{"id":14405,"date":"2015-11-14T08:51:02","date_gmt":"2015-11-14T13:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14405"},"modified":"2015-11-14T08:51:02","modified_gmt":"2015-11-14T13:51:02","slug":"france-is-on-the-verge-of-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14405","title":{"rendered":"France is on the Verge of \u2026 What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

France is on the Verge of \u2026 What?<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"terror-attack-paris\"<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIs France Ripe for an Authoritarian Regime?<\/a>\u201d What is remarkable about that Op Ed piece in the conservative\u00a0Le Figaro<\/em>\u00a0newspaper, is that it was written not in the wake of today\u2019s horrific terrorist attacks in Paris\u2014but the day before<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As I write, it is still unclear how many have been killed in the French capital\u2014the reported total has reached at least 140\u2013but there is no question that the massacre could have a devastating impact on France\u2019s already very shaky democratic institutions.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0Le Figaro<\/em>, when asked by IFOP, a respected French poling agency, if they would accept a non-democratic form of government to bring necessary reforms to France, 67% of the French said they would opt for a government of non-elected technocrats. 40% percent said they would back a non-elected authoritarian regime.<\/p>\n

Again, that survey was carried out the day\u00a0before\u00a0<\/em>the bloody carnage in Paris. People may have poured out into the streets in an impressive show of unity earlier this year in the wake of the\u00a0Charlie Hebdo<\/em>killings, but that moment of attempted racial harmony was brief and the situation has been fraying ever since.<\/p>\n

There is no question to my mind that in the wake of these Friday the 13th<\/sup>\u00a0horrors in Paris, the great majority of French would back the most Draconian of measures (just as Americans reacted following 9\/11). France has the largest Muslim population of any country in Europe, and the danger of a fatal fracture\u2014driven by hatred and suspicion and fear\u2014is very, very real.<\/p>\n

The next moves are up to President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, which is not at all reassuring.<\/p>\n

Since he took office, he has been totally incapable of coping with France\u2019s huge and varied problems. \u00a0He is one of the most unpopular French president\u2019s ever.<\/p>\n

And now he faces his greatest challenge.<\/p>\n

For France, and its peoples, these are very perilous times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

France is on the Verge of \u2026 What? \u201cIs France Ripe for an Authoritarian Regime?\u201d What is remarkable about that Op Ed piece in the conservative\u00a0Le Figaro\u00a0newspaper, is that it was written not in the wake of today\u2019s horrific terrorist attacks in Paris\u2014but the day before. As I write, it is still unclear how many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[7682,333,334,10614],"class_list":["post-14405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-authoritarian-state","tag-france","tag-francois-hollande","tag-le-figaro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14406,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14405\/revisions\/14406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}