Three words were enough for the President of the Senate to say out loud what the silent majority, tired of the shameful provocations of the far left and tired of having to tolerate all its excesses, is thinking in whispers. This is the height! While Gérard Larcher’s rant against Jean-Luc Mélenchon was supposed to serve as a catalyst for a profound discussion on the place we give to a party with filthy political methods and whose only driving force is hatred, the debate was exclusively fixed on the form. As usual, intransigence for the moderates and indulgence for the leftists…
Because it is time to say stop, to denounce and condemn what the media still call with “gazelle-like modesty” the “left of the left”. However, with each of its declarations, the extreme left proves to us that, no more than the extreme right, it is not acceptable. No more than the far right, it deserves any complacency. As for her, under the guise of freedom of expression, speech actually has only one objective: to sow discord and chaos. Noise replaces debate, fury supplants ideas to destabilize and not to govern. A positioning outside the Republican arc which must require us to stop treating the far left as a responsible interlocutor in the political arena and to denounce its hyperdangerousness.
Indeed, if the extreme left is very conciliatory towards autocrats like Hugo Chavez of whom Mélenchon declared “port[er] proudly the record” or of a Fidel Castro whom he considers as an “example”, we must believe that the methods of authoritarian regimes also inspire the movement. Demonizing, essentializing, dehumanizing his adversaries who are in turn qualified as “jerk[s]”, from “liar[s]”, dirty[s] idiot[s]”manipulation”[eurs]”, from “fanatic[s]”, “hyenas” or “dog[s] guard”. Once the targets have been designated, Jean-Luc Mélenchon only has to deliver them to his two favorite packs. That of the LFI activists invited to “rotten” them[r] everywhere that [ils] p[e]uve[nt]”. Also that of social networks now used no longer to defend ideas but to call for violence and directly attack the enemies of the party or its leader. The designation of scapegoats guilty of all evils because they are too rich , too many journalists, too many cops or too many Jews is once again part of a mechanism theorized by the worst regimes in history. Ruth Elkrief, today under police protection, has sadly paid the price for a process which aims to install a climate of terror by leaving opponents with only two options: physical violence or self-censorship.
More than ever, every speech made by Jean-Luc Mélenchon or members of his party must be carefully examined to reveal the true nature of a movement filled with hatred. Every dubious insinuation must be firmly decoded. And there are many of them! The refusal to qualify Hamas as a terrorist movement, the sordid attacks against the President of the National Assembly accused of “camping in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre”, the rhetoric against a police which “kills”, “a violent police […] who does what she wants when she wants”, Mélenchon’s accusations against the “rich” responsible for “the misfortune of the poor” and guilty of “parasitism”.
Gérard Larcher’s anger is a salutary start. It summarizes the thoughts not only of millions of French people but also that of Karl Popper in The Open Society and its enemies : let’s stop showing tolerance with the intolerant, let’s stop thinking that this sinful indulgence will lead us anywhere other than the edge of a precipice. We can no longer ignore the threat the far left poses to our democracy. However, with them, there is no point in arguing on the merits: anti-Semitism is not an opinion. It’s a crime. Like racism or Islamophobia. We just have to denounce, decipher, unmask. It’s time to open it so they can shut it!
Jean-François Copé, former minister, mayor (LR) of Meaux