Hello, and happy Friday. I’ve spent much of this week reporting on a television star eyeing a presidential run as an outsider looking to take on the political establishment. And no, it isn’t Donald Trump.
Even if this is the first time you’re hearing of Éric Zemmour, I can guarantee that it probably won’t be the last. The far-right pundit-turned-politician has dominated the headlines in France as the country’s presidential election, slated for the spring, kicks into gear. Zemmour hasn’t officially declared his candidacy, but as far as all of the French journalists I spoke with are concerned, it’s only a matter of time.
I’ll have a piece about Zemmour, and the wall-to-wall coverage that surrounds him, out sometime next week. If I’ve piqued your interest (or at least given you a sense of déjà vu), stay tuned!
In podcast news: I joined the Bunker this week to discuss the tragic murder of British lawmaker Sir David Amess and the impact that it stands to have on the openness and accessibility of Britain’s political culture. You can tune in via your favorite podcast app (find yours here).
What I’ve written
Now that the Taliban is back in charge, and now that international attention has largely diverted elsewhere, I wrote about how the group has been free to show its true, all-too-familiar, colors.
Ghafari was never under any illusions about what the return of the Taliban would mean for her country, or for people like her. “They never changed,” she told me from her new home in Germany, where she and her family fled shortly after the fall of Kabul.
“If anybody believes that the Taliban have changed,” she added dryly, “please have a small amount of them as a guest for your countries. We Afghan people would love to give them as a gift. We don’t mind at all.” Keep reading here
American politicians appear to agree on precious little these days, with one notable exception: China and the threat it poses. As appealing as consensus is in politics, I wrote about why lawmakers should still be wary of the blind spots it can cause. Keep reading here
What I’ve read
This thoughtful reflection on what Lebanon, Hong Kong, and Afghanistan have lost (The Atlantic)
In these places, people feel betrayed by their leaders, the world, the West, by their own optimism even as they watch, stunned, the erasure of the life they thought possible after decades of progress—imperfect and uneven progress, but progress nonetheless. I have written about slow, surreptitious transformations, waves of change that wash over societies across decades until people wake up one day and think, What happened to us?
This poignant piece on the inherent openness, and vulnerability, of British democracy (Financial Times)
Those who criticise politicians for being out of touch miss the point that their regular surgeries make them more in touch than most realise. Change is needed to save the system but the constituency link is the most precious jewel in Britain’s democracy. It must be preserved.
If this riveting story about organ donation, narcissism, and catty writers—aka the Bad Art Friend—hasn’t inspired you to enable disappearing messages in all of your group texts, I honestly don’t know what will (The New York Times)
Barely anyone brought up what she’d done, even though everyone must have known she’d done it. “It was a little bit like, if you’ve been at a funeral and nobody wanted to talk about it — it just was strange to me,” she said. “I left that conference with this question: Do writers not care about my kidney donation? Which kind of confused me, because I thought I was in a community of service-oriented people.”
What I’m thinking about
How Facebook will need much more than a name change if it wants anyone under the age of 55 to use it again…
Until next time,
Yasmeen