Mobilization of October 17: Clash between Lecornu and Mélenchon on responsibility for the violence

Who is responsible for the violence on the sidelines of the October 17 demonstrations? The answer to this question led to a very virulent exchange of arms between Sébastien Lecornu and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, each blaming the other.

“Making police chiefs responsible for the violence is a dangerous and cynical inversion of responsibilities,” the Prime Minister said in a message on X. “We cannot call for an end to violence while providing excuses for those who commit it. It’s YOUR political responsibility,” added the tenant of Matignon who has accused, since the start of the mobilization in mid-September, LFI of fueling anger.

LFI castigates the strategy of maintaining order

Immediate response from the leader of LFI: he accused the Prime Minister of having “played with fire, counting on the rot” of the situation and once again called into question the strategy of maintaining order deployed by the authorities. “You are not a statesman. Just a clerk who is causing a regime crisis,” criticized the one who has made youth one of the central pillars of his electoral strategy and is counting on high school mobilization to gain points six months before the presidential election.

Earlier in the afternoon, as clashes, damage and looting increased in several cities in France (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Nice, Limoges, etc.), the Prime Minister denounced “extremely intense violence” against the police. And directly targeted LFI, accused of wanting to make these excesses “a warm-up tour” before the presidential election.

Lecornu refuses to be “intimidated”

“We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated”, “no one will impose their political agenda through violence”, he insisted. Before summoning, in the evening, during a trip to the 41st intervention company in the center of Paris, Jean-Luc Mélenchon to “choose his camp”, either “the camp of the Republic and therefore of the forces of order […] or that of the thugs”.

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Responding to the accusations against him, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who participated in the demonstration in Paris, launched an appeal for calm: “those who share our fight have nothing to do with the pillaging, the ransacking,” he assured. “Whatever the responsibilities of power and its incompetents and their violence, we must refuse to participate in actions without political significance and contrary to our methods,” added the candidate for the Élysée.