Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Noam Chomsky, Mark Ruffalo, Eve Ensler Root For Far-Left French Candidate

Political activist Noam Chomsky is leading an unlikely gaggle of Americans who are backing left-wing upstart Jean-Luc Mélenchon to become France’s new president.

In a MoveOn petition launched on Tuesday, Chomsky, together with actors Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, playwright Eve Ensler, director Oliver Stone and critical theorist Nancy Fraser, called on French voters to “unite in the first round of the presidential election behind the Left candidate with the most support in the polls”, aka Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The petitioners urged against a repetition of the “Clinton v. Trump” tragedy.

The text, which has gathered over 7,000 signatures so far, warns against a choice between “corporate establishment liberalism and xenophobic right populism”. Even though no other politician is named in person, this is an explicit reference to centrist candidate and former investment banker Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

“Thank your for your support!” Mélenchon reacted on his Twitter account.

Contact Daniel Hoffman at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielHoffman__

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.