Dr Raul Cârstocea is Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Leicester, UK. He has co-edited with Éva Kovács a volume entitled Modern Anti-Semitisms in the Peripheries: Europe and its Colonies, 1880-1945.
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.