The desert of politics

Dear readers,

Three weeks before the first round of municipal elections, a city has captured the attention of the political class and the media: Lyon, where “political hatred killed” the far-right activist Quentin Deranque, according to the Luxembourg newspaper Le Quotidien, which added that “the whole city is in shock.”

Beyond the “horror” and “disgust,” the headline takes a harsh look at French politics, which has been “mired in excesses for months now,” and believes that “the hatred that animates [the French political world] now flows through the streets of Lyon.”

It also states that this climate, in addition to its violence, reduces the reader to “a foil and a pawn that can be used in protests or marches that will serve one party or another.”

Using the reader rather than serving them. This feeling of betrayal and abandonment has been identified, for years, by the international press as one of the main ingredients of the anger that fuels the rise of the far right in rural and peri-urban regions as well as social movements, especially the “yellow vests” movement.

In its report (to be read in issue number 1842 of Courrier International),