{"id":304648,"date":"2017-04-22T12:56:37","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T11:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-main-issue-in-the-french-presidential-election-national-sovereignty\/"},"modified":"2017-04-22T12:56:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T11:56:37","slug":"the-main-issue-in-the-french-presidential-election-national-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-main-issue-in-the-french-presidential-election-national-sovereignty\/","title":{"rendered":"The Main Issue in the French Presidential Election:  National Sovereignty"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_92208\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-92208\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-7.35.25-AM.png\" alt=\"Photo by Blandine Le Cain | CC BY 2.0\" width=\"510\" height=\"337\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-7.35.25-AM.png 510w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-7.35.25-AM-300x198.png 300w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/04\/Screen-Shot-2017-04-21-at-7.35.25-AM-768x507.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p align=\"right\">Photo by Blandine Le Cain | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em><br \/>Paris.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The 2017 French Presidential election marks a profound change in European political alignments. There is an ongoing shift from the traditional left-right rivalry to opposition between globalization, in the form of the European Union (EU), and national sovereignty.<\/p>\n<p>Standard media treatment sticks to a simple left-right dualism: \u201cracist\u201d rejection of immigrants is the main issue and that\u00a0what matters most is to \u201cstop Marine Le Pen!\u201d \u00a0Going from there to here is like walking through Alice\u2019s looking glass. Almost everything is turned around.<\/p>\n<p>On this side of the glass, the left has turned into the right and part of the right is turning into the left.<\/p>\n<p>Fifty years ago, it was \u201cthe left\u201d whose most ardent cause was passionate support for Third World national liberation struggles. The left\u2019s heroes were Ahmed Ben Bella,\u00a0Sukarno, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba, and above all Ho Chi Minh.\u00a0 What were these leaders fighting for?\u00a0 They were fighting to liberate their countries from Western imperialism.\u00a0 They were fighting for independence, for the right to determine their own way of life, preserve their own customs, decide their own future. They were fighting for national sovereignty, and the left supported that struggle.<\/p>\n<p>Today, it is all turned around.\u00a0 \u201cSovereignty\u201d has become a bad word in the mainstream left.<\/p>\n<p>National sovereignty is an essentially defensive concept. It is about staying home and minding&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/04\/21\/the-main-issue-in-the-french-presidential-election-national-sovereignty\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Blandine Le Cain | CC BY 2.0 \u00a0 Paris. The 2017 French Presidential election marks a profound change in European political alignments. There is an ongoing shift from the traditional left-right rivalry to opposition between globalization, in the form of the European Union (EU), and national sovereignty. Standard media treatment sticks to a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-304648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}