The Huma Festival is also the meeting place for the left and in the aisles of the festival, activists question the national secretary of the PCF on his choice to present a candidate in the European elections.
Hand on the shoulder and kisses in the aisles, Fabien Roussel wants to show that he loves people. “You’re doing good ?” In a white polo shirt, the national secretary of the Communist Party takes selfies and plays caring father with young people: “We’re lucky, the weather is nice. Have fun! Love yourself! Enjoy!” The Huma Festival – organized by the newspaper Humanity – has been in full swing since the morning of Friday September 15 at the Plessis-Pâté military base, in Essonne. A party where the national secretary of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, goes it alone for the start of the school year.
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But in the aisles, activists are waiting for him around the corner. They want a union of the left with the Europeans, which the deputy from the North refuses. A young environmentalist takes advantage of a press lunch to challenge him while he is at the table: “Our generation, we have nothing to do with your identity stories of ‘on this or that proposition, we do not agree’ while on the other hand, we have a risk of the extreme right which is as strong. And history will judge the communists on you, if in 2027 we have Marine Le Pen who is president.”
Fabien Roussel defends himself: “It is first of all around ideas that we must come together. However, we do not have the same ones, I regret that. We do not have the same priorities for France.” “Is the fight against the far right a priority?”says one of the young people who are pushed towards the exit.
An attitude and little sentences that are annoying
As if to gain some height and to move away from the divisions that animate the left, Fabien Roussel puts a layer on his call to rebel against rising prices: “I’m like the French, I hear what they tell me. And I want the government to hear what’s happening in the country. There’s a pot boiling and it’s going to explode. You act or you don’t “It’s us who act, and that’s what I wanted to say. I understand well that it moves them because they are afraid.”
“They are afraid that things will explode. They feel that things are boiling in the country. And I don’t want it to explode. I want things to move.”
Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the PCFat franceinfo
A call to mobilize in front of the prefectures which does not shock the Huma festival. It’s about the rest – the attitude, the little sentences – that bothers Virgile and Tom, two left-wing activists who vote LFI: “It pisses me off to see the candidates who can represent me go after the extreme right. This very populist aspect that he has, when he arrives on a TV set. When he speaks of ‘France merguez’, I find that a bit limited. There is a way of doing it. And for example, François Rufin doesn’t do it in the same way at all and in a much less ambiguous way.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon will be part of the party Friday evening. The rebellious leader who will do everything, certainly to avoid meeting his main adversary within the Nupes, Fabien Roussel.
Victoria Koussa’s report at the Huma Festival