A few days after the double cancellation in Lille of a conference on Palestine by the leader of La France insoumise (LFI) and the “rebellious” European candidate Rima Hassan, Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced on X that it would be held on Monday 22 April a conference at Sciences Po Paris, at 7:30 p.m. He is invited to the initiative of Jeunes insoumis.es Sciences Po Paris, in order to “present in particular his new [book], Do better! Towards the Citizen’s Revolution”, according to the student association. The event must take place in the main school auditorium.

The founder of the radical left movement, who made the denunciation of the war in Gaza a central theme of his party’s campaign for the June European elections, continues his tour of universities, started several weeks ago, which has already brought it to Nantes, Créteil, Nanterre, and even Clermont-Ferrand.

But last week, when he was due to give a conference at the University of Lille on the situation in the Middle East, the event was canceled. The university announced in a press release that the conditions were “no longer met to guarantee the serenity of the debates” due to the “worrying” rise in international tensions after “the military escalation that occurred on April 13 and 14 in the Middle East. Orient,” in reference to Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack against Israel.

Fabien Roussel judges Jean-Luc Mélenchon “discredited” and “indefensible”

“I pity the president of the university because what he did is shameful,” said the leader of the “rebellious,” castigating the “cowards who are not capable of defending freedom.” The movement then wanted to relocate the conference to a private room, but this second event was itself canceled, this time by the prefecture.

During a gathering convened in a public square in Lille on Thursday evening by LFI, in response to the double ban on this conference, Jean-Luc Mélenchon then notably mentioned Adolf Eichmann, responsible for the logistics of the final solution, and seemed during his speech comparing the president of the University of Lille to the Nazi war criminal.

“‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Eichmann. “I only obeyed the law as it was in my country.” So they say they obey the law and they implement immoral measures that are not justified by anything or anyone,” he said. The “rebellious” leader then justified himself on Friday by citing the book The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), by the philosopher Hannah Arendt, to explain that the president of the university had “behaved in this logic of the propagation of wrong “.

Comments which provoked numerous reactions, including on the left. The number one of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, said on Monday, on BFM-TV/RMC, that Mr. Mélenchon was “discredited” after the “indefensible” remarks he made last week in Lille. Mr. Roussel added that he “no longer sees himself in Jean-Luc Mélenchon at all, since his excessive comments discredit everything else.” The PCF boss himself had been compared a few months ago to the collaborationist Jacques Doriot by MP Sophia Chikirou, a member of the “rebellious” leader’s close guard.

Incidents at Sciences Po Paris in March

On March 12, Sciences Po Paris also experienced incidents relating to the war in Gaza, as part of a day of European university mobilization for Palestine. About three hundred students had occupied an amphitheater “to end the genocidal war and colonization in Palestine.” During this undeclared event, a student member of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) was refused entry into the amphitheater. Versions diverged regarding the reasons for this refusal, but the UEJF accused the organizers of having made anti-Semitic remarks towards this student. Accusations that the Palestine committee of Sciences Po refutes.

These facts caused a real political outcry as well as the surprise visit to the board of directors of the school by the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, and the Minister of Higher Education, Sylvie Retailleau, Mr. Attal denouncing a “linked drift to an active and dangerous minority at Sciences Po” and asserting: “The fish rots from the head. » The establishment has promised, for its part, to be “intractable” with regard to anti-Semitism.

A conference by Jean-Luc Mélenchon at the University of Bordeaux had already been canceled in October, as well as another in Rennes two weeks ago.