Members of La France Insoumise call for “bringing down Emmanuel Macron”. Is it an image or a real project? Even within Nupes, some are wondering about LFI’s intentions. Jean-Rémi Baudot’s political brief
Among the partners of La France insoumise, there are a certain number who ask themselves questions: what should we really think of the revolutionary discourse advocated by Jean-Luc Melenchon and his relatives? In the tense context of retreats, by a radical discourse, how far do they encourage tensions? Are they questioning our institutions as the Elysée accuses them?
“Mélenchon wants the country to burn, he wants to overthrow Macron”: this is what an environmentalist thinks he knows. “Overturn”, “drop”, “drop”. We regularly find this vocabulary in the mouths of the rebellious. Does that mean redesign? Dissolution? Resignation? When asked, Manuel Bompard, coordinator of France insoumise, answers: “Everything in its time”. A response, with a smile, as if to better maintain the ambiguity between a call for uprising and respect for institutions.
This ambiguity is strategic. It creates doubt about the real intentions of the rebels, but above all it is a way of mobilizing and channeling anger. This touches on the DNA of left-wing populism.
“Conflict everything”, theory claimed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon
In a 2012 speech, Jean-Luc Mélenchon already called for “to create conflict (…) to transform a rebellious people into a revolutionary people”. But in the same speech, he praised democracy and elections. A sort of at the same time… Mélenchon who on Tuesday, moreover, called for calm.
An LFI MP assumes: “Our strategy is to take power.” Another states: “The revolution is only a metaphor”. Officially, dissolution is therefore the solution sought… Unless… the people really rise up! No elected LFI contacted denounces the possibility of a popular uprising. Could this be the hidden project? Encourage chaos to bring down the system? Finally set up this Sixth Republic?
A leader of the Socialist Party laughs: “The rebels indulge themselves with a revolutionary speech but none would be ready to take the Winter Palace”. A reference to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In politics, ambiguity is also sometimes a powerful argument…