The guard dogs order us to call for calm. We call for justice. Withdraw the legal action against poor Nahel. Hang the murderous policeman and his accomplice who ordered him to shoot. Leave the paramedic alone.
Do you hear the people sing?
The guard dogs order us to call for calm. We call for justice. Withdraw the legal action against poor Nahel. Hang the murderous policeman and his accomplice who ordered him to shoot. Leave the paramedic alone.
Do you hear the people sing?
I do not see how any political leader making a statement of support for protesters over this heinous act is “opportunistic”. It’s exceptionally important to have their voices sounding off to maintain momentum and public support.
Say what you will about him not being hard-left enough, I’ll give you that. But I don’t think it’s the time or place for it.
The public is up with pitchforks and a politician makes a call “Yay pitchforks!”, I think that is the opportunistic part. Anyone can make the same call for some of the juicy free public attention for themselves - and such a remark isn’t good for anything but some camera spotlight.
Most normal people would opt for an investigation from the justice system with a court and judges to make the calls - not a mob with pitchforks or a politician who wants to hang people before a trial even started.
Melenchon has always been very openly against police violence and for it’s urgent reform, and everyone in France knows that.
Voices sounding off are very different to voices calling for execution, possibly encouraging vigelante violence. It’s the latter that goes beyond political ideas and becomes opportunistic demagoguery.
Doing exactly what is needed to get change to happen when the cops are murdering children in traffic stops by shooting them in the head and then lying about it at every single level of power is good actually.
When the state refuses to provide justice people should absolutely take it. The threat of the population taking their own justice is precisely what motivates states to provide a source of it that they control.
The translation is wrong, you can see his actual tweet in this article:
He did NOT ask to hang the policeman, he said “suspendez le policier” which means put the policeman on administrative leave (second definition here)
If he wanted to say “hang the policeman”, he would have said “pendez le policier” (third definition here)
The translation given here in this article is voluntarily misleading. I would invite you to paste the original tweet in DeepL or ChatGPT to have a more accurate one.