Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a member of the National Assembly for La France Insoumise (“Unsubdued France”, LFI), a left-wing populist and democratic socialist political party. He is a former communist and a former member of the Socialist Party and the Left Party.
Recently the house and offices of Mr. Mélenchon were raided by the police due to alleged financial irregularities. Other prominent French politicians affiliated with LFI were raided at the same time.
During the police action at his house, Mr. Mélenchon live-streamed events with his cell phone in an extended video selfie. Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Below is an excerpt from an RT article about the raids on La France Insoumise:
First Le Pen, Now Melenchon? Another Macron Critic Has Headquarters Raided
Former French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon’s home has been raided by police, as part of an investigation into alleged misuse of EU funds that also targeted political firebrand and Macron critic Marine Le Pen.
The leader of France’s left-wing La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) livestreamed the unannounced intrusion on Facebook, vowing to exact revenge on France’s Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet for the raid, which targeted his home as well as his party’s headquarters.
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | Don’t touch me, Monsieur, you have no right to touch me! | |
| 00:04 | This is the prosecutor who says I don’t know what. | |
| 00:08 | Nobody touches me. My person is sacred. I’m an MP. | |
| 00:12 | And in order to convince you of it, so you finish by understanding well who I am, | |
| 00:16 | I’ll put this on: | |
| 00:20 | Voilà. It’s me, Mélenchon, | |
| 00:24 | with my three-colored ribbon. I’m not scared of anybody! | |
| 00:28 | Those people can invade my house and the premises of my party and | |
| 00:32 | my movement and they don’t scare me. We haven’t stolen anything. | |
| 00:36 | We are honest. All right. | |
| 00:40 | So this time I just had a look at the size | |
| 00:44 | of the police operation, which is taking place. It’s a political operation. | |
| 00:48 | It’s not justice , it’s politics. Therefore I’m asking you | |
| 00:52 | to gather, those who can, who can join us, | |
| 00:56 | who can come to help us, because we don’t have to lower our gaze. | |
| 01:00 | So the headquarters of France Insoumise [Unsubdued France] is at 43 Dunkirk Street | |
| 01:04 | in the 10th district in Paris. For those who can [come] at 11:30am, we’ll be there. | |
| 01:09 | For the time being I’m giving the order: to all those who are inside | |
| 01:13 | and can see me, and to those who are right now outside, especially the MP, | |
| 01:17 | to enter the premises of the headquarters. We won’t be evicted from there by this gang [police]! | |
| 01:21 | You have to enter and defend your headquarters. | |
| 01:25 | None of this is justice or police. The new government | |
| 01:29 | started its work with an operation that took place this morning at the homes | |
| 01:33 | of nine people, in order to proceed to searches, and also at the headquarters | |
| 01:38 | of the movement La France Insoumise and at the headquarters of the Parti du Gauche [Left Party] | |
| 01:41 | I’m asking all my friends to occupy those headquarters and not surrender. | |
| 01:45 | Not to be intimidated. And if, perchance, | |
| 01:49 | they try to kick you out, hold onto the furniture and | |
| 01:54 | resist in all the possible ways! Do not obey! Do not obey! | |
| 01:58 | Those orders are illegal, unmoral, unacceptable! | |
| 02:02 | It’s a type of political intimidation operation. | |
| 02:06 | I want them to know what the consequences are for bothering us. | |
| 02:10 | See, those people have been in my house since 7am. Imagine, it’s 10:20 now. For three hours | |
| 02:18 | they’ve been coming and going in my house. | |
| 02:22 | Some are armed, picture that, because you never know | |
| 02:26 | whether I might fight them with a serving spoon or with I don’t know what | |
| 02:30 | I might find around. Therefore I’m asking you to occupy | |
| 02:34 | the headquarters at Dunkirk Street. You are there at home. It’s your place. | |
| 02:38 | This headquarters belongs to you, with everything that is in it! | |
| 02:42 | Don’t be intimidated. Don’t let them make you lower your gaze! | |
| 02:46 | It’s not police; it’s not justice; it’s politics. | |
| 02:51 | The fellow who reported us started by validating my campaign accounts. | |
| 02:55 | Before complaining, after his wage was raised 57%! | |
| 02:59 | His name is [François] Logerot. He’s the president of a pretend-commission | |
| 03:03 | of campaign accounts [Mélenchon’s campaign finance]. I already said ten times that if they | |
| 03:07 | weren’t happy they should re-examine all accounts. Do you see all those people here? Well, | |
| 03:10 | I guarantee that they won’t go to the President of the Republic, who was also reported. | |
| 03:15 | They won’t go to [the home of Christophe] Castaner, who is now the Interior Minister and was | |
| 03:19 | general delegate of the République en Marche [Macron’s party] until yesterday. They come | |
| 03:22 | to my house! To the houses of my assistants! Without taking into account | |
| 03:27 | the neighbors, people’s lives; all that to intimidate and to scare. | |
| 03:31 | Don’t be afraid! Resist in all the possible ways! Don’t be intimidated by them! | |
| 03:35 | There, I’m counting on you, and at 11:30 am | |
| 03:39 | be as numerous as possible in front of the headquarters of La France Insoumise, | |
| 03:43 | 43 Dunkirk Street, and we’ll see if those people will keep confronting us for very long. |
Hat tip for the article: Reader From Chicago.
Wow, I never thought I’d agree with Mélenchon on anything, but I agree with everything that he said today.
Scary.
Funny how similar events in the major Western civilization countries are going. All of them led by dim-bulb, incompetent, corrupt, blindly partisan, lock-step traitors, all of them jettisoning the concept of due process and the impartiality of the law. In the US, also, we are treated to the spectacle of police overreach in early-morning raids on long-ago tax cheats, simply because they supported the current President.
In my opinion, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an agent of the Deep State, doing the very little he has to do to keep Trump from sacking him immediately, but ignoring the flagrant abuses of police and prosecutorial powers under his administration. I often think that Sessions was actually the “insurance policy” hinted at in the now-public text messages of the FBI operatives. I know that Ann Coulter says that Sessions is the only one actually carrying out the least bit of Trump’s original campaign plank: stop illegal immigration. But, latest figures show the immigrant numbers surging again, whether illegal or semi-legal.