Jean-Luc Mélenchon is afraid, but of what? Or from whom? By Fabien Roussel? All the same, there is something to laugh about given the big gap in the polls between the two men. But how else to explain the vigor with which the chief rebel and his lieutenants attack the communist leader who asserts his difference, his disagreements? It would be wrong to say that Roussel does not find a certain satisfaction in it, or even reciprocates it. No matter how annoying Roussel is, the first rebel he meets in the street would believe, he remains left-wing, despite the contradictions, despite the anathemas through the press. “All of us, even separated, let us remain socialists; despite everything, let us remain brothers, brothers who will have been separated by a cruel quarrel, but a family quarrel, and who a home can still reunite,” whispered Léon Blum at the end of the Congress of Tours in 1920, which saw the socialists divided over communism from Moscow.
But the rebels have denied this. The last episode will leave an indelible mark on the left. In a publication on her Facebook account, Sophia Chikirou, MP for Paris and close to Mélenchon, considered that there was “some Doriot in Roussel”. The comparison is assumed, approved by the head of a cryptic “OK”. The analogy is nothing new, Mélenchon himself is a compulsive user of the reference to this sad sire of French history. In July, in a blog post, he was offended by the refusal of certain Nupes partners to participate in banned demonstrations against police violence and predicted for them a xenophobic fate like Marcel Déat or Jacques Doriot. The rebellious often collapse into this intellectual idleness which makes them say that everything that does not think like them is obviously “extreme right”. Describing left-wing deputies as “Sarkozysts” in recent days, those who signed the forum for the regularization of undocumented workers in sectors in tensionappears almost indulgent.
“Stealing workers’ bread”
Being far-right is one thing, being Jacques Doriot another. A member of the PCF in the 1930s until his exclusion, he was not only a notorious but very obsequious collaborationist. He is not an everyday collaborator, one of those who easily denounce the Jewish neighbor. He became infatuated with the Nazi occupiers, even pushing for the creation of the LVF, these French volunteers who wore the uniform of the Wehrmacht and ended up in the ranks of the SS Charlemagne Division. Doriot himself fought on the Eastern Front in 1943. Unlike Philippe Pétain, he sincerely wished Germany’s victory in Europe.
Neither Chikirou nor Mélenchon are unaware of this, and this is what makes their parallel with Doriot all the more obscene. They believe that Roussel has crossed the line, that he is knocking on the doors of the voters of the National Rally, that he is repeating the words of the right and the extreme right on the subjects of immigration in particular. However, he does not say anything very different than Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on July 5, 2017 in an intervention in the European Parliament on Brexit. “I believe that the Europe that has been built is a Europe of social violence, as we see in each country every time a posted worker arrives, who steals his bread from the workers there” , he said. Words he will say he regrets.
Who is the enemy of the rebels? Fabien Roussel, or the extreme right, which seems to be at the gates of the Élysée much more than the communist? Nobody really knows anymore. If you cry wolf too much, as the fable sang, you see its face. In the background, Jean-Luc Mélenchon yawns while tending his flock, and enjoys it. Doriot here! Deat there! But he shouts so loudly that he becomes hoarse and the wolf, well, imaginary… Even at Roussel’s! Even at Macron, of whom Mélenchon accused “the junction” with Marine Le Pen. But one day the wolf will come. It is a fine carnivore. Mélenchon will shout again. We’ll think he takes us for idiots, as he did with Roussel and so many others who don’t think like him. And the wolf will have a king’s feast.