Know Your Enemy
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Macron vs. Le Pen (w/ Cole Stangler)
🕑 Added 2022-04-22 13:42:14 +0000 UTCMatt and Sam talk to KYE Paris correspondent Cole Stangler (@colestangler) about the French presidential election. Did this week's one-on-one debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen change the race in any significant ways? Why is Le Pen drawing notably more support this time around than she did in 2017? How much is Macron's strategy of pivoting to the right on issues of culture and identity to blame for her rise? What about Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftwing politician who nearly made it to the runoff? And why did the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour fade? Listen for the answers to these questions—and more!
Further Reading:
Cole Stangler, "'He Just Shat All over Us': Why Macron’s “Republican Front” Is Fraying," The Nation, April 15, 2022
Cole Stangler, "A Mélenchon vs. Macron Runoff Would Be Good for France," Foreign Policy, April 4, 2022
Cole Stangler, "France's War on Terror," Commonweal, December 16, 2020
Harrison Stetler, "Catholics for Zemmour," Commonweal, April 1, 2022
Arthur Goldhammer, "Macron Nails Le Pen on Putin," New Republic, April 21, 2022
Comments
Vincent Calabrese
just get a bit tired of the 'no failing, only being failed' retrospectives on Bernie, Corbyn, now Melenchon, etc.
Vincent Calabrese
I think it's worth giving at least some of the blame to Melenchon for the non-alignment of the left. There's a reason the PCF ran its own candidate this year, when they endorsed him in 2012 and 2017.
Joshua Smith
Random thought. I would really love an episode where Matt and Sam talk about books that are important to them. Sort of like the old CSPAN Book TV. Bonus points if they ask the questions in the weird roundabout way the CSPAN guy did ("Who is Edmund White?"), or if they somehow do it live and have crank callers dialing in with solipsistic questions.
David Turner
Would love some coverage of British conservatism, but huge fan of Cole and hearing about France.
