France is besieged by protests and vandalism unleashed after demonstrations in recent weeks. Some 800,000 people took to the streets in some 110 marches on Saturday. Then came the looting and fires. One person died, and the town halls of Limoges, Marseille and Lille suffered very serious damage. There are more than 2,000 detainees, and the large cities of France have declared curfews at night. The Executive has admitted to having lost control of the situation, the Minister of the Interior presented his resignation, although it was rejected by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. But before the first fires were put out, the political class already had a culprit: Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, pointed out the responsibility of the radical left party France Insoumise (LFI) since the same Saturday. Then the entire political arc was added. Édouard Philippe, the center-right's main candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, accused the rebels of questioning the foundations of the Republic. Raphaël Glucksmann, the social democratic candidate, reproached him for betting on chaos and serving as a stepping stone for the extreme right. The social democratic family, represented by the candidate for the 2027 presidential elections, has serious difficulties in making itself heard amid the verbal confrontations between LFI and the presidential bloc. And Gabriel Attal, Bruno Retailleau and the far-right Marine Le Pen joined the burning. “Social demands have been hijacked by the extreme left,” said the far-right. Macron promised that those who tried to overthrow the Republic will answer for it, referring veiledly to the leftist party.
The National Assembly will open a commission of investigation to clarify what happened last Saturday, the failures in the security device and identify the main agitators. Curfews have been reissued in the main French cities such as Paris, Nice, Lyon or Lille. In the capital, the prefecture assured that it will continue “for as long as necessary.” Furthermore, on Tuesday, the first information revealed that the author of the fire that destroyed the Limoges town hall was an ultra-left militant identified as dangerous by the Minister of the Interior. And then everyone turned their eyes definitively towards the Mélenchon formation.
The reality is that LFI has an extraordinary presence among students and urban peripheries. Also that their voters are quite impervious to this type of criticism. But the cocktail, in the medium term, can be harmful to the formation, which tries to drain water. Its leader spoke of a “regime crisis” and denounced an aberrant police command in Paris that “opened the door to chaos.”
Mélenchon's defense has arguments. The digital newspaper Mediapart published this week an exchange of messages written on October 18 in which a territorial intelligence commissioner complains to his colleagues about being asked to write that LFI is behind the movement. He affirms that it is objectively false, in the general opinion of his service, and concludes: “There are necessarily political decisions.” Mélenchon goes further and says that the leadership of the service asks to involve LFI knowing that it is not true. The Ministry of the Interior denies having given those instructions.
Mathilde Panot, head of the LFI parliamentary group, attacked the prime minister on Tuesday afternoon in the Assembly. "You are crossing an inadmissible limit. You point us out as responsible for the problems that you yourselves have created to avoid responsibility for your disastrous balance," he stated.
Lecornu, who announced that the security device for the demonstration that the yellow vests have called again will be "massive", described as "absolutely scandalous the way in which La Francia Insumisa has exploited this Mediapart article, which echoes some unofficial statements by an anonymous police commissioner. "In France there is no political espionage; "The police forces do not work to monitor the opposition," insisted the prime minister, who is asked by some to block certain social networks to avoid new calls for revolts.
Arithmetic weighs
The general trend against LFI invites us to think about elements that go beyond the revolts. Behind the noise there is a precise account. At the beginning of October, the average poll gave Le Pen 34.2% in the first round, followed by Édouard Philippe (17.5%) and Mélenchon (16.2%). The latter had gained 3.3 points in a month. In the latest Elabe for BFMTV (October 14-16), Le Pen has 34.8%, Mélenchon 16.6% and Philippe 15.5%. Glucksmann has just won the socialist primary, on October 11, without having taken off yet. Second place, which gives access to the final against Le Pen, will be decided, if things do not change much, between Mélenchon and Philippe. And the fear of the so-called Republican Front, the central spectrum of French politics, is known: if the LFI leader reaches that final, Le Pen will have a highway to the Elysée.
The siege did not begin on Saturday. On October 1, Matignon attributed the violence to a “maneuver organized by LFI and its ultra-left proxies.” That same day Retailleau proposed banning the party, although he admitted that it would be very difficult legally. Mélenchon then responded: “And of course, it's LFI's fault.”
The campaign against LFI takes root in some past episodes. The party maintains ties with violent movements, starting with the Jeune Garde (Young Guard), which it has never wanted to renounce. In February, the death of far-right activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon, in an attack in which a parliamentary assistant to Raphaël Arnault, a rebellious deputy, was arrested, had already opened the debate on a cordon sanitaire around LFI.
