Essayist, journalist, political advisor, MEP, how Raphaël Glucksmann hopes to win votes by doing “everything at once”.
Raphaël Glucksmann, the man
Raphaël Glucksmann is the leader of the French Socialist Party list for the 2024 European Election. The strategy put forward by the candidate is to get out of a Macron-Le Pen duel, presenting himself and his list “Place Publique” as the best and only viable alternative to the far-right party Rassemblement National (RN), and Macron’s party Renaissance.
The most recent surveys seem to confirm that Glucksmann strategy of appealing to the largest voting base possible pays off, as he is now third in the voting intentions. An Ipsos survey of the 29th of April 2024 confirmed his third place in the voting race, as he now collects 14% of the voting intentions, while it represented only 9% in January according to another French survey institute IFOP. How did the current vice Chairman of the European subcommittee of Human Rights manage to place himself in such an advantageous position?
Since the beginning of 2024, all French media portray the upcoming EU-elections as a key step towards the 2027 presidential election. The Macron-Le Pen duel is in every media, reinforcing the media presence of the RN and presenting said party as a viable and reasonable alternative to Macron, while the left fails to find common ground. In this turmoil, Raphaël Glucksmann manages to stand out. The candidate has a fairly classic background for anyone wishing to take part in the political debate in France: first Sciences Po, after a course at the prestigious Parisian lycée Henri IV, then a brief spell as a journalist. His political engagement is resolutely focused on humanitarian crises, particularly in the former USSR. He is also known for an episode on French radio in which he denounced France’s involvement in 1994 Tutsis genocide in Rwanda, which led to the prosecution of his interviewer Natacha Polony for denying the existence of said genocide.
On a national level, his political placement is blurry to say the least. Following his father’s footsteps, he follows a neo-conservative and neoliberal tradition, and in 2007, although he will later deny it, he was a supporter of the presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, right wing party UMP’s candidate. Later he will, in an interview given to Le Monde, position himself as “an atheist in politics when he started out”, and to have moved to the left “out of spite”, Sarkozy having, in his view, “left the field of republican acceptability”. Later, he will endorse Macron’s candidacy and welcome his election as Président de la République.
In 2018, he founds Place Publique, a party designed to unify the left with a view to the 2019 European elections. He is elected as MEP and in 2020 is elected Chairman of the Special Committee on foreign interference in the democratic processes of the European Union, making the Uighur genocide its hobbyhorse.
In 2024, he is invested by the PS as the leader of the list for the upcoming European Elections, with the same goal as 2019: unite the broken left. However, he is adamant in his refusal to unite with the most prominent leftist party, La France Insoumise, he cannot imagine going into electoral battle with people with a vision of Europe that is so different from his.
Controversial positions and balancing extremes, the opportunist
Glucksmann’s past in Georgia leaves a dark shadow on his self-proclaimed “humanism”. Between 2009 and 2012, he was an advisor and friend to President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is now in prison for abuse of power and organization of assault against an opposition lawmaker. Raphaël Glucksmann is, as such, still a very controversial figure in Georgia, although he was a fervent militant for the entry of Georgia in the EU. The former president has been imprisoned since 2021, and allegations of mistreatment have been made, including from Glucksmann himself in 2022, “If Saakashvili dies in jail, it’s the end of Georgia’s European fate, and a shame for European leaders.” This particular quote is to be found on a Georgian press website, Interpress.ge, and I would like to make it clear that the several translations might have altered its original sense.
The friendship Glucksmann entertained with former president Saakashvili has been proven by his own book, co-written with Saakashvili. This relation puts a strain on his MP position, heavily critiqued by Georgia. On 22/05/2022, the Prime minister of Georgia held a speech in front of the Georgian Parliament, explaining how Glucksmann “used to be Mikheil Saakashvili’s adviser back when Saakashvili killed people, murdered, and raped, and tortured, and actually presented the country as an outright mafia state. This person, Glucksmann, is a Member of the European Parliament today.” Indeed, Glucksmann’s track record as advisor to Saakashvili is far from socialist: abolition of the minimum wage, dismissal of 60,000 civil servants, lowering of corporate income tax from 20% to 15%, and dividend tax from 10% to 5%. Yet, he seems to pride himself as a representative of the Socialist Party in France.
As a European MP since 2020, Raphaël Glucksmann displayed behaviours that were confusing. As the head of the list for Macron’s Party, Valérie Hayer, in an interview to Le Figaro, the 29/02/2024, explains it: “Raphaël Glucksmann and I vote 90% the same way in the European Parliament. He should be with us, and he knows it”. His proximity to the position of Macron’s Party is harshly criticised by the left, “No he is not a comrade”, titled Le Média, a French independent leftist web journal.
Glucksmann has presented himself as the forefront against illiberal regimes and autocracies. To do so he used his Instagram as a way to target a broad audience, with repetitive posts in bright colours throughout the Uyghur genocide and Ukraine war. Ukraine is indeed one of his main focus points, and he pushes for its EU and NATO membership. His strong positioning towards Ukraine and his lack of nuance on that topic takes him to “extremes” such as saying on the 14th of January 2024 in a TV-interview “If you vote for us, we will support Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. If you are vehemently opposed to this accession, I suggest you vote for the RN list.” This particular quote caused an uproar amongst the left, and has been denounced by François Ruffin (French leftist MP) in an open letter ten days later. Indeed, as many other left-wing parties are competing in the EU-election, calling for a vote for the far-right is… tacky at best. The candidate simultaneously denounces in a rally in Bordeaux the 20th of January 2024 the uprising of the far-right in Europe: “All over the European Continent, there is a wave of far-right, threatening the institutions”. It seems as if the candidate, in trying to appeal to everyone, instead of reconciling the left and the overall public debate, deepens the divides with contradictory statements and uncertain positions.
Recently he explained his support on Twitter towards the largely debated Macron’s position on sending the army to Ukraine, which sparked further controversy in France. The candidate is a fervent advocate for a war against Russia, to defend the Occident. In 2022 the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation, of which he is chairman and which he helped to create, produced a report that mentions Russia more than sixty-six times, showing a strong focus on Russian interferences. Other countries, whose interferences have been the object of scandals, seem to benefit from a certain discretion from the Committee. Surely there is good reason being Qatar mentioned only three times in the same report, despite the former President of the European Parliament Eva Kaili having been accused of accepting a bribe more than 1 million euros from Qatar; a different reason from Eva Kaili being the head of the S&D group, to which Glucksmann belongs.
As for the current conflict in Gaza, Raphaël Glucksmann is surprisingly silent. On his Instagram page however, the candidate proudly highlights his vote in favour of a ceasefire. That vote seems nonetheless useless when he simultaneously voted, in the 19/10/23 European resolution against the recognition of war crime for Israël’s attacks of the 8th of October 2023, as well as against the suspension of any EU association to Israel. His positions on Gaza’s situation sparked uproar among the French leftist youth, with a height in tension on the 1st of May march for the Workers’ Day in Saint-Etienne, where the communist youth exhorted him out of the demonstration, shouting “Palestine will Live” according to several videos posted by the demonstrators on X. He recently called to the “evacuation” of the students blocking Sciences Po Paris in support to Palestine and the several encampments in the US on RMC, a public television channel. This particular point could influence the votes in June, although the political fraction of the French left, especially over the Palestinian genocide, will most probably cause a huge loss for the entire left, as the far-right is already given the title of the ultimate winner in the election. Indeed, it is only combined that the left-parties represent the majority of the French voters’ voting intentions, but so close to the vote, no hope is left for a union of the left.
Raphaël Glucksmann ultra-European position puts him on top of the polls for the left in France. His communication strategy based on social media federates the youth of the party, even though his positions seem to converge towards a liberal centre rather than a political left. “Everything at once” seems to pay at the moment, especially since the mainstream media are fond of him. The lack of social project in his program is nevertheless concerning, especially since he is the first to denounce Macron’s Party as a “ladder for the far-right” in his rally speeches. His program is lacking in concrete actions, with a strong focus on an EU-Russia divide, which seems to conceal any other topic. Overall, the “Glucksmania” described by the French media is far from certain to hold for another two months of campaign, and much less for the 2027 presidential Election. Only June will tell what will happen and if the predictions of a right-wing wave all over Europe, as painted by Glucksmann will become a reality, or if he will be the hope many French, after two mandates of Macron, need. But, again, Macron was also presented in 2017 by the media as the centric hope needed to get out of the left-right cleavage, so this might be only another fleeting glimpse of hope.
