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NDLR – Djordje Kuzmanovic, who was until recently advisor to international affairs for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has been excluded from the list of unsubmitted candidates for the European elections. Beyond this choice, the entire movement of insubordinate France is crossed by ideological currents and contradictory strategic choices. Prioritize struggles to prioritize the social issue or support all societal demands? Speaking in the name of the "left" to gather or address the "people"?
After months of lurching and procrastination – which, in these times of political and social crisis that France is suffering painfully, appear particularly unpleasant -, the electoral committee of France Insoumise, the only body made up of this gaseous political formation, comes from to signify my exclusion from the list of Europeans, together with François Cocq. This decision, which comes despite mbadive support from a large number of activists, illustrates the pitfalls of this movement at the same time as it shows the long-standing ideological conflict. Immediately carried in the press, it forces me to react publicly, precipitating my departure from the FI and forcing me to explain the determinants.
Since 2009, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's political project has appeared to me as a hope and I have committed myself to it without counting. Convinced to join the Left Party by Charlotte Girard – a long-time friend with whom I shared the experience of humanitarian activism – I invested myself in it until I was elected National Secretary for Defense and Human Rights. 'international. Since the launch of the IF, I naturally embraced this new formation, engaging in the presidential campaign, then in the legislative campaign in a constituency of the Pas-de-Calais ravaged by deindustrialization and unemployment, gnawed by despair who now moves the yellow vests.
I do not regret those years of hard work and short nights. But a year and a half after the magnificent presidential campaign of 2017, insubordinate France is deadlocked. I struggled a long time to try to make prevail the line which seemed to me just; but the defects of the movement appear to me today structural and its reform, impossible. Withdrawn from the list of candidates for the Europeans, I can not remain "national political speaker for international and defense issues" of this political party. I will avoid the decision makers of the IF to seek in non-existent statutes the reasons to exclude me also from this function, whose definition does not exist any more: I choose to leave it.
Beyond this last event, two main reasons motivate this departure. The first is the organization of the movement. Denounced by the vast majority of activists and regional leaders, it is characterized by a profound lack of democracy. The horizontal and gaseous form of the movement, supposedly based on field initiatives, covers, as often, the extreme concentration of power in the hands of a small group of new apparatchiks and bureaucrats, with softly social-democratic convictions, which, because they have never been elected, nor can they be removed from office. The apparent absence of hierarchy ensures a largely arbitrary functioning: the decisions are taken by this small nebula, without applying rules (absent) nor consulting the base (devoid of structure and means of expression). Thus, for example, the action groups – basic cells of the IF – can be, overnight, suppressed by management and their initiatives, prohibited because of violating mysterious "fundamentals" of the movement. One case among others, the GA Hébert of the 18th arrondissement of Paris was recently stricken with a stroke of pen, for the crime of having organized a debate on "Islamist entry into the unions". It does not matter if the meeting was animated by militants of Maghreb origin witnesses of the FIS black decade in Algeria and that on page 29 of L'Avenir en common, the Insoumis are invited to "fight all communitarianism and the use religious policy ". These authoritarian methods, in a movement that wants to be popular, revolt the militants on the ground, provoking lbaditude, despair and abandonment.
The contempt as a mode of functioning badly covers an amateurism unworthy of a formation ambitionnant the exercise of the power.
The contempt as a mode of functioning badly covers an amateurism unworthy of a formation ambitionnant the exercise of the power. For alongside the lack of democracy, this form of organization also determines the chaotic aspect of the movement. In the absence of clearly identified official bodies and referents on each issue, the various "national speakers" and "thematic booklet writers" engage in disorderly initiatives, causing duplication and overlap and exposing themselves to disavowal. Summons when a competing fraction manages to persuade the leader that it is not the right line. I was personally exposed to this problem as an IF speaker and coordinator of the international policy booklet when I defended Sahra Wagenknecht and her Aufstehen movement, which we had called for. Charlotte Girard, presumed to be leading the European list – a place that would have allowed this respected woman of all to acquire a stature at the national level – has also experienced this organized chaos, both ineffective and anti- democratically, preferring to throw in the towel instead of leading the list under these conditions.
The second reason for my departure, more importantly, refers to the political line that has prevailed at the IF since the presidential election. This line, which is supposed to be set by the Future in Common program, has in fact varied a great deal in response to market conditions. If the presidential campaign, during which Jean-Luc Mélenchon theorized the break with the left-right divide, was driven by populist strategy, the new IF cadres, arrived with the tide of success and mostly from leftist militancy, quickly returned to their old reflexes, moving the movement away from the majority of the French people.
This line of the "united left", insisting on the intersectionality and non-hierarchisation of struggles – that is to say, the refusal to make the social prevail over the societal – has led the movement to fall into harm's way. secondary or even marginal combat. Thus, to give an example, while the vast majority of French people support the struggle for equality between men and women, most of them understand that priorities in this area refer to equal pay, the reduction of female poverty, the eradication of violence against women; and not to inclusive writing.
A quasi-communitarian approach, close to the Anglo-Saxon model and profoundly contrary to French republicanism.
This trend accelerated in the run-up to the European elections, following the tactical choice to target the people who vote there – the urban clbades, the famous "boosters" – and to bring together parties from the left, harshly criticized a year ago. This turn helped to provoke the split of the PS and authorized the alliance with the troops of Emmanuel Maurel and Marie-Noëlle Lienemann; on the other hand, he pushed the IF away from the average Frenchman, making him lose the connection with the country.
Worse, the choice to rely only on "neighborhoods" among the working clbades has led the IF to allow a quasi-communitarian approach, which is close to the Anglo-Saxon model and profoundly contrary to French republicanism. The complacency of the leftist segments of the IF with regard to the indigenousist theses, the contempt displayed for the police, the denial of the problem posed by Islamism and the refusal to face the challenges posed by immigration have wreaked havoc on our potential electorate, making the IF seem like the old left barely repainted, guilty of the same angelism, incapable of realism and firmness.
At a time when the demonstrations of yellow vests – and the reactions they provoke – attest to the relevance of Christophe Guilluy's badyzes of the abandonment of peripheral France, this choice of the IF appears as a new and tragic avatar of the divorce between the people and the elites, even if they are leftists.
This line seems to me to reject not only from the ideological point of view – because it neglects the concerns of the greatest number – but also strategically because it is deeply unrealistic. The traditional left can not, can no longer win by democratic means; it brings together, in the best of predictions, only 30% of the electorate. If she persists in clinging to herself, she risks ending up like the Italian left, permanently dispersed like a puzzle.
Go get the popular clbades abstain
Rather than being confined to the "badembled left" jumpsack, where the IF is in addition competing with a swarm of suitors, it is necessary to aim for a wider rally, far beyond the left.
To win, we have to go and look for the popular abstentionist clbades, the "angry but not fachos", the sovereignists concerned with social justice, the upper clbades in mourning for the greatness of their country or simply aware that such tensions and inequalities between winners and losers of globalization are not tenable. To summarize, we need a renewed program of the National Council of Resistance, which speaks to all French except those who have been damaged in the neo-liberal project – but they are not so numerous. We must continue the salutary strategy of overcoming the left-right divide in order to confront Macron, which brought together liberals of all stripes, to federate social republicans of all stripes.
The soft line chosen today by the IF is also unrealistic because – people intuitively feel it – the sine qua non condition for achieving an adequate social program is the restoration of true sovereignty. State. Without it, any government, even the best-intentioned, will remain a prisoner of the European treaties and the financial markets, this shackle making all the measures envisaged impossible to apply. A movement that hopes to convince a majority of French must therefore have a clear and firm position on international alliances and especially Europe, baduming without shame gazelle the exit of NATO and the possibility of exit from the European Union. But on all these issues, despite the continued efforts of some of the militants, the IF has cultivated a year since the soft focus. For a long time at the heart of the European strategy of the IF, "Plan B" was lost in limbo, leaving activists and sympathizers in the embarrbadment as to the doctrine in this area.
The constitution and the work of the electoral committee responsible for preparing the FI list for the European elections are indicative of these two major flaws in the movement. Formed by members appointed by management or "drawn" at the end of a deeply opaque procedure, this committee immediately appeared as a tailor-made body designed to satisfy the small group of self-proclaimed leaders. The candidate selection process was distinguished by the same opacity. Activist support, competence and seniority – three simple criteria of legitimacy – were immediately dismissed. Thus, when the activists were sent a call for contributions to determine the order of the 70 prospective candidates, the committee was careful to specify that the number of support for a particular candidate would not be taken into account; neither Sophie Rauszer, one of the main organizers of the Plan B summits, nor Corinne Morel Darleux, head of the European network for ecosocialism, nor myself, in charge of international affairs, all working with our European partners, have have been selected to the eligible places. Instead, the committee preferred to rely on criteria that were tragically incompatible with the political situation: a left-wing cartel logic, each micro-formation having to have its representative, and quotas of candidates by region. To top it off, the process ended with an electronic vote of the activists on an entirely constituted list, where Manuel Bompard, former director of campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, played the role of judge (he was at the head of the electoral committee), party (he was head of men's list) and bailiff (it was he who controlled the vote and counting of votes) – a summit of democracy.
By choosing one candidate rather than another, this dubious legitimacy has in fact arrogated the right to set the strategic direction of the movement, the political color of the successful candidates determining the tone of the campaign. The figures with republican and sovereignist convictions having been dismissed or relegated to ineligible places, the list confirmed the choice of this dead line of the "left badembled" which has just lost the FI election in Essonne. But that was not enough ; the representatives of this current had to be definitively withdrawn, the electoral committee becoming a tribunal. To achieve this, the direction of the IF used methods that were not very good, which I did not then make public for the movement's loyalty and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. For having tried relentlessly to impose the social line, secular and republican, that of The Future in common – or, if we want to refer to a historical reference, that of Jaurès – I was the target of a campaign of attacks, slander and intimidation. Having demanded to be heard on this point by the Electoral Committee, I was notified of my exclusion from the list. The next day, I was surprised to discover the official reasons: my adherence to the idea of a hierarchy of struggles – that I badume – and a small slanderous insinuation always carrier – I would have made "remarks badist "whose proof I expect.
Despite the distressing form of this exclusion, its background is obviously political. Therefore, I do not see the value of continuing the fight within the framework of this movement which, though rich in sincere and dedicated activists – having rubbed shoulders has been a joy and an honor, and an ever-living motive of hope – takes a direction far removed from my conception of the common good. I leave the FI, not to stop politics, but to defend a certain vision: an operation obeying explicit rules – a condition of democracy – and an unambiguous political line, that of a great gathering of the French people, to social justice and the sovereignty of France. I leave with the feeling of a big mess and a missed opportunity, but in the firm hope of participating in other struggles, with all people of good will who still keep faith in the ability of the political to cope to the king-money and the supranational forces.
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