Atlantico: In Avignon, the left-wing forces have chosen to parachute Raphaël Arnault in view of the next legislative elections. This candidate, S file and spokesperson for a small group of Lyonnais anti-fascists, will soon be supported by Rima Hassan in the current campaign. Can we say that Avignon is transforming itself into a laboratory of Islamo-leftism? Is this phenomenon older?
Karim Maloum : The phenomenon in question here obviously predates the parachuting of Mr. Raphaël Arnault. It began in the late 2000s and intensified from 2015, 2016 and 2017. It was at that time that we were able to see the junction between Islamists, decolonialists, leftists and pro-Palestinians in Avignon. But to fully understand what is happening today, we must talk about the candidate of the Popular Front and the person who will come to support him on Friday. On Friday, as you said, Raphaël Arnault will be able to count on the support of Rima Hassan, a notorious anti-Semite, known for her anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli positions. She supports Hamas without any hesitation, which she also considers to be a resistance movement. According to her, there can only be one territory in Israel: that of Palestine, which belongs to all Palestinians and this necessarily implies the destruction of Israel. For the last day of the campaign, it is she that the candidate of the New Popular Front has decided to bring. If Avignon is not a laboratory of Islamo-leftism in France, I do not know what is. The situation is all the more serious because, even though some socialists opposed Raphaël Arnault’s candidacy, he was able to run under the label of the union of the left. However, he is an S-listed person, who invites a woman calling for the destruction of Israel. It is a symbol and it is particularly strong.
Note also that this is not the first time that Raphaël Arnault has been talked about: already in 2022, he was a candidate for deputy. At the time, he was not running for a seat for LFI but for the NPA. He was summoned by the police for advocating terrorism and is objectively not a person to be around. None of this prevents him today from claiming a seat in the National Assembly within the France Insoumise group. All this is possible because Avignon is what it is, that is to say a laboratory of Islamo-leftism in France.
Very concretely, it is the junction of the Islamo-leftist current with neo-feminism and decolonialism which gave rise, first in local universities, to what we are witnessing today. You will find, in their ranks, anti-Semites who claim to be pro-Palestinian and who even refute democracy or public freedoms. For years already, they have wanted to transfer the conflict from Gaza to Avignon (as well as to Paris, for that matter). But why do they support Hamas? Because they are, I am convinced, fascinated by the violence to which he resorts. They see it as a form of violence which applies against imperialism and could therefore, theoretically, be applied against white people.
Why Avignon, rather than another city in France? Should we think that the local ecosystem predisposed the metropolis to becoming a laboratory of Islamo-leftism?
In fact, and it is essential to remember, Avignon is not the only laboratory of Islamo-leftism in France. The situation is particularly glaring there, particularly due to this candidacy, but the logic at work and the mechanisms that we have described can also be observed elsewhere. Thus, we could also talk about Paris, Marseille, Nantes, Rennes or Lyon. There are such examples almost everywhere on French soil. Some of these young guards, these bastions of Islamo-leftism, are advancing faster than others. In Avignon, this is particularly the case. Let us remember that, at the end of the 2000s, there were still socialist or communist elected officials courageous enough to denounce their respective groups when they were tempted to give in to the Islamists or abandon secularism. This is simply no longer the case today. Communitarianism is gaining ground and figures like Raphaël Arnault are now able to connect all the antifa, pro-Palestinian and radical environmentalist movements. He brings back to him the Mélenchonists, who we know are now against the Republic and against democracy.
What we see in Avignon, the reason why we are talking about it today, is because it is a laboratory which is operating at full capacity. The Islamo-leftists have allied themselves with all the most anti-democratic, most anti-republican currents, from decolonials to Hamas sympathizers. Let us remember that, after September 11, 2001 and the attack on the two towers of the World Trade Center, certain students did not want to respect a minute of silence in Avignon, as Pierre-André Taguieff made known in 2002 .
How can we explain that the Avignon “laboratory” is progressing faster than the others?
Islamo-leftism, as we have already said, was particularly well established in Avignon. He was able to rely on other currents with which he made alliances and connections to better replace, in the eyes of the left, worker voters with Muslim voters and immigrants from Africa. The leftists of France Insoumises today refer to these voters as “populations from working-class neighborhoods”. There was a connection between the Islamists, who take care of the good maintenance and respect of mosques as well as neighborhoods and part of that left. The local score of France Insoumise illustrates this well: in the European elections, and despite the fact that LFI conducted its entire campaign around the Palestinian question alone, Mélenchon’s party garnered 10% of the votes against the 5 % initially expected. He was able to rely on the support of Islamists who, in mosques, worked to develop the kind of ideas that LFI defends.
Moreover, in Avignon, the traditional left seems to have given up. In Paris, some people are still resisting and opposing these ideas. There remains a part of the left which is republican, secular, democratic. Elsewhere, as in Avignon in particular, the left ended up giving in and letting Islamo-leftism take over. This is also very true in Saint-Denis, in 93, as well as in certain districts of Nantes or Rennes. The republican population there pushes back nature having a horror of emptiness, it is a harmful ideology which takes hold of this that she left behind. Extremists who want to do battle with capitalism, with democracy, and unite the struggles. Understand that, when we seek to bring together the worst enemies of the system, we must call the Islamists: we are no worse than them. This is why as soon as someone criticizes them, the left cries out and cries Islamophobia. Veiled women do not bother them, nor does their control over their bodies. It doesn’t matter that top athletes are forced to perform in hijabs: women’s bodies must be hidden and Islamist propaganda must be repeated.
If Islamo-leftism is progressing, it is because the left is opening all doors to it.
Are we to believe that Avignon constitutes the final project of Islamo-leftism in France?
It’s very possible, yes. This is why what is happening in Avignon is particularly dangerous. We have seen the impact that the intersections of all these struggles can have, of anti-imperialism which is associated with Third Worldist anti-agricultural productivist movements, for example. When they manage to rally behind a figure who does not hesitate to claim to be Hamas and to more or less support the events of October 7, we should be concerned. The left, in Avignon, has finished eating its hat. Raphaël Arnault has the luxury of ending his campaign with one of the most anti-Semitic figures in France and no one within the New Popular Front will have moved a finger.
We should remember from this campaign the way in which LFI treats Muslim voters, whom it obviously sees as very primal beings, who are not intelligent, who are easy to manipulate. Everyone is aware that, at the end of the campaign, the Gaza issue will be forgotten by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his friends. Above all, we must not abandon the Muslim community, which represents almost 10 million people in this country and many of whom are humanists, in the hands of such a cynical, dishonest political group, which claims to be Hamas. The mistake of the Democrats, the Republicans of the left and the right, and even the radical right, is to have left all these people in the hands of LFI.
