“The Student Union is a union in name only. It is in reality the projection of La France insoumise which organized, orchestrated and structured this split from Unef.” Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, former first secretary of the Socialist Party and president of Unef-ID between 1980 and 1984, sees the hand of Jean-Luc Mélenchon behind the student union in the maneuver of the main pro-Palestinian mobilizations of recent weeks in universities, notably Sciences Po.
Officially, this is not the case. “It is completely false to imagine that any party would tell the students what to do. The students are self-organizing to be able to fight effectively against the genocide underway in Gaza,” assures, for example, Eléonore Schmitt, spokesperson for the Student Union. Who adds all the same: “But any support is welcome in the context of this mobilization which is tough. The fact that parliamentarians intervene between the demonstrators and the police and help to avoid clashes is welcome .”
Specifically, several rebellious figures have proclaimed their support for the mobilization in recent days. “Nanterre, the Sorbonne, Tolbiac, Clignancourt, Paris-Saclay, Lille: the mobilization is spreading throughout France for the ceasefire and the end of the genocide. The mobilized youth is the honor of France,” declared for example the LFI deputy Louis Boyard on his X account (ex-Twitter) a few hours after the end of the debate on the Israeli question organized this May 2 at Sciences Po Paris. After the holding of the “town hall”, demanded by the Palestine Action Committee and accepted by the management, a handful of demonstrators again occupied the school before being dislodged by the police during the night.
Since the start of the conflict in the establishment, on April 24, the elected Insoumis have paraded in front of the institution, notably Eric Coquerel, his chest covered with his tricolor scarf, whispering in the ear of certain young pro-Palestinian demonstrators, or Aymeric Caron again. Behind the heavy door of the institute on rue Saint-Guillaume, some do not budge. For Maxime Loth, head of the Spring Republican section at Sciences Po, “today, the Student Union is LFI!” While for Maxime Pontey, secretary general of Nova – officially “apolitical” but said to be close to the Renaissance party – “it is obvious that its members today feel galvanized by the support of these elected officials whose presence attracts the media, which contributes to fanning the embers.
“Putsch”
To fully understand the interactions between the Insoumis party and the Student Union activists, we need to go back a few years. In 2017, the battle raged within the Unef where some of the members of the national office, close to the Insoumis, were suspected of fomenting a “putsch”. This is denied by the seven people in question, who say they are victims of “purge” after being ousted from the student union. In 2019, a second wave of departures gave birth to a new movement, the Alternative. Finally, in April 2023, some of the local sections of Unef (17 out of the sixty existing) joined the Alternative to form the current organization called the Student Union. Officially for organizational reasons, the Student Union defending “a federal model, more connected to the field”.
The fact that several of its activists campaign with the Insoumis supports the thesis of a “satellite” organization of them. Thus, during the 2019 European elections, Naïm Shili, then secretary general of the Alternative, appeared on the list led by Manon Aubry. While Marie Mesmeur, who participated in the creation of the Alternative ESR (higher education and research) union, is in turn an LFI candidate for the election on June 9. The young woman was its national secretary for three years, before the Alternative became the Student Union. “Even though I was no longer there, I continued to train young people,” she explains in West France on March 25. Finally, Fabien Caillé and Gwénolé Bourrée, founders of the Pirate Union, the local component of the Student Union born in Rennes 2 which has spread in a few years to most Breton student towns, are today parliamentary collaborators of the LFI deputy Louis Boyard.
The latter began his “college tour” in 2022 and was particularly present during the debates on pension reform. The strong support of young people for Jean-Luc Mélenchon during the last presidential election – 31% among 18-24 year olds – explains the attention of the Insoumis for this age group. The Student Union appears to be a perfect transmission belt between this electorate and La France insoumise. Especially since the union was able to establish itself in a short time. In the last elections of the regional centers of university and school works (Crous), which were held from February 6 to 8, the Student Union came in first with 30.4% of the votes and 64 elected officials. Thus overtaking Fage, first since 2016 and which, this time, only collected 28.33% of the votes and lost 8 seats. While Unef (22.08%) showed a clear decline.
A few weeks before the European elections, LFI follows in the footsteps of American university organizations by attempting to import the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into French higher education establishments. “Politicizing a part of the student youth on issues as divisive as that of Palestine is part of a clearly assumed strategy,” explains Dorian Dreuil, expert associated with the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. “As much as ideological polarization is useful in democracy because it allows the confrontation of ideas, differences of points of view and opinions, affective polarization undermines the logic of dialogue and causes the other to be perceived as an adversary or an enemy,” warns the analyst.
“Unef almost no longer exists here”
Even if they deny it, the methods of the Student Union are close to those of the Insoumis activists. “Heated by LFI, the members of the Student Union use symbolic violence and confiscate the debate by maintaining a form of ambient harassment,” denounces Maxime Loth. “At Sciences Po, someone who tries to take a slightly nuanced position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suffers mockery, sidelining, even threats,” he continues. Mathys Dupuis, elected student at the Sorbonne-Université, where activists imitated the blockade at Sciences Po and in turn took over the main courtyard on April 29, points out the aggressiveness of the Susie collective, member of the Student Union . “I was the subject of threats and pressure for having denounced certain abuses,” he denounces, adding that most of the former members of the UNEF of the Sorbonne-University have joined the new union. “Hence his extreme discretion. It’s quite simple, the Unef hardly exists here anymore,” he says.
If the demands of the historic left-wing union are similar to those of the new Student Union, certain nuances appear implicitly. The general secretary of Unef, Hania Hamidi, asks, like the Student Union, that an investigation be carried out and that, if necessary, “the administration of Sciences Po cuts its links and partnerships with Israeli universities ” but also that “the presidency takes a public position on stopping the war”. Unef also requested the abandonment of disciplinary measures against certain Sciences Po students. With one caveat, however: “We consider, on the other hand, that sanctions are necessary for all those who advocate words and actions anti-Semites if they are proven.” According to France Universités, 67 anti-Semitic acts have been recorded in establishments since the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, compared to 33 in the 2022-2023 academic year.
Certain handlings of symbols have recently sparked controversy. On February 26, around ten students marched in front of the school on rue Saint-Guillaume brandishing their hands covered in red paint. Several observers saw it as a reference to the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000 where one of the attackers showed his bloody hands to the crowd. For Eleonore Schmitt, spokesperson for the Student Union, it was a matter of demonstrating that “the Macron government has blood on its hands since it is not doing everything possible to stop what we describe as genocide.” “I didn’t know the meaning that some give to it since I was born in 2000 and I wasn’t watching TV at that time,” she explains, adding that this symbol is “regularly used in mobilizations for peace all over the world.
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