Jean-Luc Melenchon (born 19 August 1951) was a French Front de Gauche/La France Insoumise Member of the European Parliament from 14 July 2009. Melenchon was known to be a far-left firebrand who extensively utilized technology for his campaigns, and he was considered a political outsider due to his radical views.
Biography[]
Jean-Luc Antoine Pierre Melenchon was born in Tangier, Morocco on 19 August 1951 to a Spanish postmaster and his Spanish-Sicilian wife, and his family moved to France in 1962. Melenchon graduated from the University of Franche-Comte to become a teacher, and he joined the Socialist Party of France in September 1976. Melenchon advocated a merger of the Socialist Party and the French Communist Party to create a union of the left, and he remained in PS until 2008, when he created the new leftist Front de Gauche party. In 2012, he won 11.10% of the vote, taking fourth place. Melenchon opposed Francois Hollande's centrist free market economy, and he believed that the PS had betrayed leftism. In 2017, he ran for President of France as the leader of the new Unsubmissive France party, utilizing technology for his campaign; he appeared in a hologram onstage, and his supporters created the "Fiscal Kombat" online game. Melenchon was a left-wing populist who opposed the European Union, and he was seen as an outsider by many, and was not expected to win. He won 19.2% of the popular vote during the first round of elections, again placing fourth.