Following the President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the United States, the French hard-left party La France Insoumise (LFI) has called for a shift towards left-wing “radicalism” to counter the far-right.
The party has urged the French Left to break from Liberalism if it hoped to win what it called the ideological battle, further distancing itself from France’s mainstream Socialist Party.
“Trump did Trump, and Kamala Harris did Hollande [Former French Socialist President],” snapped LFI’s MP Antoine Leaumant on November 6.
“There is also a concern in France that some people want to follow this path to the Left, a soft, flexible path, which in the end brings the extreme right to power,” he added.
According to the hard-left party, “only a radical and popular left can win against the far-right”.
In a statement published on November 6, the party argued: “The political lessons from this [US] election are clear. Without a bold platform that embraces widespread aspirations for social and fiscal justice, anti-racist efforts and job re-localisation, particularly in industry, the Left cannot defeat the far-right.
“The Democrats offered nothing but a continuation of [outgoing US president] Joe Biden’s neo-Liberal policies, anti-immigrant rhetoric and the lack of a significant plan against climate change,” it added.
LFI’s standpoint has stirred up some controversy on the French Left.
“The reaction of the Insoumis [LFI] to the election of Trump is to attack the rest of the Left and the environmentalists! Distressing! Pathetic!” stated Greens MEP Senator Yannick Jadot on November 6.
For the leader of LFI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the US Democrats lost because they were not visible enough.
“The US could not choose the Left — there was none,” he also said on November 6.
“When there is no Left, there is no limit to the right. When there is no programme battle, the election becomes a casting [based on personality]. Trump’s victory is the unstoppable consequence of this situation,” he added.
Mélenchon’s words resonated with those of Bernie Sanders, the 2016 Democratic presidential contender and a current US Senator.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” said Sanders on social media.
While LFI and more progressive US Democrats such as Sanders have advocated for a political focus on workers’ rights and associated grassroots campaigns, others have said they felt that approach was now outdated following Trump’s victory.
Prior to the outcome of the US election, European People’s Party MEP Banko Grims had said he believed a Trump victory would shift Europe and the entire world away from “cultural Marxism”.
