A bad time for François Ruffin, who launched his presidential campaign on April 25 in Lyon with certain militant support. At issue: the release of his comic strip, Picardie Splendor.
In Lyon, he posed as a defender of “essential workers”. He broadened this theme 10 days later, by publishing this comic strip, a new idea, the candidates usually favoring the more classic form of a book combining autobiography and program. Under the guise of 11 designers and with the help of a scriptwriter, the deputy for Somme recounts significant episodes of his life in contact with Geodis forklift drivers, Normandy carers, veiled women chased from a terrace in Amiens or even a young high school graduate who cannot find a job. But several sequences in this work aroused indignation, in particular from activists of La France insoumise (LFI) who denounced “racist and neocolonial stereotypes”.
In particular, a sequence from the comic strip in which the “deputy-reporter” intervenes on a train during an altercation between a black woman and two police officers, a scene in which a North African man gets heated when the agents speak informally to the woman or throw his receipt in her face, then thanks François Ruffin for having brought back calm. Problem: apart from the fact that unlike other sequences, in this one the deputy does not offer an analysis of the facts – a non-condemnation of “ordinary racism” which the rebels do not forgive him -, another protagonist of the scene emerged from the shadows this Wednesday presenting a version different from events. This young white and non-North African man intervened on the train in the same capacity as the deputy and above all, he assured in a video broadcast on social networks, if he got angry, he did not thank him by lowering his head like represented in the comic strip.
“Posture du grand sauveur de l’humanité”
François Ruffin has already justified this sequence three times in less than 48 hours, which he recognizes as a “failed passage”. On the sidelines of a support visit this Wednesday to Eurolyse employees in Amiens, he assured that “puff out my chest and stand straight [n’étaient] “not really in my habits.” “And that wasn’t his attitude either [à l’autre passager, NDLR] to bow down,” he added. But added to his recent comments criticizing the principle of labor immigration, particularly among doctors, the damage is done.
“A scene was invented and a person was racialized to portray Francois Ruffin in the position of the great savior of humanity,” mocked LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on X, among the many criticisms in the face of very little support.
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Ex-member of the rebellious family, François Ruffin left it just after the “purge” of 2024, not mincing his words against Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his “quasi-racial” reading grid. His entourage recognizes this, he has little fundamental disagreement with the LFI program. But his personality, less divisive than that of the rebellious tribune, appeals to a left-wing electorate that the latter could claim. “As soon as there is a Ruffin wing that sticks out, the rebels “boom†they are going to shoot,†we whisper. “The rebels take up so much space, the others on the left, Ruffin included, are running behind,” analyzes political communications specialist Emilie Zapalski. “They have a long-term strategy, with content, and work in a well-ordered team,” she specifies, judging the socio-democratic sphere also on the sidelines from this point of view.
Regarding François Ruffin, he is “a free electron”, “we see him alone, he does not constitute a team”, observes Emilie Zapalski, for whom the candidate “gets lost” in wanting to be “so original, so different”. The main person concerned is a philosopher on the twists and turns of a presidential campaign, far from resembling “a bed of rose petals” and a “humanist” comic book made to “reconcile”.
