Anti-Semitism, racism and anti-elitism are spreading in France

WHEN HERVÉ BERVILLE was growing up in rural Brittany, he was often the only black child around. But, he says, he encountered scarcely any racism. Adopted by a French couple during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the lanky economist went on to be elected in 2017 to the National Assembly, for President Emmanuel Macron’s party. Last year, when Mr Berville received a typed death threat by post at his parliamentary office, he threw it in the bin. When another arrived last month regretting the fact that he had “escaped the machetes”, the deputy decided to speak out. “It was so violent,” he says, and the atmosphere had shifted. “The border between threats, and acting on those threats, is shrinking.”