Posts Tagged ‘Jean-Luc Mélenchon’
From Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Populism, Andréa Kotarac Defects to far-Right Populism.
From Populist Left to Populist Far-Right.
Many on the French left have long been wary of La France insoumise, the self-styled Left Populist Movement, “point de ralliement (rally) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
One issue has been its ‘sovereigntism’.
That is, putting the demand of popular sovereignty – against the ‘oligarchy’, domestic and European – at the centre of its politics.
A couple of days ago this type, Andréa Kotarac, decided that the far-right rally of Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement national, was a better bet for this nation-centred strategy.
French far-left candidate slammed as ‘stink bomb’ for defecting to far right
France 24.
High drama in the French campaign as a far-left candidate calls for voters to back the far right – earning the would-be MEP some choice insults from French far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Andréa Kotarac, a former regional adviser to Mélenchon’s far-left France Unbowed party (La France Insoumise), announced Tuesday that he was leaving the party and would instead back the far right in European Parliament elections in order “to block” President Emmanuel Macron’s Republic on the Move (La République en marche) party. Mélenchon responded by calling Kotarac a “stink bomb” and a “traitor”.
In fact there is already a legal process to stop Marine Le Pen’s Party using this support in their election publicity.
More:
For a Left Populism. Chantal Mouffe. Review: “Neither Left nor Successful”.
Left Populism, “Neither Left nor Successful”.
For a Left Populism. Chantal Mouffe. Verso. 2018
Review: Andrew Coates.
(From the Latest Chartist Magazine.)
Chantal Mouffe and her partner Ernesto Laclau published Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in 1985 She begins For a Left Populism on the “challenge represented by the ‘populist moment’ by referring to the “incapacity of left politics” during the 1980s to grapple with post-68 movements, from the women’s movement to ecology. Anything that could not be thought of in class terms had been rejected. They offered, she states, an alternative, which became associated with the monthly, Marxism Today, against this “class essentialism”. It focused on bringing these new social forces into a left project, the “radicalisation of democracy”. There were angry debates on the left about these claims, focused around the authors’ ‘post-Marxism’ and the importance of class in left politics.
The world has changed. Today Mouffe argues that neoliberalism, austerity, and “oligarchisation”, has brought down living standards and eroded popular sovereignty. The political system is hollowed out. It is “post-democracy”, a term she takes from Colin Crouch and Jacques Rancière (La Mésentente. 1997). A paradigm of ‘consensus’ around the value of the free-market marks Western societies. There is little more detail about what is ‘post’ democratic in the new millennium’s elections, political competition for government and the possibilities for public debate opened up by social media.
How this differs from the previous consensus around the Keynesian welfare state, known in Britain during the 1950s as ‘Butskellism’, is not explored. The thrust is that social democratic and Labour Parties, notably during Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s premierships, accepted the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. As part of this ‘hegemonic’ package they put concern for the Taxpayer over generous public spending. New Labour agreed that privatisation of state functions and industries were “what works”. They aimed at competing on the global market. .
After the 2007 financial crisis people across Europe began to question the belief that these policies brought them any benefit. Those “left behind” by austerity in the wake of the baking crisis and globalised economies, demanded “democratic recognition”. Many Mouffe says, have turned to anti-establishment populist parties of the right, or have expressed their unhappiness through backing the Hard-Right project of Brexit in the UK European Referendum.
The message of For a Left Populism is, “To stop the rise of right-wing populist parties, it is necessary to design a properly political answer through a left populist movement that will federate all the democratic struggles against post-democracy.” She commends the Spanish Podemos, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise (LFI) and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, for “left populist strategies.”
For a Left Populism draws on many, often very abstract, ideas that Mouffe has developed since the 1980s. This include her writings on Carl Schmitt, Claude Lefort, Jürgen Habermas (amongst many others) and ‘agonistic democracy”. This is a concept which puts conflict and dissensus at the heart of democratic debate. Conflict, she argues, are the keynotes of pluralist democracy. This is an idea familiar from less elevated works. Bernard Crick’s In Defence of Politics (1964, and later editions) made a vibrant democratic socialist case for the importance of open disagreement and debate for the democratic left. Crick also wrote on how Machiavelli saw “liberty arising from conflicts.” (Introduction to The Discourses. Niccolò Machiavelli. 1970)
For a Left Populism talks about constructing a “collective will”. Left populism, she asserts, draws into its orbit by a “chain of equivalences” a variety of progressive demands, open citizenship. This is the ‘construction of the People”, a collective political agency, “ opposing the ‘people’ against the ‘oligarchy’. For this to work Mouffe follows the late Ernesto Laclau. There has to be “some form of crystallisation of common affects, and affective bonds with a charismatic leader… “ One can see the attraction for Jean-Luc Mélenchon who has made sure that there is no “so-called” democratic opposition in his Web-Platform based movement. It is a “lieu de Rassemblement” (rallying point) not a political party. (1)
Mouffe’s left populism also, centrally, draws on the “libidinal investment at work in national – or regional – forms of identification”…” National identities should be left to the right. Instead of leaving the field to national populists there should be another outlet, “mobilising…. around a patriotic identification with the more egalitarian aspects of the national tradition.”
Much of this approach to nationalism is drawn out from the tangled thickets of Frédéric Lordon. The French theorist developed from some of Spinoza’s ideas a picture of the importance of ‘affects’, which he illustrated as attachments of people to national identities, and, above all, nation states. La Société des affects (2013). Lordon, a supporter of Mélenchon has faced charges of nationalism himself. Chantal Mouffe’s French critics have not been slow to point out to the emotional ‘affects’ of voters motivated by anti-immigrant feeling. These are neither legitimate concerns nor are those who have them likely to drop their views to join a left-wing Collective Will. (2)
Since For a Left Populism was published Mélenchon’s Movement has stagnated and declined in polls, down below 10% of voting intentions for the coming European Elections. It has faced a series of internal crises, centring on the lack of democratic decision-making. Marine le Pen appears to have had more of an impact in the Gilets Jaunes uprising than the leader of La France insoumise. After poor regional election results in Andalusia and declining support Podemos, has suffered a serious split. Her interlocutor, Iñigo Errejón (Podemos, In the Name of the People. Iñigo Errejón. Chantal Mouffe. 2016) is now aligned with Más Madrid, a catch-all progressive alliance. Pablo Iglesias is said to project a long-term alliance with the Spanish socialists, the PSOE. The radical left “Anticapitalista” current is in outright opposition.
The problem with left populism is, as Éric Fassin has remarked, is that, “it’s neither left nor a winning strategy.” Perhaps we should follow his advice and concentrate on creating broad and effective democratic socialist parties and not on ‘federating’ the “people”. (Populisme: le grand ressentiment. 2017) (3)
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- À propos du mouvement «La France insoumise» Jean-Luc Mélenchon. C:\Documents and Settings\Compaq_Owner\My Documents\À propos du mouvement «La France insoumise» Jean-Luc Mélenchon.htm
- Populisme de gauche, du nouveau ? Pierre Khalfa
- See also: Left-wing populism.A legacy of defeat: Interview with Éric Fassin Radical Philosophy. 2018. For an overview of Mouffe and Fassin see Jacobin, Can There Be a Left Populism?Jacob Hamburger. There is much to say on the intellectual structure of the ‘affects’ argument, and the abstract account by Mouffe construction of the ‘people’ in a counter-hegemonic direction through relations of equivalence which he does not. Hamburger however makes the valdi points that ‘left populism’ is hard to pin down as one thing (the gulf between Sanders and Corbyn alone is immense, and Podemos and La France insoumise) but fails to deal with anything like the different party structures. One can also see that the “degree of porosity between left and right” is politically fraught with dangers, as, even if minority, Gilets Jaunes red-brown cross-overs indicate. One would also prefer an account which focuses on sovereigntism, national independence as a rampart against neoliberalism, something Jacobin writers have themselves embroidered into a ‘left populism’.
As the attraction of ‘left populism’, which is still influential in publications such as New Left Review, and the American Jacobin, and other pro-Brexit groups, wanes, this important article also in the latest Chartist, continues the argument:
THE DANGER OF LEFT NATIONALISM IN THE UK AND EUROPE
Extract:
A recent book on Corbynism by Frederick Harry Pitts and Matt Bolton argues that its key components lie in “seeing the world as constituted essentially of nations” and “posing the nation against global and international capital”. But, the authors point out, the search for sovereignty is destined to fail, not least because “we live in a world structured by capital, a social relation which exists as a world market, from which single states cannot abdicate, no matter how hard they try”. Not only is this emerging aspect of Corbynism pitting itself against the tide of history, but it also produces political rhetoric that shares territory with the nativist Brexiteer right wing. In casting the ‘national community’ as the primary community for whom the left speaks, and in describing not only global flows of capital but also of people as threat to this primary community, the left has clearly contributed to racist othering of migrant workers. Which is why some of Corbyn’s speeches on Europe have drawn praise from the likes of Nigel Farage.
Corbynism’s emerging left nationalism is treading the same path as parts of the French and German left. As far back as 2016 Sahra Wagenknecht of Die Linke challenged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to accept more than one million refugees, calling for limits on entry. In an environment where the far right is stoking fears about ‘violent’ immigrants with fake news and conspiracy theories, Wagenknecht has called for the deportation of any refugees who ‘abuse’ German hospitality: a call in complete contravention of the UN 1951 Refugee Convention, and one that drew praise from the far right Alternative für Deutschland.
Between 18,000 and 30, 000 marchers in Paris for ‘Day of Action’ called by Union Federation CGT, and some of the Gilets Jaunes.
Radical Left Says: neither Macron nor (Gilet Jaune Leader) Drouet.
Today, following the appeal, principally by the left-wing trade union federation, the CGT (Confédération générale du travail), a Day of Action was held in France.
A response the “pseudo” national debate launched by President Macron work stoppages and marches have been held demanding (for the CGT),
- an increase in the minimum wage, the Smic of 20% (1800 euros gross), and all wages and pensions as well as social minima (that is social security payments).
- equal pay for women and men.
- a tax reform with a more progressive income tax and reduced VAT on basic necessities, the restoration of wealth tax and greater taxation of higher incomes and capital ownership.
- control and conditions of public aid to large companies.
- the development of public services.
- respect for public freedoms, such as the right to protest challenged by the government.
- strengthening collective rights and guarantees, unemployment rights, social security, including retirement.
- fair and supportive plans for ‘ecological transition’ (measures to make reduce carbon emissions and other green policies).
Entre 18 000 et 30 000 manifestants à Paris.
Le Monde reports:
For the “mardi de l’urgence sociale” called by la Confédération générale du travail (CGT), Solidaires, Force ouvrière (FO) and some representatives of the Gilets Jaunes there were 160 marches across France. There were a few work stoppages (a small number of railway services were affected, 5% of teachers went on strike), some Radio France programmes were disrupted and two to three hundred drivers of VTS (a category of taxis, véhicules de tourisme avec chauffeur) joined the day of action. Groups of students and lycéens also responded. Despite a call for airport workers to follow the movement the Aéroports de Paris maintained aeroplane flights.
Across the county a number of roundabouts and roads were blocked by Gilets Jaunes and trade union activists.
A number of tens, though minor, confrontations with the police took place across France.
More details of the effects here: Les autres secteurs touchés
Left parties and groups joined the appeal for the protest, Attac, the fondation Copernic, the banlieue collective La Vérité pour Adama, former Socialist Party Presidential candidate, Benoït Hamon’s Génération·s, Jean Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise, the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste )NPA_ and….. Mélenchon’s personal faction, the Parti de gauche.
Libération states that Philippe Martinez, the secretary general of the left CGT union federation, emphasised the convergences at work between the unions and the Gilets Jaunes, at least in in certain areas. He remains nevertheless very cautious when it comes to engaging the CGT in a rapprochement on a national scale, pointing in particular to the presence of the extreme right in the demonstrations. “This movement has allowed us to build collective action, and has moved in the right direction” he has recently declared ( Gilets jaunes, gauche et syndicats : «On a intérêt que ça prenne» )
La France insoumise in crisis as leading figures denounce “autocratic” Mélenchon.
Crisis over Nationalism and Autocratic Leadership in La France insoumise.
Des cadres de La France insoumise dénoncent les dérives autocratiques de Mélenchon
Nouvel Obs.
A wave of protest has been stirring in La France insoumise (LFI). According to Le Monde several leaders of the movement, including candidates for European elections, and Charlotte Girard, co-responsible for LFI’s programme – have denounced the autocratic excesses of the leader of LFI. These criticisms were published in an internal letter of January 9 came after ” banishment” of François Cocq, January 5, by this tweet from Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
CNews claims that a Spokesperson for LFI is nationalist François Cocq who has been banished from the movement.
Le Nouvel Obs continues, that there are “serious complaints about the internal organisation of LFI.”
Le Monde has the original story.
Europe I continued,
Now it is clear that this Blog has little, indeed, no sympathy with the politics of Cocq, who represents the worst sovereigntist tendency in La France insoumise.
This is, for example, what he has said in his defence (Novel Obs)
ll emploie le mot nationaliste comme une injure. Je n’ai pas de problème à parler de la nation. Pour moi, c’est le corps politique constitué, ce qui définit le corps républicain. C‘est notre histoire, la grande histoire révolutionnaire. Mélenchon parle lui plutôt de patrie républicaine mais je sais qu’on met la même chose sous ces deux termes.
(Mélenchon) used the word nationalist an insult. I have no problem speaking of the Nation. For me, it is the political body which makes up the flesh and bones of the republic. It’s our history, our glorious revolutionary history. Mélenchon prefers to speak of a Republican fatherland, but I know that the two terms refer to the same thing.
The main difficulty seems to be that Cocq does not simply repeat the party line on this ideological issue.
There also appear to have been differences over the degree of warmth and enthusiasm for some of the Gilets Jaunes, notably the leading figure Eric Drouet.
Cocq appears to have been more guarded in his support for this figure.
It is clear that, as the letter cited above states, banishing the individual, who is widely known in the Rally, apparently a “national orator ”, by tweet from the Party leader, is hardly democratic.
As those protesting have said, this is an off the cuff pronouncement from Mélenchon not a the result of LFI party members’ decision-making.
It reminds people of Trump’s behaviour.
French Government Backs Down on Fuel Tax Rise . “The Solution, it’s the People!” Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Stop Taxes! Gilets Jaunes “aspire” to Mélenchon’s Programme.
French Prime Minister announces suspension of fuel tax hikes
France fuel protests: PM Philippe suspends fuel tax rise
BBC.
France’s PM has announced a six-month suspension of a fuel tax rise which has led to weeks of violent protests.
Edouard Philippe said that people’s anger must be heard, and the measures would not be applied until there had been proper debate with those affected.
The below puts the result in its true historical perspective:
The genial Mélenchon has found a whole new raft of supporters!
They have given “weight to my words”.
And “aspire” to his programme.
Bless!
After Saturday’s Violence: the Politics of the Gilets Jaunes, La France périphérique and the Far-Right.
Gilet Jaune: Sacred Heart, The Hope and Salvation of France?
France 24
Masked, black-clad groups ran amok across central Paris on Saturday, torching cars and buildings, looting shops, smashing windows and fighting police in the worst unrest the capital has seen since 1968, posing the most formidable challenge Emmanuel Macron has faced in his 18-month-old presidency.
Disturbances also rocked several cities and towns and across France – from Charleville Mezieres in the northeast to Nantes in the west and Marseille in the south.
“We have to think about the measures that can be taken so that these incidents don’t happen again,” government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told Europe 1 radio.
…
According to figures released by the French interior ministry, around 75,000 demonstrators took to the streets across France on Saturday. The headcount was significantly lower than for the last two “Yellow Vest” protests, which drew roughly 300,000 and 100,000 respectively.
Authorities were caught off guard by Saturday’s escalation in violence overshadowing the spontaneous protest movement, dubbed the “Yellow Vest” protest because many participants are wearing the fluorescent safety jackets kept in all cars in France.
In Paris, police said they had arrested more than 400 people while 133 were injured, including 23 members of the security forces. Police fired stun grenades, tear gas and water cannon at protesters at the top of the Champs-Elysées boulevard, at the Tuillèries Garden near the Louvre museum and other sites.
The analysis below is gaining traction:
It is in this France périphérique that the gilets jaunes movement was born. It is also in these peripheral regions that the western populist wave has its source. Peripheral America brought Trump to the White House. Peripheral Italy – mezzogiorno, rural areas and small northern industrial towns – is the source of its populist wave. This protest is carried out by the classes who, in days gone by, were once the key reference point for a political and intellectual world that has forgotten them.
France is deeply fractured. Gilets jaunes are just a symptom Christophe Guilluy
Le Monde this week published David Goodhart. He employed his distinction between “somewhere” and “anywhere” people in The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (2017) to say much of the above: Gilets jaunes » : « La “France périphérique” demande à être respectée.
There is something in this.
The distinction taken from the writings of Christophe Guilluy, between better off urban areas to the left behind regions and “peri-urban” areas, exists. But there is a great deal of rhetoric, shared by Goodhardt, about a “cosmopolitan” urban liberal electorate and and the “real” country, La France profonde, inhabited by françaises de souche and (in the French case) the banlieue where there are large number of people whose origins lie in post-War and more recent immigration.
In the case of the Gilets Jaunes their principal complaint – fuel prices – is based on transport. That is, the need (and we would not dismiss the choice) of a car. This is easy for people across Europe to get to grips with: you can see it where I am writing from, where austerity has meant fewer, if any bus services in rural areas, and villages described as “fossils” with few services at all.
The problem is that claims about a gulf between the Citizens of Nowhere and those from Somewhere is not a sociological portrait.
It is not directly a picture of classes, people are defined by where they live, and their culture, not their work or their ownership of economic agents.
It is clearly directed by those who oppose the Nowhere people and try to assert their authority to speak for the Somewheres.
The fiercest opposition to rootless cosmopolitans comes from nationalists….
We would not reduce the Gilets Jaunes to this cultural-political-economic ferment at all.
But it’s not hard to see that this is fertile ground for the right, and we should not forget that the far-right has intervened vigorously in the protests.
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Marine Le Pen et Marion Maréchal droite tente de se rhabiller en jaune
This is an account of the presence in Paris of groups to the right of the above:
Gilets jaunes : à Paris, groupuscules nationalistes et d’extrême droite s’affichent.
The journalist noted the presence of groups equipped with catapults umbrellas, hammers….
Libération was thus able to identify Yvan Benedetti, former president of the ultranationalist group “L’œuvre française”, dissolved in 2013 after the death of Clément Méric. There was graffiti from the GUD (Groupe Union Défense), a far-right student organisation, sprayed on shop fronts and street furniture.
(Note, the GUD is notorious for decades of physical attacks on leftist students).
A little further on, we read this inscription:«On est chez nous.» “We are at home.” A slogan taken up in chorus by a few dozen people, sometimes wrapped in blue-white-red flags, who threw stones and bricks at police vehicles. In another place, there was the“Justice for Esteban” that was made, in reference to the skinhead Esteban Morillo, sentenced to eleven years in prison for killing – in a fight – the anti- fascist Clément Méric in 2013.
Several traditional Catholic groups, including the Saint Pius X fraternity, the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church are also present, recognisable by symbols such as the flag of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, adorned with the slogan “Hope and Salvation”, and royalist emblems with the fleur-de-lis.
This has appeared on the Facebook pages of French leftists.
And this violence:
Placed alongside this response from the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NPA) seems feeble: support for the Gilets Jaunes without qualification.
The French far-left, no doubt encouraged by reports which talk of “urban guerrilla warfare” is said to be desperately searching for texts to justify backing tax revolts.
Amongst a call for a d’états généraux de la fiscalitée to plan taxes, referdums and Proprotional Representaiton, emerging from the Gilets Jaunes is the demand for an immediate freeze on the tax rise on fuel, and for fewer checks on cars, that is MOTs in the UK. (Des Gilets jaunes lancent un appel : “Nous voulons être les porte-parole d’une colère constructive” le Journal du Dimanche).
This morning it was noticeable how carefully right-wing figures treated the violence – which would have been far from the case had it happened if young inhabitants of the banlieue had invaded the Champs–Élysées.
Large sections of Marcon’s party (LREM), following nearly all the political class, have responded by demanding a Moratorium on Taxes.
Amongst the cacophony Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has called for the return of the tax on the wealthy, the impôt sur la fortune .
Although we discover he managed to find this programme, close to his own, put out by the “gilets Jaunes”.
Spooky!
The US Jacobin has just published a piece defending the revolt. We’re With the Rebels. AURÉLIE DIANARA
Even the moralistic criticisms that accuse the gilets jaunes of materialism and selfishness can be called into question. as not the increase in the price of bread the main factor pushing the women of Paris to mount their furious march on Versailles in October 1789?
One can understand the appeal of calls to reduce, if not abolish, taxes, to the wealthy owner of this publication.
Though this justification for the movement looks like flaying at very dry old straws.
Brendan O’Neill would relish these lines, about left-wingers who criticise the Jilets Jaunes,
Criticisms of their behaviour have been influenced by an evident contempt for the “lower classes”: social media are awash with jokes about the “pig-headed” “imbeciles” of the “France d’en bas.” Such derision also appeared across the social networks close to the autonomous “movement” left, before the powerful demonstration of November 17.
Oddly attempts by the other side, those to wish to “shape the movement” with wise left guidance, have yet to discover the magic potion which will make the following problem vanish. Even somebody as wreathed in a halo as the author admits,
Ecologists and the defenders of nature have been, to say the least, disconcerted by the hubbub around a movement that basically asks to be able to burn more fuel at a lower price and that seemed initially uninterested in the government’s at least explicit intention to use this “carbon tax” to fund the ecological transition.
Another Setback for La France insoumise after Defeat in By-election.
After predicted win, defeat for La France insoumise.
The American radical progressive journal Jacobin ran this story this weekend,
France Insoumise’s Farida Amrani is the frontrunner to replace France’s former prime minister Manuel Valls as MP for Évry.
A Foot in the Streets An interview with Farida Amrani.
Talking to a progressive French patriot, Cde Broder, Amrani the candidate for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Rally, said that their progressive politics were clear,
We work in the interests of a program created by and for the people, above partisan divides.
Amarani lost, heavily, to the candidate of la République en Marche (LREM), President Macron’s Party.
He, the Mayor of Évry, Francis Chouat got 59,1% of the vote.
There was a high rate of abstention in the by-election, 8,08 % in the first round.
And in the second (83%), which the Leader of the Progressive LFI drew some comfort from – by blaming it for stifling the voice of the people’s anger.
The candidate of LREM was less unhappy:
The owner of Jacobin, the wealthy Brexiter and radical progressive Bhaskar Sunkara has recently bought into the British left.
Well-established rumour has it that he has sent his majordomo, Sebastian Budgen, to negotiate a slice of the media empire of La France insoumise, the “web-télé” imaginatively titled Média.
It is said that after this, and other setbacks for LFI, stocks are on offer at an attractive price.
More information: Législative partielle en Essonne : Francis Chouat, soutenu par LREM, succède à Manuel Valls
