Only “revolutionary action” is now able to save the world from climate change, senior leftist La France Insoumise (LFI) politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon has claimed.
Mélenchon has engaged in radical rhetoric, telling a crowd gathered at a conference in Brussels this week that an electoral solution to current environmental issues is “no longer possible”.
“I am [of] the age that allows me to remember the time when we thought we had time,” he said at an event hosting European Union and South American left-wingers.
“If we failed in one election, we would meet again in the next one, and we would build, with the infinite patience of popular circles.
“Now we have no more time, we only have deadlines,” he argued, adding that capitalism had already caused irreversible damage to the world’s climate.
According to Mélenchon, the Left can no longer afford to wait for the next French general election in 2027 to change the situation and must now embrace unspecified action beyond the ballot box.
“Only revolutionary and subversive action, which ensures a break with capitalism, can enable us to pull humanity out of the impasse,” he added.
The LFI’s former candidate to become French president in 2022, Mélenchon has come under serious pressure from his own supporters over what many see as his increasingly inflammatory rhetoric.
His decision to accuse one senior Jewish leader of being linked with the far-right prompted some on the Left to demand that Mélenchon step aside from his prominent position in the party and let someone else take over.
His refusal to call for calm during migration-linked rioting in France also ruffled feathers throughout the country, with one of the politician’s own comrades describing Mélenchon’s intransigence as “irresponsible” and “completely bent”.
