Dear FO° Reader,
Fair Observer draws from a deep understanding of global shifts in marketing, language, culture, and geopolitics. We endeavor to enrich your perspective by incorporating diverse linguistic, philosophical and cultural elements. This integration reveals the delicate interplay between two competing forces: individualism and freedom on the one hand and social cohesion and harmony with the environment on the other.
The world is not black or white. It is almost always gray. Nuance matters. That is precisely what social media destroys. People become a bit too sure of their views because of filter bubbles and echo chambers. Shouting matches replace awareness, empathy and communication. And Fair Observer stimulates, encourages and fosters dialogue.
From the earliest days, we wanted dialogue in multiple languages. We will be launching a francophone version, francoFOnie, in 2024 that will be the next step in creating a multidimensional, multilingual conversation. Stay tuned.
Historically, French is the language of diplomacy
We tend to forget that French succeeded Latin as the dominant language of Europe. For a while, French was the language of diplomacy. Cynics might say that this happened because Louis XIV waged numerous wars and la grande nation imposed its language through “a whiff of grapeshot” so favored by Napoleon. However, there may be merit in the argument that French is a language of nuance. The likes of Molière and Voltaire might have played a role too.
Victor Adam: The Signing of the Treaty of Mortefontaine, 30th September 1800, Wikimedia Commons
When we speak about diplomacy, It is impossible to forget Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. This remarkable French statesman served as Napoleon’s foreign minister during the heady days of multiple triumphs and then snatched a largely favorable peace after the 1815 catastrophic Waterloo defeat. Thanks to deft diplomacy, Talleyrand negotiated a favorable peace at the Congress of Vienna that brought a century of relative peace to Europe, which only ended when World War I erupted in 1914.
Many argue that it was not only Talleyrand’s exceptional ability but also the use of French as the diplomatic language that enabled his historic diplomatic achievements. After all, the wily old diplomat had home turf advantage.
Not only diplomats but also intellectuals used French too. Across the Rhine, the polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote in French, too. It was the best way to reach a pan-European audience, and remained that way long after the British Empire led to the rise of English as the global lingua franca. As late as the 1960s, French was the working language in international projects like the Second Vatican Council. French remains a preeminent language of art, culture and diplomacy to this day. It is one of the UN’s six working languages and one of the EU’s three procedural languages, spoken not only in Europe but also in North and South America, Africa and Asia.
Fair Observer is now entering that tradition with francoFOnie. Our goal is to publish many voices from around the world in French and translate some of them into English. Of course, we will translate some of our best pieces from English to French.
Note that we have already launched a Fair Observer Hindi YouTube channel. We have done so quietly and, so far, we are making slow but steady progress.
Remember, we have done all of this on a shoestring. ProPublica’s database can tell you that our revenues in 2021 were $159,000 and our expenditure was just $125,000. This is less than the starting salary for lawyers in a top New York law firm. Once, Atul (our founder, CEO & editor-in-chief) worked in such a law firm and would certainly have made more money if he had stayed on.
For him and for us, Fair Observer is a labor of life. We believe that democracy dies without discourse — no, we are not stealing this line from Jeff Bezos-owned The Washington Post — and a truly global bottom-up conversation based on fact and reason matters.
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Communications and Outreach & Assistant Editor Respectively
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