The cult of military service sprouted in the era of the volunteer army. While it means that professional politicians like Tim Walz may ride this into the White House with Kamala Harris, for others, it is a road to the graveyard.
The French ruling class has persisted in winding back democracy to force neoliberalism onto an unwilling population. Its refusal to accept the electoral results is just the latest example, and the growth of the far right is one of the results.
The left’s victory in France’s parliamentary election shows that the country’s most important political actors—urban workers and young people—want to fight against both fascism and neoliberalism.
According to Britain’s Economist magazine, a weekly diary of establishment opinion, the “political centre has been dented but it still holds”. Yet parties of the centre lost to the far right in the continent’s biggest countries.
If a fascist government comes to power in France, it should build statues in honour of President Emmanuel Macron. Victory wouldn’t have been possible without him.