“In Sainte-Soline, the ultra-left and the extreme left are extremely violent against our gendarmes”, wrote Gérald Darmanin on Twitter Saturday, after the demonstrations against the Deux-Sèvres mega-basins. The Interior Minister had already condemned, a few days before, the “ultra-left” after the violence during the demonstrations against the pension reform on Thursday.
But with the use of this term, who is Gérald Darmanin specifically aiming at? In fact, the description of “ultra-left” has been associated in recent years with heterogeneous groups: both the Zadistas of Notre-Dame-des-Landes and the activists who form the black blocs or even the environmental protesters.
With this term, the idea of a radical leftist movement that advocates a break with the current system is initially raised. HE larousse He thus gives a broad definition of “ultra-left”, speaking of an “autonomous current that differs from the extreme left by rejecting institutional rules and which sometimes resorts to violent modes of action”.
“The target group is not clear”
But “the ultra-left” is not a political party or a defined organization, in this sense with the use of this term, “the target group is not clear,” sociologist Michel Kokoref explains to BFMTV.com.
The author of Specter of the ultra-left, the state, the revolutions and us, It stands out that the movements grouped under this qualifier are multiple. He speaks of a “constellation of libertarian-minded, anti-authoritarian, anti-partisan, anti-union, feminist, and environmentalist networked affinity groups, advocating radical practices of self-organization, autonomy, and direct democracy.”
“The ultra-left” as it is pointed out would be a “constellation that goes from anarchists to autonomists” going through anti-capitalists, anti-statists or even anti-fascists, abounds Sylvaine Bulle, conflict sociologist, author of Irreducible. Study of living environments from Bure to Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
For these researchers, speaking of the “ultra-left” therefore has a limited meaning, because it brings together different ideologies that are then listed together at the same level. In fact, this term “does not correspond to anything”, declares Sylvaine Bulle.
Behind this expression, the government seems, in fact, to be particularly targeting protesters who are perpetrators of violence. Gérald Darmanin has systematically associated “ultra-left” and “violence” during his last speeches.
For a BFMTV.com government adviser, this association is clear, the so-called “ultra-left” groups are extreme-left groups that “try to impose their ideas through violence.” He speaks of “violent movements and actions” of the “ultra-left”.
But here again, the researchers ask for nuances. “If the specter or ghost of the ultra-left is synonymous with ‘violence’ from the point of view of the social order, its militants or activists are not essentially so”, explains Michel Kokoreff. Its main objective is that they “aspire to another world, to a good life together.”
For him, “the ultra-left” is “a construction destined to feed the distressing discourse on street violence and its ‘thugs'”.
It must also be remembered that this expression has already been used by members of the government in a completely different context. In 2020, the Ministry of Education was thus accused by Médiapart and Release finance and direct the union ‘Avenir Lycéen’. Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer then criticized the “ultra-left” for “creating controversy for nothing”. At the time, the term did not refer to perpetrators of violence.
A risk of “semantic bias”
Sylvaine Bulle stresses that with this vagueness in the definition of this group, there is a risk of “semantic and ideological bias”. Gérald Darmanin thus repeatedly associated in his speeches “ultra-left” and “extreme-left” in the same sentence, while condemning the violence of certain protesters.
With this association, “the extreme left is also returned to violence,” he says.
Taking into account that the demonstration against the Sainte-Soline basins defended ecological objectives, “it can instill in the public mind that ecology is violent” and “discredit the ecological struggle”, adds the researcher.
In Gérald Darmanin’s entourage, it is also claimed that a difference is made between the far-left political parties and the militants who perpetrate the violence, who therefore continue to be called the “ultra-left” by the government.
Source: BFM TV
