Reuters/File

Adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, is suing President Trump to negate a non-disclosure agreement she signed in 2016 to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital encounter, as well as for defamation. Mr. Trump has denied the relationship.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia may be the most high-profile probe circling President Trump in the aftermath of the 2016 election. But it is far from the only legal threat Mr. Trump is facing – and it may not even wind up being the most consequential.

Allegations about Trump campaign collusion, murky international business deals, and the president’s alleged encounters with various women, have given rise to a barrage of litigation in the civil courts as well.

Such lawsuits – filed by Russian oligarchs, the Democratic Party, and a porn star, among others – may seem like a distraction or a source of cable news entertainment. But legal experts warn that this kind of civil litigation could in fact pose grave risks to Mr. Trump and his presidency.

“This is very serious,” says Andrew Wright, a professor at Savannah Law School and a former White House lawyer during both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

“I think they’re under greater threat than the Clinton administration was at any time,” he says. “The Trump White House is in significantly greater legal peril.”

While Trump and his supporters have grown increasingly critical of the expanding nature of the special counsel’s criminal investigation, the president and his associates are facing an even wider array of civil lawsuits.

What that means for Trump and his team is that they are now facing multiple allegations from a variety of lawyers conducting their own investigations into various aspects of Trump’s alleged conduct. These investigations are independent of Mr. Mueller’s probe – yet they could wind up being somewhat symbiotic, depending on what they unearth. And they will likely continue, regardless of the final outcome of Mueller’s investigation.

Among the pending lawsuits:   

• The Democratic Party is accusing the 2016 Trump campaign of acting as a racketeering enterprise while allegedly conspiring with Russia and WikiLeaks to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

• An adult film star, Stephanie Clifford (also known as Stormy Daniels), is suing Trump to negate a once-secret October 2016 non-disclosure agreement set up by Trump’s personal lawyer to prevent Ms. Clifford from publicly discussing an alleged 2006 consensual intimate encounter. When Trump denied the relationship and called her claims a “con job,” she retaliated with a second lawsuit – for defamation.  

• A Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, is suing Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, over $18.9 million that allegedly disappeared from a Cayman Islands investment company. Mr. Manafort is under indictment by Mueller in both Washington and Virginia on money laundering and tax fraud charges related to his earlier business dealings. Manafort has pleaded not guilty. He is suspected of being a key link, through Mr. Deripaska and other former Russian business associates, between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Deripaska denies any such connection.

• Summer Zervos, a 2005 contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice,” is suing Trump for defamation after he called her a “liar” when she claimed he twice kissed her on the mouth and made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 2007.

• Three victims of the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016 are suing the Trump campaign for violating their privacy. The stolen information was posted online, disclosing Social Security numbers, financial details, private correspondence, and, in one case, the sexual orientation of the victim.

Five of these pending civil lawsuits are closely linked to alleged actions by Trump.

“In each of those cases, I anticipate that the president is going to have to give depositions, and those will be done under oath,” Professor Wright says. “Some of them are going to cover topics that the president is currently threatening to avoid talking to Bob Mueller about.”

He adds: “There’s certainly nothing stopping coordination between Bob Mueller and other people’s counsel where there are areas of overlap.”

The Stormy Daniels effect

The most prominent area of overlap currently is between Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, and federal prosecutors in New York City who are investigating Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

It was Mr. Cohen who drafted the Clifford non-disclosure agreement and funneled $130,000 of hush money to her in the weeks before the 2016 election. Now Clifford wants out of the agreement.

The publicity surrounding Clifford’s case has given a fresh uplift to her career. She has been appearing at strip clubs across the country, and even had a cameo (clothed) appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Likewise, Mr. Avenatti is making a name for himself as a kind of litigation pit bull, with ubiquitous appearances on CNN and MSNBC.

This week, he released a seven-page “executive summary” of his investigation of Essential Consultants – the newly-formed Delaware company that Cohen used to make the hush-money payment to Clifford.

Avenatti discovered that there was more going on in the company’s bank account than just the movement of money to his client. He identified a series of other transactions, including $500,000 in payments transferred from Columbus Nova, a New York-based private equity firm with ties to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

Avenatti suggested in his executive summary – without citing any evidence – that the money was transferred by Mr. Vekselberg and that “it appears that these funds may have replenished the account following the payment to Ms. Clifford.”

Officials with Columbus Nova and a spokesman for Velselberg dispute any connection with the Clifford issue. “The firm hired Michael Cohen as a business consultant regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures,” the company said in a statement.

Essential Consultants received similar payments from major corporations including the telecom giant AT&T and the international pharmaceutical company Novartis. The companies say they hired Cohen as a consultant for advice about how to navigate the new Trump administration.

Although this episode may not significantly advance the ongoing investigation of Cohen or the Trump-Russia probe, it underscores how interrelated many of these cases may wind up being – and how aggressive tactics by a single lawyer can complicate efforts by the president and his associates to defend themselves.

It remains unclear how Avenatti got his information, and the Treasury Department’s Inspector General has now launched an investigation. But from Avenatti’s perspective, his strategy is working. “Because we’re so out front on this, people send us information,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “People want to help our cause.”

A vehicle to procure documents?

Trump supporters have denounced many of the lawsuits – including Avenatti’s – as vehicles to convince judges to order Trump to turn over documents related to his business activities, including tax returns, and eventually submit to questioning under oath. Whatever they discover could be used to undermine the president politically, be turned over to the special counsel’s office, or be sent to members of Congress for use in any future impeachment proceeding.

Next Thursday, lawyers for the Trump campaign will ask a federal judge in Washington to dismiss the privacy lawsuit filed on behalf of the three victims of the stolen DNC emails.

In his motion to dismiss the case, Washington lawyer Michael Carvin argues that the allegations in the complaint of a Trump-Russia conspiracy are being made without any underlying factual support.

“The object of this lawsuit is to launch a private investigation into the president of the United States,” Mr. Carvin writes. “Plaintiffs have not named the president as a defendant, but the complaint foreshadows a fishing expedition into his ‘tax returns,’ ‘business relationships and financial ties,’ ‘real estate projects,’ conversations with FBI Director Comey, and on and on.”

Lawyers for the three victims counter in their own brief that the dismissal motion is designed to deny them the opportunity to collect the evidence that could prove their case.

In the two suits filed on behalf of Clifford, Avenatti has made clear that his goal is to force Trump into a face-to-face interrogation under oath.

Among the unresolved questions in the Clifford hush-money case are when the president learned of the nondisclosure agreement, and whether Trump paid for it.

Trump has denied that he had any intimate encounter with Clifford. He and his associates have made conflicting statements about the payment. Cohen originally told The New York Times that he made the $130,000 payment on his own and was not reimbursed. More recently, one of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, said Trump did repay Cohen, and Trump himself tweeted that Cohen was repaid via a monthly retainer. Despite these attempts to answer lingering questions, Trump and his lawyers have yet to provide a clear explanation of the episode.

The Clinton comparison

Many legal analysts have drawn the comparison between Trump’s shaky posture in response to the Clifford case and the disastrous actions taken by then-President Bill Clinton when he was confronted under oath about alleged sexual improprieties.

Mr. Clinton lied and was ultimately impeached on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. The Senate declined to remove him from office.

Now it is a Republican president in the spotlight, and many of Trump’s supporters are concerned that he may not emerge unscathed from an interview with Mueller’s team or a deposition in any of the pending civil cases.

Trump is famously imprecise in his use of language and engages in frequent flourishes of hyperbole. Some Trump supporters have expressed concern that it might make him vulnerable to a perjury trap.

Others analysts dismiss the idea.

“I don’t know what a perjury trap is. I don’t think a perjury trap exists,” says Richard Serafini, a defense attorney in South Florida and a former prosecutor with the Securities Exchange Commission.

“How do you get fooled into lying?” he asks. “In order to commit perjury, you have to convey false information knowing that it is not a mistake. I don’t see how you get tricked into that.”

Mr. Serafini says the process is simple. “You go in, you tell them what you know honestly, and if you don’t know something, you tell them you don’t know.”

In the meantime, experts say Trump could help himself by talking less.

“The way you handle this kind of cross-cutting risk across many different investigative bodies and civil litigants is by keeping your mouth shut,” Wright says.

The standard response is to decline any comment about an ongoing investigation.

“That’s how you get through the news cycle,” Wright says. “Not by calling it a witch hunt and attacking the motives of everyone. All that is just going to be quicksand. You are just going to sink deeper and deeper into it.”

He adds: “The way you survive is by not engaging at all. And that is clearly not in the president’s skill set – yet.”

Allegations that now-former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman led a double life where he championed women by day and mistreated them by night offered Americans this week a disquieting peek at the ubiquity of hypocrisy.

The latest in a long line of US politicians accused of abusing women behind closed doors, Mr. Schneiderman, a veteran prosecutor who cut his teeth in the Albany legislature, had emerged as a hero of women’s rights and a champion of the #MeToo movement. He resigned Monday amid allegations he hit and strangled romantic partners.

That this all happened in the liberal sphere delighted many Republicans, some of whom saw it as a gotcha moment for liberal pieties, especially as Mr. Schneiderman had gone to war against the Trump administration. For their part, liberals saw it as horrifying but also a suggestion that the #MeToo movement is working. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) has called for a criminal investigation. Democrats’ disquiet was heightened by the reports that some victims said their friends urged them not to reveal the abuse because it could damage broader political goals.

The alleged violence and the reaction to it highlights a broader ethical dissonance where many Americans struggle, in large and small ways, with “the aspiration to uphold a moral self-image and the temptation to benefit from unethical behavior,” as researchers put it in a recent issue of Current Opinion in Psychology. For some at least, the Schneiderman case has inspired a humbling recognition of the damage that hypocrisy can inflict on people and society, in part because it uses other people’s humanity and trust as weapons against them.

For some, the Schneiderman case has given insight into what Polish dissident Czesław Miłosz described as “ketman.” In totalitarian countries, maintaining a public face that's completely at odds with one's private nature could be a strategy for success and even survival. In Western democracies, it's more commonly known as hypocrisy.

Now, the case is part of a growing recognition of the damage that hypocrisy can inflict on people and society, in part because it uses other people’s humanity and trust as weapons against them.

“It’s an emperor’s-new-clothes moment,” says Duke University political scientist Ruth Grant, author of “Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau, and the Ethics of Politics.”

Four women told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow that Schneiderman physically assaulted them while they were in romantic relationships. He allegedly broke one woman’s eardrum, and multiple women say he strangled them. He also threatened the women if they spoke up, they said. “I am the law,” he reportedly told one.

Only weeks earlier, he had said, “protecting New Yorkers from domestic violence – and the housing and job discrimination that victims often face in the wake of such abuse – is a key part to stopping the cycle of violence in our state and our nation.” He has also lashed out in speeches and statements at the immorality of other men using their power to subjugate and control women.

Now Schneidermann is being investigated for violating an anti-strangulation law that he himself sponsored while in the state Senate. He has called his actions “role play” that did not interfere with the execution of his state duties. “In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross,” Schneiderman has said in a statement.

But it isn’t just the allegations of violent acts themselves that shock the public conscience, but the dishonest signaling that accompanies them, says Jillian Jordan, who studies the origins of human morality at Yale University.  

“When people find out that Eric Schneiderman privately is acting completely inconsistently with the public image he’s created, they think ‘OK, one, the thing that you did is bad, but, also, your public advocacy was deceptive and misleading and earned you a false reputation,’ ” says Dr. Jordan. “We don’t like that. We think it’s unfair. You don’t deserve to be seen as good if you’re not good.”

Hypocrisy-laced scandal, of course, knows no particular party.

Republicans Blake Farenthold, Trent Franks, and Pat Meehan have bowed out of office under clouds of sexual misconduct, at times contrasting with stated beliefs in family values. So have Democrats Al Franken, Ruben Kihuen, and John Conyers, who professed support of women’s causes. Scandals have ensnared a number of high profile entertainers. Schneiderman, in fact, sued former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. More than 50 women have accused Mr. Weinstein of abuse ranging from rape to sexual harassment, kickstarting the #MeToo movement. For his part, Weinstein has denied charges of nonconsensual sex and retaliating against women who turned him down.

‘Drunk with power’

The nexus of power, fame, and high-octane work environments also play a role: Leaders are often more likely to chide members of their flock for immoralities that they, themselves, indulge.

“In general, we find that powerful people are more ‘free’ in their judgment decisions...,” says psychologist Joris Lammers, who studies the interplay between moral reasoning and immoral behavior at the University of Cologne, Germany, via email. “It is at least partially an automatic effect [which means] there is also a more uncontrolled element to it. You can compare this to the effects of alcohol. In many ways, the phrase ‘drunk with power’ is true, psychologically speaking.”

Some Republicans, including President Trump, have questioned the veracity of allegations leveled against people like Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore and former White House adviser Rob Porter, highlighting the need for due process for those accused. In Missouri, Republican Gov. Eric Greitens has refused to resign even after facing criminal charges in a sexual blackmail scandal. The Republican-led legislature is convening a special 30-day session May 18 to consider whether to impeach him.

Much of the measure of scandal and the direction of public scorn is the extent to which an alleged perpetrator has condemned others for doing the same thing.

Dr. Jordan and her colleagues have found that hypocrites typically invite greater scorn than those who commit straightforward moral infractions. “Someone who commits a moral transgression will be seen more negatively if they also condemn somebody else for the same transgression than if they just said nothing at all,” she says.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been quick to cut ties with those seen to be overstepping ethical bounds, some even before a hearing.

“There’s two ways to look at the political divide: One would be that the two parties have sincerely different positions about women’s rights and the other ... is looking at coalitions that the two parties are trying to build,” says Jim Battista, a political scientist at the University at Buffalo. “If you are trying to win over non-conservative women, part of how you do that is by ... not minimizing [these kinds of cases] or shielding people who seem to have done wrong. On the other hand, if you are not particularly fighting for [votes of] non-conservative women, you might see yourself as playing to your electorate by shielding people against those darn liberals.”

Women challenging assumptions

Research shows that while not everybody is a hypocrite, it is human to downplay, dissemble, and even simply forget one’s own ethical transgressions, especially those for which you have called out others. In fact, Daniel Effron and Paul Conway found in 2016 that “acting virtuously can subsequently free people to act less-than-virtuously.”

Much like the phenomenon of the ketman principle in totalitarian countries, Ms. Grant says that hypocrisy is also particularly common in liberal democracies like the United States, where fealty is paid to high moral ideals while the actual conditions are tied more to power and political pragmatism.

To Professor Battista, the dynamics of the Schneiderman case underscores that “there are a lot of ways in modern American society that we expect women to take this hit and take another hit and keep taking a whole bunch of other hits throughout life for the asserted benefit of someone else.”

For women more broadly, it may also be a time of greater introspection – and challenging assumptions, says Grant. She says the push to call out hypocrisy even if it spotlights your own individual or group’s flaws has already crossed partisan lines. Criticism is mounting around the Rev. Paige Patterson, the president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

When it emerged last week that Mr. Patterson had suggested that the Bible says that married women should endure domestic violence and that it is OK for men to ogle teenage girls, more than 2,000 Southern Baptist women signed a letter calling for his removal from leadership, citing an “unbiblical view of authority, womanhood and sexuality.”

In their view, the issue has to be dealt with not just individually, but as a congregation coming to terms with fundamental beliefs – an honest soul searching.

“We’re trying to offer this correction in love because we are a body,” the women wrote to the Southern Baptist Convention. “That’s what we believe as Christians. And we need to correct one another and spur one another onto good deeds. And that’s what we’re trying to do with this letter.”

Gérard Alezard never threw a stone, vandalized property, or endured the blows of a police baton like many soixante-huitards (sixty-eighters) – those who participated in France’s May 1968 protests. But he remembers those who did.

They were mostly students who had led a protest on May 10 in Paris’s Latin Quarter that ended in a violent confrontation with police. On that notorious evening – “the Night of the Barricades” – thousands of police officers descended on the Left Bank of the Seine River to break up the some 20,000 students who had erected a dozen barricades in protest.

By the next morning, the area resembled a war zone – cars smashed, fires burning, and sidewalks uprooted. More than 400 students were brutally arrested; beaten with batons, sprayed with tear gas, and assaulted. “So many people, myself included, were disgusted by what happened” to them, says Mr. Alezard, who was the head of the Paris branch of the CGT trade union at the time.

France’s May ’68 – in all its glory and myth – is often remembered for its early days of student protests and the police brutality that came with it. But what happened next is what became so notable for the movement itself and how France’s current nationwide transport protest has been shaped, 50 years on. It was in those frantic days that followed May 10 that the labor code, public services, the role of trade unions, and cultural and sexual liberation all evolved, changing how France operates to this day.

“After May 10, there was so much anger and a desire to fight back, to be in solidarity with the students,” says Alezard, who at 82 still remembers those days vividly. “From that moment on, we saw the power of the people.”

Jacques Marqueton/AP/File

Parisian student protesters retreat under blows from police during demonstrations in the Latin Quarter of Paris on May 6, 1968.

Bringing France to a standstill

While many associate the start of the May ’68 strikes with student protests on May 2 and 3, a rising indignation was already brewing across the country before then.

France at the time was a rigidly conservative, hierarchical society, dogged by massive unemployment, vast political divisions, and a relative lack of women’s rights. University students had been protesting since March, with demands ranging from visitation rights for young men and women to each other’s dormitories, to an end to the wars in Vietnam and Algeria.

After the Night of the Barricades, French society went into an uproar against the government. What began as a one-day general strike organized by the CGT on May 13 turned into a month-long shutdown of France’s economy.

Throughout the month of May, union leaders made the rounds to offices, department stores, and factories to instruct workers on how to occupy spaces in an effort to bring the country to a halt. “It was important for us that the employees decided for themselves if and how they protested,” says Alezard. “I felt an enormous amount of pressure to lead the protests responsibly so that the country could advance.”

On May 27, union representatives met with government leaders to negotiate an end to the strikes. While an agreement was never actually signed and the strikes continued until June, their talks set the stage for future improvements to France’s labor code, like a raise to the minimum wage and the right for trade unions to operate within companies.

Marion Fontaine, a historian from the University of Avignon, says that trade union activity during May ’68 had more of an impact than many realize. “In May ’68, France’s trade unions were very strongly divided between the left, the reformists, and the more radical groups,” she says. “The fact that workers were striking – collectively – is what had such an impact then and has carried over to today.”

In early April of this year, railway workers from three trade unions launched a three-month strike to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s reforms, which they say will privatize railway services. Workers from other sectors have since joined sporadically in the fight too. They accuse Mr. Macron of slowly privatizing the country’s public services, a prized component of French society since World War II.

“There is a lack of evolution when it comes to salaries, working conditions are deteriorating, and thousands of jobs will be cut,” says Gabriel Gaudry, the general secretary of the Paris branch of the trade union Force Ouvrière.

Mr. Gaudry, who participated in the May ’68 strikes when he was 25, led protests this year on May 1. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t hope these current protests shut down the country and blocked the economy like in May ’68.”

#MeToo, 1968

At the same time that workers were fighting for better salaries, conditions, and union rights, France’s feminist movement was taking off. It was only in 1965 that married women could open a bank account in their name and in 1967 that contraception was legalized.

But it wasn’t until May ’68 that women like Michèle Idels comprehended what was missing from French society and, ultimately, from the movement. “There was a certain misogyny during the strikes,” says Ms. Idels, who took part in the strikes of May ’68 as an 18-year-old and is now co-president of feminist organization Alliance Femmes. “Women’s issues were not being addressed…. It was as if we didn’t exist at all.”

Spurred on by what Idels calls the “male arrogance” of the May ’68 movement, feminist activists fixed posters inside the halls of the Sorbonne in June ’68, calling on students to fight male domination. Soon, the Women’s Liberation Movement was born.

The years following May ’68 saw the legalization of abortion, the creation of the first women-run publishing house, a ministerial position dedicated to women’s rights, and a law guaranteeing gender equality in political institutions.

“The movements that came out of May ’68 were able to transform society more quickly in 20 or 30 years than in 2,000 years of history,” says Idels. “It was a historic step for women… the #MeToo movement shows us this heritage, at what point things have advanced.”

Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

Employees of French state-owned railway company SNCF and CGT labor union members demonstrate as part of a nationwide strike in Paris on May 3.

Fifty years later

Despite comparisons with the movement five decades ago, the current strikes have failed to stir the public to the same extent. According to an April Ifop poll, just 41 percent of French people supported the railway strike, while 78 percent said they believed the government would push its reforms to the bitter end.

Most union leaders agree that in order to replicate the powerful nature of May ’68, more workers from more sectors will have to join the strike. Working against them, though, is a much different society, with fewer political and social factions. Even student activists have organized in support of the strikers – a sort of reverse of how May ’68 unfolded – occupying buildings at several universities across the country since March. But their efforts have not sparked wider support.

And yet, it is the romantic notions which remain intact from May ’68 that have left such a lasting mark in the French collective memory.

“We gained more than women’s rights, a less rigid society, and a stronger minimum wage,” says Erik Neveu, a professor of political science at Sciences Po Rennes. “We were transformed by May ’68 – the right to have an opinion, to take initiative, and a feeling of legitimacy for the power of the individual.”

Professor Neveu says that the majority of May soixante-huitards have remained politically and socially engaged. A vast number of France’s major influencers – journalists, intellectuals, philosophers, and politicians – are former May ’68 activists.

Alezard, too, has refused to stay quiet, even 50 years since he first helped lead one of France’s most revered social movements. Now, he’s an unofficial economic advisor to the CGT and stands in support of the current railway strike.

“We did a lot of soul searching after May ’68, where did we go wrong, how can we improve in the future,” says Alezard. “But one thing is for sure. If you want something, you have to fight for it.”

Reuters

A woman on a mobile phone walks past a Marriott hotel in Hangzhou, China, on Jan. 11, 2018. Marriott apologized for a hotel survey that listed Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau as separate countries.

For Mercedes-Benz, it was quoting the Dalai Lama in an Instagram post. For Marriott, it was referring to Tibet and Taiwan as countries in an online customer survey. And for 36 international airlines, it was listing Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau as separate from China on the companies’ websites.

Over the last several months, China has gone on the offensive against foreign companies that have, in one way or another, contravened the government’s position on long-standing territorial disputes. Government officials and internet users have been especially quick to lash out against any hint of support for an independent Taiwan: a self-ruled island that Beijing considers a breakaway province, and has increasingly tried to isolate on the international stage.

While the United States and Australia have started to push back – the White House accused the Chinese government of “Orwellian nonsense” in a recent statement on the airlines issue – analysts say China is emboldened by its growing economic and geopolitical influence. And with the support of nationalistic consumers, Beijing has made clear that companies who resist its political demands do so at their own risk.

Chinese consumers have proven to be a potent force when harnessed by Beijing. In 2012, Chinese nationalists smashed Japanese stores and boycotted Japanese cars because of a dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Last year, they boycotted the South Korean retailer Lotte for providing land in South Korea for a US missile defense system. After being forced to close more than 80 of its stores, Lotte announced that it planned to pull out of the country altogether. 

Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a May 6 statement that foreign companies operating in China “should respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, abide by Chinese laws and respect the national feelings of the Chinese people.” 

Left unsaid was the role that online nationalists – partially inspired by President Xi Jinping’s rhetoric about “national rejuvenation” — have played in not only responding to Beijing’s cues, but drawing attention to perceived offenses and pushing the government to act. That nationalism is palpable in tens of thousands of comments on Weibo, a microblogging site, where the US Embassy in Beijing shared the White House statement.

“You need to follow our rules if you want to do business here,” wrote one Weibo user. “If you can’t, get out.”

Risky business

The consequences can be severe for foreign companies caught out of step with Beijing’s official position. In January, regulators ordered Marriott to close its China-based website and app for one week. Marriott later apologized and pledged that it did not support separatism in China. The company took down the survey and ended its contract with the Canadian firm that wrote it.

Other companies, including the German carmaker Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, have also publicly apologized and removed sensitive online content in response to similar incidents. Many seem to have calculated that doing so is simply the cost of doing business in China. To refuse is to risk triggering a more serious backlash. The Chinese internet users who first brought attention to the Marriott survey, for example, called for a boycott of the company.

Galvanized by the Marriott case, Chinese internet users began searching online for other offenders. They quickly found that Delta Air Lines and the fashion brand Zara had also listed Taiwan and Tibet as countries on their websites. The two companies apologized and updated their sites after being rebuked by Chinese authorities. (Delta still lists Taiwan separately from the mainland, however.)

So far, most foreign companies have acquiesced to Beijing’s demands for fear of missing out on one of the world’s largest consumer markets. But Jessica Chen Weiss, an associate professor of government at Cornell University who studies Chinese foreign policy and nationalism, says in an email that the recent episode involving the 36 airlines could turn out differently.

“While individual companies such as Marriott and Mercedes have apologized, likely to preserve their appeal to Chinese customers, the Chinese government’s direct involvement this time may backfire,” Dr. Weiss says, referring to a letter the Civil Aviation Administration of China sent to the companies. “By drawing public attention to what the White House has called ‘Orwellian nonsense’, US airlines face counter pressure to stand firm against Beijing’s unreasonable demands.”

American Airlines and United Airlines, two of the 36 companies that received the letter, have so far refused Beijing’s order. If they continue to hold out, the question is how China will respond. The Civil Aviation Administration of China has reportedly threatened to enact various administrative penalties against airlines that fail to comply. Then there is the risk of boycotts, which could be devastating. By 2022, China is expected to surpass the US as the world's largest air travel market, according to the International Air Transport Association.

Target: Taiwan

The order against the airlines comes as China ratchets up military and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan. The Chinese Navy held live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait last month. And last week, the Dominican Republic announced that it was severing diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of recognizing China, leaving the island with only 19 diplomatic allies.

“Often these pressure campaigns have been spearheaded by angry netizens,” Weiss says, referring to the incidents involving foreign companies. “But the recent Chinese effort to compel foreign airlines has had a more official stamp. It’s a symbolic reflection of Beijing’s dissatisfaction with political trends on Taiwan and recent developments between Washington and Taipei.”

Cross-strait relations have steadily deteriorated since 2016, when Tsai Ing-wen from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party became president of Taiwan. Meanwhile, the US has taken steps to show support for the island, a longtime ally. In March, President Trump signed into law a bill that encourages official, high-level visits between the US and Taiwan. And this summer, the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto US embassy, is scheduled to open a new office in Taipei.

Mareike Ohlberg, a research associate at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, says Beijing’s targeting of foreign companies is simply one part of its campaign to isolate Taipei. And with President Xi having promised China’s “national rejuvenation” by 2049 – a promise which many analysts say includes reunification with Taiwan – Dr. Ohlberg sees no signs of it stopping.

“The pressure is just going to get stronger and stronger,” she says. “Unless there is some sort of fundamental political shift, it’s not going to go away."

Long before the French duo Madame Monsieur utter the first verse of their piece “Mercy” at Saturday’s Eurovision contest, their entry will have already won France itself a victory of sorts.

Perhaps not for best song – the top prize in the world’s longest-running, and most flamboyant, annual TV music competition. But definitely on the linguistic front: one of the many social, cultural, and political battles that simultaneously course through the 63-year-old event.

In a contest dominated by the English language, despite the participation of dozens of nations outside the Anglosphere, only 30 of 43 competing nations (or 70 percent) will offer English lyrics this year. If that sounds like a lot, look at the numbers last year: 36 of 42, or 86 percent, of performances were in English, according to Eurovision statistics. For countries as proud of their language as France is, that drop is a sign of progress.

The 2018 edition marks one of the highest employments of local parlance to echo in the arena in years. It owes in part to the surprise victory of Salvador Sobral, who won the contest for Portugal last year with his song “Amar Pelos Dois” (“Love for Two”), inspiring a new crop of stars to sing in their mother tongue.

Armando Franca/AP

Madame Monsieur from France performs the song 'Mercy' in Lisbon, Portugal, Wednesday, May 9, 2018 during a dress rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest. The Eurovision Song Contest semifinals take place in Lisbon on Tuesday, May 8 and Thursday, May 10, the grand final on Saturday May 12, 2018.

As Eurovision kicks off in Lisbon’s Altice Arena, this pop-culture show will also work as a stage for a larger debate in the European Union about English as the bloc’s lingua franca. When Britain leaves, it will take a majority of the EU’s native English speakers with it.

No one expects the chambers of Brussels to suddenly switch their working languages overnight. But for those vying for more linguistic representation in Brussels and the world – and no one vies for it more than France – the time has never felt more propitious. The TV pop extravaganza is no exception.

'English is losing importance in Europe'

Eurovision has always been so much more than a sing-off in sequined costume.

When a bearded drag queen named Conchita Wurst won the contest for Austria in 2014, she opened a culture war between the progressive, liberal Europe and its more traditional bases. Last year, Russia did not compete in host country Ukraine, fallout from the conflict in Crimea. Madame Monsieur's song is a catchy ballad about Europe’s migrant crisis, from the perspective of a baby named Mercy, born on a rescue ship in the Mediterranean.

English has long been another theater of Eurovision. When the show began in 1956, there were no set rules on lyrics. But after Sweden entered in 1965 with the song “Absent Friend,” sung in English, new requirements regarding countries’ official languages were put into place, despite Nordic protest. The rule was relaxed in 1973, setting the stage for ABBA, arguably Eurovision’s most successful product, to win with “Waterloo” the next year. In 1977 the language rules were re-imposed and lasted until 1999.

Since then, Eurovision might be a showcase of European unity and friendship – and some of the most popular television nights of the calendar year – but on linguistic heritage, there has been almost no diversity. English songs almost always win. Before Mr. Sobral’s victory, another primarily non-English song hadn’t won in over a decade.

Dean Vuletic, author of “Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest,” argues that the contest should reflect the participants’ heritage. “This was an early aim of the contest … that diversity should be promoted,” he says. “So I think it’s a shame that Eurovision is less diverse from this linguistic perspective, even though Portugal last year is a good sign that things may be changing.”

France is one of the few countries to almost always present an entry entirely in its native tongue – even though a French-language song has not won since the language rules were relaxed. It would be even less likely to drop that tradition now. French President Emmanuel Macron, despite his nearly flawless English and uninhibited used of it on the world stage, has made a pitch to revitalize the use of French, the language of global diplomacy and art before English took over.

Mr. Macron's drive is something the French support. A recent survey by French pollster BVA showed that many respondents worry about their language’s degradation, blaming various causes from the creep of English in advertising to bad teaching, and 70 percent say they’d be willing to do something to defend it.

They aren’t alone. In a speech last May, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, had a message for post-Brexit Europe, whose only member states that use English as an official language will be Ireland and tiny Malta. “Slowly but surely, English is losing importance in Europe,” he said, and then continued in French, an official language of his native Luxembourg.

'English might be the best compromise'

Anna Mauranen, a professor in the languages department at the University of Helsinki, says that even if English is less represented in the EU without Britain, English will continue to dominate. “They use English, in their free time and their official capacity, because that is the language they all know,” she says.

And that doesn’t look likely to change. In a 2012 poll, English came up top as the most commonly studied foreign language in the EU at the lower secondary level, with 96.7 percent of students learning it, far ahead of French (34 percent), German (22 percent), and Spanish (12 percent).

The use of English could even increase post-Brexit, as ridding the bloc of its major English player neutralizes the language politically. That’s been seen in Eurovision: English has helped multilingual countries get around their potentially conflictive language debates, says Dr. Vuletic. The Swiss don’t have to battle over submitting an entry in German, French, Italian, or Romansh – when they can write a song in English.

Some say the same could be true of English in diplomacy between EU member states post-Brexit. "Why should French now be privileged over Spanish, when Spanish is now a more global language than French?” says Vuletic. “Maybe English might be the best compromise in the end for the European Union.”

At Saturday’s final, the festive soirée that is Eurovision might simply underline that, despite an emergence of linguistic pride, English won’t get bumped out any time soon. The favorite to win? Israel’s Netta Barzilai. Her song is named “Toy.”

AP Photo

People gather at a May 8 campaign rally for a parliamentary candidate in Baghdad, Iraq. Voters will cast their ballots Saturday, May 12, in the first parliamentary election since the country declared victory over the Islamic State extremist group. The balloting is expected to be a referendum on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s tenure and his pledge to be more inclusive of Iraq’s Sunni minority.

This weekend, Iraq holds its fourth election since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the first since the defeat of Islamic State (ISIS) last year. As one of the Middle East’s few democracies, it is still on a sharp learning curve. Yet it seems to be adopting one big lesson: Don’t mix mosque and state.

Most of the country’s political parties are religious based (Sunni or Shiite). Yet over the past 15 years, their leaders have mostly proved corrupt or ineffective in running government. In the eyes of Iraqis, they have sullied their particular brand of religion, just as ISIS certainly did during its violent 2014-17 caliphate.

For this election, campaign themes have had to be more secular, offering practical promises such as rule of law and clean governance. In addition, more Sunni and Shiite politicians are partnering up.

One reason is that more Iraqi voters demand to be treated as citizens, not congregants. They have lived through 15 years of sectarian violence. Their identity has broadened to embrace the common traditions and civic interests of other Iraqis. While many voters are still too cynical to vote, for those who plan to cast ballots, the parties are singing an inclusive tune.

That is an uphill struggle. The electoral system, devised in 2005 under United States guidance, sets a quota system for power based on Iraq’s religious and ethnic communities. The power sharing only reinforces the notion that each group is due a portion of government spoils and therefore each should hang together. Years of sectarian strife are what left a political vacuum for ISIS to fill. It also allows Iran to wield more influence over the Shiite-based parties.

The greatest champion of keeping religion out of politics happens to be Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In a statement a week before the May 12 election, he asked Iraqis not to vote along sectarian lines, to avoid foreign influence, and for clergy not to endorse any party. He also warned voters not to vote for politicians “who are corrupt and those who have failed” in their posts.

“There is hope that the possibility of correcting and reforming the course of governance can be achieved through the concerted efforts of the people of this country and the use of other legal methods available for that,” he stated.

In the past Mr. Sistani’s words have rallied Iraqis in times of crisis. He is an opponent of Iran’s system, in which one religious leader holds supreme power, because of its inherent denial of equality before God.

After the election, Iraqi politicians may again go to their sectarian corners and haggle in divvying up key government positions. But if Sistani’s call to put the country's interest first reaches voters, we may see less “mosque” and more “state” in Iraq's public affairs.