Tag: François Mitterrand

Rodrigo Ballester

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The following is an interview with Rodrigo Ballester, Director of the Centre for European Studies at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary, which is an institution that has established close ties with Viktor Orbán’s government in recent years. Rodrigo Ballester is a former European civil servant from the College of Europe, and was notably a member of the cabinet of the Commissioner for Education and Culture from 2014 to 2019. He has been teaching at the Sciences-Po Paris (Dijon Campus) since 2008. (more…)

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The architects of the European Union argue that their construction is an unprecedented achievement following the fratricidal conflicts of the World Wars. Indeed, never before have sovereign nation-states freely consented to forming such a trade bloc and currency union. Furthermore, advocates of European integration argue that the Union’s common citizenship, promotion of regional identity, and open internal borders have softened the harsh lines between nations. (more…)

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The European Union has often been accused of being “fascist” by mainstream nationalists. This accusation, while typically melodramatic, is not absurd insofar as “fascism” is used as shorthand for “undemocratic.” Mainstream EU-philes have long been embarrassed by their regime’s so-called “democratic deficit,” (more…)

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Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog at Versailles, Property of François Pinault

For most of my lifetime, the visual culture of France was not in dispute. It is not like in the United States, where nativity scenes were only recently ripped from the public square. Perhaps there was not a mutually accepted border, but for decades there has been a kind of line of control between all that was rooted in our culture and traditions and all garbage of the culture distorters. (more…)

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Translated by Greg Johnson

In the center of all the questions raised by the sinuous and contradictory path of François Mitterrand is the famous photograph of the interview granted to a young unknown, the future socialist president of the Republic, by Marshall Philippe Pétain in Vichy, on October 15th, 1942. (more…)