How the French left made Mamdani

It should come as no surprise that Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in last week’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York was celebrated so vociferously by the French far left.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) regard the 33-year-old Socialist as a chip off the old block. In a post on X Mélenchon delighted in Mamdani’s defeat of Andrew Cuomo, saying: “Opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, he is obviously already accused of anti-Semitism. He won against a figurehead of the centre-left backed by the local leaders of the cheating Democratic party.”

As in France, continued Mélenchon, the “traditional” left no longer speaks to the people; it is the radical left. This message was echoed by one of Mélenchon’s senior lieutenants in LFI, Manon Aubry, who said that “faced with the far right, only a clear, popular and determined left can win.”

Mélenchon visited New York in April and at the City University he made his first address to an American audience in what was billed as “Revolution in the 21st Century.” Mélenchon, who met Bernie Sanders during his visit, endorsed Mamdani during his address.

The veteran Marxist Mélenchon, who turns 74 next month, has little in common with Mamdani other than a sharp eye for an opportunity. The Frenchman’s  political career was petering out a decade ago as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally became the party for the dispossessed white working class of France. In the 2012 presidential election, Mélenchon’s Front de Gauche polled 3.9 million votes, 11 percent of ballots cast. Ten years later – and leading a new party, LFI – Mélenchon was up to 7.7 million votes and a 21 percent share.

How had he done it? By shamelessly courting the vote of what he regards as the new oppressed: Muslims. In last year’s European Elections, for example, 62 percent of France’s 6 million Muslims, ticked the box of LFI. That European election campaign was the political debut of the rising star of LFI, Rima Hassan, a charismatic 33-year-old was born in a Syrian refugee camp to Palestinian parents, and was recently described by one French broadsheet as “the new electoral arm of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.”

Hassan does have a lot in common with Mamdani; a media savviness, for a start, as well as the same age and religion, but also an obsession with Palestine. Hassan was alongside Greta Thunberg when their aid boat was detained by Israeli last month en route to Gaza.

It wasn’t the first time Hassan had fallen foul of Israel. In February this year Hassan, a Member of the European Parliament, arrived in Israel as part of an EU delegation. She was refused entry on the grounds that she intervenes “on a regular basis to promote the boycott against Israel.”

Hassan, who is rarely seen without a keffiyeh (last year she was ordered to remove it as she prepared to address the EU Parliament), has twice been investigated for apology for terrorism, most recently at the start of this year when a Jewish group accused her of legitimizing Hamas.

She is not the only member of LFI to have taken such a stance; a week after Hamas had slaughtered over 1,000 Israelis in October 2023, the terrorist group was described by Danièle Obono as a “resistance movement.”

Such statements explain why 92 percent of French Jews hold LFI partly responsible for the alarming rise in anti-Semitism since 2023. Last year the veteran Nazi-hunter, Serge Klarsfeld, said that faced with a choice at the ballot box between Marine Le Pen and the LFI, he would vote for the former because the far-left has become “resolutely anti-Jewish.”

None of this really matters to the LFI, who knows it has two key demographics to keep on side: Muslims and the well-educated 18 to 24 year-olds. In the first round of the 2022 presidential election, 37 percent of graduates voted for LFI, 28 percent for Emmanuel Macron and 10 percent for Le Pen.

One suspects that Zohran Mamdani has studied the strategy of LFI. Like Mélenchon, he has skillfully used social media to attract students, while also focusing heavily on Palestine, describing it as “central to my identity.”

Activists and supporters of LFI and Mamdani are also quick to cry “Islamophobia” if their views on Gaza and Israel are challenged.

Mélenchon intends to contest the 2027 presidential election although if he is to have any chance of success he will have to see off Raphaël Glucksmann to become the sole candidate of the left.

Glucksmann represents what Mélenchon dismissively calls the “traditional” left, which for him means social democracy, globalism and a favorable view of the EU. Mélenchon is the radical self-styled “revolutionary” who dreams of a “New France” composed of migrants, and who last week declared the French language a “créole” that should be renamed to mark that fact.

The fight for the soul of the French left is underway, and it’s a conflict that may soon be replicated in America as the young radicals challenge the old Democrats.