 70 percent of people arrested on suspicion of terrorism are under 21 and over half are motivated by a desire to avenge Gaza.

    There was grief, poignancy and dignity across France as millions paused to remember that horrific evening in Paris ten years ago. But there will also be delusion. Not among the people, three-quarters of whom told a recent poll that they expect more Islamist attacks in the future, but among the political elite.

    France is not united; it is divided. To deny this reality dishonors the dead and endangers the living.

  • Why is it only left-wing leaders who are allowed to be young?

    Why is it only left-wing leaders who are allowed to be young?

    There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them. Not now. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race has caused much joie de vivre in left-circles.

    Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Gallic Bernie Saunders and the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, described Mamdani’s win as “very good news.”

    The general secretary of the center-left Socialist party, Olivier Faure, posted a smiley face on X above a headline in Le Monde, hailing Mamdani as “the youngest mayor in New York history.”

    Mamdani referenced his age during his victory speech in Brooklyn. “The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate,” he proclaimed. “I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a Democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”

    There has been no need to apologize to much of the world’s mainstream media. His age and his religion have been a help not a hindrance to Mamdani’s rapid ascension.

    A puff-piece in Wednesday’s Guardian was typical. It praised his youthful vigor, particularly his “savvy social-media presence” and the way in which it was “energizing younger voters… who are hungry for generational and ideological change.”

    France’s left-wing Liberation newspaper took a similar line, characterizing Mamdani as “the idol of Generation Z” and the hope for a better future in the United States.

    Curiously, these newspapers have a different take on another political idol of Generation Z, France’s Jordan Bardella.

    The 30-year-old president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is routinely attacked for his age and his reliance on social media. When Mamdani promotes himself and his policies to his 3 million followers on TikTok he is being “savvy.” When Bardella addresses his 2.2 million followers he’s using it as a “propaganda tool.”

    For Mamdani, his youth is a virtue but with Bardella it’s a weakness. CNN has pointed to his “short career and lack of concrete experience,” while the Guardian depicted him as “too young and inexperienced.”

    This week Bardella was forced to defend his age during a television interview, saying his youth does not “discredit” him. Yet the same broadcaster made no reference to Mamdani’s age when discussing the possibility that he was the future of the Democratic party. The fact he was a little “too left” was perceived to be his only blemish.

    France’s international broadcaster, France24, believes that the victory of Mamdani will “galvanize” the French left. No doubt. But it will also be a boost for Bardella.

    He has become the face this year of the National Rally, eclipsing the de facto leader of the party, Marine Le Pen. In March she was disqualified from political life for five years after a Paris court ruled she had misused EU funds. Le Pen has appealed her conviction and the outcome will be known next February.

    Even if she overturns the sentence, there is a growing belief in France that Le Pen won’t be her party’s candidate in the 2027 presidential election. She has two disadvantages: her economic socialism, which remains a turn off for middle-class voters, and her last name.

    There are still a sizable number of voters, particularly among the over 60s, who, while they agree with her about the dangers of mass immigration and Islamism, still can’t bring themselves to cast a ballot for a Le Pen. The anti-Semitism of her father, Jean-Marie, is etched in their memory.

    Bardella is different. He does not suffer the sins of his father and he is also more economically liberal. Over the last year he has been courting big business and deftly drawing the distinction between himself and his mentor, Madame Le Pen.

    Bardella’s only disadvantage is his age. Or at least it was until this week. But Mamdani has done the Frenchman a favor. Next time Bardella is interrogated by a hostile journalist about his callowness he can simply namecheck the inspiring mayor of New York.

    Or is it only left-wing leaders who are allowed to be young?

  • What doesn’t kill Egly-Ouriet makes it stronger

    What doesn’t kill Egly-Ouriet makes it stronger

    In recent columns, we have visited some lesser known spots in Burgundy – Saint-Romain, Maranges, Ladoix – where the wines are good and the prices reassuring.  This time, I’d like to travel to Champagne to introduce you to one of my most exciting recent discoveries, the wines of Egly-Ouriet. You know about Dom Pérignon, Krug, Bollinger and Taittinger. They can be very good. Egly-Ouriet is something else.

    Remember that Champagne occupies the northernmost precinct of French wine production. The northeastern bit of the area borders Belgium. It’s chilly up there, and damp. Nietzsche famously declared that, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” That may not be true of people. I am pretty sure it is not. But the observation has a certain application to wine. Difficult conditions make the grapes try harder.

    This is something that Champagne makers understand instinctively. It is said the Egly family and its ancestors have been growing grapes in and around the eastern valley of Montagne de Reims since the 18th century. The vineyards around Ambonnay, Bouzy and Verzenay are their epicenter. At first, Egly-Ouriet sold most of its fruit to other winemakers. But in the mid-20th century, the family began marketing its own wine. After Francis Egly took over the business in the 1980s, the winery developed a cult following. Today, it makes some of the most complex and sumptuous Champagne in the world.

    A word one often sees in connection with Egly-Ouriet is “precise.” In some ways that is curious, because Egly’s approach to winemaking can also be described as laissez-faire or “minimalist.” His spots of dirt offer some of the choicest grand cru and premier cru terroir in Champagne. Some of his grand cru vines in Ambonnay date from 1946. Planted on shallow chalk soils with only about a foot of topsoil, they make, in Egly’s hands, some remarkable wines.

    Egly takes great pains to let nature do the talking. He uses local yeasts and minimal pressing. He listens hard to the weather, the “unheard melodies” of the land that he is blessed to cultivate. Galileo said that wine is sunlight caught in water. Francis Egly makes the sunlight sparkle. Time equals money. One reason Champagne is expensive is that it requires a lot of time to make. By law, nonvintage Champagne must age for a minimum of 15 months, vintage for 36 months. Some of Egly-Ouriet’s offerings age for 60 months, some of its grand crus age for 84 months, a few for an astonishing 96 months, eight years, in the barrel and sur-lattes. Look for the initials “V.P.,” which stands for “vieillissement prolongé,” or “prolonged aging.”

    So what does all this time and cultivation cost? Some of Egly-Ouriet’s Champagnes are expensive. Vintage Grand Cru Brut Millesime and Extra-Brut Blanc de Noirs Les Crayères are dear. Bring along five or six Benjamins for a recent vintage, more for older ones. But some of its wines are, as these things go, veritable bargains. Its premier cru Brut Les Vigne de Bisseuil, for example, can be yours for about $100. Its Les Prémices is about $70. They are all delicious, with that bread-like yeastiness and blooming, succulent mouthfeel that most of the best Champagnes feature.

    I have had several bottles of Champagne from Egly-Ouriet in the last few years. After a gala event in Washington at the end of last month, I repaired with some friends to Butterworth’s, DC’s trendy and most politically mature refectory (at 319 Pennsylvania Avenue SE) with a bottle of the Rosé Grand Cru Extra Brut. The cuvée was from vineyards in Ambonnay, Bouzy and Verzenay – 70 percent pinot noir, 30 percent chardonnay, tinctured with 5 percent still red wine from Ambonnay. It was nonvintage, but on a base of 2019 grapes, disgorged in October 2024; the wine had lingered 48 months on the lees.

    We were in a mood to be appreciative, but even with an appropriate discount for what (in another context) Alan Greenspan called “irrational exuberance,” we all agreed that the wine was spectacular. It started with an intense nose, redolent of a pâtisserie, proceeded with a kaleidoscope of shifting tones and flavors and adumbrations, and finished long, with that bright intensity that all good Champagne deploys. This wine is not cheap, but neither is it exorbitant. A bottle can be yours for about $200.

    I will end by noting the Egly-Ouriet also makes an excellent still pinot noir called Coteaux Champenois Rouge. It comes from vines that are 60 years old or older in a single south-facing vineyard in Ambonnay directly below the Les Crayères chalk pit. We followed the Champagne with a bottle of the 2022. It was unlike any Burgundy pinot noir I have had. Intense yet balanced, full-fruited yet reticent, severe yet coaxable. Bottled by hand directly from the barrel, it is a wine that had a pampered yet strenuous upbringing. It is usually about $300 a bottle. Definitely vaut le voyage, as Baedeker would say.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Macron has declared war on free speech

    Macron has declared war on free speech

    Emmanuel Macron says Europeans should stop relying on social media for their news and turn back to traditional public media. Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, he said people were “completely wrong” to use social networks for information and should instead depend on journalists and established outlets. Social platforms, he argued, are driven by a ‘process of maximum excitement” designed to “maximize advertising revenue,” a system he said is “destroying the foundations of democratic debate.”

    He accused X of being “dominated by far-right content” and added that the platform was no longer neutral because its owner had “decided to take part in the democratic struggle and in the international reactionary movement.” TikTok, he warned, was no less dangerous. Macron called for “a much stronger agenda of protection and regulation in Europe” to rein in what he views as the excesses of social networks.

    Macron is urging Europe to “take back control of our democratic and informational life.” This is not the first time that he has spoken in such terms. France and its allies, he warned, have been “naïve” in allowing their public debate to be shaped by foreign-owned platforms and algorithms that no longer respect neutrality. To counter what he calls “a crisis of information,” he wants a new “European agenda of protection and regulation.” It is, in effect, a plan to bring the digital sphere under far stricter political control.

    Macron’s comments are an attack on how an entire generation gets its news. Over 40 percent of people under 30 and nearly half of 18- to 30-year-olds now rely on social media for news. He appears to believe they should return to the days of reading and watching state-controlled media. The suggestion is astonishing. It’s frightening to even have to write this but democracy depends on access to competing points of view, not on state-managed television and subsidized newspapers. Macron cannot seriously believe that it would be good for democracy if Europeans were driven back to getting their news from government-aligned networks.

    Macron also blamed foreign interference, accusing Russia of being “the biggest buyer of fake accounts’ aiming to destabilize European democracies. “We’re facing interference on steroids,” he said. Macron has previously cited alleged manipulation of online content during recent elections in Eastern Europe, which he called “terrifying.” Yet observers found little evidence of large-scale manipulation in those cases. What really unsettled Paris and Brussels was often the result of those elections and the rejection of EU-backed candidates. His warnings about fake accounts look less like a defense of democracy than an argument for tightening state control over speech.

    The logical consequence of what Macron is proposing is that to abolish “fake accounts” you must abolish anonymity itself. If Macron is serious about ending fake accounts, and he keeps repeating that he is, the only way to do that is through digital identity. His plan leads inevitably to a system where anyone who wants to post or comment online must first prove who they are.

    The architecture for full control of social networks in the Europe already exists. The EU’s eIDAS regulation requires every member state to issue digital identities. There is France Identité, Germany has eID, Italy its SPID. Originally designed for banking, healthcare and tax, these IDs could easily be integrated into online services. Macron’s vision would plug them directly into the Digital Services Act. The result would be an internet where every post is traceable to a verified name. It’s a short step from fighting “fake accounts” to outlawing anonymous speech altogether.

    For years, Macron has argued that the internet must be brought to heel. When he cannot legislate at home, he does it through Brussels. The EU’s Digital Services Act already gives regulators the power to police what they call “systemic risks” online, a term broad enough to cover disinformation, hate speech, or anything judged destabilizing to democracy. Under the Act, platforms can be fined up to 6 per cent of global turnover, a threat that forces them to police themselves long before Brussels intervenes. The result is over-compliance and the quiet erosion of free speech. Add the eIDAS digital-identity framework, and Macron suddenly has the tools to pursue his long-standing ambition of ending online anonymity.

    In France itself, Macron is running out of power. His government has no stable majority, his authority in parliament has evaporated, and his personal ratings have collapsed. A poll in Le Figaro magazine this week puts his confidence level at just 11 per cent, among the lowest scores ever for a president of the Fifth Republic. On the streets he’s booed. Online he’s mocked daily. But in Brussels, the machinery of regulation still answers to him. The Digital Services Act and eIDAS framework move forward regardless of French politics, enforced by bureaucrats rather than parliament. Macron may be paralyzed in Paris, but in Europe he can still act like a statesman. The danger is that he could still in the time that he has left in office shape the rules that define what Europeans can and cannot say.

    Macron insists he’s defending democracy from manipulation and hate. But that’s the excuse. His vision is of a Europe where free speech is tolerated only when it is traceable, and where platforms pre-emptively silence anything that might draw a regulator’s glare. He calls it a “resurgence of democracy.” It’s nothing of the kind. It’s the bureaucratization of thought, and the beginning of a continent where debate survives only on license. If Macron has his way, Europe’s public square will not just be regulated, it will be licensed.

  • Brigitte Macron has run out of sympathy

    Ten people have been on trial this week in Paris, accused of transphobic cyberbullying against Brigitte Macron. France’s first lady, the wife of Emmanuel Macron, pressed charges after a claim that she was in fact a man went global. Some of those in the dock have apologized for spreading the allegations online but others have said that it’s just a bit of harmless fun and that in a free country one should be able to say what one likes.

    This argument was dismissed by Brigitte Macron’s lawyer, Jean Ennochi, who said: “They all talk to you about freedom of expression, defamation, they completely deny cyberbullying [and] mob harassment.” Prosecutors have demanded suspended prison sentences ranging from three to twelve months for the accused. The judges will give their verdict in January.

    Perhaps Madame Macron should have followed the late Queen of England’s maxim of “never complain, never explain.” Had she done so, the claims that she was a man would probably have not been covered across the world, from the BBC to the New York Times.

    But Macron felt compelled to take action after what began as a one-woman smear campaign turned into a global conspiracy theory. The American influencer, Candace Owens, began pushing the theory in 2024 and eventually released an eight-part podcast. She is being sued by the Macrons.

    The originator of the claim that Brigitte is a man who transitioned is a Frenchwoman in her fifties called Natacha Rey. She took a dislike to Brigitte from the moment her husband was elected president in 2017 and began a three-year “investigation” into her background. No one took any notice of Rey’s social media rants at first. That may have been because of the goodwill most people in France felt towards Brigitte Macron. She seemed like a grounded woman who was more in touch with the average citizen than her husband. They were prepared to overlook the “weird” circumstances of how they met; she was a 39-year-old teacher, a married woman with three children, and he was a 15-year-old pupil in her theatre class.

    In an Anglophone country more searching questions might have been asked by journalists but in France the fawning mainstream media depicted the union as an inspiring love story. As one paper wrote: “Two thwarted lovers ready to overcome all obstacles: the story begins like a Molière comedy.”

    In the early days of Macron’s presidency, Brigitte earned the respect of the French by fronting a campaign against bullying in schools and supporting victims of violence. But then stories began emerging that eroded much of the goodwill: the €600,000 ($694,000) that the Élysée Palace spent on flowers in 2020, the year when Macron locked the French in their homes because of Covid.

    In the summer of 2023 it was disclosed that Brigitte had forked out €315,808 ($365,000) on clothes in the past 12 months. “Brigitte Macron has a particular fondness for luxury items,” explained a fashion magazine, listing her favorite designers as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Chanel.

    The following year Brigitte made a guest appearance in Emily in Paris, the spectacularly vacuous Netflix sitcom that depicts the lives of the rich and frivolous in the French capital. It was not well received. France was in political turmoil, the country was ravaged by violence, the cost of living was soaring and here was Brigitte simpering on screen.

    Barely anyone in France takes seriously the claim that Brigitte Macron is a man. But whereas a few years ago many would have sprung to her defence now they just shrug. They have scant sympathy even if, as one of Brigitte’s daughters told the court this week, her mother suffers from the “horrible” things said about her. The view of the majority is “so what?” They have suffered eight years of her husband’s chaotic presidency.

    Brigitte was asked in an interview last December about the fraught relationship between her husband and his people. She replied that they “don’t deserve him.” It was a provocative remark and, judging from the slap Brigitte gave her husband a few weeks later, he can also drive her to distraction. “We are not an ideal couple,” Brigitte said of her marriage in 2019. The French would agree.