This image does not prove that Jean-Luc Mélenchon “praised” the National Front in 1991

Published on: 04/14/2022 – 18:17 Since April 12, Twitter and Facebook accounts have shared a photo of an old quote from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to affirm that the candidate of rebellious France would have “praised of the National Front. This image is from an article published on December 25, 1991. If this quote is genuine, it was actually taken out of context and the full text of this interview does not indicate support for the far-right party . The verification in briefSince April 12, the photo of an old interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been shared on Facebook and Twitter. It is titled by one of his quotes: “The only party that rehabilitates politics is the National Front.” According to the accounts which share it, this archive would date from December 25, 1991 and would prove that on this date, the current deputy for the 4th district of Bouches-du-Rhône would have made “the apology of the National Front”. If this interview was published by the newspaper Le Quotidien de Paris, the quote is now taken out of context. Numerous archives make it possible to affirm that, in this interview, Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not praise the far-right party. This false information has already been shared on several occasions, notably in 2017 during the previous campaign for the presidential election. The detail of the verification “To those who voted Mélenchon and who are afraid to vote tomorrow Navy [Le Pen, NDLR], it was in 1991…” Since April 12, Facebook and Twitter accounts have shared the same photo of an old interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. These publications have been viewed more than 300,000 times. According to these accounts, this archive would prove that the candidate of rebellious France, eliminated in the first round of the presidential election on April 10, 2022, would have “apologized” for the National Front in 1991. In question, the quote used to title this interview: ” The only party that rehabilitates politics is the National Front.” Screenshot of one of the publications sharing this old interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. 04/14/22. © Observateurs An archive taken out of contextTo find the origin of this interview, it is necessary to carry out a Google search with several keywords. First, the name of the newspaper which published it, namely Le Quotidien de Paris, then the quote used in the title of this interview Since Le Quotidien de Paris closed its doors in 1996, we cannot find the archives of its publications online. But this Google search by keywords refers to an article published on December 26, 1991 by the daily newspaper Le Monde. This article explains that, on December 25, 1991, Le Quotidien de Paris published an interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In this interview, the one who was then PS senator from Essonne, in Île-de-France, reacted among other things to the partial cantonal election which had been held in Sommières, in Gard, by actually pronouncing the words: ” The only party that rehabilitates politics is the National Front.” But the article in Le Monde transcribes all of these remarks. However, the complete version of this sentence does not at all have the meaning of a compliment addressed to the National Front: “The vote of Sommières is the sacred union against the PS [Parti socialiste, dont est alors membre Jean-Luc Mélenchon, NDLR] […]. The country is sitting on a powder keg of people who can no longer stand the current situation. These people want change, but we still offer nothing; so they will look elsewhere. The PS has abandoned politics. I’m going to tell you something dreadful: today, the party that rehabilitates politics is the National Front.” In this interview, Jean-Luc Mélenchon therefore did not praise the party of extreme right, as his expression “I’m going to tell you something dreadful” makes explicit. His remarks consist mainly of a criticism of the Socialist Party which, according to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was then incapable of proposing an innovative project and was a figure of “speaker of government policy”. An exaggeration used excessively This decontextualized publication of the words of Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not original. Thanks to the Google search “Mélenchon Front national réhabiliter”, we find several checks carried out by TF1, 20 Minutes or CrossCheck And all these articles do not date from 2022, but from 2017. During the previous presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had already been the target of publications using this same interview of 1991. And the candidate of La France insoumise had even explained his remarks in 2011. He was then interviewed by Valérie Trierweiler in the program “2012 Portraits de Campagne” on the Direct 8 channel. This false information on the remarks by Jean-Luc Mélenchon has therefore been circulating on social networks for several years.