The French president challenges American campus and media leftism.
Cynics will also note Mr. Macron is up for re-election next year. His antagonism to left-wing intellectuals and radical Islamists may arise in part because his likely opponent in that race, Marine Le Pen, is a right-wing politician who will rally voters against mainstream politicians’ failure to tackle extremism and willingness to bow to political correctness.
All the more reason for Mr. Macron, a center-left politician, to make his stand. His warning is that if intellectuals and politicians on the left can’t find ways to defend French values of freedom and equality, a politician further to the right will.
It’s a message American Democrats and progressive academics missed as their woke fixations prepared the ground for Donald Trump’s rise—and they miss now as they fail to speak up against the censorious progressive mobs in the media, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Mr. Macron is performing a public service by trying to make classical liberal values a bipartisan cause.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/emmanuel-macron-and-the-woke-11613604823
