However rapidly political change around us takes shape, some facts stay the same.
For well over a century, Jews have understood that political parties of the far left and the far right cannot be trusted. And what was true in the past remains true in the present.
The far right, traditionally distinguished by its ultranationalist, racist and antisemitic agenda, has always been an enemy. The far left, traditionally denying that it is antisemitic while frowning upon any expression of Jewish collective solidarity, most of all Zionism, has never been a friend.
When I was on a reporting trip in Russia and Ukraine a few years ago, I met several elderly Jews who had experienced the rule of both extremes. In Kharkiv, a city that has since been decimated by invading Russians, I interviewed a woman whose father had been imprisoned by the NKVD, the precursor to the KGB. She described how, as a 6-year-old in the late 1930s, she would lie in bed every night listening to the churning sound of the elevator in her building traveling between floors, as NKVD agents carried out arrests of residents.
By the turn of the next decade, she observed, such fear had pivoted to invading Germans, who occupied Kharkiv between 1941 and 1943, murdering thousands of Jews. Listening to her stories and those of other Jews whom I interviewed drove home to me the terrifying nature of political extremism, whether red or black-shirted. I truly felt grateful to have been born in a different, gentler, more enlightened time.
Now, however, we find ourselves suspended again between the pincers of the far right and the far left, waiting warily for one or both to snap down upon our necks.
Since the Hamas-led pogrom in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, both far-left and far-right politicians and pundits have rounded on Israel, Zionism and the Jews. In the United States, we have become all too familiar with the antisemitic ravings of political commentator Tucker Carlson on one side and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on the other, to name just two of many adversaries. As the country edges towards the midterms later this year and then the 2028 presidential election, related anxiety is expected to become only more acute.
The next test will take place in France, where municipal elections are being held in March. Those elections are increasingly regarded as a testing ground for next year’s presidential vote. And as in other liberal democracies right now, in France, liberals and conservatives alike are being squeezed to the benefit of both political extremes.
For French Jews, the largest of Western Europe’s Jewish communities, the threat posed by the extremes has always been palpable. For the last half-century, the accent of concern has been focused on the far right, with a cordon sanitaire drawn around the National Front (FN) and its successor, the National Rally (RN). But with the rise of anti-Zionism on the far left, that sanitary cordon is now being extended to France Rising (LFI), a party combining various leftist factions that is led by the veteran politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
LFI is currently being excoriated across the French political spectrum to the point where it is replacing the RN as the country’s leading political pariah. That’s because two weeks ago, a young far-right activist named Quentin Deranque was murdered by a group of left-wing extremists while he provided security to a right-wing feminist group that was holding a protest on a university campus in the city of Lyon. Deranque’s alleged killers, who beat him to death with their fists and their boots, included members of a violent group, the Young Guard, which provided security for Mélenchon and LFI before it was proscribed last year.
One of the seven accused, Jacques-Elie Favrot, previously served as a parliamentary assistant to LFI deputy Raphaël Arnault. It was Arnault who launched the Young Guard in 2018. Another one of Arnault’s youthful assistants, Adrian Besseyre, was also charged with involvement in Deranque’s murder.
Disgust at the manner of Deranque’s death spread quickly throughout France, to the detriment of LFI. “Mélenchon’s party has become the formation that is the most condemned in politics and the media,” wrote one conservative commentator. “For the RN, it is a godsend, after half a century in which the distinction belonged to it.”
French Jews should remain cautious about any softening of their historic rejection of the RN, which began life as the project of the French neo-fascist Jean Marie Le Pen, who once infamously called the Shoah “a minor detail” of the history of World War II. But in the nearly two-and-a-half years that have elapsed since Oct. 7, LFI has established itself as the most immediate political threat to the community.
If you’re seeking a comparison for LFI, look no further than the British Labour Party during the five-year tenure of its former leader, the far-left politician Jeremy Corbyn. Antisemitism in the United Kingdom soared under his tenure, with a 2020 investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission finding the party responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination. He was also seen over the years hob-knobbing with officials from Palestinian terror groups.
The feminist protest at which Deranque was killed had targeted an event addressed by Rima Hassan, a French Palestinian who represents LFI in the European Parliament. Hassan has described the Hamas massacre in the Jewish state as a “legitimate action.” Last year, she was detained by the Israeli authorities and deported after she participated in the so-called “humanitarian flotilla” to Gaza led by the irredeemably irritating Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
Mélenchon himself has uttered several antisemitic comments during his long career. In 2013, he accused then-Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, who is Jewish, of no longer “thinking in French but thinking in the language of international finance.” He also leapt to the defense of his British comrade Corbyn, declaring that “Corbyn had to endure without help the crude accusation of antisemitism from the chief rabbi of England and the various Likud networks of influence.” He then added that Corbyn, “instead of fighting back, spent his time apologizing and giving pledges. (…) I will never give in to it for my part.”
This week, Melenchon outdid himself with a speech straight out of a Nazi rally in Nuremberg. Addressing a rally of LFI faithful, he referred to the late, disgraced pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein by mocking the pronunciation of his Jewish family name. “I wanted to say ‘Epstein,’ sorry, it sounds more Russian, ‘Epsteen,’ so now you’ll say Epsteen instead of Epstein, Franckensteen instead of Frankenstein,” he sneered before an audience that laughed appreciatively. “How many decades has it been since a politician made a room laugh by rattling off Jewish names, emphasizing their pronunciation, with a sneer of hatred?” asked one incredulous parliamentary deputy from the Socialist Party.
The RN, which is largely supportive of Israel, is currently riding high in French opinion polls and is right now poised for victory in next year’s presidential contest. One poll released just last week showed that more than two-thirds of French voters would vote tactically against LFI should the election reach a second round, compared to 45% who said they would do the same against the RN.
While LFI is highly unlikely to win an outright majority, it could still garner enough seats to decide the composition of a future French government. France’s centrist parties must now apply the same principle to Mélenchon and his thugs as they did with the RN: no negotiations on the formation of a government and no joint participation in any coalition.
Allowing LFI anywhere near the levers of power is a guarantee that anti-Zionism will continue to make strides in French politics.
