A leading leftist in the National Assembly has claimed that France was never a white and Christian country, and that the idea is merely a “fantasy” of the so-called far-right.
Mathilde Panot, who leads Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France in Rebellion/LFI) party in the lower house of the French parliament, not only championed the idea of a “New France” but appeared to suggest that Old France never actually existed.
Speaking to Le Média, the MP for Val-de-Marne’s 10th constituency said that it is imperative for the political left to “never concede anything whatsoever to the far right” as it is through the acceptance of premises through which the “far right becomes socially acceptable”.
Despite Christian heritage in France dating back to the 5th century with the conversion of Clovis I, she claimed that the right “fantasises about a France that does not exist and has never existed… a France that is supposedly a ‘white’ France, a ‘Christian’ France… a France being ‘invaded’ by—well, by who knows whom. In short, they are completely lost in a fantasy regarding the true nature of this country.”
“The only way to defeat the far right is to remain steadfast in one’s principles and refuse to yield even an inch to them regarding issues of racism, immigration, and—well—all such matters. Anyone who actually cedes ground to them is, in effect, helping them advance every single time—because, by doing so, they are effectively playing right into the far right’s ideological framework,” Panot continued.
The LFI leader made the comments in reference to a growing consensus across the political spectrum against mass migration into France, with fellow leftist leaders such as François Ruffin, who was formerly in the same party as Panot, coming out last month in favour of limiting the influx of foreigners to protect the wages of French workers.
Meanwhile, neo-liberal Macronists, who will be vying for tactical left-wing votes in the upcoming presidential election, such as former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, have both in the past week called for significant cuts to immigration.
In contrast, Panot and her party’s presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have doubled down on multiculturalism, in what they term “New France“.
Mélenchon, who was born in Morocco to Sicilian and Spanish parents, has hailed the idea that France is experiencing “creolization” through the importation of millions of foreigners, primarily from former French colonies in North Africa.
This has seen his party become a major power player in the areas of the country dominated by ethnic minorities, such as the Seine-Saint-Denis commune outside of Paris.
While Mélenchon has embraced the term “Great Replacement” — arguing that it is a good and natural phenomenon in which one generation takes over from the previous — he has also made it clear that he views the native French population, particularly the rural, Catholic working-class, as a chief impediment to forming a socialist state.