Olivier Besancenot
Olivier Besancenot (born April 18, 1974 in Levallois-Perret ) is a French politician of the radical left spectrum. He was spokesman and presidential candidate of the Trotskyist Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR, Revolutionary Communist League ) as well as a founding member and from 2009 to 2011 spokesman for the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA, New Anti-Capitalist Party ).
Life
Besancenot, the son of a physics teacher and a school psychologist, was born in the Hauts-de-Seine department in the greater Paris area. He is a trained historian and has been working as a postman in Neuilly-sur-Seine since 1997 . He is a single father and an avowed atheist .
He sees himself as an altermondialist communist and refers more to Rosa Luxemburg and Che Guevara than to Leon Trotsky .
Political career until 2002
Besanzenot first became politically active at SOS Racisme when he was fourteen . He joined the Jeunesses communistes révolutionnaires , the youth organization of the LCR, and in 1988 became a member of their national offices. In 1991 he becomes a member of the LCR. In the supermarket where he worked during his studies, he founded a local branch of the communist union CGT and is now a member of the postal union Sud-PTT . From 1999 to 2000 he was parliamentary advisor to the EU parliamentarian Alain Krivine and since then has officially returned to work as a postman at the French state post office La Poste .
Throughout his political career he has fought what he calls "modern capitalism". This is characterized by the fact that the ownership of the capital of companies is no longer concentrated in a single capitalist, but is distributed among a large number of shareholders, whereby the proletariat does not have a significant share in this ownership. The company profits are increasingly divided between the state and the company itself ( self-financing ) at the expense of the employees, who are deprived of the added value . In his view, “modern capitalism” has gained considerable influence on political decisions today. He advocates a general increase in wages and the social subsistence level, a ban on dismissal in companies that make profits, and a higher taxation of profits and speculative capital.
At the top of the LCR 2002-2009
In 2002 he succeeded his mentor Alain Krivine as spokesman for the LCR. In April 2002 he ran as the youngest candidate to date in the French presidential elections and received around 1,210,000 votes, which corresponded to 4.25% of the votes cast. In June 2004 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the European Parliament at the head of a joint list with the Lutte Ouvrière in the Île-de-France region .
As a fundamentally opposed party, the LCR refused to join the appeal for an anti-neoliberal rally and common candidacies in 2006 because of the formulations it contained, which "leave the door open to the formation of a new pluralist left", i.e. for a government alliance of a possible one President Ségolène Royal or parliamentary support for her policy. As a result, the LCR announced Besancenot's candidacy for the 2007 presidential election , with the addition of dropping the candidacy in favor of a joint candidate with other parties in the event of mutual distancing from the Parti socialiste . The hurdle required for the candidacy of at least 500 support signatures from the 47,289 mayors and elected officials of France was overcome on March 16, 2007.
In the 2007 presidential elections, Besancenot was able to confirm its 2002 result with 1,498,581 votes or 4.08%, even with a significantly higher turnout. The other candidates on the extreme left each received less than half of his vote. After the election, Besancenot, along with other left-wing candidates, called on voters to vote against Nicolas Sarkozy , which amounted to an indirect election recommendation for Ségolène Royal .
At times, he was the politician with the best sympathy ratings in the country, right after President Nicolas Sarkozy . He was particularly popular with young people.
In October 2008, Antoine Di Zazzo, an importer of electroshock weapons, several police officers and two private detectives were arrested on suspicion of espionage. You were accused of violating privacy, data protection and professional secrecy. They are said to have spied on Besancenot for his activities against the introduction of tasers in the police force from October 2007 to January 2008.
In the NPA from 2009
A few weeks after the 2007 presidential elections, Besancenot called for the establishment of a new radical left party, which in 2009 resulted in the LCR being merged into the newly formed Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anti-Capitalist Party). Besanzenot was elected spokesman for the party. In the 2009 European elections , the NPA achieved a record share of the vote (compared to the LCR) of 4.88%, but the polls had given hope for an even higher share of the vote and the party did not achieve a mandate in the European Parliament due to the principle of seat allocation, which is unfavorable to small parties .
After the party's rather disappointing performance in the regional elections at the end of 2009 as well as the cantonal elections in 2011 and generally waning media interest, he gave up his spokesperson's office to Myriam Martin and Christine Poupin in April 2011 and soon after declared that he did not want to run for the 2012 presidential election .
Since then he has continued to appear as a member, activist, and occasional candidate for the NPA.
Publications
- Tout est à nous , 2002, ISBN 2-207-25309-0
- Révolution (100 mots pour changer le monde) , 2004, ISBN 2-290-33828-1
- Che Guevara, une braise qui brûle encore (with Michael Löwy), Éditions Mille et une nuits, 2007, ( ISBN 9782755500431 ).
- Prenons Parti pour un socialisme du XXIe siècle (with Daniel Bensaid), Éditions Mille et une nuits, 2009.
- On a voté… et puis après? , Le Cherche midi, "Documents" collection, 2012.
- La conjuration des inégaux. La lutte des classes au XXIe siècle , Le cherche midi, 2014
- Affinités révolutionnaires: Nos étoiles rouges et noires (with Michael Löwy), Éditions Mille et une nuits, Août 2014, 260 p, ( ISBN 9782755507225 ).
- Le véritable coût du capital , édition Autrement, 2015, ( ISBN 9782746741775 ).
- Que faire de 1917? Une contre-histoire de la révolution russe , édition Autrement, 2017, ( ISBN 9782746745469 ).
Web links
- Portrait of Besancenots on SPIEGEL ONLINE
- Article by Olivier Besancenot in International Viewpoint (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Polls: Sarkozy wins runoff election ( Memento from May 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Meister des Protests , die tageszeitung , issue of Sunday, May 2, 2009
- ↑ Spying affair involving left-wing politician Besancenot , derStandard.at, accessed on October 14, 2008
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Besanzenot, Olivier |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 18, 1974 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Levallois-Perret |