David Broder

1 month ago | almendron.com | David Broder

France is still in shock. The ruling last week that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally misused millions of euros in European Parliament funds has upended the country’s politics. As Ms. Le Pen was quick to say, her polling position made her the favorite to win the next presidential election in 2027. The verdict, barring her from running for office for five years, has all but ruled that out.

2 months ago | newstatesman.com | David Broder

On 29 March, a poll put Marine Le Pen as the clear front-runner in France’s next presidential election. The projected 37 per cent first-round support for the hard-right politician would be the highest for any candidate in half a century. But just days later, on 31 March, a Paris court ruled that she won’t be able to stand for election at all, after she was found guilty of embezzlement. Le Pen had declared, ahead of the ruling, that such a ban would mean “condemning me to political death”.

2 months ago | jacobin.com | David Broder

Marine Le Pen leads a party that was founded by Holocaust deniers and former Nazi-collaborators. It speaks of French people of immigrant background as second-class citizens and routinely calls for foreign-born criminals to be expelled from France. It has a long history of damning the presence of fraudsters and convicts in French political life. Le Pen has herself launched legal action to political ends.

2 months ago | jacobin.com | David Broder

Marine Le Pen leads a party that was founded by Holocaust deniers and former Nazi-collaborators. It speaks of French people of immigrant background as second-class citizens and routinely calls for foreign-born criminals to be expelled from France. It has a long history of damning the presence of fraudsters and convicts in French political life. Le Pen has herself launched legal action to political ends.

2 months ago | defenddemocracy.press | David Broder

By David Broder Feb 28, 2025The German federal election produced a parliament representing five main parties, plus one seat for regionalists in Schleswig-Holstein. Two parties previously in the Bundestag, namely the neoliberals of the Free Democrats (FDP) and the left-conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), failed to secure representation, missing the 5 percent threshold. The biggest single bloc is Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (here shown in black, as Union), a conservative force.