Review of The Pack, by Olivier Pérou and Charlotte Belaïch, Flammarion, 2025.

A destiny similar to that of a Greek tragedy, with the hubris of a character swept away by his contradictions and his wanderings, if of course the tragedy were not surpassed by the ridiculousness inherent in France Insoumise. One could believe oneself on several occasions in some farce, between the most limited capacities of Sébastien Delogu, the morbid jealousy of Sophia Chikirou, or the permanent purges that would make a Maoist cadre of the Cultural Revolution green with envy. However, if The Pack In its comic moments, discovering this work leaves above all a feeling of unease, a concern in the face of what appears, indeed, not as a party, but as a sect.

How a party turns into a sect: this could be summed up as the undertaking of journalists Olivier Pérou and Charlotte Belaïch. Employed respectively at Monde and Libération, they display the signs of progressive journalistic respectability. However, given the waves of insults, threats, and digital imprecations poured against them since the release of their book, they would seem to be Elon Musk's cronies, or even a "Likud agent" regarding Charlotte Belaïch, according to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This journalist, because of her surname, has become the preferred target of attacks by LFI cyber-activists. Any similarity with accusations of a Jewish conspiracy—very fashionable across the Rhine in the 1930s—is obviously the product of a reactionary imagination and a desire to smear LFI, the only true revolutionary movement.

The title of the work was perfectly chosen: a pack hunts in a group, following the dominant male, to pounce on the prey at the slightest weakness, whether it is part of the outside world or from its own ranks. There is nothing paradoxical, of course, for a party that is the first to denounce "patriarchy."

Because France Insoumise is a crystallization of hypocrisy.

LFI proclaims its love for direct, participatory democracy, in a "gaseous" organization, allowing the autonomy of activists, in a movement whose officially registered activists can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Behind the facade, it is an organization centered around one man, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He has never abandoned his conceptions of power and the political game forged in his early Trotskyist years: infiltrate, infiltrate the party and lock it down by forming a bloc of loyalists to, ultimately, seize power by crushing any dissenting voice.

Courage is only asserted here when it is collective: at the slightest attack against one of their own, it is time to unite: the Quatennens affair, the Bouhafs affair… A deviation from the leader's words or the refusal to support one of their own under attack and it is excommunication. LFI monopolizes power around a young, regimented guard, entirely loyal to the leader, barking in unison to defend or attack the designated target. The pack leader's stated sympathies for Maoist China are revealing and it is disturbing to observe the similarities he has with the Great Helmsman. Both are also prone to regular purges and inspire a cult of young people whose political awareness is limited to regurgitating the latest militant maxims; simply, WhatsApp loops and posts on X have replaced street demonstrations. And just as Chairman Mao had his partner Jiang Qing, President Mélenchon has Sophia Chikirou, who governs party appointments and careers.

However, that the leader is of a character straight out of The Lives of the Twelve Caesars It is one thing, whether his Artabanian manners mask a pitiful physical cowardice (although he is the first to praise the fight against the "fascists"), or whether he embodies everything that his followers never cease to condemn in the "dominant patriarchal phallocratic ecocidal cisgender white male", or...

But, it is not so much a question of a personality – we are not in a study of morals – as of the way in which Mélenchon is working to build a party whose stated goal is to fracture society, to dominate left-wing parties stunned by militant violence without filter or pause. The fact that this work is the work of journalists claiming to be left-wing values ​​and whose investigative work reveals the networks and contacts in the ranks of the New Popular Front, illustrates all the bitterness that LFI arouses, even among its "allies".

How can we define this movement? The shift toward the indigenous and decolonial cause only happened late in life, mainly after the 2017 presidential election. Influenced by North American woke theories, indigenous activists then infiltrated the party and replaced the old militant guard: Bouhafs declared, "We ate them." A transition embodied, among others, by the growing influence of Elias Imzalène, listed as an S, and close to many figures in the movement. Rima Hassan is only the latest, and media-friendly, incarnation of the indigenousism assumed by the leader as a new doxa. According to the authors, this would be a "drift," a mutation that has occurred, and the authors' decision to focus on the leader's practices and his errors does not, moreover, dwell on the workings of entryism. Because this infiltration allows the anti-Semitism clearly assumed by many activists to be expressed.

Anti-Semitism has become a commonplace, if only through electoral logic: the hope of winning the suburban vote by playing on a Muslim electorate hostile to Israel, the emergence of Rima Hassan as a figurehead revealing LFI's new predilections. But beyond that, it is indeed a value increasingly shared, evoking a "Zionist" or "Jewish" lobby whose terms are practically interchangeable. This is evidenced by the recent intimidation of Jérôme Guedj, of whom Jean-Luc Mélenchon was one of the first mentors. For while 12% of French people, according to a poll published in 2024, want Jews to leave France, the score reaches... 20% among LFI sympathizers. David Guiraud and Éric Coquerel are close to Bouhafs and readily indulge in the most ambiguous remarks, while Mathilde Panot's open justification of October 7 clearly demonstrated their position towards Hamas. And what about the party's defense of the Muslim Brotherhood, in the name of the fight against "Islamophobia" (an Islamophobia so widespread that even Saudi Arabia has indulged in it by banning the Muslim Brotherhood from its territory).

Should we, however, see this as a deviation or rather the logical continuation of a party whose ideological framework is that of its leader and his changing ideological conceptions? LFI's software is inspired by decolonial, indigenous, and Muslim Brotherhood-sympathetic influences that penetrate the leader and his inner circle, before being redirected to the militant base, where no dissent is tolerated, even towards historical companions, such as Alexis Corbière. However, verbal violence has always been explicitly assumed, and absolute loyalty has been a constant since the early years. Moreover, decolonial theses are as many arguments to eliminate such an overly independent-minded cadre: it would be too "white", too "Zionist", too "patriarchal"... Accusations that the leader and his clan can support at will - it is never too late to defend the permanent revolution - or completely ignore...

Indeed, in the era of "MeToo," LFI is adopting a most uncompromising stance in the fight against sexual violence... except when it concerns its own camp! Taha Bouhafs's exclusion is largely the result of Chikirou's distrust of him, and his non-investment does not mean the end of relations with him. Starting with Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, with tears in his eyes, has for months continued to comfort him and apologize for his temporary weakness, in the face of vulgar accusations of sexual violence. Because indeed, as the leader announced already in 2022, "there are erotomaniac women." This was to defend his friend Éric Coquerel, then accused by an activist of similar actions. The exclusion does concern certain members, such as MP Hugo Prevost in 2024, but because he had the unfortunate flaw of not belonging to the clan. It took months to part ways with the untouchable Adrien Quatennens, while the case of Ugo Bernalicis, another MP from the North, seems to have "disappeared" from the LFI's internal commission on the issue of sexual violence. Not to mention MP Thomas Portes, whose reputation was already firmly established in the previous parties in which he was active and who nevertheless finds himself surrounded by a holy aura of protection from the Mélenchonist Red Guard.

So have the battles really changed for Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI? The authors speak of a "drift," but in this Trotskyist circle fueled by agitprop, the goal has always been to destabilize French society with a view to seizing it or at least controlling its electoral strongholds. The ideology may have taken on a North American and indigenous color, but its leader remains the former socialist apparatchik who revels in the adulation of a militant guard. And it doesn't matter that the Muslim Brotherhood now has a party that shows them the strongest sympathies; the leader has kept his troops. His objective has been accomplished.

New but not new.