The Economist February 13th 2021 Europe 51meeting with foreign reporters, arguing
that if he had not carried out his liberalis-
ing reforms before the pandemic the coun-
try would be less well placed to finance
protection today. The recovery plan based
on common European Union borrowing is,
he pointed out, oriented towards invest-
ments that “build the future, and not from
a perspective of protection”. But Mr Ma-
cron does not deny that the balance has
shifted: “Two years ago I was told, ‘You are
freeing up more than you are protecting’;
today I am told, ‘You are protecting more
than you are freeing up.’”
This poses a particular challenge in
France, a country that has long had a strong
central state and that has tended to long
spells of conservatism interrupted by
bursts of rebellion, some of them rather
dramatic. Protection is in some ways the
country’s default mode, and that mindset
can be hard to alter. Mathieu Laine, a liber-
al writer and the author of a new book, “In-
fantilisation”, argues that the French state
is now acting to entrench a dangerous
form of risk aversion. All those rules and
forms devised by overzealous bureaucrats
during the pandemic—no more than one
hour of exercise a day, at no more than one
kilometre from home—are teaching peo-
ple, he says, how to “unlearn what it means
to exercise freedoms”.
It may yet be that this shift towards the
politics of protection could in fact provide
Mr Macron, a former investment banker,
with a form of defence. The most disillu-
sioned of his former supporters are on the
left. Last year he lost his absolute parlia-
mentary majority when a group of left-
leaning deputies quit his party, La Répu-
blique en Marche. Instead of a nod in their
direction, he then replaced one centre-
right prime minister (Edouard Philippe)
with another (Jean Castex). Some inside
the party now want Mr Macron to tilt to-
wards the left to recover such voters. If
faced with another second-round choice
between him or Ms Le Pen, they might oth-
erwise abstain. Polls suggest that this is
part of the reason for the closer run-off gap.
The chances are that Mr Macron, whose
adage is en même temps (at the same time),
will seek to forge a fresh balance in the
run-up to 2022. He has shown that he is
still ready to take risks, says one of his
presidential aides, by keeping schools
open since last May, and refusing—against
scientific and ministerial advice—to put
France into a third lockdown right away.
Partly as a result, his poll rating among the
young has risen 11 points in three months.
For now, his greatest asset is that no single
credible alternative candidate has yet
emerged, on either the left or the right. But
these are uncertain times. And nobody
knows more about the volatility of electo-
ral politics than the former outsider whom
polls overlooked, Mr Macron.
A
rthur schopenhauerowned a
succession of pet poodles. Franz
Kafka maintained that “all knowledge,
the totality of all questions and all an-
swers is contained in the dog.” Frederick
the Great exclaimed: “The more I see of
men, the better I like my dog.” Pets have
been deeply embedded in Germanic
culture for centuries, but never more so
than now. As people seek a cure for co-
vid-induced solitude and angst, demand
has surged for dogs, budgies, snakes and
even cats.
The German Kennel Club says dog
sales increased by 20% in 2020. Prices
for puppies sold on pets4homes, Bri-
tain’s largest online ad site for pets, more
than doubled. A Yorkshire terrier pup canset you back £1,500 ($2,050), and some
breeds cost twice that. Some dogs are no
doubt enjoying the pandemic, since their
owners are always home. Many are being
pampered. The share price of Chewy, an
online pet-supplies store, rose by more
than 260% in 2020 as owners splurged
on posh toys and organic food. Zoo Zajac,
a huge pet shop based in Duisburg, says
January was probably the best month in
its 45-year existence.
Soaring profits, alas, attract crooks.
The unspeakable crime of “dognapping”
is on the rise. Pedigree pooches are pre-
ferred. The German Animal Welfare
Federation (dtb) registered 75 illegal
trades between January and October last
year, more than in all of 2019, involving
more than 800 animals (mainly dogs).
The true number is surely much higher.
Many take place online and are hard to
spot. Puppy farms are mass-producing
dogs, often in poor conditions. Thomas
Schröder of the dtb demands a ban on
the online sale of animals. Other activists
argue that the internet helps find good
homes for many pets, though they ad-
vocate stricter regulation of online sales.
When covid-19 eventually recedes,
animal shelters expect another problem.
Some new owners will tire of their lock-
down pets and want to return them.
Others will go back to work and find they
have no time to look after them. Europe’s
biggest animal shelter, in Berlin, which
is the size of 22 football pitches and
houses some 1,300 animals, including
apes and a pig called Tinkerbell, is brac-
ing for a post-pandemic crush.Pets and covid-19Canine crushes
BERLIN
Pets have made lockdown more bearable. What happens when it ends?He’s got the answersTu r ke yLesbian, gay, bi
and terrorist?
S
quadrons ofarmed policemen block
the entrance. Metal barriers line the ave-
nue leading up to the campus. Snipers oc-
casionally emerge on nearby rooftops. Bo-
gazici University has long been considered
one of Turkey’s most prestigious. Today it
resembles a besieged terrorist hideout.
That, believe it or not, is how Turkey’s
president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sees it.
On February 1st police stormed the campusand detained dozens of students who were
protesting about his appointment of a gov-
ernment loyalist as their rector. The pro-
tests have taken place regularly for over a
month. They escalated after the arrest of
four students who had organised an art
show that included a rainbow flag along-
side an image of the Kaaba, the black cube
at the heart of Mecca. Turkey’s interior
minister called the students “lgbt per-
verts”. Mr Erdogan compared the protes-
ters (at least 600 of whom have been de-
tained) to terrorists. “There is no such
thing as lgbt,” he said on February 3rd.
(Why he is so upset about something he
doesn’t think exists remains a mystery.)
Mr Erdogan tends to inflame protests.
He often depicts them as part of an existen-
tial struggle between pious and secular,
conservative and degenerate, patriotic andISTANBUL
Recep Tayyip Erdogan takes on a top
university and the LGBTmovement