"The Useful Idiots of Fascism": Socialist Party Officials Attacked, Emma Rafowicz Targets an "LFI-sphere on the Networks"

Punches, kicks, insults. On Thursday, during the May Day demonstration in Paris, individuals dressed in black physically attacked Socialist Party elected officials at the PS booth set up along the march route. Called a "Zionist," MP Jérôme Guedj had to be removed from the procession, while other elected officials were called "collaborators."

"It was absolutely terrifying," Emma Rafowicz, a Socialist Party (PS) MEP from the Place Publique party, told RMC and RMC Story this Friday. "Firecrackers were thrown at protesters, and they decided to charge and get violent. There were about 40 of them, and there was a real charge. There were a lot of blows, some extremely harsh scenes. One activist was beaten to the ground behind me. These are things we don't want to see at a protest and they have no place there," she lamented.

"They claim to be anti-fascist, but they act as useful idiots for capitalism and fascism. When people see these images, no one thinks that these are acceptable methods," the MEP continues.

Emma Rafowicz believes that slogans associating the Socialist Party with Zionism have been increasing in number for "several months." "These slogans from far-left activists are intolerable," she says, believing that there is "a link with the brutalization of political debate on social media, sometimes coming from an LFI-sphere that feels authorized to throw around this kind of slogan as insults that would have no consequences."

"But what we see is that a climate of insults can have physical consequences," she concludes.

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But Emma Rafowicz insists it wasn't La France Insoumise that "insulted and attacked." "But 18- to 20-year-old activists were knocked to the ground and beaten; everyone needs to examine their conscience."

"When you're a political leader, you need a form of ethics, responsibility, and the assumption that if tomorrow we have to rebuild the country together, which has been massacred by the right-wing in power, and the far-right threatens everything, we have to build a left together," the elected official insists.

Following the violence, several La France Insoumise leaders insisted that these incidents were not their mode of action: "They weren't the ones who were striking behind the hoods, but what is unbearable is this half-hearted condemnation; it feels like it's just talking points. I'd like to believe them, but I find it less and less possible," concludes Emma Rafowicz.