Emphatic, combative and demanding: a style that matched moments in far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s speech to an emotional crowd of thousands celebrating his victory in France’s legislative elections on Sunday.
Mélenchon stood in front of supporters of working-class people in Paris’ 20th arrondissement and addressed President Emmanuel Macron in an impolite tone. “The president must either resign or appoint one of us as prime minister,” he declared.
Other left-wing leaders said there should be a “discussion” about the country’s future. That’s not it. On Sunday, the crowd cheered.
Mélenchon’s tone and tough stance have won him a loyal following of young people – he is the only left-wing leader with one – and made him both beloved and hated in French politics. Marginalized and then central figure. More French people have a negative view of him (73%) than far-right national rally leader Marine Le Pen. But he also draws huge crowds that hang on his every word, just like they did Sunday.
He is now bound to be at the center of discussions about France’s future: his leftist style, or the moderate form represented by his critics in the victorious left-wing coalition New Popular Front. His party “France Not Surrender” won the most seats in parliament in the coalition government, with 75 seats.
He said the person chosen to lead the government should be himself. Unlike other leaders on the left, he has come very close to the presidency, coming close to a runoff two years ago. On June 22, he told France 5 television that it was “very clear” that he was ready to become prime minister. “I intend to run this country,” he said.
Even members of Mélenchon’s own coalition, wary of his intermittent extremism, have vowed that such a prospect will never happen. “If he really wants to help the New Popular Front, he should put himself aside,” the mild-mannered former president, Socialist and newly elected lawmaker François Hollande said two weeks ago. “He should shut up.”
That he will not do so is both a source of support for him and a major problem between him and the rest of the left-wing coalition, which almost immediately threatened to split despite Sunday’s narrow victory.
“The problem they’re going to face is that when the president is looking for a new administration, others don’t want Mélenchon,” said political scientist Gerald Grunberg, research director emeritus of the National Center for Scientific Research. “He makes a real alliance on the left impossible. He is very provocative. The left is completely disunited.
Currently, France has no government and no idea how to create one. No party or coalition won an electoral majority. Still, Mélenchon said Sunday, “We’re not going to take away a page or a comma from the show.”
The plan is a redistributionist, egalitarian, hostile to capitalism vision of the economy, largely inspired by the platform of Mr. Mélenchon’s 2022 presidential campaign.
On Sunday, he spoke of the league’s economic plans as if he owned them: raising the monthly minimum wage after tax from 1,398 euros to 1,600 euros (or about $1,500 to about $1,700) – “We will Decree it,” Mr. Trump said. Mélenchon said; freeze prices on food, energy and fuel; tax the wealthy $162 billion. Other factors include paying families the costs associated with their children’s education. The right and Mr Macron criticized the move as adding an unbearable fiscal burden to an already heavily indebted country.
Mr. Mélenchon did not even have to propose another signature element of his left-wing platform: “Retire at 60!” the younger crowd began to chant spontaneously.
It is difficult to imagine Mr Macron appointing Mr Mélenchon as prime minister. They are not fans of each other. Mr Macron compared the political movement of the left to national rallies of the far right. Mr. Mélenchon was pleased to return the compliment.
“Under his command, France became a global model for police violence and government abuse of power in a regime that was supposed to be democratic,” Mr. Mélenchon wrote of the president in his 2023 book. “We can do more. Good! Toward a Civil Revolution”, untranslated.
“Macron is dilly-dallying, deliberately dragging his feet,” Mélenchon said after arriving at the National Assembly on Tuesday. “He’s holding on for dear life to stay in power as long as possible.”
Mr. Mélenchon battled the media, targeted individual journalists, openly expressed his hatred of the United States and his affection for left-wing dictators in Latin America, whom he was as verbose as. He praised authoritarian regimes in China, Cuba and Venezuela. “The Yankees represent everything I hate,” he told Le Monde in 2011. “A pretentious, arrogant empire of ignorant men and poor leaders.”
Mélenchon, a former Trotskyist who had long been a senator from the outer suburbs of Paris and a government minister under the de facto Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, was a reader of Faulkner, who wrote about He left the Socialist Party in 2008 and founded his own party, moving increasingly to the left.
He has refused to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization, has publicly fought against leaders of French Jewish organizations and has been regularly accused of anti-Semitism, which he denies. He sometimes alluded to stereotypes, once saying, for example, that Jewish former Economy Minister Pierre Moscovici did not “think of France” but of “international finance”.
“At least there is an ambiguity that favors anti-Semitism,” Mr. Grunberg said.
Another political scientist, Patrick Weil, agreed: “Mélenchon’s views are limited. A large number of people think he is dangerous and anti-Semitic.
Crowds erupted in cheers of “Free Palestine” when Mélenchon said Sunday that the top priority was “recognition of a Palestinian state as soon as possible”. As at other Mélenchon rallies, headscarves and Palestinian flags were everywhere.
One of his heroes was Maximilien Robespierre, the bloodiest of the French revolutionaries, who during the campaign showed his autocratic side and purged the often unconquered members of the French Unyielding Party. Five members who disagreed with him. “Our democracy deserves better than yours,” François Ruffin, an independent-minded lawmaker and party member who was not one of those purged, posted on social media. .
Yet he has a formula – appealing to poor young people with populist economics, appealing to the French Muslim working class in the suburbs with intense hostility to Israel, anti-American and anti-European rhetoric, and a pro-immigration stance – fact Prove to be the winner of this election. Many of the crowds cheering him on Sunday were of Arab and African descent. “The French have no religion and no colour,” Mr Mélenchon said.
He is the rare French politician to express approval of immigrants, using the word “creolization” to describe his country, as he did on Sunday. “It’s very positive,” Mr. Weir said. “He integrated young people from North Africa and African descent into citizenship. He said France has become a melting pot. This is very important.
This is one of the many factors that has won him supporters. On Monday, Mathilde Panot, one of the leaders of France’s Incumbent party, preemptively told RTL radio station that Mr Mélenchon was “absolutely not disqualified” from being prime minister.
His comments on Sunday night echoed those of his hero Robespierre, who presided over the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
He said: “The government of the New Popular Front has no other powers except those vested in it by the people.” This sentence may have come from the mouth of Robespierre 230 years ago, who constantly declared that “the people” were the only power. The source of government power.
“The politics of the past are not going to continue,” Mr. Mélenchon said, “but the people are coming out of all working-class communities.”
