Théodore Abitbol is a self-described “militant antifascist,” with degrees in political science and comparative literature, and a bookshelf that ranges from the gender and queer theory of bell hooks to the anti-capitalist social analysis of the Marxist theorist Mike Davis.

The 34-year-old is a regular participant in pro-Palestine protests, and has a decade of full-time activism under his belt: unions, strikes, protests, civil disobedience and vast protest encampments used to block construction projects, known in France as ZAD – for “zone à défendre”.

Abitbol should be an in-the-bag vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), a longtime fixture of hard-left French politics and a 2027 presidential candidate who is drawing significant support among voters under 35.

After all, LFI is doing something necessary by focusing on some of France’s most left-behind urban areas and giving voters in them a voice: Bally Bagayoko faced down racist abuse to win the mayoral race in Paris’s inner banlieue of Saint-Dénis. David Guiraud defeated the right for the first time since 1983 in Roubaix, one of France’s poorest large cities. The party’s success in these heavily working-class and minority areas is due its willingness to draw new lines around old identity debates, and an intransigent anti-capitalist attitude. LFI parliamentarians such as Clémence Guetté are actually making innovative and radical proposals, such as recognising close friendships and extending legal rights to them.

Yet Abitbol demonstrates the single biggest voter faultline between two incompatible French lefts: Mélenchon himself.

I mainly remember Abitbol, an acquaintance from my immediate post-student days, as being staunchly opposed to Macron’s economic policies. That hasn’t changed. But he also can’t stomach voting for Mélenchon, he confided when I reached out to him recently, , because of the LFI leader’s stances on Russia, Ukraine and the EU. “A part of the [French] left retains a cold-war mentality where Russia is an ally against American imperialism, without seeing that Putin and Trump are in agreement about almost everything in their foreign and domestic policies,” he told me.

I don’t believe Abitbol is alone. They might not admit it as openly, but I think there are millions of French voters who also crave the kind of rupture with capitalism and the status quo that Mélenchon is proposing, but have no desire to go where he would take France on foreign and European policy. French presidential elections rarely hinge on discussions of France’s place in the world. But the threat posed by Russia to Europe has already dominated the opening days of the........

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