Lozère devoid of intellectual figures? Remarks made by Jean-Luc Mélenchon during the summer university of La France insoumise in August have resurfaced on social networks, provoking the indignation of Lozériens and their representatives.
During a conference on creolization on August 22 in Valence, in the Drôme, the leader of LFI considered that “Martinique is a rather special place, because it is a very small place all the same, there are 300,000 of them and they are, so sorry for the others, the Guadeloupeans…”
“But they have always cultivated a certain feeling of intellectual elite and the truth is that they are,” affirmed Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“Well yes, because when you do Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Glissant and Chamoiseau at the same time, well you can’t say we’re anywhere, eh! In Lozère you don’t have that! Well yes, well you just have to realize it, eh!”, he continued in a joking tone, which did not fail to make the audience laugh.
The department reacts
Comments deemed “totally contemptuous” by the Macronist president of the Lozère department, Laurent Suau. “It is regrettable that he mistreats French citizens,” he told France Bleu.
“To denigrate the department, to denigrate 76,000 inhabitants, is not to his credit, far from it. I want to remind him that we had Jean-Antoine Chaptal, Théophile Roussel, Marie-Rose Brugeron,” added the president of the Community of Communes Cœur de Lozère.
The department also issued a reaction on its Facebook page on Wednesday, September 4, citing these same figures who “like so many other Lozériens bring honor to France.” “The complete opposite of this ham… Without destiny…”, he added.
- BFMTV.com
