The demographic corollaries of an individualist society won’t be solved with more individualism. — On a recent visit to my hometown of Madrid, I found it worthwhile to attend a panel on family policy hosted by a religious-cum-scholarly group deeply invested in the issue. Three speakers took turns to intone, with varying degrees of alarm, what is by now the three-pronged conservative consensus on…

West European nations are being coaxed by foreign powers into giving away their independence in exchange for better access to the global commons — in the case of Russia and China — and enhanced security — in the case of the US. — Editor's note — This essay is adapted from my opening remarks at a panel on “challenges to national independence” at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels on March 24th, 2022, with Baroness Foster of Oxton DBE (UK House of Lords), Francesco Giubilei (Nazione Futura, Italy) and Juan Ángel Soto Gómez…

His underwhelming flop among the general electorate notwithstanding, the right-wing candidate has exposed a deep fracture within France’s Jewish community that may reappear in future races. — When I first met Éric Zemmour at a meet-and-greet for Hispanic politicos held last October in a ritzy Parisian hotel, the question I asked him may have let slip a somewhat overdone philosemitism on my part. The response I got, however, helps make sense of the polemicist’s — now failed — bid for the French presidency. Still a month out from announcing his candidacy, I was intrigued by Zemmour’s stance on what is increasingly the top concern for his fellow French Jews per a recent survey by the FONDAPOL think-tank and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) — the rapid rise of anti-Semitism.

Britain never meant to entangle itself in a continental march towards federalization and has seized on Brexit as an opportunity to project power, argues an erudite book by eminent historian Robert Tombs. — This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe. By Robert Tombs. Allen Lane; 224 pages; 16.99$. “The future of Europe and its peoples”, declares Robert Tombs in the preface to This Sovereign Isle (2021), “now worries me more than that of Britain”. What are the odds he’s sincere? A…

When his death is proven to be an antisemitic murder, will France’s media and political establishment confess to having covered up the case? — PARIS — Antisemitism could be rearing its murderous face in France — yet again. In the evening of February 16th, 30-year-old French Jew Jérémy Cohen was savagely beaten to the ground by a thuggish, multiethnic mob of loitering youths. The incident took place near the Bobigny train station, in the…

Having thrived for millennia amidst Arab societies despite their inferior status, Oriental Jews were swiftly uprooted in a matter of decades by the Arab-Israeli conflict. A once-in-a-lifetime exhibit at Paris’s Institute for the Arab World attempts to synthesize conflicting narratives of trauma and nostalgia. — Every so often, some corner of French academia will launch into a seemingly sterile controversy that nonetheless touches a deep chord amongst parts of the larger society and works as a barometer gauging its political climate. Over the past half-decade, Arab-Jewish relations past and present have been just that scholarly…

Standing athwart the emergence of a ‘literal society’ which no longer appreciates irony, nuance, or sarcasm, the intellectual Alain Finkielkraut’s embrace of high culture makes him a reactionary in today’s France. — The ‘trigger warning’ system in France just about melted down: “Rape! Rape! Rape! There you go! I say to all men: rape women! In fact, I rape mine every night. Really, every night. She’s so sick of it.” This burst of angry sarcasm came from Alain Finkielkraut, France’s most eminent…