Did you have to be a great cleric to know that the death of Nahel, 17, killed by a policeman during a traffic check in Nanterre, would sooner or later become the breeding ground for a political battle where drama feeds strategy, on the right like on the left? It was Éric Ciotti and Marine Le Pen who, responding to the call of certain police unions, defended the institution at all costs, in an interested quest to arrogate an electoral segment (the police vote). It is Éric Zemmour who sees in it the beginnings of a civil war, between the suburbs where riots flourish. It is also Jean-Luc Mélenchon who sees a revolutionary anger in it, refusing to call for calm until justice has been passed. “The guard dogs order us to call for calm. We call for justice. Withdraw the legal action against poor Nahel. Hang the murderous policeman and his accomplice who ordered him to shoot. Leave the paramedic alone ” he wrote.
The rebellious do not play much differently from their political adversaries. A scene, behind the scenes of the National Assembly, says a lot about their strategy. It is held on Wednesday June 28, the day after the tragedy. Sabrina Sebaihi, the Green MP for Nanterre, is organizing a rally on the steps of the Bourbon Palace in tribute to the teenager and to demand “justice and truth”. At the gates of the canteen, two Nupes parliamentarians meet David Guiraud, elected from the 8th district of the North, and in particular Wattrelos where the situation was very tense between the rioters and the police. He will say that he will not go to the small gathering, for lack of time. An hour later, he will be on the set of BFM and will launch another appeal: justice before calm.
“Everything that moves is red”
What embarrass their socialist and environmental partners. Philippe Brun, PS deputy for Eure, does not even see a hint of electoralism but a lot of “irrationality”, and wonders: “What does that mean, justice first? We are putting the country at fire and blood until deliberation, in two years? The left has never been and will never be the advocate of violence. But the instruction, distilled on Tuesday by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Sherpas in a few loops internal to the movement, is assumed. “Calls for calm most often consist of putting dust under the rug and moving on, explains LFI deputy Paul Vannier. If we want calm to return, the message must be powerful and understood. return to normal when the normal malfunctions, it is unfortunately inaudible.”
That his socialist, ecologist, communist partners – and some rebels – have called for calm, Jean-Luc Mélenchon pays little attention to it. There is in this anger of the districts a humus of revolt, he believes, and it is necessary to accompany it. A return to a few passions of yesteryear, above all Trotskyist. “Everything that moves is red”, chanted the Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR), the Trotskyist formation founded by Henri Weber and Daniel Bensaïd and which was at the forefront of May 68, unlike the Lambertists – the another Trotskyist organization of which Mélenchon was a member – who failed to see the student revolt rise.
Tame the anger
One of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s greatest fears is to miss the mark of the vanguard of revolutions. He still has a lot of remorse for not having supported the yellow vests movement early enough. At the time, he dithered, sometimes giving reason to the rebellious who saw it as a movement monopolized by the far right, sometimes to those who called for pounding the pavement by their side. Over the weeks, the movement is gaining momentum and the three-time presidential candidate is trying to cling to the wagon. He denounces “the blindness of the traditional world of the left”, applauds a mobilization which “is unlike anything we have seen to date”. Too late. Conspired by the yellow vests, Mélenchon will not be able to feed either his ranks or the ballot boxes with this social anger.
Exit the Mélenchon who wrote in 2022 his “absolute disagreement with so-called revolutionary violence because it stunts the revolutionary process”. “I also know that a revolution that begins with violence continues in violence,” he continued. The rebel in chief returns to his Trotskyist passions of yesteryear, convinced that he can tame and capture anger, seeking recognition from the rioters. But Jean-Luc Mélenchon forgets that a legitimate anger does not automatically turn into a revolutionary insurrection. The attack on Carlos Martens-Bilongo, the LFI deputy for Val-d’Oise attacked by a group of masked men in Nanterre on the night of June 27 to 28 when he came to support the inhabitants, came as a reminder Mélenchon to a harsh reality: political speech, even revolutionary, has become vain and inaudible.