Emmanuel Todd and Jean-Luc Mélenchon do not like each other. No one really knows why: there are of course ideas that differ but not always, and above all two colorful characters. “The people at LFI don’t like me very much (euphemism),” the first wrote to us. “Not an easy character… But magnificent intelligence,” confides the other. Yet they have so much in common, these two. The media intellectual and the multi-candidate in the presidential election often allow themselves to be carried away by the intoxication of their speeches and other formulas which thunder, dramatists of a political theater whose habits and customs they have known for so long, from interview to interview. maintenance for one, from campaign to campaign for the other, from book to book (which sells) for each.
Beyond form, the two men share a common hatred: the United States. Evil presupposition which is gnawing at Europe and the West, the devil of modern times in decline according to Todd, which must be revolutionized, believes Mélenchon for his part. Otherwise what ? The fall ? In a recent conference organized at the La Boétie institute, the rebellious training school, where the question was whether “the de-Westernization of the world [était] good news”, the politician judges that “Europe has entered a decline in power compared to the United States which, itself, is in a decline in power compared to China”. And in his latest work Do better! (Robert Laffont, 2023), the same Mélenchon, in whose eyes China is the leading world power, judges harshly “the real state of their economy centered on services and finance, their dilapidated infrastructure, and their savings non-existent to finance itself”: “The global reality has changed and the United States is not playing an advantageous role for which it hoped to be rewarded.” Resonance of a Toddian vision, because the demographer publishes a much criticized essay in which he wishes to demonstrate that the collapse of the West can be explained by the military, diplomatic and societal economic fall of Washington.
To tell the truth, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in no way a declinist, unlike Emmanuel Todd, and also unlike conservatives such as Eric Zemmour who use moral considerations (the supposed great replacement, the loss of identity and values, etc.) to justify an inevitable decadence of France, of Europe. “Without having the same conclusions as the far right, Todd considers that the disappearance of religion would partly explain this decline,” explains Arnaud Le Gall, LFI deputy in charge of international issues. “But we understand nothing about the transformation of the order of powers if we do not analyze the crisis of financialized capitalism, the ecological crisis, etc. The global balance of power has evolved, but Todd remains locked in the binary opposition Russia against the West. The notion of the West used in international relations makes us forget only the differences of interest. The United States has thus done everything to prevent Europe from becoming a real power, helped in this by the European Atlanticists.” A West no, Wests yes. If Mélenchon says he fears that French power will decrease as that of the United States collapses – he even speaks of a “dedollarization” of the world – he does not reject the idea of power of France, of Europe in the concert of nations. The champion of “non-alignment” dreams of himself no less than a neo-Gaullist of diplomacy, speaking to everyone, from Washington to Beijing via Moscow and the Arab powers. Unfettered Atlanticist sovereignty is the religion of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
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