A historic election in an authoritarian world – a weekly news review

Across the world, there is a ramping up of authoritarian oppression as ruling elites defend a political system that generates growing inequality and destroys the planet and that is facing a rising tide of resistance. Even here, in picturesque Strasbourg, I have got used to seeing riot police and tear gas, and while the situation in France is hardly of the same order as that in Turkey, both arise from the suppression of challenges to elite power, and oppressors in different countries learn and take encouragement from each other.