“Gossip” and “lies”: Mathilde Panot reacts to the release of the book on the LFI system

For weeks, the LFI troops had been expecting a wave of criticism, in the run-up to the release of a detailed essay on their movement, entitled La Meute, enquête sur La France insoumise by Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Flammarion), journalists Charlotte Belaïch (Libération) and Olivier Pérou (Le Monde), in bookstores Wednesday, May 7. Dedicated to the functioning of the apparatus created by the former presidential candidate, the book describes a violent, pyramidal and courtly mode of operation, where purges are frequent . And where the lack of internal democracy is assumed, in the name of political objectives.

At the National Assembly on Tuesday, May 6, the leader of the LFI deputies, Mathilde Panot, was expecting questions from the press. The day before, the Val-de-Marne MP had urged her flock to be "extremely vigilant" regarding media invitations. Her troops have even been asked to "refuse" the morning shows in the coming days, as indicated by a message sent in an internal messaging loop, seen by Libération . Facing the cameras, the Mélenchon loyalist took charge of the response: "I don't want to comment on a book that collects both gossip and lies, since many of the facts reported in this book are false." Adding: "LFI absolutely does not correspond to what this book [says]."

The MP refuted several passages mentioned in the book, anecdotal and mirroring the latter's thesis, that of a political movement legitimizing violence and the silencing of internal democracy on the grounds of defending a political project. According to Panot, Mélenchon would never have uttered this sentence against Manuel Bompard , the coordinator of the movement: "You, buy yourself a brain." Charlotte Girard , a former figure of LFI, would not raise her children alone either, as the two journalists write, but "with her husband," according to Panot. Jean-Luc Mélenchon would not have the habit of drinking a glass of white wine at the end of his meetings, but rather red, or even a Jura. Panot concludes: "Everything in this book is factually false and questionable."

The group's leader also deplores the book's focus, which focuses on the movement's internal workings. "There are no political ideas in this book, none of our campaigns, none of our mobilizations." Finally, when asked about the instructions given to her troops, Panot stated: "We are free to respond or not to media invitations."

Invited on BFM TV this Tuesday, Fabien Roussel, the national secretary of the French Communist Party, denounced the lack of "democracy within" LFI, comparing the Mélenchonist movement to "a sect under the influence of a couple," that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon "and his partner Sophia Chikirou," a Paris MP.

Allied with LFI for the last legislative elections, in 2022 and 2024, Roussel has already distanced himself from Mélenchon's personality, and reiterated this Tuesday, May 6, that he was "not a good candidate, a good choice for France."