Those who consider themselves “native French” represent a “serious problem” for social cohesion, far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon declared as he laid out the vision for the “New Popular Front” alliance in the snap legislative election called by President Emmanuel Macron.
Former French presidential candidate, leader of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party and effective head of the New Popular Front leftist election alliance, Jean-Luc Mélenchon hailed the demographic changes in his country while attacking the native population of France in a speech to supporters on Friday.
“When I was born, one in ten French people had a foreign grandparent, now it’s one in four. Consequently, those who call themselves native French pose a serious problem to the cohesion of society,” he said in comments reported by Le Journal du Dimanche.
“In the Paris region, there are thirteen million of us, including at least eight million immigrants: Corsicans, Bretons, Malians, Algerians, Moroccans… Everyone was torn from the environment from which their parents or grandparents came and put against the wall to build a society.”
The leftist leader went on to call for the “re-foundation of France”, explaining: “Ransacked by liberal policies, trashed by racism, trashed by divisions, it is this new France that we must have in mind when we undertake the policy of the New Popular Front.”
The comments drew swift pushback from nationalist figures, including former presidential candidate and leader of the populist Reconquête (Reconquest) party, Éric Zemmour.
“Let Mélenchon understand: the French were here a thousand years ago, they will remain here for another thousand years and we will do everything to prevent their replacement by his new people,” Zemmour said.
Mélenchon, a 72-year-old Morocco-born Spanish-heritage far-left politician who is often compared to Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn or America’s Bernie Sanders, is a controversial figure in France, with many accusing him of downplaying antisemitism and courting radical Islamist elements in the country, notably in the wake of the October 7th Hamas terror attacks on Israel which saw over 1,200 innocent people slaughtered and hundreds taken captive by jihadists.
Nevertheless, Mélenchon was able to convince relatively moderate left-wing figures in the Socialists, the green Les Écologists party, and the French Communist Party, to join his La France Insoumise in an election pact to prevent the anti-mass migration National Rally party of Marine Le Pen from taking power in the National Assembly in the upcoming snap elections.
The leftist bloc, which is collectively polling second in the two-round legislative elections to be held on June 30th and July 7th, was further bolstered on Saturday by former President François Hollande announcing he would return to politics and run for the National Assembly as a Socialist under the New Popular Front banner to confront the rise of the National Rally.
While the left has descended into full-blown panic over the rise of the supposed “far-right”, Le Pen argued on Sunday that the real threat posed to French democracy is the “Islamo-leftist bloc” headed up by Mélenchon.
“It is Islamo-leftism which almost openly advocates the disappearance of all of our freedoms,” she said in comments reported by L’Opinion. “The first of these being the freedom to be French… and to benefit from it: the freedom to own, protest, and expression. They want the physical and moral disarmament of the police, and are for the overthrow of our constitutional and republican structure.”