On the insanity of Europe's new Dark Ages thinking

The virulent anti-China campaign that's currently going on in French media is insane, and I mean this in the pathological sense: when someone becomes so consumed by fanatical belief that they can no longer distinguish between facts and dogma.

"Insane" also because it does enormous harm to the country, at a special geopolitical moment in time when Europe desperately needs diplomatic flexibility instead of a rigid ideological playbook.

This latest media frenzy started when a French MP, Sophia Chikirou (a member of Mélenchon's party), had the misfortune of replying that she didn't believe China was a dictatorship when asked by journalists. Her exact words were: "From my point of view, and according to the rules, I do not consider China to be a dictatorship. China has a political system with a dominant party which is the Chinese Communist Party. In their political system it isn't a single man who leads China."

A selection of French mainstream media headlines following Sophia Chikirou's comments about China's political system - illustrating the uniformity of response