Jean-Marie Chauvier is a Belgian journalist and writer who has written extensively on the former Soviet Union and is now a collaborator of Le Monde Diplomatique. He describes himself as a “past and present dissident”.
The first round of the local elections took place against a backdrop of widespread creeping fascism in France and comes after a brutal offensive by the far right, during which the traditional ‘Republican’ right has decisively broken from much of its historical framework and values.