Why the system and the mainstream media have an interest in demonizing Jean-Luc Mélenchon
If the first thing to remember from the second round of the French legislative elections is the rejection of the RN by two-thirds of the French electorate, the second is undoubtedly the unexpected victory of the New Popular Front, which now constitutes the first bloc within the National Assembly with 182 deputies. Even if the New Popular Front bloc does not benefit from an absolute majority and will be called upon in the best case scenario to compromise with the other democratic forces represented in the Assembly to pass the projects that are close to its heart, this is enough to cast fear within the system and its media extensions.
The objective sought is the implosion of the New Popular Front by sidelining the LFI. At the heart of this wicked political maneuver is the demonization of the leader of the LFI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The question is of crucial political importance for the coming months or even years that separate us from the presidential deadline of 2027.
The fallacious accusation of “anti-Semitism”
For those who follow what is being said in the mainstream media, it is self-evident: Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the devil incarnate and with him all those within the LFI who have not publicly disavowed him. The reasons that explain the demonization of the LFI and its leader can be summed up in one word: “anti-Semitism”. The accusation, as infamous as it may be, is closer to defamation than anything else. For the simple reason that “anti-Semitism” is not only something morally reprehensible but constitutes, under French law, an offense that is subject to criminal prosecution. However, no such prosecution has been brought against Jean-Luc Mélenchon or against other leaders of the LFI.
It is clear. The LFI and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon are accused of “anti-Semitism” because of their courageous positions regarding what is happening in Gaza. Calling a spade a spade by describing what is happening in Gaza as a war of extermination and calling for the cessation of this war and respect for the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people in accordance with international law is clearly enough to pin the infamous accusation of “anti-Semitism” on them.
The defamatory nature of the accusations made against Jean-Luc Mélenchon is all the more clear since the latter has never publicly made any remarks that could attest to an anti-Zionist position. Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounces the Israeli war and colonization and speaks out for the two-state solution, which in no way calls into question the Zionist project of creating a “Jewish national home” on part of the land of Palestine. As a reminder, there are Jewish civic and political movements in the world, including in Israel, that express more radical positions on the subject than those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the LFI.
You only have to compare what is said in some Israeli and American media and what is said in the French media to realize that in France we are more royalist than the king. The greatest columnist of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, did not mince his words in imputing to the Netanyahu government the responsibility for what risks happening to the State of Israel. Not a day goes by without the Israeli left-wing daily Haaretz publishes an alarming article on the dangers that the policies of Netanyahu’s right-wing government pose to the State of Israel. More recently, the popular Israeli daily Maariv released a report concluding that after nine months of war, no alternative to Hamas in Gaza is realistic.
In any case, it is astonishing and incomprehensible that an international political issue – as loaded with symbolic meaning as it is, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict undoubtedly is – could constitute such a divisive issue in the French political landscape. Between the two rounds, Raphaël Glucksmann grew by speaking out against those who wanted to confine him to such a narrow choice and by affirming that he was above all a French citizen with republican and democratic convictions. It is in this capacity that he called for a blockade against the RN by allying himself with the LFI within the NFP. Would he have done so if he was deep down convinced that Jean-Luc Mélenchon was truly “anti-Semitic”?
The same reasoning can be applied to President Macron and his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal who called between the two rounds to block the RN, even if it meant withdrawing in favor of the candidates of the New Popular Front in many three-way races, even if the presidential camp ultimately benefited more in the second round from the transfer of votes from left-wing voters.
The real reasons for the demonization of Jean-Luc Mélenchon
So how can we explain the delirious campaign against the LFI and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in these conditions? If the infamous accusation of “anti-Semitism” is so unfounded, we must look elsewhere for the motives for such a mendacious campaign. The mainstream media and the intellectuals and politicians invited onto the sets to spread their hatred against Jean-Luc Mélenchon are not Samaritans. They are on official duty. To guess what makes these media dance, you just have to know who pays them.
Behind the mainstream media that spew their hatred against the LFI and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon every day, there is a system that handles thousands of billions of euros with a vertical and horizontal organization made up of transnational financial holdings and supranational and national administrations with sprawling ramifications at all levels of society. In old democracies, the system can accommodate the free competition of programs and political parties in the context of electoral competitions, provided that all this does not compromise the fundamental balances of the system.
In the context of the Fifth Republic, the powers of the President of the Republic are important and this is why the choice of the person who should occupy this position is decisive. It is not said that Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s political profile is likely to reassure the centers of the system. Curiously, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is as unpopular within the media in the pay of the system as he is popular within French society and more particularly within the working classes.
The program of the New Popular Front can only appeal to the broad popular classes who have been crushed in recent years by the liberal reforms of the Macron era. While this program will have difficulty getting through an Assembly in which the NFP does not have an absolute majority, it remains that it can unite broad popular classes around the personality who embodies it in the most beautiful way during the next presidential election if in the meantime Macron and his advisors do not hasten the burial of the Fifth Republic in favor of a new parliamentary republic in which the president of the republic will no longer have the same powers.
If things remain as they are, the next presidential election could be a headache for the system’s supporters. If he is not disqualified in advance as part of some unknown cabal, it is hard to see who could compete with Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round among the potential candidates that the system is preparing to endorse, like Gabriel Attal or Gerald Darmanin.
The question is all the more worthy of being asked since Jean-Luc Mélenchon appears today as the one who has taught the Left to win again, including in a proportion that has thwarted the predictions of the polling institutes. The performance is all the more meritorious since it occurs in a context marked by a brutal attempt to liquidate the Left under the guise of overcoming the left-right divide now considered archaic. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s qualities as an orator and peerless tribune have something to do with this remarkable performance, but far from being borrowed as is the case with many politicians, his rhetorical qualities are always backed by strong arguments in the service of unambiguous republican and social convictions.
Better still, the presence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the second round of the 2027 presidential election would not be at all incongruous if the guardians of the temple did not start working right now to block his path. Indeed, let us imagine for a single moment Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the second round against Marine Le Pen. What will be the attitude of the system and its priests in such a case?
It has been a long time since destiny has given us such an epic rendezvous in the history of the Fifth Republic. The reconciliation of national sovereignty and popular sovereignty in order to achieve the aspiration of the multitude for shared prosperity and peace in Europe and the world is neither a utopia nor the chaos that the spokesmen of international finance and the European Commission predict for us.
But what Jean-Luc Mélenchon embodies above all, in these uncertain times where the hope of peaceful living together rubs shoulders with calls for hatred and exclusion, is above all the reconciliation of humanism and socialism, dear to Jean Jaurès, in a surge of generosity that welcomes the new popular forces coming from elsewhere but which remain, beyond their particularities, carnally attached to the French way of life, whatever the sirens of discord say.
This is enough for the system and its media to try by all means – including defamation – to demonize Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Will they succeed? It is up to the popular forces that blocked the RN’s path and propelled the NFP to the forefront on this memorable July 7 to deny them and continue their united mobilization so that the last word goes to the people.
