Diane de Vignemont

1 month ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Diane de Vignemont |Alona Ferber

The spectacle of Marine Le Pen’s downfall has all the trappings of a political drama: the courtroom, the damning verdict, the righteous declarations of persecution. And, of course, the inevitable succession crisis. France’s far-right leader, the 56-year-old woman who dragged her party out of the shadows of postwar extremism and into the limelight of mainstream politics, now finds herself barred from running for office for the next five years, effective immediately.

Oct 25, 2024 | newlinesmag.com | Diane de Vignemont

At the “March for Life” in Washington, D.C., held in January of this year, the Colorado-based nonprofit Save the Storks distributed hundreds of colorful anti-abortion placards. Most of them were light blue, adorned with catchy slogans. “I will be their voice,” read one. “Pro-life is pro-woman,” was another. But one of them was not like the others.

Aug 2, 2024 | newlinesmag.com | Diane de Vignemont

Some three decades after their own resistance won support in Buenos Aires, the French repaid the honor The march began in near silence. Only the repetitive horn of a saxophone rang out as the procession moved through central Paris, making its way from the Pantheon, where France buries its great, to the Place de la Concorde, the biggest public square in the French capital. One by one, 100 10-foot-high banners hoisted on tall bamboo poles appeared, carried by some 300 activists.

Jul 5, 2024 | newlinesmag.com | Diane de Vignemont

The New Popular Front echoes the politics of the 1930s, but what can be learned from the historical parallels? Eighty years after Oradour-sur-Glane was burned to the ground, traces of those who lived there remain. The streets are strewn with bed frames, bicycles and the occasional car, frozen in time. And there are sewing machines, dozens of them, lying where they were last used, littered among the ruins of the small French village.

Jun 7, 2024 | newlinesmag.com | Diane de Vignemont

Summer 1940. A young boy reads in his parents’ living room as a portrait of the French Gen. Charles de Gaulle watches over him from the mantelpiece. The house is not in Paris or Nice, but Alta Gracia, Argentina. And the young boy’s name is Ernesto Guevara. Sixteen years later, Guevara would lead Cuba’s armed communist revolution. But at the time, “El Che” was a schoolboy in a small town in Argentina. Guevara’s political consciousness came from his mother, Celia de la Serna.