It’s revealing that Avi Lewis ignores the most successful leftist leader in the imperial core. It’s not Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s anti-capitalism that explains the NDP leader’s reticence, but the French presidential candidate’s opposition to NATO.
In a summary of a recent interview with Lewis Politico noted, “He has worked before with ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (on a ‘Green New Deal’ cartoon; he was a writer), admires BERNIE SANDERS — and his team has traded notes with ZOHRAN MAMDANI’s staff.”
I was unable to find any mention by either Lewis or the NDP of Mélenchon, who has increased his share of the vote in three consecutive presidential elections coming within 1% of reaching the second round in the last vote, or his La France Insoumise (LFI) party. Even Lewis’ quasi media arm The Breach, which has equated Lewis to Sanders, Mamdani and former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, has ignored Mélenchon/LFI.
Omitting the decade old LFI, which has 72 seats in Parliament and 9 Euro MPs, is particularly startlingly today. Mayors and MPs from the largest party on the French left have participated in blockades and demonstrations of the massive mobilization by lycée students (somewhat like Quebec’s CEGEPs, French lycées cover grades 10-12). While focused on education conditions, the movement is spiralling into a systemic challenge encompassing Palestine, military spending and the climate crisis.
Polling second seven months before the presidential election, Mélenchon has noted recently that “capitalism is inherently anti-ecological” and “today, being an anti-capitalist is a precondition simply to make reasonable preparations for humanity’s survival.”
LFI has participated in campaigns against police violence and has refused to kowtow to media pressure over the reaction to a police killing. Mélenchon noted that the establishment’s media “guard dogs are ordering us to call for calm. We call for justice!… Suspend the police murderer.”
Mélenchon’s overall political tone — “we are not talking about a patch-up job, but a change from this civilisation to a different one” — troubles the cautious NDP. But there’s likely one specific demand that deters Lewis from associating with Mélenchon/LFI. In front of 10,000 supporters on Sunday the French presidential candidate declared, “We’re not preparing our children and grandchildren to die for some hazardous operation concocted by NATO. We are partisans of non-alignment.” Mélenchon has called for dissipating tensions with Russia and recently stated, “NATO only serves one purpose: to place us under U.S. control.”
It’s not just a rare rhetorical flourish against NATO. LFI has put withdrawing from the alliance front and centre with aJanuary released headlined, “LE GROUPE PARLEMENTAIRE DE LA FRANCE INSOUMISE PROPOSE DE SORTIR DE L’OTAN.”
Even more than anticapitalism, NATO is a third rail in NDP politics. The party supported the 2011 NATO bombing campaign of Libya and has ardently promoted the alliance’s proxy war in Ukraine. But historically most NDP members have supported withdrawing from the belligerent alliance.
At a time when the defensive argument for NATO was stronger than today the NDP officially called for withdrawing from the alliance. In 1969 NDP members voted for a resolution calling on Ottawa to withdraw from the alliance. But the party leadership partly reversed that position in a 1987 “security” policy.
With Mark Carney massively increasing military spending to reach the Trump-imposed NATO target of 5% of GDP, the alliance has become a direct threat to Canadian social programs. One of the most important subjects for left NDP members should be rekindling a grassroots debate about withdrawing from NATO.
As John Mullen details in the critical, but supportive, “Ten years of France insoumise: a Marxist view”, there’s limitations to Mélenchon’s foreign policy outlook. (During an April 2025 visit organized by LFI’s Montréal chapter I sought to ask Mélenchon if he agreed with the push to repay Haiti its $40 billion ransom of independence, but I was unable to get into the overflowing venue.) Despite questioning his nationalism, Mullen recognizes that for a mainstream left politician Mélenchon has been far more willing to challenge French imperialism.
Leftists in and around the NDP should be pressing Avi Lewis and the NDP to look towards Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise as a model.
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