Mélenchon and his pyromaniac firefighters: “Tear down the citadel and the old world”

The smell of burning and the scent of victory. High school riots and the first signs of political revolution. The Fifth Republic is under attack, and Pascal Bruckner, writing in *Le Figaro*, speaks of a ‘silent coup d’état’. “We will sweep away the old world,” Clémence Guetté, Vice-President of the National Assembly and a leader of France insoumise, had just said. “Abattez la citadelle.” Tear down the citadel. So said Jean-Luc Mélenchon at the Humanité festival. The Belgian philosopher who inspires the insoumise, Chantal Mouffe, theorises “antagonistic democracy”. The message resonates with young people who chant “Acab” (all cops are bastards) at demonstrations. Would Mélenchon adopt the slogan? “It depends on the day and the hour,” he tells Le Monde, amused. And what about the police officers injured in the attacks? “That’s just part and parcel of the job,” Mélenchon cuts short. 

According to Mélenchon, Paris is like Soweto in June 1976, when black students protested against the introduction of Afrikaans as an official language of instruction and the crackdown was brutal. To disperse the crowd, the police opened fire, causing several deaths. In a little-known book, À la conquête du chaos (1991, Denoël), Mélenchon explained the need for a climate of ‘permanent insurrection’. In another book, Le Choix de l’insoumission (2016, Seuil), the former Lambertist asserted that in radical socialism there is “a hesitation between the path of the barricades and the path of the ballot box”.

While La France insoumise may not have been the driving force behind the movement that has been throwing the country into turmoil for the past three weeks, it is undoubtedly its amplifier, just as it was for Nuit debout, the Yellow Vests three years later and the urban riots following Nahel’s death. And yesterday, MEP Rima Hassan stood trial for “glorifying terrorism”, after she appeared on social media to justify an attack at Lod Airport in Israel.

“Violence can be legitimate”, according to Bally Bagayoko (the ‘Insoumise’ mayor of Saint-Denis). The statement was made during the early days of the secondary school blockades. Bagayoko clarified that he disapproved of violence, but did not retract the statement, which led to the opening of a judicial investigation into incitement. As a staunch communist by training, the mayor – a symbol of the riots – employs an old strategy: political violence is never claimed as such; it is always presented as a response and a means of expression for the weak in the face of the powerful.

“In the past, left-wing mayors – often communists – played a role in maintaining social order during demonstrations, explaining to young people the limits they must not cross,” Thibaut Tellier, a historian specialising in the banlieues, told Le Point yesterday. “Today, an elected representative – the mayor of Saint-Denis – tells young people that violence is legitimate.” And the countless scenes of looting and arson have given the right-wing an opportunity to denounce their opponent’s “incendiary strategy”, with Édouard Philippe’s centrists also accusing him of “plunging the country into chaos”. In Place Bellecour in Lyon, the city’s Green mayor, Grégory Doucet, was booed by passers-by who accused him of having “organised (the destruction) with La France Insoumise”.

“Le manifestazioni prendono la forma che vogliono, non andremo a fare i pompieri” secondo Antoine Léaument (deputato della France insoumise). “It is not in the neighbourhoods that people should be demonstrating, but rather at the Élysée,” said David Guiraud (a former MP and now mayor of Roubaix), who also explained that “we come in peace, but we are not calling for calm”. “Louis XVI? We beheaded him. Macron? We can do it again!”, according to regional councillor Christophe Prudhomme. From Place de la République, Bettina Zourli, a professor of sociology at the University of Rennes and a France Insoumise activist, welcomed the violence and looting in Paris. Left-wing MPs paid tribute to Maximilien de Robespierre with a trip to Arras, the birthplace of ‘the Incorruptible’.

MP Antoine Léaument pays tribute to Robespierre every 28 July, the anniversary of his death. As if that were not enough, he quotes Saint-Just: ‘The only serious adversary of a people is its government’. This week’s fire at Limoges Town Hall cannot help but bring to mind the burning of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris by the Communards in 1871. To understand Mélenchon’s vision and the nature of the political line he sets for his supporters, one must listen to his speech, delivered one day in 2019 in the National Assembly before a sparsely attended chamber: “I am the heir, as everyone knows, to Robespierre, to whom I am not related. I am the heir to Marx, whom I never knew. And so on. We choose our own past. And even the memory you believe you possess is a reconstruction. And history, if it is a science, establishes no certainties; otherwise, it would not be a science. Let us embrace the splendour of relativism. And this is precisely what I am championing at this very moment.” How far will they go before May? The dangerous aspect is not only their short-term patronage, but the fruit of their long-term sowing.