Thursday, July 4. Only two days of campaigning left before the start of the reserve period for the second round of the early legislative elections. In a statement made on RTL, François Ruffin put an end to several weeks of rumors surrounding his departure from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s movement. In the National Assembly, “my place will not be in the La France insoumise group,” he confirmed. The divorce having been consummated, a new phase now opens: that of “afterwards.”
Very quickly, however, some understand that “after” is also the time for settling scores. The exchanges of arms follow one another. Until this Wednesday, September 11, the release date in bookstores of his latest book entitled Itinerary. My whole France, not half! (ed. Les liens qui libèrent). In this political essay, François Ruffin pounds LFI like he never did before. Account of the twenty-four hours that marked the definitive break of the deputy of the Somme with his former political family.
Act I: A book that feels like a stab in the back
The affair broke this Wednesday. François Ruffin started his day on the BFM TV set. 8:45 am was approaching. The exchange between the Somme MP and the journalist moved on to her essay to be published that same day. LFI? “It’s a party where there is fear, where no room is given to debate,” evaded the instigator of the New Popular Front (NFP). So far, nothing really new. But in the morning, the content of the book was developed, explained, and defended in an interview with New Obs.
To our colleagues, François Ruffin paints a very dark portrait of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. That of a candidate who describes his voters as “obese” who “smell bad” and “sweat alcohol from the morning”. That of an aspirant to the supreme office greedily eyeing the suburban vote. Or again, of a resigned man, convinced that the former bastions of the left, now captive to the Front National vote, are definitively out of reach. By coincidence, the description echoes a word slipped by Jean-Luc Mélenchon to a demonstrator on Saturday, September 7: “We need to mobilize the youth and the neighborhoods. Forget everything else, we’re wasting our time.”
The precept does not surprise the man that Jean-Luc Mélenchon considered in the spring of 2023 to be “ready” for 2027. For several years now, the Lider maximo of the rebels has had a formula attesting to the merits of the path that will lead him – or so he is convinced – to the Château: “To denazify Germany, it took half a century, so well…” An electoralist strategy assumed behind the scenes, confirms François Ruffin, who denounces the “abandonment” by his former political family of the social question in favor of that of ethnic minorities.
In the columns of the New ObsFrançois Ruffin offers his analysis of La France insoumise version 2022. A movement that would have become the mirror of the National Rally (RN). Like the far-right party, LFI chooses its victims. Young Thomas, from Crépol, “killed because he was white” for the Frontists. Gardener Mourad, from Villecresnes, called a “wog” by his assassin, for the insoumis. Like the party with the flame, that of insoumission operates according to a “quasi-racial” reading grid, François Ruffin continues, assuring that “the 25% of French people who have an immigrant grandparent” are now LFI’s priority.
This September 11, it is also a repentant François Ruffin who speaks out. The founder of the newspaper Fakir admits to having distributed targeted electoral propaganda during the 2022 presidential campaign. To “Black and Arab voters in the housing projects of Amiens-Nord”, for whom Jean-Luc Mélenchon is “a master key”, a leaflet with a photo of the rebellious leader. To white voters, for whom the patriarch is a deterrent, a poster without. In short: “facial leafleting”. Two years and a divorce later, François Ruffin admits: “I felt ashamed when I did that.”
Act II – The rebellious lieutenants take up arms
Dare-dare, in the rebellious ranks, we rush to counterattack. The shame? “It’s you”, retorts dryly on X the rebellious deputy Danièle Obono, pinned last October for having described Hamas as a “resistance movement”. For her part, Aly Diouaraelected in the Seine-Saint-Denis constituency of Raquel Garrido, who has since gone into dissidence, says: “Ruffin is only targeting one electorate and you and I know very well what motivates the apostle of “angry/not fascist”… and it’s not the people in the towers.”
In the wake of the two rebellious elected officials, the Seine-et-Marne MP Ersilia Soudais feels “relieved that a man who has never understood anything about anti-racist struggles has left” the LFI group at the Palais-Bourbon, Antoine Léaument stages his “disappointment” with François Ruffin: “I discovered him with his book The Little Soldiers of Journalism. He explained how journalism students are formatted to be docile to power. Write that, become rebellious, end up docile. He did well to leave.” Others allow themselves to make comparisons with Jacques Doriot, a Vichy collaborator. “The ghost of Doriot does not reside in the North but in Picardy,” sneers the regional councilor of Ile-de-France Julie Garnier.
Act III – The fragile defense of Eric Coquerel
While on X the rebellious lieutenants attack François Ruffin, the leaders of LFI remain in the background. We have to wait until the next day, Thursday September 12, for one of theirs to comment. Or rather, to deny it. Questioned on France Inter this morning, Eric Coquerel denies without preamble or precaution the accusations made by François Ruffin.
According to the Seine-Saint-Denis MP, the “secessionist” would be making a killing on the rebellious political apparatus to serve his “presidential ambitions”. “I had respect for François, but he is doing something that does not suit me at all, and I remain measured in my remarks”, he evades. However, faced with the elements taken from the indictment of his Picard colleague, the president of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly is struggling to defend himself.
Is he just trying to repeat a cliché on which the Mélenchonist strategy denounced by François Ruffin is based: the fight against racism would be a way to resolve the issue of the division of social classes. And while the rebellious leader has still not reacted to the charge of the Picard elected official, a question remains unanswered: who, Jean-Luc Mélenchon or the escapades attributed to him, will be buried first?