Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, at a rally in Lille, France, during the European election campaign, April 18, 2024.

It’s a slow poison, distilled drop by drop, that has, over the months, disrupted the left, and more so in the run-up to the parliamentary elections on June 30 and July 7. In the express campaign, accusations of anti-Semitism against the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI) are damaging the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance formed by LFI, the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists. More than a century after the Dreyfus affair erupted in 1894, during which the left took up the fight against anti-Semitism, its leaders are now on the defensive, forced to justify themselves. “Three of my great-grandparents died in the camps, and both my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Believe me, I wouldn’t support the Nouveau Front Populaire if I had the slightest doubt that there was a form of anti-Semitism on that side,” said Communist Senator Ian Brossat, on CNews, on June 26.

The new left-wing alliance has taken hits because of several problematic remarks by LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7. The comments have reactivated accusations of anti-Semitism against him.

On April 18, at a rally in Lille during the European election campaign, the LFI leader, for example, drew a parallel between the president of the University of Lille and the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. The reference to the man in charge of the logistics of the Nazi regime’s Final Solution “trivializes the Holocaust,” said the Action Network Against anti-Semitism and All Forms of Racism, a group of left-wing citizens. On June 2, Mélenchon wrote on his blog that “anti-Semitism remains residual in France,” downplaying a scourge that has exploded since October 7. A new wave of criticism came.

‘Symptom of a major crisis’

Each time he has been asked to explain himself, Mélenchon has vigorously denied making “anti-Jewish” remarks, as his opponents have denounced. “I have nothing to do with racism, I have nothing to do with anti-Semitism, that’s enough now,” he said on France 5 on June 22. “All this is a pretext to say that La France Insoumise is an anti-Semitic organization, so as to encourage the Rassemblement National vote.”

It is this context that has forced the left-wing parties, in their new coalition, to examine their consciences and send positive signals to confused voters. Raphaël Glucksmann, who was the Socialists’ lead candidate in the European elections on June 9, was the victim of fierce anti-Semitic attacks during the campaign. He made a common position on anti-Semitism one of the conditions of his support for the Nouveau Front Populaire. “We talked about it because there was a problem with anti-Semitism being downplayed,” he told Le Monde on the sidelines of a trip to Marseille on June 19. “In French history, when the ‘Jewish question’ comes back into the public debate, it’s a symptom of a major crisis in the Republic,” said Christian Picquet, a member of the executive committee of the French Communist Party (PCF), who was at the heart of these left-wing party discussions.

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