Reflectii

Posing the Question

This year marks the 57th anniversary of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964). This text, although plagued with a pessimistic spirit, was a great source of inspiration for the development of the New Left and the May 68 uprisings. The question we must ask ourselves is whether a text that predates the last 50 years of neoliberalism has any pertinent take-aways for today’s revolutionary struggles. Before we examine this, let us first review the context and central observations in Marcuse’s famed work.

The NSA would have used the Danish IT infrastructure to spy on Angela Merkel and other European leaders.

The Danish public television DR and other European media on Sunday published an investigation showing that the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE) gave the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) open internet access to spy on top politicians of neighboring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Une tribune du général François Gaubert

En tant que général signataire de la lettre ouverte dite des généraux – laquelle en fait est celle de plusieurs milliers d’anciens militaires de tous grades, ce qui en fait la valeur – je souhaiterais apporter un éclairage complémentaire mais essentiel au paragraphe évoquant « l’intervention de nos camarades d’active ».

La France a longtemps été connue pour sa démographie dynamique. Mais des signes très préoccupants d’un dérèglement apparaissent ces dernières années, alerte le haut-commissaire au Plan François Bayrou. Les critiques lui ont reproché de vouloir ouvrir grand les vannes de l’immigration. Or le rapport ne dit pas vraiment cela.

When Rachid Zerrouki, a teacher in Marseille, headed back to his classroom last Monday, he braced himself for the worst. He hadn’t seen his students since the brutal killing of Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old middle school teacher in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, who was beheaded by a young Chechen refugee days after he showed his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson about freedom of expression. With school back in session after a holiday break, the Education Ministry had instructed teachers to have students participate in a minute of silence to express solidarity with Paty and all teachers throughout France.

It is necessary to keep an eye on the other strategies of the New Right and populists, to protect the political culture from a change towards right-wing ideas.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a key topic of discussion in the media was the growing impact of populism on political culture and the political order. The February 2020 election of Thomas Kemmerich of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) as Minister-President of the federal state of Thuringia in Germany gained international attention, as it marked the first time since the Second World War that a candidate was elected head of state government by the Christian Democrats (CDU), the liberals (FDP) and the right-wing, and partly right-extremist, party Alternative for Germany (AfD) by a ‘parliamentary trick’ — AfD members did not vote for their own candidate but unexpectedly shifted their votes to the liberal candidate, Kemmerich. This was contrary to common political behaviour in Germany.

Tous les corps de l’État ont donc le droit de la ramener, de grouiller, de scribouiller, de maugréer, de se politiser et de s’encanailler, sauf les militaires ?

Ils sont la fine fleur de la nation. Ils sont ces femmes et hommes, pas si nombreux, prêts à mourir pour défendre la France si le devoir les conduit à cette terrible extrémité. Ils partagent avec gendarmes, policiers et pompiers une prise de risque fréquente et parfois fatale.

Les militaires d’active, de réserve ou en retraite constituent l’un des derniers bastions de l’honneur, de la fidélité et du respect de l’autorité.

   Bien que n’exerçant pas actuellement le pouvoir, la gauche française est en mauvais état. Le désir d’alternance ne joue pas en sa faveur. D’où vient le désamour dont elle est victime ? Quatre causes principales expliquent l’état comateux dans lequel elle végète : déni de la réalité, goût immodéré pour les minorités couplé à un aveuglement à leur sujet, incapacité de parler au peuple, enfin entre-soi arrogant et sectaire.

Déni de la réalité

wenty Palestinians, nine of them children, were killed in Israeli bombing attacks in the Gaza Strip on Monday night.

This came at the end of a day of violence that began in occupied East Jerusalem, where Israeli forces assaulted worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, injuring hundreds.

Scenes of brutality in Jerusalem generated outrage and solidarity among Palestinians and around the world.