Mélenchon’s bid risks handing Elysee to Le Pen in May runoff
With 20,000 fans in Le Bourget, the 75-year-old leftist targets a decisive second round against the far-right leader.
By Arjun Weber ·
Twenty thousand supporters packed a vast hall north of Paris on Saturday, singing about revolution while Jean-Luc Mélenchon prepared for his fourth presidential bid. The 75-year-old leftist, whose name was emblazoned on the backs of young fans above the number 27, declared that everything must change. He is seeking a winner-take-all showdown in the May 2 runoff against far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen.
Three previous campaigns ended short of the final round. In 2022, a margin of 421,308 votes kept him out. Now, riding a surge in support, he aims for the Elysee Palace. A loss to Le Pen would hand the anti-capitalist’s opponent command of France’s nuclear arsenal. A victory would pull the EU’s only nuclear-armed power out of NATO’s military command and collide with Europe’s central bank over debt plans.
Born in Tangier, Morocco, in 1951, Mélenchon spent three decades in the Socialist Party before leaving in 2008 to build his own movement. His rallies, dubbed the Mélenshow, feature sweeping camera work and staged solutions. He boasted that he is doing this all by himself, contrasting his crowd with former President François Hollande, who filled only a third of the same hall. Critics call him the Donald Trump of the left, noting his habit of bellowing at police and claiming to be the Republic.
The campaign targets the young and the suburbs, particularly Seine-Saint-Denis, mainland France’s poorest department. The hall fell silent in memory of Pengo Bossio Wangi, a 26-year-old shot dead last month. Since September, protests over crumbling schools and teacher shortages have swept the country, resulting in thousands of police arrests. Mélenchon embraced the movement, warning the government not to touch young people.
Last month, cost-of-living protests turned to looting and arson in more than 20 cities. Rioters torched the 19th-century City Hall in Limoges. Le Pen accused Mélenchon’s party of causing chaos, while he blamed police tactics. Jamal Santos, a 22-year-old student, said the movement is the future and that Mélenchon listens to them.
His program, over 1,000 points long, proposes lowering the voting age to 16 and bringing back retirement at 60. It imposes a moratorium on artificial intelligence and demands a new constitution. A special assembly of citizens, excluding current lawmakers, would draft the new rules for voter approval. Ordinary citizens could gather signatures to force votes to overturn laws or oust a sitting president.
France’s old political order is fragmenting. The Socialists and conservative Republicans won just 6.5% of the first-round presidential vote between them in 2022. A runoff between Le Pen and Mélenchon would leave both traditional parties on the sidelines. Center-right former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe is also vying for a spot in the final round, aiming to unite the center to block a battle between the extremes.
Mélenchon made Gaza a rallying cry, insisting that genocide must be called genocide. Activists who accuse him of fanning antisemitism disrupted the rally with whistles. He refused to tone down his rhetoric, turning President Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 comment about people who are nothing into a line from the Internationale. The hall ended by singing La Marseillaise.
