France’s Far-Left and Islamic Groups Support the Protest Movement
France’s protests began in the second half of September with backing from communist parties, Trotskyist groups, far-left student unions, and labor confederations. The Prime Minister’s office accused La France Insoumise (LFI, “France Unbowed”), Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party, and its ultra-left proxies of organizing the school blockades. A Paris police intelligence note similarly accused far-left movements of exploiting them.
A Fox News Digital investigation identified 54 organizations connected to the movement, including communist youth groups, Trotskyist parties, unions, Palestine-solidarity groups, and international media outlets. Their involvement ranged from organizing protests to expressing solidarity or amplifying coverage.
Among the organizers, the Union Syndicale Lycéenne (USL, “High School Students’ Union”) has direct ties to LFI. Its president ran on an LFI-led electoral list in Wattrelos. The union supported the New Popular Front (NFP) left alliance in 2024, and members volunteered for LFI deputy Louis Boyard’s campaign. Boyard headed its predecessor, the Union Nationale Lycéenne (UNL, “National High School Union”), from 2018–2019, when it organized school blockades alongside the Yellow Vest protests.
The Union Étudiante (“Student Union”), now France’s largest student union, co-organized national marches and distributed blockade instructions and a mobilization kit. It formed during the April 2023 pension-reform protests, when 17 local sections of the National Union of Students of France (UNEF) split and merged with L’Alternative, a union close to LFI. The president of the rival Federation of General Student Associations (FAGE) described it as a youth political party rather than a student union. Alongside the USL, it called the October 6 “Act III” march.
Founded in 1907, UNEF is France’s oldest student union and also called students into the streets. In 2021, its president acknowledged holding racially restricted meetings for members affected by racism. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer called them racist, and a Republican senator described UNEF as “LFI’s student union”. Mélenchon and approximately 250 former leaders defended UNEF in Le Monde.
Solidaires Étudiant-e-s (“Solidaires Students”) is affiliated with the Solidaires labor confederation. In 2024, anti-terrorism police summoned its members at the Paris graduate school EHESS in an investigation into alleged glorification of terrorism over their public support for the Palestinian struggle.
Another student organization, Étudiants Musulmans de France (EMF, “Muslim Students of France”), has Muslim Brotherhood connections, according to the French Interior Ministry’s report. It says EMF was created by the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, now Musulmans de France, which it identifies as the Brotherhood’s French branch. EMF is affiliated with that organization and the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations, described as the youth branch of the Brotherhood-linked Council of European Muslims.
The political parties supporting the movement have their own histories of protest mobilization. During the 2023 riots following the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne accused LFI of exploiting the death.
Trotskyist organizations also urged escalation. Révolution Permanente (“Permanent Revolution”) and its youth wing, Le Poing Levé (“The Raised Fist”), which has been active since 2018, gained prominence during the 2023 pension protests. Both belong to the international Trotskyist Fraction network, led by Argentina’s Socialist Workers’ Party. Anti-terrorism police questioned spokesman Anasse Kazib over four Gaza tweets in an investigation into alleged glorification of terrorism.
Révolution Permanente was expelled in 2021 from the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA, “New Anticapitalist Party”). Founded in 2009 as the successor to the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League, the NPA split in 2022. Philippe Poutou’s faction contested elections under the NFP banner in 2024. On October 7, the NPA called on workers to strike, calling the government the real “casseurs,” or rioters.
On October 3, the Union de la Jeunesse Communiste (“Union of Communist Youth”) urged supporters to expand the high school protests, describing Macron’s governments as bourgeois and committed to a war economy.
The French Communist Party (PCF) and its youth wing, the Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France (“Young Communists Movement of France”), also backed the protests. In an October 14 statement, the PCF urged students and workers to unite for the October 17 mobilization and union-led strikes on November 5. It opposed restrictions on gatherings, repression, and a planned €7 billion increase in military spending. Party leader Fabien Roussel had urged support for the October 6 student action, rejecting the government’s accusations against LFI while condemning violence. Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure also pledged to stand with students on October 6.
Connections among these parties extend into antifascist, decolonial, and pro-Palestinian activism. Raphaël Arnault, founder of Lyon’s Jeune Garde Antifasciste (“Young Antifascist Guard”), sits with LFI in the National Assembly. Founded in 2018, the group was dissolved by decree on June 12, 2025. France’s highest administrative court upheld the dissolution on April 30, 2026, finding it trained its members for confrontations.
Eight suspected members were charged in connection with an antisemitic assault on a 15-year-old in 2024. Two of Arnault’s parliamentary aides were arrested in February 2026 in connection with the killing of far-right activist Quentin Deranque.
Jeune Garde’s connections extend to Génération EDR (Espoir, Dignité, Résistance, “Hope, Dignity, Resistance”), an anti-Islamophobia collective founded in March 2025. Its spokespeople include a former Jeune Garde member and members of USL and a popular-education collective. The government is moving to dissolve Génération EDR, alleging violent activism under the guise of fighting Islamophobia.
LFI deputy Danièle Obono has called a “comrade” Houria Bouteldja, co-founder of the Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR, “Party of the Indigenous of the Republic”). The Interior Ministry’s Muslim Brotherhood report compares PIR’s rhetoric to the Brotherhood’s. In 2015, Bouteldja described Jews as shields for France’s imperialist and Islamophobic policies.
Urgence Palestine (“Palestine Emergency”) was founded the day after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau initiated dissolution proceedings in April 2025, saying the state must target Islamists. The proceedings remained pending in November.
Co-founder Omar Alsoumi was taken into custody that month on suspicion of glorifying terrorism and faced prosecution in 2026. In sworn parliamentary testimony, a journalist said he marched alongside deputies Mathilde Panot, Thomas Portes, and Ersilia Soudais of LFI. LFI and the FSU labor federation signed a statement demanding Alsoumi’s release. LFI MEP Rima Hassan signed the petition against Urgence Palestine’s dissolution, which the NPA also publicly opposed.
Organized labor joined the protests through an education-union coalition comprising the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), Unitary Trade Union Federation (FSU), Workers’ Force (FO), French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT), National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions (UNSA), SUD unions, and Solidaires. The CGT, Solidaires, and farmers’ union Confédération Paysanne (“Peasant Confederation”) also mobilized for the October 17 demonstrations over student grievances, fuel prices, and living costs.
Led by Sophie Binet, the CGT is one of France’s two largest union confederations. In April 2024, its Nord branch leader, Jean-Paul Delescaut, received a suspended prison sentence of one year for glorifying terrorism over a pro-Palestinian leaflet issued three days after October 7. Mélenchon, Binet, and Roussel signed a petition supporting him. The Toulouse branch of CGT Éduc’action, its education union, co-signed a statement in 2024 with Le Poing Levé, the NPA, and Collectif Palestine Vaincra (“Palestine Will Win Collective”).
SUD Éducation, part of Solidaires, condemned both Hamas’s October 7 massacres and Israeli killings of civilians while describing the situation as colonial since 1948. It also signed the statement defending Solidaires students summoned by anti-terrorism police.
The wider list includes environmental, parents’, and civil-rights organizations whose histories provide context but do not, by themselves, establish responsibility for the current unrest. The radical environmental movement Les Soulèvements de la Terre (“Earth Uprisings”) was founded in 2021 at the Notre-Dame-des-Landes protest camp. The government dissolved it following the 2023 Sainte-Soline clashes over farm reservoirs. The Council of State annulled the dissolution as disproportionate, although it found the group had incited violence against property.
The Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH, “Human Rights League”) deployed observers at Sainte-Soline. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin subsequently suggested reviewing its public subsidy funding. Citizenship Minister Sonia Backès criticized it for defending the CCIF, the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, dissolved by the government as Islamist. She also accused the LDH of spreading a false claim that gendarmes had blocked emergency care at Sainte-Soline.
Other organizations identified include France’s largest public-school parents’ federation, the Fédération des Conseils de Parents d’Élèves (“Federation of Parents’ Councils”), and the Mouvement Contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples (“Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples”). SOS Racisme also has longstanding Socialist connections. Founded in 1984 by Julien Dray and Harlem Désir, it emerged from a political trajectory an academic study traces from Trotskyism into the Socialist Party, which Désir later led.
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