Last week, New Popular Front (NFP) head Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s vacation home in a village in the Loiret region of France was broken into and sprayed with graffiti by fascists.
The Parti de l’égalité socialiste condemns the break-in and the fascist threats against Mélenchon. The PES has well documented political differences with Mélenchon’s anti-Trotskyist populism and the role he played in demobilizing the workers during the struggle against pension cuts last year and in the July 2024 elections. However, the PES defends Mélenchon against fascist threats and aggression which aim through him to intimidate all left-wing opposition in the working class.
The Montargis public prosecutor gave a report on December 17 with some details on an investigation assigned to the Bellegarde military police. The mayor of Lombreuil had found parts of the grill work in Mélenchon’s residence had been cut and a window opened. According to Orléans regional public television, the house had been seriously vandalized: “The entrance to the property had been cut, military police found a window opened through which the neofascists likely entered, and lots of graffiti, that police called ‘insulting’ and ‘dishonoring’, targeting Mélenchon.”
Mélenchon learned of the attack on his house through friends watching the TV news and said that the graffiti included Nazi swastikas and said, “We will find you,” “Long Live Marine [Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally]”, or “F*ck Arabs.” He tweeted his thanks to those who had alerted him and the press: “Thanks to comrades watching television who warned me of the attack on my house in the Loiret. I fear for my books. To the media, please do not worsen the danger I face.”
Mélenchon, the leader of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, said these intimidations “resemble the language, the anonymous flyers, the phone calls, the aggressions we have had to face over the last year. … It recalls the vocabulary of the racists who attack our positions against the Gaza genocide. Yes, the attack is political, otherwise why would there be these slogans?” He added, “Over the last year we have felt we are protected neither by the courts, nor by police. Everything ends in the quicksand of nothingness or mistrials, in 9 cases out of 10.”
Olivier Faure, the head of the big business Socialist Party, denounced it as an “intolerable attack,” while the right-wing mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, said “all that is unforgivable and serious.” Marine Le Pen, mentioned in the graffiti, felt obliged to react, saying, “Such actions must face exemplary condemnation. I hope everything will be done to find those guilty of these very cowardly acts, and I give my support to Mr Mélenchon who is today a victim of them.”
The fascist threats against Mélenchon are aimed not only at him but also at the millions of his voters among workers and youth who had hoped for a left-wing, social and anti-war policy. In both of the last two presidential elections, he received over 7 million votes. But fascist gangs systematically attack anything identified as “left” to try to intimidate workers and youth opposed to the policies of austerity and imperialist war demanded by the financial aristocracy.
In past times, fascist violence has targeted allies of Mélenchon,such as former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Anonymous generals threatened to mutiny if he was elected prime minister, while British soldiers were then filmed shooting live ammunition at pictures of Corbyn’s head.
In 2021, during the Spanish regional elections, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias received a letter with four bullets and death threats. The investigation confirmed that the bullets came from a Cetme assault rifle, a weapon that has been used for decades by the Spanish army and state security forces.
The danger of fascist violence, far from fading away, is escalating massively. After the election victory in the United States of Donald Trump, who has threatened to kill Marxists and socialists, the ruling classes are accelerating their turn towards the far right, reinforcing those who attacked Mélenchon. They are getting a green light to continue their intimidation campaign, as capitalist governments fear eruptions of working class opposition to imperialist war abroad and class war at home.
Against fascist violence encouraged by state policy, the working class must build an independent political movement against imperialist war and social reaction, based on a socialist perspective against the parties of the capitalist ruling class, whose shock troops are the fascist gangs.