Profile: As the global economy crumbles, a young revolutionary’s talk of smashing the state seems attractive to voters in France.
France's baby-faced “Red Postman” has been quietly knocking on the door of French politics for years.
However, Olivier Besancenot believes he has now created a wrecking ball to end capitalism and the institutions of the French state symbolised by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
With his cropped hair, Tintin quiff and cheeky grin it is not hard to see why the 34-year old is referred to as everyone’s “ideal son-in-law”.
Whatever you think of his politics – he believes that no employee should ever be sacked – this earnest Trotskyist has a magnetic media presence and undeniable gift of the gab, which have helped turn him into a youth idol.
In Britain, he would be dismissed as a “loony Lefty”. In France, Mr Besancenot is the second most popular political figure behind Mr Sarkozy.
In the wake of the global financial meltdown, his plans to do away with the market economy and create a single, nationalised “state banking service” no longer sound quite so far-fetched.
Middle France’s acceptance of the far-Left postman was sealed when he appeared on the French equivalent of This is Your Life and promised: “For me, the revolution is not a puddle of blood on each street corner.” But behind the harmless, working-class-boy-next-door image, Mr Besancenot means business.
On Sunday, he will launch what he hopes is the ultimate weapon against the powers that be — a mass-appeal far-Left party whose provisional name is the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste (NPA).
This will replace the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire.
With financial institutions on the verge of collapse and anger rife at the immorality of a system that spawned the Madoff scandal, the timing could not have been better for the launch of a party that hopes to build a non-capitalist state. Add to that a bitterly divided and ineffectual centre-Left and long-standing French scepticism to the free market and it is not hard to see why Mr Sarkozy no longer views the NPA as a laughing matter. >>> | Friday, February 6, 2009
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