“The greatest danger is not that people are deprived of information, but that they no longer know which information to trust.” For centuries, the manufacture of obedience was almost exclusively the domain of the state. Kings had their messengers, churches their preachers, empires their proclamations, political parties their newspapers, and dictatorships their propaganda. Whoever controlled the means of communication largely controlled the collective narrative. The arrival of

Spinoza, or the Art of Remaining Free “The end of the State is not to transform rational human beings into beasts or automatons, but to enable their minds and bodies to perform their functions in safety, and to allow them to exercise free reason. The true end of the State is therefore freedom.”— Baruch Spinoza At the conclusion of this inquiry, one truth becomes unmistakably clear. From the earliest cities of antiquity to the digital democracies of the twenty-first century, e

When the Party Replaces God “All ideologies are simplifications of reality. That is both their strength and their danger.”— Inspired by the thought of Hannah Arendt The revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed to herald a definitive break with the past. Monarchies claiming divine right were in retreat, societies were becoming increasingly secular, science was advancing, and religious authority was gradually losing its monopoly over human conscience. Many

When History Commands “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”— George Orwell When religion gradually loses its role as the organizer of society, political power does not abandon its search for a source of authority greater than itself. Over the past two centuries, states have discovered another force almost as powerful as the sacred: memory. A people's great wounds, victories, humiliations, and martyrs gradually become the foun

When God Commands “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”— Jesus of Nazareth There is a paradox that runs throughout human history. The greatest empires were never governed by force alone. No army, however powerful, can watch millions of people day and night. No police force can overhear every conversation, control every thought, or prevent every act of rebellion. Rule based solely on coercion is not only costly—it is profoun

A Missed Turning Point in Intelligence in the Global South The intelligence doctrine in many countries of the Global South is rooted in the Chekist legacy—that is, a conception of intelligence born with the Cheka, the political police created in 1917 by the Bolshevik regime under the authority of Felix Dzerzhinsky. Emerging from the logic of combating counter-revolution, it turned intelligence into an instrument for defending the regime, based on surveillance, coercion, and p

Yury Bezmenov Was Right: Active Measures are Now AlgorithmicIn the 1980s, Yury Bezmenov, a KGB defector, warned the world about active measures —sophisticated campaigns of ideological subversion designed to weaken societies from within. Back then, it took decades to manipulate culture, institutions, and public opinion. Today, thanks to social media, AI, and algorithms , the same tactics work faster, smarter, and far more dangerously. From Cold War to Your Feed Bezmenov descr

When Violation Becomes a Method of Government One of the major mutations of contemporary leadership is the transformation of transgression into a political resource. Where leaders once sought to appear as guardians of limits — legal, moral, and diplomatic — some now build their legitimacy on the ability to cross them. This posture is not merely an electoral strategy; it reflects a psychology of power in which domination is demonstrated through the capacity to ignore constrain

From idealism to cynicism: an anatomy of a field of power For a long time, politics was driven by major structuring ideologies: socialism, liberalism, conservatism, decolonization, the welfare state. These frameworks gave collective meaning, historical direction, and a sense of purpose. Today, those grand narratives have weakened. Politics has become more technical, more focused on communication, and more opportunistic. This shift has profoundly changed the types of people it

Understanding their power of attraction in order to break free from it Adherence to far-right ideas—whether based on the rejection of immigration, fear of the so-called “great replacement,” religious identity-based withdrawal, or certain forms of religious extremism—is often analyzed through social, economic, or cultural factors. These elements certainly matter. But they are not enough to explain why such ideas can sometimes provide those who embrace them with a sense of cert

Emmanuel Macron perfectly embodies the profile of the "top of the class": a tireless worker, rigorous technician, intellectually armed, obsessed with reform coherence and mastery of files. But in today's political world, this traditional model has been overturned: the top of the class are now the most disruptive, aggressive, and outrageous. Overturn of Codes Long valued, the top-of-the-class profile—reason, procedure, compromise—is now disqualified as "cold technocrat" or "di

For much of the 20th century, the United States exercised a form of influence unparalleled in modern history. Its power did not rest solely on military strength or economic dominance, but on something far more subtle and potent: the ability to make the world dream . Through Hollywood, music, technology, universities, the pioneer spirit, and constant innovation, America came to feel as though it belonged to everyone—or at least to those who had not turned it into a sworn enemy

There exists a particular form of weakness that stems neither from a lack of resources nor from a deficit of intelligence, but from a temporal mismatch . In The World of Yesterday , Stefan Zweig offers a painfully lucid account of a cultivated, humanist, rational Europe that believed it had definitively left behind the age of brutality. It thought it was living in a pacified era, while others had already settled into a time of conquest . Pacifist naivety does not lie in lovin

Contemporary dictatorships no longer content themselves with locking opponents in cells. They build a total prison, a sprawling system in which every individual — opponent, journalist, exile, but also loyal supporter of the regime — is imprisoned in another kind of cage: fear, guilt, uncertainty, pain, compromise. It is a machine that crushes everything, like an industrial fishing net that selects nothing: it catches the targeted fish, destroys innocent species, scrapes the s

The current political situation in France is often described—wrongly—as a major crisis . In reality, it represents a painful but...

A Lost Battle Against Bad News and Social Media In politics, not all news is created equal. A “good news story” – a successful reform, a...

Between Frozen Authority and Absolute Domination The distinction between dictatorship and totalitarianism is fundamental to understanding...

Democracy is often wrapped in a moral halo, as if its mere existence guarantees justice, equality, and dignity. But democracy is not...

The Case of Western Sahara and the Prospects of the New Russia–West Rivalry The 20th-century Cold War, which pitted the United States...