Posts Tagged ‘Jean-Luc Mélenchon’
Formal legal investigation opened into Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France insoumise’s finances.
Mélenchon Faces the Law of the Republic.
Two inquiries have been launched into the campaign accounts of Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the 2017 presidential election and the assistants of his rally La France insoumise’s MEPs. They have been entrusted to investigating judges by the Paris prosecutor’s office, according to a statement issued on Friday 9 November .
Jean-Luc Mélenchon et LFI visés par deux informations judiciaires
Two judicial information was thus opened against X. The first, relating to the financing of the campaign , mainly for “fraud” and “breach of trust” , while the second, concerning the parliamentary assistants, was opened for “misappropriation of public funds “ .
Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his party are therefore targeted by two separate investigations.
The first concerns the accounts of the campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the presidential election of 2017 where the fraud is alleged to occurred.
These are extremely serious and range from money-laundering to pure and simple swindling.
The second concerns Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament.
The suspicion is that he and his rally employed parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament to work for themselves outside of their European tasks. This ultimately amounts to diverting money from Parliament by creating fictitious jobs.
Other MEPs and former MEPs are involved in the investigations into the use of European Parliamentary assistants for domestic party work, such as Brice Hortefeux and Michèle Alliot-Marie (the right of centre, Les Républicains), Edouard Martin (elected on the Socialist Party’s list, now in Génération.s , of Benoît Hamon) or Yannick. Jadot (Europe Ecology-The Greens, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts EELV).
Mélenchon has reacted by stating that he is happy that this inquiry is to be led by two independent investigating judges, the “normal” procedure:
Mélenchon and la France insoumise in Free-fall.
Looking Further from the Gates of Power than Ever.
“la vertu est cette capacité à mettre en adéquation les principes qu’on applique dans sa vie avec ceux qu’on voudrait voir appliquer au plus grand nombre au benefice de tous”
Virtue is the faculty to be able to properly line up the principles that you apply in your life with those that you would like to see applied to the greatest number of others to the benefit of all.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon. De La Vertu.2017.(1)
Tout commence par la mystique, par une mystique, par sa (propre) mystique et tout finit de la politique.”
Everything begins in mysticism, by a mystique, one’s own mystique, and ends in politics.”
Notre Jeunesse. Charles Péguy. 1910 – 11. (2)
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, writes Chantal Mouffe, is a successful left-populist. He has channelled a feeling of being “left behind” and the “desire for democratic recognition” away from the far-right. Mélenchon’s Rally, la France insoumise (LFI) has been able to “federate all the democratic struggles against post-democracy”. Like Jeremy Corbyn his “anti-establishment discourse” “comes from the progressive side”. (3)
Mélenchon has ambitions grander than picking up the votes of La France périphérique, the ‘somewhere people’ stranded on the margins in the age of globalisation. He seeks support in that direction. LFI’s reaching out to protests against the rise in engine fuel, backed by the far-right Rassemblement National (ex-Front National) – despite previous green commitment – underlines the approach. But the goal of the movement is to create the multitude, the common people, are transformed into a People by collective action. The fight against the “oligarchy” the push for equality, what remains of class struggle, the deeply rooted “anthropological” need for sovereignty, are woven together into a vision adequate to the ecological demands of a planet under threat. (4)
Out with Class Based Parties!
In these conditions the old class based “party forms” of the left have consigned the left to a dwindling “archipelago”. Their vertical structures correspond to the old Taylorist and Fordist forms of work. The emergence of the dissatisfied People, broader than the traditional working class, as a category, a potential political subject, facing the financial Oligarchy rends them obsolete. Horizontal on-line debate makes the old ‘rigid’ democratic procedures out of date. His movement, a “brand (“label”) is a vehicle for common action. It is not (his quotation marks) “démocratique”, with different tendencies, factions, or even votes on opposing motions at conferences of elected party representatives from branches. It is, in line with these social changes, a “movement”, in which its politics are visible, and through which supporters are involved not by old-fashioned voting but through selection by lot to participate, to a degree decided by their own wishes, in the grand replacements of the old politics of La France insoumise. (5)
It was hard not to be reminded of this vision when listening to the radio station, Europe 1 this morning. The news began with the results of an opinion poll which put LFI’s list for the 2019 European elections in free-fall, down to 11% (drop of 3%) three and a half points above the Parti Socialiste (7,5%if Ségolène Royal lead their list, otherwise 6%) Its follows surveys which indicated that, after his public exhibition of petulant rage over an investigation into the Movement’s finances, Mélenchon himself has lost 7 points in personal popularity though some polls put the loss higher at a drop in 15% amongst those who voted for him in the Presidential elections (Jean-Luc Mélenchon dégringole de 7 points). Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement national (ex-Front National) meanwhile is scoring the same, around 20%, as La République en Marche of Emmanuel Macron.
L’enfance d’un chef.
The coup de grâce came with an interview with Mélanie Delattre et Clément Fayol, the authors of a book, to be published this week, on Mélenchon and La France insoumise. Mélenchon : Aux portes du pouvoir.This attempts to unravel “le système Mélenchon” It began with a description of LFI as a “business” (Chef d’entreprise et anticapitaliste), and its Leader’s considerable personal fortune. The canny homme d’affaires prefers, they allege, to squirrel away money in a variety of companies rather than reward his long suffering staff. We were then treated to a sketch of its internal ‘operations’, tightly controlled by those in the ‘club’ around the leadership.
Next, the authors asserted, far from being a ‘new type of open to all, a” participative” structure, it is ruled by ‘Trotskyist’ organisational practice – that it a very special kind of ‘Trotskyism’, the Lambertist centralist type which brooks no opposition. They managed to suggest that his screaming and foot stamping against those officials and police agents trying to investigate some of the secrets of this “business” was a premeditated piece of theatre. In short, the accusation is that Mélenchon has retained the political practice of his youth inside one of the most sectarian narrow-minded nationalist (both of its two existing splinters advocate Frexit) French left currents.
Finally, the interview raised the issue of Jean Luc’s long-standing membership of the Freemason, Grand Orient lodge. This, for those wishing to pursue further, may be compared to the deceased leader of Mélenchon’s former faction Pierre Lambert, who enjoyed a life- time friendship with one of the founding figures of French Trotskyism in the 1930s, Fed Zeller, who passed from the Fourth International to the same loge…(6)
To their credit after his tantrum and disrespect for republican legality the French freemasons have suspended Mélenchon and some have asked for his expulsion (Des francs-maçons veulent éjecter Jean-Luc Mélenchon du Grand Orient à cause de son attitude lors des perquisitions).
Where does this leave La France insoumise?
Many people have the impression that their intellectual support was from the kind of academic or student who, had they been born at the time, would have admired Péguy. That is, a kind of faith in the capacity of socialism to effect a cultural and spiritual renewal beyond sordid (‘post-democratic’) politics. One can see them warming to the nationalist exaltation of Le Mystère de la Charité de Jean d’Arc (1908) It is to be doubted if they would have belched at the author’s railing at “bourgeois cosmopolitanism” and hatred of Jaurès’ Teutonic socialism. (7) The might well have had a sneaking admiration for the Camelots du roi, armed with lead-weighted canes against rootless youpins. If few would accuse Mélenchon of anti-semitism, LFI, we are informed is none too fond of George Soros, and as for Germans….
Rather than awaiting the Second Coming the supporters of Mélenchon expect a laïque révolution citoyenne and the Sixth republic led by the genial LFI Chief – any day now…
The painful realisation that Mélenchon’s ‘mystique’ is evaporating and that they have ended up in the sordid world of less than virtuous politics will be a hard to manage…
Mélenchon aux portes du pouvoir, published at the end of the week, looks set for the leftist must-read list….
- Page 136. Jean-Luc Mélenchon avec Cécile Amar. Editions de l’Observatoire. 2017
- Page 115. Charles Péguy. Notre jeunesse. Folio Essais. Gallimard. 1993.
- Pages 22 – 23. Chantal Mouffe. For a Left Populism. Verso. 2018.
- Le Peuple et son conflit. Pages 142 – 147. Jean-Luc Mélenchon L’ère du Peuple. Pluriel. 2017 (new edition).
- Le Peuple et son mouvement. Pages 148 – 156. Op cit.
- Fred Zeller. Témoin du siècle. Du Blum à Trotsky au grand Orient de France….Fayard. 2000
- This is how he described the German influence on the politics of Jean Jaurès: “une sorte de vague cosmopolitisme bourgeois vicieux et d’autre part et très particulièrement et très proprement un pangermanisme, un total asservissement à la politique allemande, au capitalisme allemand, à l’impérialisme allemand, au militarisme allemand, au colonialisme allemand.”(P 1259) .Charles Péguy: Oeuvres en Prose. 1909 – 1914. Tome ll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Avant-proposes et notes. Marcel Péguy. 1961.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Wobbly Goes Rotten: Where will his leftist admirers stand now?
Mélenchon Goes Trump:”Have You Still Got Questions, Bunch of Scumbags?!”
At this year’s The World Transformed, held parallel to the Labour Conference., Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was a star.
Why we’ve invited Jean-Luc Mélenchon to The World Transformed
.. the real reason for Mélenchon’s invitation to TWT is not because he is Corbyn mark 2. No, it is for the same reason that TWT is happening in the first place: as part of a democratic socialist project to shift power towards the people. The fundamental truth about the two men’s successes is that it’s not about them. It’s about what they, and TWT, represent: the left taking hold of the future.
Mélenchon’s presence is not simply a result of similarities between him and Corbyn. It is a sign of a rising internationalist left building socialism from the grassroots. In learning from and debating with one another, as TWT allows us to do, we can help build a world for the many, not the few.
Politis has published an accurate account of the scandal that is shaking Mélenchon’s rally, La France insoumise (LFI).
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left freakout
The France Unbowed chief, who came fourth in last year’s presidential election, is taking to Facebook livestreams and iPhone monologues to harp on what he calls a “Macronism-media-prosecutor” conspiracy against him. The early signs are that the ranting and raving are not going down well with the French public, as Mélenchon seeks to build support for an international leftist alliance for next year’s European Parliament election.
The plot alleged by Mélenchon, which presumably draws support from President Emmanuel Macron’s backers, centers around an October 16 raid on the far-left leader’s apartment and office by magistrates investigating suspected campaign finance fraud in his 2017 bid for president. In a video of a standoff between Mélenchon’s followers and the investigators standing outside his office, the 67-year-old firebrand can be seen leaning nose-to-nose with an officer and shouting “La République, c’est moi!” (“I am the Republic!”) as the man quietly asks him to take a few steps back.
Mélenchon was only getting started. Three days after the raids, which targeted the homes of 10 France Unbowed aides in addition to his own, the party leader held a news conference during which he railed against what he called a “political police” and accused Macron of using the judicial system to undermine his movement. He then turned his wrath to the media, vowing to sue news channel BFM for defamation, accusing journalists from public news outlet FranceInfo of being “liars and cheats,” and mocking a female reporter who tried to ask him a question for having an accent from southern France.
Politis does not cover some of the salient details of this one-man melt-down that have since emerged.
Such as the 12,000 Euros, in cash, found during the Police enquiry at the home of one of those close to the Leader.
Or the “close” relation (“extraprofessionnelle”) between the Chief of La France insoumise and the Sophia Chikirou, former head of the LFI linked PR firm, Mediascop, renamed and called imaginatively Le Média when it expanded into providing ‘news and information’. After resigning following some ferocious rows there she is at present involved in their European election campaign. (Mélenchon, visé par les juges, s’en prend aux médias).
Today brings another batch of details about the accusations concerning LFI’s use of fictitious jobs and dodgy accounts involving Mediscop, his election campaigns and the company set up in the name of one of Mélenchon ‘s dire books, L’Ere du peuple (which announces that class struggle is henceforth absorbed into the fight between the People and the elite Caste): Soupçons d’emplois fictifs et comptes de campagne : les deux affaires qui visent Mélenchon (le Monde).
Mélenchon has responded to media reports of the charges and his hysterical reaction by calling on supporters to “« pourrir ” (which could be translated as ‘give a bollocking to’, bearing in the mind that its root meaning is “to rot”) critical journalists.
Two targets were singled out: Radio France’s France-Inter and the independent Mediapart, set up by the left-wing veteran Edwy Plenel (“Agression” et “ignominie” : Mélenchon s’en prend à Mediapart, qui révèle sa “relation extra-professionnelle” avec sa conseillère Sophia Chikirou “)
Attacking the media, some might say, has become something of an obsession:
With a tear in his eye LFI deputy Eric Coquerel, who has close ties with the exemplary media outlet, RT, tweeted yesterday. He warned of the far-right in Bresil, and fellow Media-hater Trump, and compared Melenchon to French socialist martyr , Jean Jaurès.
Coquerel omitted to mention that Jaurès, opposed to war between the European nations un the build up the Great War, was insulted for his alleged ‘pro-German’ sympathies, for which he was murdered by a far-right nationalist.
There are not many people around who would accuse the author of “le poison Allemande” of being pro-Bosch.
Still, he’s got this backing for his present stand:
There have been many admirers of La France insoumise in the English speaking world, Counterfire for one.
But few are as stalwart in defending Mélenchon as the US magazine Jacobin.
As this reaction to his latest troubles indicates.
Raided by the Machine. COLE STANGLER
17.1018.
Yesterday morning, French police raided the home of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The leftist leader was quick to point the blame at Emmanuel Macron.
……
If anything, this will energize the party’s base even further. Among Mélenchon’s many attributes, he has a powerful social media presence; of the 1 million people who like his page on Facebook and the 1.93 million who follow him on Twitter, a significant portion just witnessed their favorite politician humiliated at his own home.
Not everyone will feel the same; some will even think he went overboard with his reaction. But faced with the judicial offensive, Mélenchon’s own supporters will surely be fired up by the raids.
Unfortunately for this die-hard the opinion polls this week say that not only do 76% disapprove of this attitude but 51% of his voters in the Presidential election do so as well. His support now stands at a shrunken level. His
score has dropped by 7 percentage points since last month, with 22 percent of respondents approving of his job performance. Among hardcore backers — those who voted for him in round one of the presidential election — the level of support had fallen by 15 points.
Tough one…
Review: Revolution française. Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation. Sophie Pedder. Bloomsbury. 2018.
Review: Revolution française. Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation. Sophie Pedder. Bloomsbury. 2018.
Emmanuel Macron is an “anti-Trump”, pro-European and a “liberal internationalist” who unites the centre-left and the centre-right against the extremes. He is a “neo-progressive”, argues Sophie Pedder, whose ideas are “structured around the idea of individual progress for all.” Elected President in 2017, in a run off with the far-right Marine Le Pen, at 39 years old, Macron presented a “a message of hope.” His strategy was “both a means of remaking party politics and a response to the populist threat”. Their campaign laid claim to break the existing party duopoly, and sweep away the existing “political caste”, itself perhaps a “populist” message.
The Head of State’s party, La République en marche (LRM), commands 60% of the seats in France’s National Assembly. It is, like many new ‘parties’ of this millennium, including their rivals La France insoumise (LFI), is less a democratic organisation run by the members than a top-down run movement or ‘rally’. Macron, despite the Benalla affair, and the recent Cabinet resignations of ecology Minister Bernard Hulot and Minister of the Interior Gèrard Collomb, is the master of French politics. He has been, so far, able to carry out his programme. Protests, last year, against liberalising reform of labour legislation, and the railway service (SNCF), as well as of higher education, failed to have any impact.
Sophie Pedder is Paris bureau chief for the liberal (economically and politically), British weekly the Economist. Largely favourable to the President, the book is unlikely to win a favourable audience amongst those who dismiss Macron as, at best, a “social liberal”. This does not stop Revolution française from being a deft and informed account of Emmanuel Macron’s life and politics.
Modernisation.
Macron, writes Pedder, is a long-standing advocate of “modernisation”. France, from this standpoint, is burdened with regulations that stifle economic initiative. As a Minister of the Economy under Parti Socialiste President Hollande, his 2015 plans (Loi Macron) to loosen the rules on shop opening hours, and rigid legislation governing the ‘liberal professions’ (notaries, pharmacists) were partly thwarted. His Socialist colleagues were to blame, including the influential Mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, a moderate social democrat described as the “standard bearer of the Socialist left”.
This experience, Pedder states, led Macron to conclude that the existing party system kept France stuck in the past. A modernising regroupment needed, “to put together two-thirds of the Socialist Party, all of the centrists, and part of the centre-right. That would give us a pro-European market-friendly majority in favour of modernising the social model.” British readers will not fail to observe a parallel electoral logic with domestic ‘centrist’ projects, however tiny the audience for making the UK social system more ‘liberal’ is.
The achievement of that goal was partly due to good fortune. The “normal” Hollande discredited himself, both by his incontinent deprecation of colleagues revealed in Un président ne devrait pas dire ça (2006), and his causal deception of his partner Valerie Trierweiler. As his Presidential bid took off in 2017 his chief opponent on the right, François Fillon, became mired in allegations of financial misconduct. The Socialists chose the left-Green Benoît Hamon, without many allies beyond his own forces. With their political rivals in disarray Macron’s support snowballed. Socialists, centrists and the right, duly defected in his direction. The movement En marche soon picked up a large number of the professional politicians targeted above, and inspired a, largely middle class, army of volunteers to campaign for him door to door.
Centre Left Reconciled to the Market Economy.
Revolution française equally offers a readable account of Macron’s ideas. Unlike the Macron, un president philosophe (Brice Couturier. 2017) Peddar does not offer a weighty list of influences, from Hegel to Schumpeter. Instead she singles out the influence of Macron’s teacher, Paul Ricœur, his Protestant humanism, and “confidence in mankind” with a dose of Saint-Simon’s advocacy of technocratic progress. Above all, “His roots are on the progressive centre left that reconciled itself to the market economy.” At the same time, noting some of Macron’s verbal tics, she observes that, “his theoretical abstractions and grandiosity came across as pompous. His sentences were convoluted, meandering and went on for ever.” One could expand further on his grating anglicisms.
Will Macron, the “networking machine”, be able to change France? Has ‘liberal globalism’ found a champion who will step into the breach that has opened up after the failure of ‘third way’? Peddar signals the entrenched difficulties of a divided France, mass unemployment, those cast aside in the banlieue and “la France périperifeque”. Can Macron’s grand romantic mission turn this around?
The ‘nation’ is less important than the people who live in France. There are not many grounds for hope in the recent indications that the richest section of French society is the undoubted winner of the President’s tax reforms. (Les ultrariches, grands gagnants de la fiscalité Macron. Le Monde. 13.10.18). Weakening labour legislation to the point where wage negotiations can take place plant by plant, does not look so progressive from the position of workers in enterprises cut off from national union support. Local tax changes seem designed to weaken municipal finance, not strengthen decentralised initiative. While Macron has tried to stand up to Trump his efforts have few visible effects.
Defeat of the French left.
The French left has yet to recover from the catastrophic defeat of the governing socialists. Hamon was fated, in the words of former PS General Secretary, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis to get the minimal score of left-greens, 6,36 % (Chronique d’une débâcle 2017). Hamon now has his own party Génération.s. The PS has since seen more defections, this time to Jean-Luc Mélenchon La France insoumise. If LFI won a respectable vote of in the Presidential elections (fourth position and 19.58% for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in the first round) , and has, with its allies, 17 deputies, it is far, very far, from securing an alternative majority to Macron. It is unlikely this week’s pantomime response to police investigations into their funding will expand their audience and ‘federate’ the “People”. The left is now so splintered that up to 6 different lists will appear in next year’s European elections. It would appear, if one might say so from a distance, that a long-term war of position to regroup the left into some form of united front would be a better way of building an alternative to Macron that a head on war of manoeuvre. And, unlike LFI, it is quite possible to be a ‘pro-European’ radical leftist.
Mélenchon on Police Inquiry into La France insoumise’s funding: “La République, c’est moi!”
Mélenchon’s sound and Fury: what does it signify?
Investigations have been opened into allegations of violence and threats against Police agents after incidents during the search of the headquarters of La France insoumise on Tuesday (October 16th).
The case, which arose from allegations of fictitious jobs in the European Parliament (that is, diverting EU funds into the movement’s hands to pay party employees in France) and the other examining funding of Mélenchon’s French presidential campaign last year. , and the finance of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Presidential campaign of 2017, has created an unholy row.
France 24 reports,
The raids, part of a long-running investigation into the alleged misuse of European Parliament funds to pay party employees, took place at the offices of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) in central Paris and Mélenchon‘s private residence.
Shouting “Resistance!”, hundreds of supporters gathered outside the party’s headquarters to protest against the police action.
Police blocked Mélenchon from entering the premises as the far-left firebrand threatened to break down the door if he was not allowed in.
“Who gave you these orders?” he demanded a police officer blocking the entrance. “I am a parliamentarian!”
Amid the scuffle Mélenchon yelled, “I am the Republic.”
This was the “hallucinatory” scene that ensued,
La France insoumise issued a series of furious statements, stating that the inquiry originated in malicious complaints from the far-right, and the was motivated by President Macron’s wish to discredit his most serious rival (at – at most – around 25% of public support).
They have issued this video of the events claiming that there was a “will” to intimidate behind the actions.
Coup de force policier, judiciaire et politique
LFI asserts that the French president himself received funding (donations) that infringed laws regulating party finance.
Whatever the truth of these claims (and little can be ruled out in this murky world) Mélenchon’s barking response won the affection of the wits of the Internet.
Here is LFI’s own version of events:
Here is one of the countless parodies:
“You pour water on the tea-bag, you do not put the tea-bag in the water. Never!”
You can see more here, Pose ton Mélenchon.
Oddly not everybody sees the funny side of this. Nor have the media and political figures dismissed the unseemly display of anger as “just one of Mélenchon’s little tantrums”.
Showing that after this outburst he has not lost the ability to rub people up the wrong way Merluche yesterday mocked a journalist’s Provençal accent, in a fashion some might suggest was racist….
Mélenchon se moque de l’accent d’une journaliste avec un ton méprisant
The harshest criticism is not the he made a fool of himself but that the leader of the rally, La France insoumise failed to respect the authority of the Law of the Republic ignoring the dictum that, “nul n’est cense ignorer la loi”, (nobody should ignore the law). Or in plain language, no-one is above the law.
Le Monde’s Editorial today there is talk of his “deadly rage”.
The tone is, to say the least, severe.
Voilà un député, qui plus est président de groupe, qui conteste violemment, entrave et veut discréditer une procédure judiciaire, certes spectaculaire et déplaisante pour les intéressés, mais, quoi qu’il en dise, parfaitement conforme aux règles de la procédure.
Here is a member of Parliament, who is also the president of a Parliamentary group, who violently contests, obstructs a judicial procedure, and who wishes to discredit it,. This is certainly spectacular and unpleasant for those concerned, but, whatever he says, the procedures followed in this case are perfectly in accordance with the rules.
A widely shared view is that the leader of LFI has shown himself incapable of self-control, that he loses his nerve in the face of adversary, and is thus unsuited to hold any position of power.
Rumours that he will be appearing in a London pantomime with Ken Livingstone have not been confirmed.
This will no doubt interest those on the British left who brought the leader of LFI to speak at a meeting outside the recent Labour Cofnerence.
Perhaps a world tour, with Jacobin, is on the cards.
In short, his behaviour has obscured the real issues arising from this judicial operation, summarised here;
The row over Mélenchon has become sufficiently loud to reach even the homegrown English language press.
Allegations relate to staff payments and 2017 presidential campaign accounts
French police have questioned leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in connection with two funding probes after raids on his home and party headquarters this week.
The firebrand leader of the France Unbowed party, who has led opposition to President Emmanuel Macron’s economic reforms, was summoned to the headquarters of the anti-corruption bureau in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
Police are investigating allegations that he used EU funds for European parliament assistants to pay staff for work carried out in France. They are also looking into allegations of irregularities in his 2017 presidential campaign accounts.
The 67-year-old MP, who won 20% of the vote in the first round of last year’s presidential election, has denied any wrongdoing and claims he is the victim of a political witch-hunt.
He reacted furiously to the raids on his home and party headquarters on Tuesday, shouting at police officers, shoving a prosecutor and attempting to force open the door of his party’s offices during the search.
The former Socialist minister has been strongly criticised over his outburst, with members of Macron’s government and centre-right Republicans accusing him of seeking to intimidate public servants and acting as if he were above the law.
Mélenchon, who is famous for his tirades (Note, should have read, “famous for his tirades, full stop”) against globalisation, the EU and elites, admitted later that things “got heated” but said he had “no regrets”.
The Paris prosecutor’s office is investigating him and other party officials for “threats and acts of intimidation against judicial authorities” and “violence against people carrying out public duties”.
Mélenchon’s party has filed a counter-complaint alleging police violence.
French Socialist Party Splits: Emmanuel Maurel and his left leave.
Looking towards Mélenchon on “l’immigration” and “la question des frontières.”
This Friday France’s Parti Socialiste, (PS) which until 2017 under President François Hollande had a working majority in the country’s Parliament, left his historic HQ in the rue de Solférino near to the National Assembly for more modest premises just outside Paris in Ivry-sur-Seine.
In 2017 their candidate for the French Presidential election, Benoît Hamon, came 5th and won a tiny, 6,36% of the vote. Both before and after the contest a whole swathe of Socialists joined the victor, now President, Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche. In the legislative elections of that followed they had got only 7,5% of the national ballots, and 30 MPs.
Hamon left the PS and created his own, radical green left movement, Génération.s.
The former Prime Minister Manuel Valls went so far as to leave France and is now seeking office in Barcelona.
The present Macron PM, Edouard Philippe’s Cabinet counts a number of one time Socialist party figures, , such as the Minister of foreign affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, although the former PS Minister of the Interior, Gérard Collomb, has recently reigned.
Only 37 000 members (out of the already shrunken 42,300) took part in the vote for this year’s Parti Socialiste Congress.
Under their present General Secretary, Olivier Faure, the PS been unable to define a new strategy to fight back into a position of influence on the French left.
Now the face a new challenge.
The organisation has haemorrhaged again with the break away of one of their left-wing leaders, the MEP Emmanuel Maurel who ran the party current, Maintenant La Gauche which obtained 18.8% of the the ballots in internal PS elections earlier this year.
Emmanuel Maurel : « Ce n’est pas un départ du PS, c’est une scission » reports Le Monde today.
In announcing that the Parti Socialiste no longer corresponds to his idea of socialism Maurel stated that hundreds of local lay office holders and local councillors, as well as the senator for Paris, Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, would join him. Henceforth Maruel, whose socialism includes hostility to ‘no borders’ is looking in the direction of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France insoumise.
An English version of some of this text is given here: Emmanuel Maurel: “It’s not a departure from the PS, it’s a split”
There is a report in English on this site: THE MEP EMMANUEL MAUREL LEAVES THE PS.
Maurel’s politics.
Maurel comes from the “Poperian” tendency within the Parti Socialiste. This current, led in the 1970s by Jean Poperen (1925-1997), embodied, in some eyes, a kind of statist Marxism embedded in the French republican tradition.
Others, more favourable to Poperon, would point to his break with the French Communist Party and activism within both a ‘class struggle’ tradition and leading role in the decidedly non-statist Parti socialiste unifié (PSU).
Le Monde paints Maurel in terms which come largely from the first side of Poperon, “du marxisme et de la tradition jacobine” wedded to the principle of laïcité (Ancienne figure du PS, Emmanuel Maurel veut incarner un « socialisme décomplexé »)
Putting this aspects together we get a “antilibérale, écologiste, républicaine” supporter of “socialisme décomplexé”, that is, an anti-economic liberal, green, republican unfeigned socialist.
While it is hard to dislike somebody who admires Stendhal’s la Chartreuse de Parme and Baudelaire, there is a distinct ‘Euro-sceptic’ strain in Maurel. (10 choses à savoir sur Emmanuel Maurel).
Recently he declared, “Je suis pour une politique de contrôle des flux migratoires, nous ne sommes pas des “no borders”. La gauche ne doit pas avoir honte de parler de nation, de frontière, de laïcité. On ne va pas laisser ça à la droite et à l’extrême droite. »(Le Monde 25.8.18) I am for the control of the the migratory flows, we are not backers of ‘no borders’. The left should not be ashamed to talk of the Nation, of Borders, and of Secularism (in the French sense, of ” laïcité’). We should not let these issues to the Right and the Far-Right.
This would put him in the line of the nationalist and sovereigntist left represented by the German Aufstehen and Sahra Wagenknecht
Maurel also seems to think well of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France insoumise (LFI) (Emmanuel Maurel quitte le PS : une double bonne nouvelle pour les « insoumis »).
Stating that his first steps are to create a grouping with his friends in the “ gauche républicaine” one of the main themes aligning him with LFI is not ‘socialism’ but “l’immigration” and “la question des frontières.”
The central objective today, he declares is to prepare a new Front Populaire of the 21st century, “Notre objectif est de préparer le Front populaire du XXIe siècle») in which La France insoumisme has a key part to play. (Libération).
He will be on the LFI lists for next year’s European elections.
Whether he will accept the Leadership of the, er Leader, yes, the Leader, of La France insoumise, today’s Maurice Thorez and Léon Blum combined, is not at all certain.
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See also: Valls, Hamon, Maurel, Lienemann… La fuite des ténors du PS se poursuit
Mélenchon’s Mates Biff Back.
“They nourish national vanity and the love of supremacy by force. “We alone,” they say, each behind his shelter, “we alone are the guardians of courage and loyalty, of ability and good taste!” Out of the greatness and richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism–which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred–out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and suffocation of armed peace.”
Under Fire: The Story of a Squad, by Henri Barbusse, 1917.
The Left Should Welcome Mélenchon
Liberals want to smear Jean-Luc Mélenchon as a xenophobe. In fact, they fear his potential to unite the oppressed.
This article contains the following, which some may consider incredibly patronising, even for a graduate of Science-Po a place many consider the homeland of most patronising arrogant gits on the planet:
Mélenchon’s patriotic tones may sound odd to British ears (as, indeed, may those of Bernie Sanders or Pablo Iglesias). But the Resistance, the Revolution, and the Commune figure far larger in French public life than the Chartists or Diggers in Britain. The Left’s own French-republican tradition owes not (as Dan tells us) to some desire to deny that Vichyite Nazi-collaborators were indeed French, or that France has committed colonial crimes, but the attempt to marginalize chauvinist narratives of French identity.
Historically, this has led to many sins of omission. And yes, Mélenchon should be scrutinized for his failings just like anyone else. But it is mean spirited and not a little bit silly to judge France Insoumise, or its leader, by assembling a series of clipped quotes and assertions of guilt by association. Was Jeremy Corbyn not himself subject to such a campaign, just a fortnight ago? I don’t agree with everything that Jean-Luc (or Jeremy) says either. But a politics of solidarity starts from the future we want to build in common.
Reponse
Thursday 27 September 2018, by
Worse still, in order to justify his refusal of a real opening of borders, Jean-Luc Mélenchon uses the argument of the use of immigration, by the bourgeoisie, “to put pressure on wages and social gains” [9]. That some employers and politicians instrumentalize immigration to reinforce the logic of exploitation is undeniable. But to infer that immigration is “organized by the free trade treaties” [10] in order to reduce wages and grind down social gains, there is a step… that it is difficult to take. Because it is not just a question of confusion between a windfall effect and an organized policy, which we will come back to, but of the legitimization of the idea of a de facto competition between French and foreign workers and, therefore, the questioning, whether voluntary or not, of the possibility of jointly fighting against the employers. However, the fight against the pressure of capitalists determined to increase, at all costs, their profit rates, certainly does not involve challenging, even indirectly, migratory phenomena (“to say that (the waves of immigration) can exert a downward on pressure on wages and be profitable for the employer is not a completely absurd reasoning”) [11] but only challenging… the capitalist system itself, and the frantic race for profit. Besides, all things being equal, we seem to be hearing the arguments of some trade unionists at the beginning of the 20th century, according to which the entry of women, less qualified than men, into the labour market, would be used by the employers to lower wages…
