The publication this week of A book about the way Jean Luc Mélechon governs the leftist party France insumisa (LFI) has generated a intense controversy in France among those who accuse the work of defamation and who see their opinion reinforced about the vehement political leader.
‘La Meute’ (La pack) has been written by journalists Charlotte Belaïch and Olivier Pérou, respectively of the newspapers Liberation there the world (Two progressive publications), which interviewed more than two hundred people for two years to review the history of LFI.
These formation, which symbolizes the French radical left was created by Mélenchon in 2016, who left the Socialist Party in 2008 before founding the ephemeral left party (2009-12) and then launching LFI.
The book describes a Pyramidal and courtly internal operation, With frequent purges, where Telegram discussion groups serve, not only to communicate, but to detect and silence critical voices.
One of the most remarkable episodes took place when the new LFI address was decided, in December 2022, in the course of a meeting without internal vote and the one that the leaders considered critical with Mélenchon were not summoned, who learned of everything by the press.
In addition, several of them were separated from the candidacies to the early elections of 2024, although a handful of the excluded managed to keep his seat against ‘official’ candidates of LFI, such as Alexis Corbière or François Ruffin.
The appearance of the book, last Wednesday, has resulted since then to a Long battle of interviews, gatherings and statements between critics or faithful of Mélenchonthat at 73 he considers aspiring for the fourth time to the presidency in the elections of 2027.
“Mélenchon asks for blind devotion”
“Mélenchon does not ask only group discipline and absolute loyalty, but Blind devotion. Who doubts, betrayed, “summarized Raquel Garrido, daughter of Chilean refugees, deputy between 2022-24 and one of the retaliated figures.
Another of the figures excluded from the direction, the deputy Clémentine Autain, who left the game in July last year, denounced “A virilist and intimidation culture”in which “strategic debates do not close democratically.”
The president of the LFI parliamentary group, Mathilde Panot, described the book as a Collection of “gossip” and “lies”and said that the party she knows “does not correspond at all to what the book says.”
To the fray was added the general secretary of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, who in some statements considered LFI as “a sect dominated by a couple”, in relation to Mélenchon and her partner, the deputy by Paris Sophia Chikirou.
LFI is, together with the Socialist, Communist and Green parties, one of the four members of the fragile Left Alliance arising after the legislative of 2022 (and renewed in 2024) to face the macronism and the extreme right.
However, the other partners look uneasy, Mélenchon’s desire to dominate the space on the left. Roussel, who has already complained in the past of the personality of the leader in the shadow of LFI, made clear this week that Mélenchon “is not a good candidate” for the presidential presidentials of 2027.
‘The Meute’ also points out how Mélenchon has minimized the importance of the resurgence of anti -Semitic incidents in France in recent years, but especially following the conflict in Gaza, something that he considers “residual.”
The controversy was exacerbated when Alain Jakubowicz, lawyer and former president of the International League against racism and anti -Semitism (Liquea) comes to compare Mélenchon with Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany.
The BFMTV television channel, the scene of that comparison, quickly condemned the statement, while Mélenchon announced the presentation of a complaint complaint.
The current coordinator of LFI, Manuel Bompard, a deputy of Mélenchon’s total trust, borrowed the title of the book to denounce “the media pack” that has been launched on the party these days, according to him with clear objectives of political demonization.
