Michael G. Vann is a professor of history at California State University, Sacramento, and the coauthor of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam.
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.
