What the French Third Republic Can Teach Us About January 6
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2022
⏱️ 55 minutes
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Summary
What’s the best historical analogue for the American political situation today? Often, pundits will compare our current age of rising polarization and increasing political violence to the era preceding the American Civil War. If they’re alarmed and looking for a European analogy, sometimes they’ll point to Weimar Germany. But another point of comparison from prewar Europe might be more apt: the French Third Republic, from the late 19th century leading up to World War II.
Lawfare Managing Editor Jacob Schulz and Quinta Jurecic spoke with John Ganz, who writes the Substack newsletter Unpopular Front and is working on a book about American politics in the 1990s. He’s written in depth about the political crises roiling the Third Republic, from the Dreyfus Affair to February 6, 1934—a violent riot outside the French National Assembly, which has striking echoes in January 6. So why is France a more apt comparison than Germany or Italy? What can studying the Third Republic, and February 6, tell us about January 6 and the rise of an American far right? And what might we learn from the striking differences between how French civil society responded to February 6, as opposed to the more muted American response to a similar riot almost 90 years later?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:34.0 | This kind of Caesarism, hope for this not necessarily a dictator, but a man on horseback |
| 0:41.2 | to fix all these problems just was a pretty clear parallel to Trumpism and the trends |
| 0:47.8 | we're seeing on the American right. |
| 0:50.2 | I'm Quinted Jurassic and this is the LawFair podcast. |
| 0:54.2 | January 31st, 2022. |
| 0:58.2 | What's the best historical analog for the American political situation today? |
| 1:03.3 | Often, pundits will compare the current age of rising polarization and increasing political |
| 1:08.8 | violence to the era preceding the Civil War. |
| 1:12.9 | If they're alarmed in looking for a European analogy, sometimes they'll point to Vimer |
| 1:17.1 | Germany. |
| 1:18.6 | But another point of comparison from pre-war Europe might be more apt. |
| 1:23.0 | The French Third Republic from the late 19th century leading up to World War II. |
| 1:29.1 | Today on the podcast, LawFair managing editor Jacob Schultz and I spoke with John Gans |
| 1:34.4 | who writes the sub-stack newsletter on popular front and is working on a book about American |
| 1:39.0 | politics in the 1990s. |
| 1:42.0 | He's written in depth about the political crises ruling the Third Republic from the |
| 1:46.2 | Dreyfus Affair to February 6th, 1934, a violent riot outside the French National Assembly |
... |
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