Sophia Chikirou never looks down. “You’d have to punch them out first,” she likes to say. The loud words, the strong words, in public as in private, in front of political adversaries and with the partners of the Nupes… She is like that, the rebellious deputy of Paris, little known to the general public but oh so much feared in the corridors of left. “Frank” for some, “warlike” for others, “formidable” for all.
“I avoid any contact with her, so as not to get a slap in the face,” smiles a socialist leader from Nupes. I stick to the institutional contacts of La France insoumise (LFI), with Mathilde Panot [NDLR : cheffe du groupe] or Manuel Bompard, with whom things go very well.” Who knows that Sophia Chikirou is one of the centerpieces of LFI if not those who bear the brunt of her methods, her flowery words. Her threats, too. Even the members of the rebellious family sometimes suffer his wrath – “especially the rebellious family”, adds a small hand from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s movement, a week after the “Doriot episode”.
An “episode” which will leave its mark, and which she caused with a click on her Facebook account. This September 20, the Nupes is barely recovering from a very tense Humanity Festival, where the left spent its time sending each other banderillas. Sophia Chikirou has not finished with Fabien Roussel, the leader of the PCF, and compares him to Jacques Doriot, a communist from the 1920s-1930s who became a zealous collaborationist to the point of embracing Nazism at the end of the war. “There is Doriot at Roussel”, shares the MP, taking up a publication from the Facebook account L’œil gauche, dark online activist fanzine, which accuses the PCF boss of playing into the hands of the far right to seduce “the electorate of Le Pen-Zemmour”. The rag was already burning between communists and rebels, now it is consumed to its last ashes.
“I prefer to wait on the edge of the river to see their bodies pass by”
The comparison launched by Sophia Chikirou, and taken up by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, repels Nupes, including within La France insoumise. “This is not a trivial incident, explains MP Raquel Garrido, in conflict with the management of LFI. What does that mean, a little Doriot in Roussel? A little Nazism? So, Nazism is serious , but not if it’s in small doses? Absurd. It’s intellectual mush, and I really invite everyone to keep our political and historical references solid.” Within the rebellious movement, already in crisis since the Adrien Quatennens affair and the banning of a few critical minds – François Ruffin, Clémentine Autain, Alexis Corbière, Raquel Garrido and Eric Coquerel – the discussions are tough. Tuesday, September 26, the tone rises during the weekly meeting of rebellious deputies. Many are calling for a collective discussion on what they describe as a “moral fault”, and new voices, usually so discreet, are being heard. Manon Meunier, young MP for Haute-Vienne, is moved by the risk posed to the balance of Nupes in her constituency in the face of such outings. “It’s a private message which does not commit the movement,” brushes off Manuel Bompard, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s sherpa.
Move around, there is definitely nothing to see. “When one of ours is attacked, we hold together,” summarizes Hadrien Clouet. This is even more true when it comes to Sophia Chikirou, made untouchable by her proximity to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. About ten days before the group meeting, the band of rebels once again suffered the wrath of the Parisian MP. Guest on BFMTV on September 15, Clémentine Autain, tired by yet another skirmish between Roussel and Mélenchon, said she was “fed up” and called for a “stop the fire”. A felony in the rebellious kingdom.
In the Telegram loop of LFI deputies, an exchange of which fell into the hands of L’Express, the Mélenchon clan accuses him of taking the side of Fabien Roussel. “To avoid dividing, the dividers in need of recognition will have to stop,” writes Chikirou, who denounces “the deadly game of an extreme minority which, failing to do better, does everything to destroy.” A deputy, usually discreet, replies: “I know too much about the hunt for internal enemies to know that they are in vain.” And Sophia Chikirou pronounces her sentence: “You are right. I am like Aymeric [Caron], anti-hunting. I prefer to wait on the edge of the river and watch their bodies pass by.” Andy Kerbrat, MP for Loire-Atlantique, adds with a laughing emoji: “Natural selection.”
She is her; him, it’s him
To confront Sophia Chikirou is to attack Mélenchon, the leader, the presidential candidate proud of his 22% and, in fact, the political line. It’s beyond disloyalty, in short. Does Sophia Chikirou know? Does she play it? She is her; is he him? She too experienced the low blows of the socialist house. She doesn’t slam the door, but is sent away. It was in 2007, in the socialist backwater of Paris. At the time, this close friend of Michel Charzat, mayor of the 20th arrondissement and spokesperson for Laurent Fabius, was predicted to have a destiny “like Najat Vallaud-Belkacem”, no less. He is promised the 21st constituency, that of eastern Paris, around Père-Lachaise, in the legislative elections. One of the historic strongholds of the left. His candidacy is not to the taste of Bertrand Delanoë, the Parisian elephant (and mayor), who is calling on the PS to freeze the constituency for “a visible minority”, George Pau-Langevin, one of his close friends. Chikirou and Charzat will launch into the battle in dissidence, in vain. They will be excluded from the party, and the young woman, then 27 years old, will harbor eternal resentment. She immediately joined Senator Jean-Marie Bockel, who is one of those socialists who accept “openness” and has a crush on President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A year later, in 2008, the one we categorize as a “left-wing Sarkozyist” nevertheless joined Jean-Luc Mélenchon, then the Left Party, which he founded after leaving the PS with losses and uproar. She remains behind the scenes, in the shadow of the leader. “Sophia does not have a left-wing imagination, so we were all wary of it,” recalls a former traveling companion of Mélenchon. In fifteen years and three presidential elections, she will not have let go an inch, or almost, founding her communications company Mediascop which she puts at the service of candidate Mélenchon. She also travels to Spain to observe Podemos, to the United States, for Bernie Sanders, and even claims to have advised left-wing candidates in South America as a representative of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In 2017, she founded Le Média, a web television which carries the line of the new leader on the left, crowned by his 19.6% in the presidential election. The affair turns sour, the fault of Sophia Chikirou’s management, and shatters friendships, like that between Gérard Miller and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The two men have not spoken since.
“This woman is toxic”
“Sophia, she’s always been like that, and that’s why it works so well with Jean-Luc. of the gang. And when you talk to her, you know what’s really going on in her head.” She is the guardian of the temple.
When the Quatennens affair exploded, in September 2022, she took charge, from start to finish, of the media defense strategy of Mélenchon’s prodigy son. Evoking it is not without consequences, among journalists and politicians alike. “This woman is toxic, and violence is her mode of operation,” adds an LFI deputy who fears the show Further investigation, on France 2, which devotes an investigation to Sophia Chikirou, Thursday October 5, and predicts: “After the Quatennens crisis, the coordination crisis, we are entering a Chikirou crisis.”
We will learn her methods, her brutal exchanges of words, like when she describes them as “shit shit” (sic)” the members of the Média editorial team, which she directed. Ironically, it is not so much the revelations of the program that the movement fears, to believe a rebel: “If we do not react, it there will be nothing… What I fear is a tweet from Jean-Luc Mélenchon.”