Is this stupidity? Or maybe ignorance? No, and no. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from his years of political experience, knows too well, even in his tweets, the weight of words. From its innuendo: “this is France”, that of the defenders of Palestine, when “Madame Braun-Pivet”, in Tel Aviv, does not speak “in the name of the French people” – anti-France , maybe ? His mistakes too: “Camper” is the one he chose to use to describe the visit of the President of the National Assembly to Israel. He could have written “to crash” or “to confine himself”, but he chose “to camp” with all the historical charge that this term includes when addressing a person of Jewish origin, regularly threatened with death, regularly recipient anti-Semitic couriers, and granddaughter of a Polish Jew who took refuge in Nancy to escape persecution by the Nazis. In his time, Léon Blum, father of humanist socialism, considered that “morality consists [ait] essentially in the courage to make a choice”. Mélenchon made his.
The rebellious leader decided to put political strategy above everything else. This is how his first words should have been read, and those of the press release from the LFI deputies, which put Israel and Hamas back to back, forgetting – on purpose – to qualify the actions of the small group as “terrorist”. He denies it, says he does nothing other than call for peace, claims to prefer the word war crime, thereby inventing for himself a life as an international law jurist, supposedly because the Criminal Court international would not recognize the term – which has been challenged. These chosen words and these unsaid words are above all, to use the words of Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur in The world, the sign of “a major lack of empathy […] which locks us into a space of selective empathy”. The rebel in chief, by reproaching those who mourned the Israeli victims of forgetting those in Gaza, traded humanism – an Angelus to the left – on the altar of his political destiny.
Make no mistake, Mélenchon’s hunger justifies the means he uses. His comrades, as loyal as they are, whisper him and wonder about the leader’s confinement. “What you gain there, you lose elsewhere,” one told him, disillusioned, when he described the president of Crif, Yonathan Arfi, as far-right. His political agenda has nothing to do with a Nupes which ankyloses him. The time to unite has not come, the time for conflict, an assumed, theorized strategy. “You know very well that the Mélenchon of 2021 was not that of 2022”, justifies a relative, while admitting: “What is the point of acting like a great sage today, there are no elections tomorrow .”
“It is also false to believe that we are able to mobilize in the suburbs thanks to Palestine”
The multi-candidate wants to strengthen his citadel, that of the popular electorate of the suburbs, predominantly Muslim, and from whom he assumes a blind sympathy towards the Palestinian cause which would ignore the Israeli deaths. Another moral fault, there too. “Through the Palestinian cause, many people thought that they were going to affect entire sections of the youth and therefore reduce them thanks to that. I have never agreed with this vision! There is no possible shortcut on the question as it is also false to believe that we manage to mobilize in the suburbs thanks to Palestine”, nevertheless estimated the deputy Alexis Corbière (The early red mornings, Laurent David Samama, L’Observatoire, 2019).
One evening in Paris, August heat. Summer 2023. Mélenchon invited his disciple of yesteryear, the PS deputy Jérôme Guedj. The two men had not spoken to each other for almost fifteen years. Thanks to a compliment from the parliamentarian in Release, the elder had taken up the thread of the discussion. The wasted pension battle, his angry tweets against others on the left, his refusal to call for calm after Nahel’s death… Guedj says he does not understand this lack of tactical intelligence. “You could be Mitterrand,” the deputy told him. “Ah! Don’t bother me too with Mitterrand!”, replies the eldest, for whom all these controversies are only made to discredit him. A sign that “the system” is arching against him, that he has control. Mélenchon, in front of his guest, is categorical: the situation is “pre-revolutionary”. Mélenchon dreamed of himself as Robespierre, here he is also Danton, declaring: “Let us be terrible, to prevent the people from being so.”