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      Colombia Election: Angry, Mobilized and Voting for Gustavo Petro

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      A large and loud youth electorate hungry to transform one of Latin America’s most unequal societies could propel Gustavo Petro, a former rebel, to the presidency.May 26, 2022FUSAGASUGÁ, Colombia — The man onstage surrounded by a screaming, sweating, fawning crowd seemed like an odd choice for a youth icon. Gustavo Petro is gray-haired, 62, and, in his speeches, he’s more roaring preacher than conversational TikTok star.But after an improbable rise from clandestine rebel to Bogotá mayor and bullish face of the Colombian opposition, Mr. Petro could soon become the country’s first leftist president, a watershed moment for one of the most politically conservative societies in Latin America.And his ascent has, in no small part, been propelled by the biggest, loudest and possibly angriest youth electorate in Colombia’s history, demanding the transformation of a country long cleaved by deep social and racial inequality.There are now nearly nine million Colombian voters 28 or younger, the most in history, and a quarter of the electorate. They are restive, raised on promises of higher education and good jobs, disillusioned by current prospects, more digitally connected and arguably more empowered than any previous generation.“Petro is change,” said Camila Riveros, 30, wrapped in a Colombian flag at a campaign event this month outside Bogotá, the capital. “People are tired of eating dirt.”Gustavo Petro this month in Santa Marta. He has held a steady lead in most polls, though he may not have enough support to avoid a runoff. As Colombians prepare to vote on Sunday, Mr. Petro has promised to overhaul the country’s capitalist economic model and vastly expand social programs, pledging to introduce guaranteed work with a basic income, shift the country to a publicly controlled health system and increase access to higher education, in part by raising taxes on the rich.Mr. Petro has been ahead in the polls for months — though surveys suggest he will face a runoff in June — and his popularity reflects both leftist gains across Latin America and an anti-incumbent fervor that has intensified as the pandemic has battered the region.“We have a decision to make,” Mr. Petro said at another campaign event this month in the Caribbean city of Cartagena. “We maintain things the way they are, or we scream: Freedom!”But critics say Mr. Petro is ill-suited for office, arguing that his policies, which include a plan to halt all new oil exploration in a country where fuel is a critical export, would ruin the economy.He has also taken direct swings at the country’s major institutions — most notably the armed forces — escalating tensions with military leaders and leading to concerns about the stability of Colombia’s longstanding but vulnerable democracy.Mr. Petro’s main opponent, Federico Gutiérrez, 47, a former mayor of Medellín, the country’s second largest city, and the candidate of the conservative establishment, proposes a more modest path forward.“Of course we need to change many things,” he said in an interview, citing a plan that would ramp up fracking for oil, steer more money to local governments and create a special unit to fight urban crime. “But changes can never mean a leap into the void without a parachute.”A third candidate, Rodolfo Hernández, 77, a former mayor with a populist, anti-corruption platform has been climbing in the polls.Mr. Petro’s main opponent, Federico Gutiérrez, is a former mayor of Medellín, the country’s second largest city, and the candidate of the conservative establishment.The election comes at a difficult moment for the country. Polls show widespread dissatisfaction with the government of the current president, Iván Duque, who is backed by the same political coalition as Mr. Gutiérrez, and frustration over chronic poverty, a widening income gap and insecurity, all of which have worsened during the pandemic.Among those hurt the most by these problems are younger Colombians, who are likely to play a big role in determining whether the country takes a major lurch to the left.Young people led anti-government protests that filled the streets of Colombia last year, dominating the national conversation for weeks. At least 46 people died — many of them young, unarmed protesters and many at the hands of the police — in what became referred to as the “national strike.”Some analysts expect young people to vote in record numbers, energized not just by Mr. Petro, but by his running mate, Francia Márquez, 40, an environmental activist with a gender, race and class-conscious focus who would be the country’s first Black vice president.“The TikTok generation that is very connected to Francia, that is very connected to Petro, is going to be decisive,” said Fernando Posada, 30, a political analyst.Some analysts expect young people to vote in record numbers, energized not just by Mr. Petro but by his running mate, Francia Márquez, an environmental activist.Today’s younger generation is the most educated in Colombian history, but is also grappling with 10 percent annual inflation, a 20 percent youth unemployment rate and a 40 percent poverty rate. Many — both supporters and critics of Mr. Petro — say they feel betrayed by decades of leaders who have promised opportunity but delivered little.In a May poll by the firm Invamer, more than 53 percent of voters ages 18 to 24 and about 45 percent of voters ages 25 to 34 said they were planning to vote for Mr. Petro. In both age categories, less than half those numbers said they would vote for Mr. Gutierrez or Mr. Hernández.Natalia Arévalo, 30, a single mother of three, marched for days during protests last year, with her daughter, Lizeth, 10, wearing a placard around her neck that read: “What awaits us children?”“You have to choose between paying your debts and feeding your kids,” said Ms. Arévalo, who supports Mr. Petro.“You can’t eat eggs, you can’t eat meat, you can’t eat anything,” she added. “We have to give a 180-degree turn to all that we’ve had for the last 20 years.”José Fernando Mazo, a law student, waving in the crowd at a rally for Mr. Petro in Cartagena on May 14.To be sure, many young voters are skeptical of Mr. Petro’s ability to deliver on his promises.In Fusagasugá, Nina Cruz, 27, a cafe worker, said Mr. Petro would fail Colombia’s struggling families, and she was particularly repulsed by his past as a member of a leftist rebel group.The country has a long history of violent militias that claim to help the indigent — and end up terrorizing them.“What he is saying is: ‘I’m going to help the poor,’” she said. “That’s a total lie.”Mr. Petro, an economist, grew up outside Bogotá. As a teenager, he joined the M-19, a leftist urban militia that sought to seize power and claimed to promote social justice.The group was never as large or as violent as the country’s main guerrilla force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But in 1985, the M-19 occupied a national judicial building, sparking a battle with the police and the military that left 94 people dead.Mr. Petro, who did not participate in the takeover, ended up in prison for his involvement with the group.He eventually demobilized and ran for a senate seat, emerging as the combative face of the left, pushing open conversations about corruption and wrongdoing.Some critics have warned that Mr. Petro’s energy proposals would bankrupt the country. Oil represents 40 percent of Colombia’s exports and Juan Carlos Echeverry, a former finance minister, has said that halting oil exploration “would be economic suicide.’’Ballistic shields on stage during Mr. Petro’s appearance in Cartagena. He has been the recent target of death threats. Mr. Petro also has a reputation for an authoritarian streak. As mayor of Bogotá, he circumvented the City Council and often failed to listen to advisers, said Daniel Garcia-Peña, who worked with Mr. Petro for a decade before quitting in 2012. In his resignation letter Mr. Garcia-Peña called Mr. Petro “a despot.”The election comes as polls show growing distrust in the country’s democratic institutions, including the country’s national registrar, an election body that bungled the initial vote count in a congressional election in March.The error, which the registrar called procedural, has led to concerns that losing candidates will declare fraud, setting off a legitimacy crisis.The country is also being roiled by rising violence, threatening to undermine the democratic process. The Mission for Electoral Observation, a local group, called this pre-election period the most violent in 12 years.Candidates pushing change have been murdered on the campaign trail before.Both Mr. Petro and Ms. Márquez have received death threats, and at his campaign event in Cartagena, he took the stage flanked by men holding bulletproof shields.Young supporters of Mr. Petro at a rally in Cartagena on May 14. A recent poll found that Mr. Petro was the leading candidate among voters 18 to 34.Some voters held signs that read “Black children’s lives matter,” and “if it’s not Petro, we’re screwed.”There was excitement — but also trepidation.“What we want are opportunities for everyone,” said Lauren Jiménez, 21, a university student.But “if Petro can’t follow through, I know we will see the same thing that happened with the Duque government: a social explosion,” she warned. “Because we’re tired of staying quiet.”Sofía Villamil More

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      French Candidates’ Economic Programs Hold Key to the Election

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      Promising tax cuts, higher wages and changes in the retirement age, President Macron and Marine Le Pen vie for undecided voters.PARIS — As President Emmanuel Macron wove through crowds during a campaign stop in northern France last week, an elderly voter got in his face to protest one of his most unpopular economic proposals: raising the retirement age to 65 from 62 to fund France’s national pension system.“Retirement at 65, no, no!” the woman shouted, jabbing a finger at Mr. Macron’s chest as he tried to assuage her. The boisterous exchange was caught on camera. Two hours later, he retreated, saying he would consider tweaking the age to 64. “I don’t want to divide the country,” he said on French television.Mr. Macron’s reversal on a key element of his economic platform, in an industrial region backing the far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen ahead of France’s presidential election next Sunday, was a reminder of the social distress dominating the minds of voters. He and Ms. Le Pen have starkly divergent visions of how to address these concerns.As they cross the country in a whirlwind of last-minute campaigning, their runoff will hinge to a large extent on perceptions of the economy. Worries about widening economic insecurity, and the surging cost of living amid the fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine, have become top issues in the race, ahead of security and immigration.Ms. Le Pen won by a comfortable margin in the first round of voting last Sunday in places that have lost jobs to deindustrialization, where she has found a ready audience for her pledges to bolster purchasing power, create employment through “intelligent” protectionism and shield France from European policies that expanded globalization.An open-air produce market in Paris, in December. Economic insecurity and the cost of living have become top issues for voters in the presidential runoff.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Macron is still expected to win in a tight race, workers in restless blue-collar bastions may yet prove a liability. Despite a robust recovery in France from Covid lockdowns — the economy is now growing at around 7 percent, and unemployment has fallen to a 10-year low of 7.4 percent — many feel inequality has widened, rather than narrowed, as he pledged, in the five years since Mr. Macron took office.After France’s traditional left-wing and right-wing parties collapsed in the first round of voting, both candidates are scrambling to lure the undecided and voters who gravitated to their opponents — especially the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — in large part by recasting major planks of their economic programs to appeal to those struggling to get by.Pensions is a case in point. Mr. Macron has worked to recalibrate his image as a president who favors France’s wealthy classes, the business establishment and white-collar voters as he set about overhauling the economy to bolster competitiveness.In 2019 he was forced to set aside plans to raise the retirement age to 65 after raucous nationwide strikes shut down much of France. He had sought to streamline France’s complex system of public and private pension schemes into one state-managed plan to close a shortfall of 18 billion euros, or about $19 billion.Following his confrontation in northern France last week, Mr. Macron insisted that he would continue to push back the retirement age incrementally — by four months per year starting next year — but that he was open to discussing an easing of the plan in its later stages.“It’s not dogma,” he said of the policy. “I have to listen to what people are saying to me.” Mr. Macron has struggled to achieve his goal of raising the retirement age to 65.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen accused Mr. Macron of engaging in a policy of “social wreckage” and of blowing with the wind to capture votes, although she has also shifted gears after the protectionist economic platform she advanced five years ago spooked businesses. She dropped plans to withdraw from the European Union and the eurozone.Today, Ms. Le Pen favors maintaining the current retirement age of 62, abandoning a previous push to reduce it to 60 — although certain workers engaged in intensive manual labor like construction could retire at the lower age.As Ms. Le Pen seeks to rebrand her far-right National Rally party as a kinder, gentler party than the one she steered in 2017, albeit with a clear anti-immigrant message, she has focused on economic issues close to blue-collar voters’ hearts.She got out front on one of the biggest issues of the campaign: a surge in the cost of living.While Mr. Macron was trying to broker a cease-fire in Ukraine, Ms. Le Pen was visiting towns and rural areas across France, promising increased subsidies for vulnerable households.She has pledged a 10 percent hike in France’s monthly minimum wage of 1,603 euros. She is also vowing to slash sales taxes to 5.5 percent from 20 percent on fuel, oil, gas and electricity, and to cut them altogether on 100 “essential” goods. Workers under 30 would be exempt from income tax, and young couples would get interest-free housing loans.Her France-first policy extends even further: To make up for increased spending on social programs, she has said she would slash billions in social spending on “foreigners.”Marine Le Pen speaking to supporters on April 10 after the first round of the French election. She has tried to recast her far-right party in a kinder, gentler form.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesShe has also vowed to create jobs and re-industrialize the country by prioritizing French companies for government contracts over foreign investors and dangling a host of expensive tax incentives to encourage French companies that have branched out overseas to return to France.While she has abandoned talk of a so-called Frexit — a French exit from the European Union — some of her proposals to protect the economy would amount to essentially that, including a pledge to ignore some European Union laws, including on internal free trade. She has said she would withhold some French payments to the bloc.Mr. Macron has branded such promises “pure fantasy” and is proposing to retain many of his pro-business policies, with modifications.Having vowed to lure jobs and investment, under his watch foreign companies have poured billions of euros into industrial projects and research and development, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country that has not easily embraced change.At the same time, he has faced a challenge in discarding the image of an aloof president whose policies tended to benefit the most affluent. His abolition of a wealth tax and the introduction of a 30 percent flat tax on capital gains has mainly lifted incomes for the richest 0.1 percent and increased the distribution of dividends, according to the government’s own analysis.After a growing wealth divide helped set off the Yellow Vest movement in 2019, bringing struggling working-class people into the streets, Mr. Macron increased the minimum wage and made it easier for companies to give workers “purchasing power bonuses” of up to 3,000 euros annually without being taxed, a policy he has pledged to beef up.The candidates have tried to address concerns about rising fuel prices in blue-collar areas like Stiring-Wendel, a former coal mining town in France’s northeast.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAs inflation has surged recently, Mr. Macron has also authorized billions of euros in subsidies for energy bills and at the gas pump and has promised to peg pension payments to inflation starting this summer. He has vowed new tax cuts for both households and businesses.His economic platform also aims for “full employment,” in part by pressing ahead with a series of pro-business reforms that has continued to lure the support of France’s biggest employers’ organization, Medef.“Emmanuel Macron’s program is the most favorable to ensure the growth of the economy and employment,” the group said last week, adding that Ms. Le Pen’s platform “would lead the country to stall compared to its neighbors and to put it on the sidelines of the European Union.”For all the differences, the pledges by Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen have one thing in common: more public spending, and less savings. According to estimates by the Institut Montaigne, a French economic think tank, Mr. Macron’s economic plan would worsen the public deficit by 44 billion euros, while Ms. Le Pen’s would widen it by 102 billion euros.“These shifts are significant enough to think that some of their proposals cannot actually be applied — except if they put in place budget austerity measures that they are not talking about,” Victor Poirier, director of publications at the Institut Montaigne, said. More

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      ‘La French Tech’ Arrives Under Macron, but Proves No Panacea

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      The president has brought innovation, jobs and growth. Still, resentments fester on the eve of the presidential election.PARIS — In full Steve Jobs mode, President Emmanuel Macron of France donned a black turtleneck in January and took to Twitter to celebrate the creation in France of 25 “unicorn” start-ups — companies with a market value of over 1 billion euros, or almost $1.1 billion.He declared that France’s start-up economy was “changing the lives of French people” and “strengthening our sovereignty.” It was also helping to create jobs: Unemployment has fallen to 7.4 percent, the lowest level in a decade.The start-up boom was a milestone for a young president elected five years ago as a restless disrupter, promising to pry open the economy and make it competitive in the 21st century.To some extent, Mr. Macron has succeeded, luring billions of euros in foreign investments and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country whose resistance to change is stubborn. But disruption is just that, and the president has at the same time left many French feeling unsettled and unhappy, left behind or ignored.As Mr. Macron seeks re-election starting on Sunday, it is two countries that will vote — a mainly urban France that sees the need for change to meet the era’s sweeping technological and economic challenges, and a France of the “periphery,” wary of innovation, struggling to get by, alarmed by immigration and resentful of a leader seen as embodying the arrogance of the privileged.Which France shows up at voting booths in greater numbers will determine the outcome.Campaign posters on display this month in the northeastern French town of Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn many Western societies, the simultaneous spread of technology and inequality has posed acute problems, stirring social tensions, and France has proved no exception. If the disenchanted France prevails, Marine Le Pen, the perennial candidate of the nationalist right, will most likely prevail, too.Worried that he may have lost the left by favoring start-up entrepreneurship and market reforms, Mr. Macron has in the past week been multiplying appeals to the left, resorting to phrases like “our lives are worth more than their profits” to suggest his perceived rightward lurch was not the whole story.He told France Inter radio that “fraternity” was the most important word in the French national motto, and said during a visit to Brittany that “solidarity” and “equality of opportunity” would be the central themes of an eventual second term.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.On the Scene: A Times reporter attended a rally held by Marine Le Pen, the far-right French presidential candidate. Here is what he saw.Challenges to Re-election: A troubled factory in President Emmanuel Macron’s hometown shows his struggle in winning the confidence of French workers.A Late Surge: After recently rising in voter surveys, Jean-Luc Mélenchon could become the first left-wing candidate since 2012 to reach the second round of the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.The pledges looked like signs of growing anxiety about the election’s outcome. After several months in which Mr. Macron’s re-election had appeared virtually assured, the gap between him and Ms. Le Pen has closed. The leading two candidates in Sunday’s vote will go through to a runoff on April 24.The election will be largely decided by perceptions of the economy. In Mr. Macron’s favor, the country has bounced back faster than expected from coronavirus lockdowns, with economic growth reaching 7 percent after a devastating pandemic-induced recession.Marine Le Pen speaking this month in Stiring-Wendel.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThe most significant cultural transformation has come in the area of tech, where Mr. Macron’s determination to create a start-up culture centered around new technology has brought changes the government considers essential to the future of France.Cédric O, the secretary of state for the digital sector, wearing jeans and a white dress shirt, no tie, admits to being obsessed. Day after long day, he plots the future of “la French tech” from his spacious office at the Finance Ministry.Five years ago, that may have seemed quixotic, but something has stirred. “It’s vital to be obsessed because the risk France and Europe are facing is to be kicked out of history,” Mr. O, 39, said, borrowing a line often used by Mr. Macron. “We have to get back into the international technological race.”Toward that end, Mr. Macron opened Station F, a mammoth incubator project in Paris representing France’s start-up ambitions, and earmarked nearly €10 billion in tax credits and other inducements to lure research activity and artificial intelligence business. A new bank was created to help finance start-ups.The president wined and dined multinational chief executives, creating an annual gathering at Versailles called “Choose France.”Since 2019, France has become the leading destination for foreign investment in Europe, and more than 70 investment projects worth €12 billion have been pledged by foreign multinationals at the Versailles gatherings, said Franck Riester, France’s foreign trade minister.In the past four years, IBM, SAP of Germany and DeepMind, the London-based machine learning company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, have increased investment in France and created thousands of jobs.Station F, a mammoth project in Paris that represents France’s start-up ambitions.Roberto Frankenberg for The New York TimesFacebook and Google have also bolstered their French presence and their artificial intelligence teams in Paris. Salesforce, the American cloud computing company, is moving ahead with over €2 billion in pledged investments.“Macron brought a culture shift where France was suddenly open to the world of funders,” said Thomas Clozel, a doctor by training and the founder in 2016 of Owkin, a start-up that uses Artificial Intelligence to personalize and improve medical treatment. “He made everything easy for start-up entrepreneurs and so changed the view of France as an anticapitalist society.”François Hollande, Mr. Macron’s Socialist Party predecessor, had famously declared in 2012: “My enemy is the world of finance.” As a result, Mr. Clozel said, securing funds as a French start-up was so problematic that he chose to incorporate in the United States.No longer.“Today, I am thinking of reincorporating in France,” he said. “The ease of dealing with the government, the consortium of start-ups helping one another, and the new French tech pride are compelling.”Among the start-ups that have had a significant effect on French life are Doctolib, a website that allows patients to arrange for medical appointments and tests online, and Backmarket, an online market for reconditioned tech gadgets that just became France’s most valuable start-up, at $5.7 billion.They began life before Mr. Macron took office, but have grown exponentially in the past five years.“I have made 56 investments in the last two years, and 53 of them are in France,” said Jonathan Benhamou, a French entrepreneur who founded PeopleDoc, a company that simplifies access to information for human resources departments.Now funding new ventures and focusing on a new start-up called Resilience in the field of personalized cancer care, Mr. Benhamou credits Mr. Macron with “giving investors confidence in stability and creating a virtuous cycle.”Talented engineers no longer go elsewhere because there is an “ecosystem” for them in France, Mr. O said.Yellow Vest protesters blocking a road in Caen, in France’s Normandy region, in November 2018.Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Macron has insisted that opening the economy is consistent with maintaining protections for French workers and that the arrival of la French tech does not mean the embrace of the no-holds-barred capitalism behind the churn of American creativity.Despite the president’s overhauls, France remains one of the most expensive countries for payroll taxes, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with hourly labor costs of nearly €38, close to levels seen in Sweden, Norway and other northern European countries.“We know that we have to go further,” Mr. Riester, the foreign trade minister, said in a recent interview. “We still have some brakes that could be taken off the economy, and we have to cut some red tape in the future.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. 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      For Macron, France’s Troubled Industries Hit Home

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      President Emmanuel Macron vowed an economic revival, but as he seeks re-election, a Potemkin factory in the town where he was raised shows just how hard that can be.AMIENS, France — During the last presidential campaign, the troubled Whirlpool factory in the northern city of Amiens became the setting for frantic, dueling appeals for support by Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.Mr. Macron promised to save the plant — which happens to be in his hometown — and once he was elected, his government poured millions in subsidies toward the factory’s reinvention, as a showpiece of his commitment to reviving French industry.As Mr. Macron seeks re-election, he and Ms. Le Pen are preparing to square off once again as the front-runners before the first round of voting in presidential elections on Sunday. But the fate of the plant has proved much the opposite of what Mr. Macron had hoped for.Today, the plant is an example of the difficulty of rehabilitating ailing French industries and of the president’s challenge in winning the confidence of French workers, who have been gravitating for years to the far right.The mammoth plant in Amiens, where weeds have pushed through asphalt and the cafeteria’s menu is frozen on sausage fricassee, is deserted and lifeless, except for three last Whirlpool workers who spend their days huddling around the coffee machines in a few small rooms.The plant’s new operator was convicted in February of misuse of funds, after a year of taking money from the government and Whirlpool and doing precious little with it. Workers say they spent idle days as next to nothing rolled off the assembly line. Instead, they kept busy killing time, taking extended cigarette breaks or lying inside their cars fidgeting on their smartphones.Frédéric Chantrelle, left, one of the last three workers still employed at the plant in Amiens, and Christophe Beaugrand, a former employee.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“Two or three times, when someone important visited, we had to pretend to work or hide,” recalled Mariano Munoz, 49, who was in charge of janitorial services. “The welders welded all sorts of things and hammered away. One or two tinkered with a car. Me, I’d take the street cleaner and I’d sweep the entire parking lot.”Mr. Macron was elected as a change agent five years ago, with plans to disrupt the heavily unionized industrial sector that had stagnated as owners feared the rising cost of French workers who were guaranteed years of ample benefits and were notoriously difficult to fire. For years, unemployment hovered chronically at 8 percent or more as the industrial sector atrophied.Initially, Mr. Macron attempted to overhaul France’s economy by pushing through business-friendly changes, like cutting taxes, especially for the wealthy. In his first years as president, he took on some of France’s toughest unions, provoking the biggest strikes the country had seen in years as he revamped France’s voluminous labor code, making it easier to hire and fire workers.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionThe run-up to the first round of the election has been dominated by issues such as security, immigration and national identity.Suddenly Wide Open: An election that had seemed almost assured to return President Emmanuel Macron to power now appears to be anything but certain.On Stage: As the vote approaches, theaters and comedy venues are tackling the campaign with one message: Don’t trust politicians.Behind the Scene: In France, where political finance laws are strict, control over the media has provided an avenue for billionaires to influence the election.A Political Bellwether: Auxerre has backed the winner in the presidential race for 40 years. This time, many residents see little to vote for.Private Consultants: A report showing that firms like McKinsey earned large sums of money to do work for his government has put President Emmannuel Macron on the defensive.But even as the overall economy has bounced back strongly from the pandemic, Mr. Macron’s efforts to reindustrialize France have proved decidedly mixed, economists say, as evidenced by the nation’s trade deficit of 84.7 billion euros, about $93 billion, last year — a record — as well as the plant in Amiens, which had made tumble dryers for Whirlpool and did not survive despite nearly €10 million in subsidies.Amiens North, an area inhabited by many descendants of North Africans recruited to work in factories in the 1960s and ’70s.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesFor Mr. Macron, the plant’s long, agonizing death has complicated every trip back to his hometown, about 80 miles north of Paris. It reinforced the impression of Mr. Macron, a former investment banker, as the president of the rich, someone cut off from ordinary French people — like the nearly 300 workers who lost their jobs when the plant finally did close in 2018.Many of the laid off workers went on to join the Yellow Vest movement, whose ranks were filled with working-class French struggling under high taxes and a lack of earning power, ushering in the biggest political crisis of Mr. Macron’s presidency.Burned by the Yellow Vest protests, Mr. Macron’s government spent massively to offset the economic shock of the pandemic, and unemployment is now at its lowest in a decade. Still, it is service-sector jobs that have continued to increase, while industrial employment declines.Thomas Grjebine, an economist at CEPII, a research center in Paris, said that the fate of the Amiens plant was “symptomatic” of the difficulties of reviving the industrial sector. “In fact, the government is somewhat powerless before the closings of plants,” Mr. Grjebine said. “But many promises are made during campaigns.”During Mr. Macron’s campaign for the presidency in 2017, 11 days before the final vote, Mr. Macron met with union leaders in town, while Ms. Le Pen paid a surprise visit to the plant’s parking lot and was greeted warmly by striking employees — forcing a reluctant Mr. Macron to follow.Patrice Sinoquet, another of the last remaining workers at the plant, showed a photograph of Mr. Macron visiting the factory in 2019.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesHeckled and jostled by the hostile crowd, Mr. Macron tried to catch up with Ms. Le Pen, whose party, then called the National Front, had won the department that includes Amiens in the first round of voting that year.“You think it doesn’t hurt me in the gut that people vote for the National Front on my soil?” Mr. Macron said to the crowd. Later, he promised a “real Marshall Plan for the reindustrialization of our economically lost territories.”Half a year after his election victory, that promise seemed in sight. A prominent local businessman, Nicolas Decayeux, was selected to take over the plant with a project to manufacture refrigerated lockers and small vehicles. He took on 162 of the 282 laid-off Whirlpool workers and received €2.6 million in subsidies from the government and €7.4 million from Whirlpool.During a celebratory visit to the plant, Mr. Macron was accompanied by Mr. Decayeux. In a follow-up letter to Mr. Decayeux, the president wrote that the businessman’s “beautiful entrepreneurial project” would “contribute to our industrial recovery.”“I really had stars in my eyes because here is a young president who wants to reform France,” recalled Mr. Decayeux, who named his company WN.It was a rare piece of good news for Amiens, a picturesque town of more than 130,000 that straddles the Somme River.Like much of northern France, it had been hit by deindustrialization for two generations as successive national governments considered a shift toward a consumer-driven economy a sign of modernization, witnessed in the Amazon warehouses that have opened in Amiens and elsewhere.An Amazon facility near Amiens. The shift toward a consumer-driven economy was seen by successive national governments as a sign of modernization.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“This drop in social standing, the sentiment of being abandoned and of not mattering, eased the way for extremism,” said Brigitte Fouré, the center-right mayor of Amiens.In an interview with a French magazine last year, Mr. Macron said that growing up in Amiens, he had witnessed the “full force of deindustrialization” in his region. Still, he acknowledged that he himself had enjoyed a sheltered upbringing, living in a “rather happy bubble, and even a bubble in a bubble.”The son of two medical doctors, Mr. Macron grew up in Amiens’s richest neighborhood, Henriville, and attended the city’s most prestigious school, a private Jesuit establishment called La Providence. “He’s from Henriville, and when you say, ‘Henriville,’ it’s Versailles,” said M’hammed El Hiba, the longtime head of Alco, a community center in Amiens North, an area inhabited by the descendants of North Africans recruited to work in factories in the 1960s and 1970s.Mr. Macron grew up in Amiens’s richest neighborhood, Henriville, and attended the city’s most prestigious school, a private Jesuit establishment called La Providence. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAt the former Whirlpool plant, the optimism faded quickly. Former workers said that Mr. Decayeux’s plans to build lockers and small vehicles never took off.“Nothing was happening,” said Christophe Beaugrand, 44, a welder who was hired by Mr. Decayeux after being laid off by Whirlpool. “People were in the cafeteria with their phones and chargers. When the prefect visited, we had to make noise or hide.”Who Is Running for President of France?Card 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      A Bellwether for Narendra Modi as India’s Largest State Goes to the Polls

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      While many voters say they are concerned about the economy, the prime minister’s party has placed a focus on religion, with often polarizing effects.MEERUT, India — An election now underway in India’s most populous state is being closely watched as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s eight years in office, during which he has often pursued a Hindu-first agenda that observers say has empowered his supporters’ polarizing emphasis on religious identity.Voters in Uttar Pradesh, a largely impoverished state of 200 million people in northern India, say they are concerned about the pandemic-battered economy, with youth unemployment widespread, housing shortages, and the rising cost of food and fuel.But the governing Bharatiya Janata Party has focused on religion, and on reinforcing new coalitions that have formed around caste, even as tensions between the state’s majority-Hindu population and its minority Muslims have been rising.Supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Meerut, a city in Uttar Pradesh, in January.Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated PressThe party is apparently counting on that divisive tactic to resonate in Uttar Pradesh, a bastion of the Hindu right, preserving its hold on power in the state and putting it in a favorable position for a general election in two years.Here’s a look at the major issues as voters in Uttar Pradesh and four other states, from coastal Goa to Uttarakhand on the border with China, go to the polls. Voting takes place over a month; the first set of results are expected March 10.ReligionIn January, Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk who is the top official in Uttar Pradesh, laid out in stark terms how his party hoped to define the coming election.During a TV news interview, Mr. Adityanath, an acolyte of Mr. Modi’s and a potential successor as prime minister, cast the election in terms of “80 versus 20” — a thinly veiled reference to the rough percentage of Hindus in the state compared with Muslims.Referring to three high-profile Hindu temple development projects in a subsequent interview on state television, Mr. Adityanath said that “these 20 percent are those who oppose Ram Janam Bhoomi, they oppose Kashi Vishwanath Dham, they oppose the magnificent development of Mathura Vrindawan.”In India, religious and caste identity has long played a part in voters’ political calculations, and Uttar Pradesh is a stronghold of the B.J.P.’s Hindu nationalist ideology.Still, the backlash to Mr. Adityanath’s remarks was swift. Within days, several high-profile B.J.P. members defected from the party, joining the Samajwadi Party. That party, which is widely seen as representing the interests of the Yadav caste and other disadvantaged castes, has formed an alliance with other, smaller caste-based parties that were historically rivals.Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, in a helicopter on Tuesday during an election rally. Prime Minister Modi appointed him to the post in 2017; voters will now decide if he gets to stay for five more years.Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated PressOne defector was Swami Prasad Maurya, who as a state cabinet minister focused on the interests of the state’s socially or educationally disadvantaged castes, known in India as “Other Backward Castes,” or O.B.C.s.“B.J.P. leaders, in the arrogance of power, did not listen, did not give any importance” to minorities’ concerns, Mr. Maurya said.Some of the smaller O.B.C. groups that helped propel the B.J.P. to power in the last state election, in 2017, also expressed disillusionment. If enough members of these groups vote for opposition parties this time, the B.J.P. may struggle to retain power.Harmeet Singh, a voter who runs a trucking business in Meerut, an industrial city in western Uttar Pradesh, disapproved of Mr. Adityanath’s framing of the vote in religious terms.“Why they ask votes in the name of Hindus and Muslims? Why not ask for votes on your performance?” he said.“We employ both Hindus and Muslims,” he added. “This polarization will hurt the country.”EconomyThe B.J.P.’s focus on religion may not be enough to take voters’ minds off their economic struggles, political analysts said.Across India, the pandemic has buffeted the economy and people’s confidence in the government. The unemployment rate, which was as low as 3.4 percent in 2017, stood at nearly 8 percent in December 2021, with rates far higher among young people. And even as incomes have fallen for many, inflation has sent prices soaring for staples like tea, meat, cooking oil and lentils.“There is a change of political discourse. It’s not about mandir and masjid,” said Zoya Hasan, a political commentator, using the Hindi words for temple and mosque. “Economic issues are far more important for people.”This new focus on the economy among voters in Uttar Pradesh could threaten the B.J.P.’s firm hold on the state, Ms. Hasan said.“The B.J.P. has all the resources and all the power, but this election seems to be showing that new majorities can be formed,” she said.Some voters in Uttar Pradesh said they were pleased with social welfare measures carried out by Mr. Modi’s party.Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated PressAs campaigning ended this week, economic issues were foremost on the minds of voters interviewed in western Uttar Pradesh.“What we want is better public service like good education, good health facilities and employment for our children,” said Surender Yadav, a sugar cane farmer and a member of an O.B.C. group who said he had voted for the B.J.P. in 2017 but would not again.“These are the basic issues, but there has been no improvement,” he said.In the city of Modinagar, an opposition candidate, Sudesh Sharma, was showered with flower petals and fed sweets while campaigning.“You give us employment,” one person in the crowd shouted, “we give you vote.”Still, many voters perceive the B.J.P. as less corrupt than the opposition parties that were previously in power. They say they are happy with the government’s signature welfare programs in the state, including the distribution of cooking gas cylinders to women, the expansion of food rations and the construction of modest houses of brick and cement.“B.J.P. is doing good work. Law and order is under control. Girls can go out, roads are good, poor people were given houses,” said Sachin Kumar, a 25-year-old mechanic on the outskirts of Meerut. “We will vote for Yogi and Modi.”Pandemic and ProtestThe elections in Uttar Pradesh and the four other states could also reflect public sentiment on the B.J.P.-led government’s response to the pandemic and to yearlong protests by farmers that extracted a big concession from the usually unyielding Mr. Modi.A catastrophic second wave of the coronavirus and a halting government response filled hospitals and crematories. At one point, dozens of bodies washed up on the banks of the Ganges River in Uttar Pradesh, presumably victims of Covid-19.Last March, the government stepped up its response, banning exports of Indian-made vaccines and funneling them into a vaccination campaign that has inoculated more than half of the country’s 1.4 billion people.A meeting of farmers in February 2021. Months of protests by farmers against an effort to overhaul the agricultural sector extracted a rare concession from Mr. Modi’s government.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesBut another political challenge emerged when a protest by farmers against a government agricultural overhaul spilled into Uttar Pradesh after encircling India’s capital, New Delhi, for months.The son of a prominent B.J.P. lawmaker in the state was charged with mowing down a group of demonstrating farmers with his vehicle. Later, after months of deadlock in negotiations with the government, the protesters triumphed, forcing Mr. Modi to ask Parliament to repeal the agricultural measures.The farmers’ success showed a rare vulnerability in the B.J.P., which has been consolidating power since Mr. Modi first took office in 2014.The state elections in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere will reveal whether the party’s recent stumbles are just bumps in the road, or a larger obstacle to retaining power in the world’s largest democracy.Hari Kumar reported from Meerut, India, and Emily Schmall from New Delhi. More

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      Status Anxiety Is Blowing Wind Into Trump’s Sails

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      What is the role of status discontent in the emergence of right-wing populism? If it does play a key role, does it matter more where someone stands at any given moment or whether someone is moving up the ladder or down?In the struggle for status, Michael Bang Petersen, a political scientist at Aarhus University, Denmark and the lead author of “Beyond Populism: The Psychology of Status-Seeking and Extreme Political Discontent,” argues thatEducation has emerged as a clear cleavage in addition to more traditional indicators of social class. The highly educated fare better in a more globalized world that puts a premium on human capital. Since the 1980s the highly educated left in the U.S. and elsewhere have been forging alliances with minority groups (e.g., racial, ethnic and sexual minorities), who also have been increasing their status in society. This, in turn, pushes those with lower education or those who feel challenged by the new emerging groups towards the right.It is hardly a secret that the white working class has struggled in recent decades — and clearly many factors play a role — but what happens to those without the skills and abilities needed to move up the education ladder to a position of prestige in an increasingly competitive world?Petersen’s answer: They have become populism’s frontline troops.Over the past six decades, according to Petersen, there has been a realignment of the parties in respect to their position as pro-establishment or anti-establishment: “In the 1960s and 1970s the left was associated with an anti-systemic stance but this position is now more aligned with the right-wing.”Those trapped in a downward spiral undergo a devastating experience.Lea Hartwich, a social psychologist at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at Osnabrueck University in Germany wrote in an email:Those falling behind face a serious threat to their self-worth and well-being: Not only are the societal markers of personal worth and status becoming unattainable but, according to the dominant cultural narrative of individual responsibility, this is supposedly the result of their own lack of hard work or merit.Instead of focusing on the economic system and its elites, Hartwich continued,Right-wing populists usually identify what they call liberal elites in culture, politics and the media as the “enemies of the people.” Combined with the rejection of marginalized groups like immigrants, this creates targets to blame for dissatisfaction with one’s personal situation or the state of society as a whole while leaving a highly unequal economic system intact. Right-wing populists’ focus on the so-called culture wars, the narrative that one’s culture is under attack from liberal elites, is very effective because culture can be an important source of identity and self-worth for people. It is also effective in organizing political conflicts along cultural, rather than economic lines.In a January 2021 paper — “Neoliberalism can reduce well-being by promoting a sense of social disconnection, competition, and loneliness” — Hartwich, Julia C. Becker, also of Osnabrueck, and S. Alexander Haslam of Queensland University found that “exposure to neoliberal ideology,” which they describe as the belief that “economies and societies should be organized along the principles of the free market,” results in “loneliness and, through this, decreases well-being. We found that exposure to neoliberal ideology increased loneliness and decreased well-being by reducing people’s sense of connection to others and by increasing perceptions of being in competition with others.”Diana Mutz, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, described the political consequences of white status decline in her 2018 paper, “Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote.”“Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups,” Mutz wrote. “Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.”Mutz found that:Change in financial well-being had little impact on candidate preference. Instead, changing preferences were related to changes in the party’s positions on issues related to American global dominance and the rise of a majority-minority America: issues that threaten white Americans’ sense of dominant group status.In fact, status decline and economic decline, which have fueled the increasing conservatism of the Republican Party, are closely linked both psychologically and politically.Gordon Hanson, a professor of urban policy at Harvard and the author of “Economic and Political Consequences of Trade-Induced Manufacturing Decline,” emailed me that before the 2016 election, the assumption was that “the political consequences of regionally concentrated manufacturing job loss” would be that “left-leaning politicians” would be “the primary beneficiaries.” Trump’s victory “dramatically altered our thinking on the matter.”Instead, Hanson continued, “large scale job loss led to greater tribalism (as represented by the populist nationalism of Trump and his acolytes) rather than greater support for redistribution (as represented by your run-of-the-mill Democrat).” There was, in fact, “precedence for this outcome,” he wrote, citing a 2013 paper, “Political Extremism in the 1920s and 1930s: Do German Lessons Generalize?” by Alan de Bromhead, Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. O’Rourke, economists at Queen’s University Belfast, Berkeley and N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi.The three economists wrote:Consistent with German experience, we find a link between right-wing political extremism and economic conditions, as captured by the change in G.D.P. Importantly, however, what mattered for right-wing anti-system party support was not just deterioration in economic conditions lasting a year or two, but economic conditions over the longer run.Many of the U.S. counties that moved toward Trump in 2016 and 2020 experienced long-run adverse economic conditions that began with the 2000 entry of China into the World Trade Organization, setbacks that continue to plague those regions decades later.Hanson and his co-authors, David Autor and David Dorn, economists at M.I.T. and the University of Zurich, found in their October 2021 paper “On the Persistence of the China Shock” thatLocal labor markets more exposed to import competition from China suffered larger declines in manufacturing jobs, employment-population ratios, and personal income per capita. These effects persist for nearly two decades beyond the intensification of the trade shock after 2001, and almost a decade beyond the shock reaching peak intensity.They go on:Even using higher-end estimates of the consumer benefits of rising trade with China, a substantial fraction of commuting zones appears to have suffered absolute declines in average real incomes.In their oft-cited 2020 paper, “Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure,” Autor, Dorn, Hanson and Kaveh Majlesi, an economist at Monash University, found that in majority white regions, adverse economic developments resulting from trade imports produced a sharp shift to the right.Autor and his co-authors describe “an ideological realignment in trade-exposed local labor markets that commences prior to the divisive 2016 U.S. presidential election.” More specifically, “trade-impacted commuting zones or districts saw an increasing market share for the Fox News Channel, stronger ideological polarization in campaign contributions and a relative rise in the likelihood of electing a Republican to Congress.”Counties with a majority white population “became more likely to elect a G.O.P. conservative, while trade-exposed counties with an initial majority-minority population became more likely to elect a liberal Democrat,” Autor and his colleagues write.They continue:In presidential elections, counties with greater trade exposure shifted toward the Republican candidate. These results broadly support an emerging political economy literature that connects adverse economic shocks to sharp ideological realignments that cleave along racial and ethnic lines and induce discrete shifts in political preferences and economic policy.The trade-induced shift to the right has deeper roots dating back to at least the early 1990s.In “Local Economic and Political Effects of Trade Deals: Evidence from NAFTA,” Jiwon Choi and Ilyana Kuziemko, both of Princeton, Ebonya Washington of Yale and Gavin Wright of Stanford make the case that the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 played a crucial role in pushing working class whites out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party:We demonstrate that counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to NAFTA suffered large and persistent employment losses relative to other counties. These losses begin in the mid-1990s and are only modestly offset by transfer programs. While exposed counties historically voted Democratic, in the mid-1990s they turn away from the party of the president (Bill Clinton) who ushered in the agreement and by 2000 vote majority Republican in House elections.The trade agreement with Mexico and Canada “led to lasting, negative effects on Democratic identification among regions and demographic groups that were once loyal to the party,” Choi and her co-authors write.Before enactment, the Republican share of the vote in NAFTA-exposed counties was 38 percent, well below the national average, but “by 1998, these once-solidly Democratic counties voted as or more Republican in House elections as the rest of the country,” according to Choi and her colleagues.Before NAFTA, the authors write, Democratic Party support for protectionist policies had been the glue binding millions of white working-class voters to the party, overcoming the appeal of the Republican Party on racial and cultural issues. Democratic support for the free trade agreement effectively broke that bond: “For many white Democrats in the 1980s, economic issues such as trade policy were key to their party loyalty because on social issues such as guns, affirmative action and abortion they sided with the G.O.P.”The consequences of trade shocks have been devastating both to whole regions and to the individuals living in them.Katheryn Russ — co-author along with Katherine Eriksson and Minfei Xu, economists at the University of California-Davis, Jay C. Shambaugh, an economist at George Washington University of the 2020 paper “Trade Shocks and the Shifting Landscape of U.S. Manufacturing” — wrote in an email that trade induced economic downturns “affect entire communities, as places with the lowest fractions of high-school or college-educated workers are finding themselves falling with increasing persistence into the set of counties with the highest unemployment rates.”Even worse, these counties “do not bounce back out with the same frequency that counties with the highest fraction of high-school and college-educated workers do. So we aren’t just talking about a phenomenon that may influence the self-perceived status of individual workers, but of entire communities.”Russ cited a separate 2017 study, “Trade Shocks and the Provision of Local Public Goods” by Leo Feler and Mine Z. Senses, economists at U.C.LA. and Johns Hopkins, which finds that “increased competition from Chinese imports negatively affects local finances and the provision of public services across US localities.”Specifically, “a $1,000 increase in Chinese imports per worker results in a relative decline in per capita expenditures on public welfare, 7.7 percent, on public transport, 2.4 percent, on public housing, 6.8 percent, and on public education, 0.9 percent.”These shortfalls emerge just as demand increases, Feler and Senses write: “The demand for local public goods such as education, public safety, and public welfare is increasing more in trade-affected localities when resources for these services are declining or remaining constant.”For example,Public safety expenditures remain constant at a time when local poverty and unemployment rates are rising, resulting in higher property crime rates by 3.5 percent. Similarly, a relative decline in education spending coincides with an increase in the demand for education as students respond to a deterioration in employment prospects for low-skilled workers by remaining in school longer.As if that were not enough,In localities that are more exposed to trade shocks, we also document an increase in the share of poor and low-income households, which tend to rely more on government services such as public housing and public transportation, both of which experience spending cuts.Eroded social standing, the loss of quality jobs, falling income and cultural marginalization have turned non-college white Americans into an ideal recruiting pool for Donald Trump — and stimulated the adoption of more authoritarian, anti-immigrant and anti-democratic policies.Rui Costa Lopes, a research fellow at the University of Lisbon, emailed in response to my inquiry about the roots of right-wing populism: “As we’re talking more about those who suffer from relative deprivation, status insecurity or powerlessness, then we’re talking more about the phenomenon of ‘politics of resentment’ and there is a link between those types of resentment and adhesion to right populist movements.”Lopes continued: “Recent research shows that the link between relative deprivation, status insecurity or powerlessness and political populist ideas (such as Euroscepticism) occurs through cultural (anti-immigrant) and political (anti-establishment) blame attributions.”“The promise of economic well-being achieved through meritocratic means lies at the very heart of Western liberal economies,” write three authors — Elena Cristina Mitrea of the University of Sibiu in Romania, Monika Mühlböck and Julia Warmuth, of the University of Vienna — in “Extreme Pessimists? Expected Socioeconomic Downward Mobility and the Political Attitudes of Young Adults.” In reality, “the experience of upward mobility has become less common, while the fear of downward mobility is no longer confined to the lower bound of the social strata, but pervades the whole society.”Status anxiety has become a driving force, Mitrea and her colleagues note: “It is not so much current economic standing, but rather anxiety concerning future socioeconomic decline and déclassement, that influences electoral behavior.”“Socially disadvantaged and economically insecure citizens are more susceptible to the appeals of the radical right,” Mitrea, Mühlböck and Warmuth observe, citing data showing “that far-right parties were able to increase their vote share by 30 percent in the aftermath of financial crises.Economic insecurity translates into support for the far-right through feelings of relative deprivation, which arise from negative comparisons drawn between actual economic well-being and one’s expectations or a social reference group. Coping with such feelings increases the likelihood of rejecting political elites and nurturing anti-foreign sentiments.The concentration of despair in the United States among low-income whites without college degrees compared with their Black and Hispanic counterparts is striking.Carol Graham, a Brookings senior fellow, and Sergio Pinto, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, document this divide in “The Geography of Desperation in America: Labor Force Participation, Mobility Trends, Place, and Well-being,” a paper presented at a 2019 conference sponsored by the Boston Federal Reserve:Poor blacks are by far the most optimistic group compared to poor whites: they are 0.9 points higher on the 0-10 scale (0.43 standard deviations). Poor blacks are also 14 percentage points (0.28 standard deviations) less likely to report stress the previous day, half as likely as poor whites to report stress in the previous day, while poor Hispanics fall somewhere in the middle.Graham and Pinto measured poll respondents’ sense of purpose, sense of community and their financial and social well-being and found “that blacks and Hispanics typically score higher than whites,” noting that “these findings highlight the remarkable levels of resilience among blacks living in precarious circumstances compared to their white counterparts.”Graham and Pinto write:The deepest desperation is among cohorts in the white working class who previously had privileged access to jobs (and places) that guaranteed stable, middle-class lives. Rather ironically, African Americans and Hispanics — the cohorts that historically faced high levels of discrimination — retain higher levels of well-being, especially hope for the future.The data suggest that a large segment of the white, non-college population lives day-by-day in a cauldron of dissatisfaction, a phenomenon that stands apart from the American tradition.This discontent drew many disaffected Americans to Donald Trump, and Trump’s defeat in 2020 has produced millions of still more disaffected voters who support his claim that the election was stolen.Michael Bang Petersen puts it this way:We know that humans essentially have two routes to acquire status: prestige and dominance. Prestige is earned respect from having skills that are useful to others. Dominance is status gained from intimidation and fear. Individuals who are high in the pursuit of dominance play a central role in political destabilization. They are more likely to commit political violence, to engage in hateful online interactions and to be motivated to share misinformation.That this is dangerous does not need repeating.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Facing Tough Election, Orban Turns to Putin for Support

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      The Hungarian leader made his name by defying Moscow. But he has increasingly turned toward Russia in an effort to secure the natural gas he needs to keep energy prices low and voters happy.BUDAPEST — Facing a tough election in two months, Hungary’s far-right populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, last week opened the centerpiece of a new state-funded museum district celebrating his country’s role as an anchor of European culture and identity.A shrine in the newly opened “House of Music” honors Hungarian champions of democracy routed by Austrian and Russian troops in 1848, anti-communist rebels crushed by Soviet soldiers in 1956 and, on a happier note, Hungary’s successful defiance of Moscow in 1989, when Mr. Orban made his name by demanding that 80,000 Soviet troops go home.On Tuesday, just days after the museum opening, a celebration of the national pride that Mr. Orban has long used to rev up his voters, the Hungarian prime minister swerved in the opposite direction to shore up another vital if contradictory pillar of his support — Russia.Meeting in Moscow with President Vladimir V. Putin, he signaled sympathy for Russia in its standoff with the West over Ukraine, and pleaded for more deliveries of the natural gas he needs to keep energy prices low and voters happy.Mr. Orban has long been seen as a political chameleon — and reviled by foes as a brazen opportunist — but he is now pushing his shape-shifting talents to a new level. He has broken ranks not only with Hungary’s allies over Ukraine but also with his country’s own long history of wariness toward Russia as he seeks to reconcile economic populism with the nationalism that underpins his political brand.Hungary, according to the European Union’s statistical agency, has the lowest electricity prices and third lowest gas prices for consumers in the 27-member European bloc. While prices elsewhere have doubled or tripled over the past year, Hungary has kept them steady, a feat that Mr. Orban’s governing Fidesz party is hoping will help it defeat an unusually united opposition in elections on April 3.A basilica in Budapest last September. A recent poll found that Hungary views Russia and China as more important strategic partners than the United States.Akos Stiller for The New York TimesAnalysts question whether Hungary can keep prices low for consumers indefinitely without crippling the finances of a huge state-owned electricity provider. But Mr. Orban has turned to Moscow to help convince voters he has their economic interests in hand.Hungary has sided unequivocally with Mr. Putin as fellow members of the European Union and NATO have voiced growing alarm over what they see as Russian bullying of Ukraine, on whose borders Moscow has massed more than 100,000 troops.Speaking on Hungarian radio Friday, Mr. Orban brushed off criticism of his cozying up to the Kremlin, saying that Hungary wanted to act as an “icebreaker” by pursuing a policy that he acknowledged “deviates entirely from most E.U. and NATO ally countries.”Understand Russia’s Relationship With the WestThe tension between the regions is growing and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.Competing for Influence: For months, the threat of confrontation has been growing in a stretch of Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Threat of Invasion: As the Russian military builds its presence near Ukraine, Western nations are seeking to avert a worsening of the situation.Energy Politics: Europe is a huge customer of Russia’s fossil fuels. The rising tensions in Ukraine are driving fears of a midwinter cutoff.Migrant Crisis: As people gathered on the eastern border of the European Union, Russia’s uneasy alliance with Belarus triggered additional friction.Militarizing Society: With a “youth army” and initiatives promoting patriotism, the Russian government is pushing the idea that a fight might be coming.At a news conference Tuesday in the Kremlin with Mr. Putin, Mr. Orban left no doubt about the main reason for this deviation.“If we have Russian gas, we can provide a cheap supply of it to Hungarian households. If there is no Russian gas then we cannot do this,” he explained.Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital in Budapest, said cheap energy was one of Fidesz’s main selling points to voters. “The party says that while people in the rest of Europe are freezing or becoming impoverished because of energy prices, Hungary has no problems.”Mr. Orban’s Moscow trip, he said, could therefore be a “big win — so long as the war does not escalate in Ukraine.” But if Russia invades, he added, Mr. Orban, who described his trip to Mr. Putin as a “mission of peace,” will be “in serious trouble internationally and also domestically. His whole narrative crumbles.”At a joint news conference with Mr. Orban in Moscow on Tuesday, Mr. Putin effectively endorsed the Hungarian leader.Pool photo by Yuri KochetkovMr. Orban is not the first Hungarian leader to go cap in hand to Moscow in pursuit of energy. But when a predecessor did so in 2007 and reached a gas deal with Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy behemoth, Mr. Orban lambasted the arrangement as evidence his country was slipping back into Moscow’s orbit.Since then, however, Mr. Orban has dropped the anti-Moscow sentiments that catapulted him to prominence in 1989, and instead developed a form of far-right populism more focused on stoking contemporary cultural wars by targeting the European Union as a menacing threat to Hungarian sovereignty and values.Nationalist leaders in other European countries like Poland share Mr. Orban’s hostility toward Brussels but reject his outreach to Mr. Putin, a rift that has hobbled a yearslong effort by Europe’s far right to form a united front.“We had a bad relationship with the Soviet Union for many reasons that I do not need to list here,” Mr. Orban told radio listeners on Friday. “But that era is over, and now we are trying to have a system of relations with this new Russia that is different from what we had with the Soviet Union.”Mr. Putin has returned the favor.After blasting NATO for “ignoring” Russia’s security concerns as Mr. Orban stood at his side in the Kremlin, the Russian president effectively endorsed the Hungarian leader.“As we usually say when our partners are having elections, we will work with any elected leader,” Mr. Putin said, adding: “But I must note that you have done so much in your work on the Russian track in both the interest of Hungary and Russia. I hope our cooperation will continue.”A station for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, owned by the Russian energy company Gazprom, in Lumbin, Germany. Around 80 percent of the gas used in Hungary is imported from Gazprom.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesMore important, he offered Mr. Orban a helping hand with energy, noting that underground storage facilities for gas in Europe are just 40 percent full and “our European partners in Europe will probably face problems next year.” But Hungary, Mr. Putin promised, “will have no problems because we will coordinate additional volumes.”Around 80 percent of the gas used in Hungary is imported from Gazprom, more than double the European Union’s average level of Russian imports. Then there is nuclear energy. The biggest producer of electricity in Hungary is the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, a Soviet-designed facility whose expansion Mr. Orban also discussed with Mr. Putin. It generates around half of Hungary’s electricity. Russia has provided loans of $10 billion to fund the plant’s expansion, a project led by Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom.“It should be clear for everyone that as long as this government is in power, energy prices will be reduced,” Mr. Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, declared last year.Hungary’s dependence on Russia for energy helps explain why, when the Biden administration announced this week that it would send more American troops to the region, Hungary said it didn’t need them. Poland and Romania welcomed the American offer.Hungary has a long history of animosity toward Russia, but this has faded as media outlets controlled by Mr. Orban and his supporters have praised Mr. Putin and steadily eroded trust in the Western alliance.Mr. Putin on TV during his meeting with Mr. Orban in Moscow on Tuesday. Hungary’s long history of animosity toward Russia has faded in recent years.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesA survey of public opinion across East and Central Europe last year by Globsec, a research group in Slovakia, found that Hungary, alone among countries in the region, views Russia and China as more important strategic partners than the United States.Some analysts believe Mr. Putin’s pledges of support for Hungary in Moscow were largely symbolic and won’t help Mr. Orban keep utility prices in check.“The era of cheap Russian gas has ended,” said Attila Weinhardt, an energy analyst at Portfolio, an online financial journal. The government’s hope that it can keep fixed energy prices for households, he said, is probably unsustainable.Mr. Orban’s Moscow visit secured no written commitment of additional supplies and mostly just reaffirmed a 15-year deal signed last September. That deal, which advanced Russian efforts to reduce gas deliveries to Europe through Ukraine by using alternative pipelines, was condemned by Ukraine as a “purely political, economically unreasonable decision.”Mr. Orban’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, responded that Hungary was not playing politics but simply securing its own economic and security interests. “You cannot heat homes with political statements,” he said.Valerie Hopkins More

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      En Latinoamérica, la izquierda asciende

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      Los candidatos con plataformas izquierdistas han logrado victorias en una región con dificultades económicas y una desigualdad que va en aumento.RÍO DE JANEIRO — En las últimas semanas de 2021, Chile y Honduras votaron con determinación por presidentes de izquierda para reemplazar a líderes de derecha, con lo que se extendió un cambio significativo que lleva varios años ocurriendo en toda América Latina.Este año, los políticos de izquierda son los favoritos para ganar las elecciones presidenciales en Colombia y Brasil, sustituyendo a los presidentes en funciones de derecha, lo que pondría a la izquierda y a la centroizquierda en el poder en las seis economías más grandes de una región que se extiende desde Tijuana hasta Tierra del Fuego.El sufrimiento económico, el aumento de la desigualdad, el ferviente descontento con los gobernantes y la mala gestión de la pandemia de COVID-19 han impulsado un movimiento pendular que se distancia de los líderes de centroderecha y de derecha que dominaban hace unos años.La izquierda ha prometido una distribución más equitativa de la riqueza, mejores servicios públicos y redes de seguridad social ampliadas. Pero los nuevos líderes de la región se enfrentan a graves limitaciones económicas y a una oposición legislativa que podría restringir sus ambiciones, así como a unos votantes intranquilos que se han mostrado dispuestos a castigar a quien no cumpla lo prometido.Los avances de la izquierda podrían impulsar a China y socavar a Estados Unidos mientras compiten por la influencia regional, dicen los analistas, al presentarse una nueva cosecha de líderes latinoamericanos desesperados por lograr el desarrollo económico y con más apertura hacia la estrategia global de Pekín de ofrecer préstamos e inversiones en infraestructuras. El cambio también podría dificultar que Estados Unidos siga aislando a los regímenes autoritarios de izquierda en Venezuela, Nicaragua y Cuba.Con el aumento de la inflación y el estancamiento de las economías, los nuevos líderes de América Latina tendrán dificultades para lograr un cambio real en los problemas profundos, dijo Pedro Mendes Loureiro, profesor de estudios latinoamericanos en la Universidad de Cambridge. Hasta cierto punto, dijo, los votantes están “eligiendo a la izquierda simplemente porque en este momento es la oposición”.Los niveles de pobreza se encuentran en el nivel más alto de los últimos 20 años en una región en la que un efímero auge de las materias primas permitió a millones de personas ascender a la clase media tras el cambio de siglo. Varios países se enfrentan ahora a un desempleo de dos dígitos, y más del 50 por ciento de los trabajadores de la región están empleados en el sector informal.Los escándalos de corrupción, el deterioro de la infraestructura y la ausencia crónica de fondos en los sistemas de salud y educación han erosionado la confianza en el gobierno y las instituciones públicas.Personas sin hogar en fila para recibir el almuerzo de los voluntarios en São Paulo en agosto. “El tema ahora es la frustración, el sistema de clases, la estratificación”, dijo un analista.Mauricio Lima para The New York TimesA diferencia de lo que ocurrió a principios de la década de 2000, cuando los izquierdistas ganaron presidencias decisivas en América Latina, los nuevos gobernantes tienen que hacer frente a la deuda, a presupuestos magros, a escaso acceso al crédito y, en muchos casos, a una oposición vociferante.Eric Hershberg, director del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos y Latinos de la American University, dijo que la racha ganadora de la izquierda nace de un sentimiento generalizado de indignación.“En realidad se trata de los sectores de la clase media baja y de la clase trabajadora que dicen: ‘treinta años de democracia y todavía tenemos que ir en un autobús decrépito durante dos horas para llegar a un centro de salud malo’”, dijo Hershberg. Citó la frustración, la ira y “una sensación generalizada de que las élites se han enriquecido, han sido corruptas, no han actuado en favor del interés público”.La COVID-19 asoló América Latina y devastó economías que ya eran precarias, pero la inclinación política de la región comenzó antes de la pandemia.Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, exlíder de izquierda de Brasil, tiene una ventaja considerable sobre Bolsonaro en un cara a cara, según una encuesta reciente.Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEl primer hito fue la elección en México de Andrés Manuel López Obrador, que ganó la presidencia con un resultado arrollador en julio de 2018. Durante su discurso de la noche electoral, declaró: “El Estado dejará de ser un comité al servicio de una minoría y representará a todos los mexicanos, a ricos y pobres”.Al año siguiente, los votantes de Panamá y Guatemala eligieron gobiernos de centroizquierda, y el movimiento peronista de izquierda de Argentina tuvo un sorprendente regreso a pesar del legado de corrupción y mala gestión económica de sus líderes. Con la promesa de “construir la Argentina que nos merecemos”, Alberto Fernández, profesor universitario, celebró su triunfo frente a un presidente conservador que buscaba la reelección.En 2020, Luis Arce se impuso a sus rivales conservadores para convertirse en presidente de Bolivia. Se comprometió a ampliar el legado del exlíder Evo Morales, un socialista cuya destitución el año anterior dejó brevemente a la nación en manos de una presidenta de derecha.En abril del año pasado, Pedro Castillo, un maestro de escuela de provincia, sorprendió a la clase política peruana al derrotar por un estrecho margen a la candidata derechista a la presidencia, Keiko Fujimori. Castillo, un recién llegado a la política, arremetió contra las élites y presentó la historia de su vida —un educador que trabajó en una escuela rural sin agua corriente ni sistema de alcantarillado— como una encarnación de los defectos de la clase gobernante.En Honduras, Xiomara Castro, una candidata de plataforma socialista que propuso el establecimiento de un sistema de renta básica universal para las familias pobres, venció con facilidad en noviembre a un rival conservador para convertirse en presidenta electa.Xiomara Castro, que ganó las elecciones en Honduras, ha propuesto un sistema de renta básica universal para las familias pobres.Daniele Volpe para The New York TimesLa victoria más reciente de la izquierda se produjo el mes pasado en Chile, donde Gabriel Boric, un antiguo activista estudiantil de 35 años, venció a un rival de extrema derecha con la promesa de aumentar los impuestos a los ricos para ofrecer pensiones más generosas y ampliar enormemente los servicios sociales.La tendencia no ha sido universal. En los últimos tres años, los votantes de El Salvador, Uruguay y Ecuador han desplazado a sus gobiernos hacia la derecha. Y en México y Argentina, el año pasado, los partidos de centroizquierda perdieron terreno en las elecciones legislativas, socavando a sus presidentes.Pero en general, Evan Ellis, profesor de estudios latinoamericanos en el Colegio de Guerra del Ejército de Estados Unidos, dijo no recordar una América Latina “tan dominada por una combinación de izquierdistas y líderes populistas antiestadounidenses”.“En toda la región, los gobiernos de izquierda estarán particularmente dispuestos a trabajar con los chinos en contratos de gobierno a gobierno”, dijo, y posiblemente “con respecto a la colaboración en materia de seguridad, así como a la colaboración tecnológica”.Jennifer Pribble, profesora de ciencias políticas de la Universidad de Richmond que estudia América Latina, dijo que el brutal número de víctimas de la pandemia en la región hizo que las iniciativas de izquierda, como las transferencias de efectivo y la atención universal a la salud, fueran cada vez más populares.“Los votantes latinoamericanos tienen ahora un sentido más agudo de lo que el Estado puede hacer y de la importancia de que el Estado participe en un esfuerzo redistributivo y en la prestación de servicios públicos”, dijo. “Eso condiciona estas elecciones, y está claro que la izquierda puede hablar más directamente de eso que la derecha”.Gabriel Boric, quien fuera activista estudiantil, ha prometido una amplia expansión de los servicios sociales en Chile.Marcelo Hernandez/Getty ImagesEn Colombia, donde las elecciones presidenciales se celebrarán en mayo, Gustavo Petro, exalcalde izquierdista de Bogotá que perteneció a un grupo guerrillero urbano, ha mantenido una ventaja constante en las encuestas.Sergio Guzmán, director de la consultora Colombia Risk Analysis, dijo que las aspiraciones presidenciales de Petro se hicieron viables después de que la mayoría de los combatientes de las FARC, un grupo guerrillero marxista, dejaron las armas como parte de un acuerdo de paz alcanzado en 2016. El conflicto había dominado durante mucho tiempo la política colombiana, pero ya no.“El tema ahora es la frustración, el sistema de clases, la estratificación, los que tienen y los que no tienen”.Justo antes de Navidad, Sonia Sierra, de 50 años, se encontraba fuera de la pequeña cafetería que regenta en el principal parque urbano de Bogotá. Sus ingresos se habían desplomado, dijo, primero en medio de la pandemia y luego cuando una comunidad desplazada por la violencia se trasladó al parque.Sierra dijo que estaba muy endeudada después de que su marido fuera hospitalizado con covid. Las finanzas son tan ajustadas que hace poco despidió a su única empleada, una joven venezolana que solo ganaba 7,50 dólares al día.“Tanto trabajar y no tengo nada”, dijo Sierra, cantando un verso de una canción popular en la época navideña en Colombia. “No estoy llorando, pero sí, me da sentimiento”.En Recife, Brasil, se complementan los ingresos recogiendo mariscos.Mauricio Lima para The New York TimesEn el vecino Brasil, el aumento de la pobreza, la inflación y una respuesta fallida a la pandemia han convertido al presidente Jair Bolsonaro, el titular de extrema derecha, en un candidato débil de cara a la votación programada para octubre.El expresidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, un izquierdista que gobernó Brasil de 2003 a 2010, una época de notable prosperidad, ha conseguido una ventaja de 30 puntos porcentuales sobre Bolsonaro en un cara a cara, según una encuesta reciente.Maurício Pimenta da Silva, de 31 años, subgerente de una tienda de suministros agrícolas en la región de São Lourenço, en el estado de Río de Janeiro, dijo que se arrepentía de haber votado por Bolsonaro en 2018 y que ahora tiene la intención de apoyar a Da Silva.“Pensé que Bolsonaro mejoraría nuestra vida en algunos aspectos, pero no lo hizo”, dijo Da Silva, un padre de cuatro hijos que no tiene relación con el expresidente. “Todo es tan caro en los supermercados, especialmente la carne”, agregó, lo que lo llevó a tomar un segundo empleo.Con los votantes enfrentados a tanta agitación, los candidatos moderados están ganando poca influencia, lamentó Simone Tebet, una senadora de centroderecha en Brasil que planea presentarse a la presidencia este año.“Si miramos a Brasil y a América Latina, estamos viviendo un ciclo de extremos relativamente aterrador”, dijo. “El radicalismo y el populismo se han impuesto”.Ernesto Londoño More