By Christophe Guilluy · Wednesday, December 8, 2021 Christophe Guilluy is a geographer and observer of French society. Christopher Caldwell comments on his work here. This interview appeared in Le Figaro on November 21, 2021 and is translated with permission by Russell A. Berman, whose comments are here.
Q: Several months before the presidential election, how do you see the political situation in France?
Christophe Guilluy: Fundamentally nothing much has changed since 2017. I did an interview about the duel between Macron and Le Pen, which I described as a chemically pure cleavage: the popular classes against the professional upper classes, the metropolis against the periphery. None of that has changed at all. The core of Macron’s electoral support is still made up of the bourgeoisies of the right and the left, the boomers, the retirees, people fully integrated into society. And for a good reason: he is the only candidate who defends the economic and cultural model of the past twenty years. Therefore, the electorate willing to follow him is the one that is integrated into this model, that benefits from it or is protected by it, such as the retirees for example. Starting from that, he can count on a hypersolid foundation of those 25%. This has not changed since his election.
On the other hand, there are the disaffected, those no longer integrated economically, those we used to call the middle class.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, August 5, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Matthias Schwartz about his article “Servants of the People: Populism, Nationalism, State-Building, and Virtual Reality in Contemporary Ukraine” from Telos 195 (Summer 2021). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they talked about the history of the Euromaidan and how it contributed to nationalism in Ukraine; the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who previously portrayed the president of Ukraine in the hit TV show Servant of the People; the way that Zelensky’s presidency undercut the nationalist form of politics by decoupling nationalism from populism; and the changes that Zelensky has (or has not) brought to Ukrainian politics. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 195 are available for purchase in our online store.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, July 29, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Jay Gupta, Mark Kelly, and Tim Luke about the changing character of the public sphere. Their wide-ranging conversation covers a number of topics, including the ways that social media has fragmented the public sphere into separate echo chambers; how the internet has contributed to an insurgent populism around the world and the efforts by traditional stakeholders to shut it down; the atrophy of the value of truth and the dominance of “bullshit” in the Trump era; the extent to which moral earnestness preserves an aspiration to truthfulness; Trumpism and the critique of society as controlled by unaccountable New Class elites; the ongoing Trumpification of the Republican Party; and the conflation versus the interpenetration of elitism and expertise. Telos 195 (Summer 2021) features a forum on the public sphere with articles by Gupta, Kelly, and Luke, excerpts of which appear here. Read the full articles at the Telos Online website (subscription required). To learn how your university can subscribe to Telos, visit our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 195 are available for purchase in our online store.
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By Telos Press · Tuesday, July 13, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Adam K. Webb about his article “Supranational Governance and the Problem of the ‘Dignified Constitution,’” from Telos 195 (Summer 2021). An excerpt of the article appears here. Their discussion covers a range of topics, including the difference between the dignified constitution and the efficient constitution, the lack of a dignified constitution in supranational institutions like the EU and the UN, the domination of these institutions by the new class elite, the possibility of a global demos, the opposition of dignified constitutions to technocratic views of government, the insularity of some traditionalist arguments, and the current prospects for a broad global coalition. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 195 are available for purchase in our online store.
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By Telos Press · Monday, July 5, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Antonio Lecuna about his article “Populism in Venezuela: The Nature of Chavismo,” from Telos 195 (Summer 2021). An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 195 are available for purchase in our online store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By David Pan · Friday, June 18, 2021 Telos 195 (Summer 2021): Global Perspectives on Constitutionalism and Populism is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
 After watching the images of the January 6 Capitol riot, many Americans concluded that right-wing populism threatens the basic rules of our constitutional order. In this view, the U.S. Constitution establishes a universal order that is detached from any particular orientation and provides the neutral ground upon which differences can be discussed, while populists upset the rules of discussion and destroy the basis of a common project. Consequently, since populism is at odds with the Constitution, the solution would be to try to reimpose a measure of rationality upon the unruly. Yet the nagging concern behind this perspective is not just the violation of rules but the suspicion that populism is ultimately motivated by racism and sexism. In this case, the real opposition would not be between constitutionalism and populism but between two understandings of the Constitution, that is, two conceptions of the character of the people, one egalitarian and the other racist. The difficulty is that the laws of a constitution cannot exist independently of a people with a specific history. Rules cannot be neutral but imply a perspective on the world, and the conflict between constitutionalism and populism may in fact be a symptom of a conflict between two factions within the people, each of which is attempting to establish itself as the proper representation of the will of the people as a whole.
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