Protests in France | “Left destabilization agenda”

Photo: AFP/Kiran Ridley October 17th will go down as a signal in France's recent history, as a symbol of the right-wing liberal government's loss of control and as the low point of the nine and a half years under head of state Emmanuel Macron. A month after the student protests began, at least 550,000 peaceful demonstrators were on the streets across the country, but images of the street battles in Paris and the burning town hall in Limoges went around the world. The whole of France is discussing how the devastation and looting could have happened. Apparently the police authorities had vastly underestimated the extent of the protest - whether this was intentional remains speculation. A rare admission of failure came from Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, who submitted his resignation to Macron - but he summarily refused.

Sébastien Lecornu brought out the big guns in the National Assembly this week: "We are dealing with a destabilization agenda of the radical left-wing extremists and the ultra-left," said the French Prime Minister, "they want to poison the presidential election." This refers to the left-wing movement party La France insoumise (Indomitable France, LFI) and its presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. They are mentioned in the same breath as militant “ultra-leftists” who were allegedly involved in the violent excesses.

The president took a similar approach in his televised address to the population: All those who, six months before the presidential election, "declare that there is nothing more urgent than taking to the streets, demonstrating, creating disorder, have only one goal: to damage the republic," he claimed. He didn't make a single concession to the protesters either.

Security experts point out that the left-wing extremist scene is too small to cause violence on this scale - up to 3,000 shops across the country are said to have been destroyed and looted. A 34-year-old carpenter, according to the newspaper Le Monde, a "militant ecologist" was arrested as the suspected participant in the arson at the Limoges town hall.

Prime Minister Lecornu had previously asked the LFI to "choose a camp, either that of the Republic and the law enforcement forces or that of the rioters." The movement plays an important role in the “left-wing extremist milieu in which people and groups clearly rely on violence.” This has been going on since the school and student movement began a month ago. “When will you give an account of the fact that you go to the high school students to incite them to commit acts of violence?” Interior Minister Nuñez soon addressed Mélenchon & Co.

The investigative news portal "Mediapart", however, reported that the Interior Ministry had instructed the domestic secret service to hold LFI responsible for the unrest. On October 18, a secret service commissioner complained internally that “we are expressly asked to write that the LFI is behind the movement, even though the general opinion of the secret service is that this is objectively false.” Even a leading police unionist could not see what the “Indomitables” had to do with the security policy “fiasco” of the 17th.

While the government wants to use this narrative to distract from its own failures, LFI is also being attacked from further to the right: Jordan Bardella from the right-wing extremist Rassemblement National (National Rally Party, RN) insulted them as "chaos professionals", while his ally Éric Ciotti sees a "red fascism" at work. Mélenchon's competitor Bruno Retailleau and Senate President Gérard Larcher from the Republicans even brought up an LFI ban.

In front of his mostly young followers, Jean-Luc Mélenchon professed nonviolence: "If you distance yourself from the methods of struggle, that does not mean that you distance yourself from the fight." Bally Bagayoko, the popular LFI mayor of Saint-Denis, who threw himself between protesting students and violent police officers in a scene that went viral, declared in front of a high school: "Under certain circumstances, violence can be legitimate" - perhaps not particularly in this charged context clever statement.

In view of the violent attacks against LFI, socialists, greens and communists expressed their solidarity with the “unyielding”. Even the Social Democratic presidential candidate Raphaël Glucksmann, who categorically rules out working with Mélenchon, held back. LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard is calm and confident: "The extent of the violence that falls on us is proportional to our chances of coming to power."

In any case, the big winner of October 17th is Marine Le Pen. The RN presidential candidate presents herself as a state-supporting politician who promises order: "We are experiencing a deep crisis of trust and authority," she explained. A new survey sees it at up to 38 percent in the first round of voting, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon is at 20 percent.

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