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FÊTE DE L’HUMANITÉ: A LOOK BACK AT THESE THREE DAYS TO
“REDISCOVER A FORM OF JOY AND HAPPINESS IN THE STRUGGLE”  
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Anthony Cortes
September 18, 2026
L'Humanité
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_ Seven months before the first round of the presidential election,
the public at the Fête de l'Humanité gathered to gather arguments
and strength. Their objective: to block the path of a far right that
believes it is on the verge of power. _

To move forward, both individually and collectively, Adrien was
counting on the Fête de l'Humanité, this "window onto the
struggles.", Caroline Doutre

 

Their voices are weak, hoarse from the dust rising with the comings
and goings, but they still carry. Around the brass instruments of the
marching band bordering the CGT entertainment workers' stand on Avenue
Rosa Luxembourg, this Saturday afternoon, September 12, Antoine and
Andrée, both 62 years old and with thirty years of communist activism
under their belts, harangue passersby when the music fades. _"Come on,
let's sing, let's keep going!"_

Beside them, Louise, their little girl, doesn't quite know where to
look. At 16, for her first Fête de l'Humanité (Humanity Festival
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), she simply nods her head, all smiles, her eyes wide open to the
joyful crowd with raised fists. For such a shy girl, _"that's not bad
at all_ ," her grandfather teases her.

Around them, people are singing at the top of their lungs to a tune
from the Popular Front: _"Let's go towards life/Let's go towards the
morning/Arise my blonde_ / _Arise, friend/He goes towards the rising
sun/Our country."_

"TO REDISCOVER A FORM OF JOY AND HAPPINESS IN THE STRUGGLE"

Paradoxically, in every booth, in front of every concert, behind every
glass shared during this 91st edition , the fear of a twilight is what
is being discussed. The twilight that would be brought about by the
arrival of the far right in power in France on the evening of May 2,
2027.

_“Finding a form of joy and happiness in the struggle is the first
step towards reaching the time of cherries,”_ muses Anna, in her
thirties, _“an anti-capitalist activist without party affiliation_
.” An anarchist symbol is drawn on her cheek with a marker. She no
longer really remembers how it appeared.

Behind the counter of the PCF stand in Pyrénées-Orientales, Adrien
Calvet navigates from one request to another. He serves beers,
launches as many debates, teases his neighbor _"with LFI leanings"_ ,
asks about the sangria being prepared... But when this danger is
mentioned, he rests his elbows on the bar and breathes deeply.

At 24, this resident of the town of Elne, a communist municipality
that fell in March into the hands of the far right, knows all too well
how this risk becomes a reality
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.

_“When the new mayor took office, his first actions were to remove
LGBT symbols from public spaces, impose a 11 p.m. curfew, organize a
Bastille Day parade that went from one cathedral to the other, and
fire employees he suspected of not sharing his views…”_ he
summarizes. He himself lost his job because of it.

CHANGING HUMANITY

To move forward, individually and collectively, Adrien is counting on
the Fête de l'Humanité, this _"window onto the struggles"_ which he
was keen to open for citizens very far removed from the left by
encouraging them (successfully) to make the trip from very far away.

_“So that they see that the left is made up of real human beings who
are aware of the real problems_ ,” he confides. “ _This event is
invaluable_ . _For three days, we prove to ourselves that we know how
to come together and compare our perspectives on the realities of our
regions in order to try to move forward together. We talk, we shine a
little, and we give each other strength.”_ The times demand it.

During these three days of festivities, artists also played a
significant role, performing on the stages where Angela Davis,
Josephine Baker, and Nina Simone have performed, and speaking out as
they left the festival. _"With what awaits us in 2027, we must fight
the far right and its harmful ideas_ ," chanted Sam Sauvage
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on Friday. _"The goal is for us all to be in the same boat, united by
our values_ ," added rapper Ino Casablanca shortly afterward.

_“Where has the ‘no’ generation gone?”_ asked Suzane, one of
the headliners on Saturday night, as if issuing a call to action. She
also dedicated her performance to _“the voices we no longer truly
hear,” “under the skies of Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, to the women
forbidden to dance, to live, to the children who live with monsters in
their homes_ . ”

Like her, earlier in the day, before the speech by Fabien Roussel
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, national secretary of the PCF and candidate for the presidential
election, personalities mobilized for a better world were applauded:
the parents and relatives of Christophe Gleizes, a journalist unjustly
detained for more than a year in Algeria; the undocumented
hairdressers of the Boulevard de Strasbourg, who fought for
seventy-nine days to end their exploitation; the firefighters who
fought throughout this sweltering summer against devastating fires.

KNOWING ONE'S HISTORY IS ESSENTIAL FOR MOVING FORWARD.

_“Faced with capitalism and its agents like the far right, culture
has a central role to play,”_ observes Anita Binacchi, 76, a member
of the CGT agri-food union for forty years, under the stand of the
publishing house Le Temps des Cerises. “ _Creating, reading, feeling
emotions, these are means of struggle and resistance. And not
insignificant ones.”_

It is in this spirit that some twenty cultural organizations signed,
this weekend, the appeal launched by _L'Humanité "for culture and
creativity to thrive"_ in the face of _"attempts by the far right to
seize control of our imaginations_ ." This initiative aims to allow
the various stakeholders in the sector to come together to prepare a
joint response.

With her hand resting on books exploring the thought of Marx, Engels
or Lenin, Anita repeats to anyone who will listen: _"You have to know
your history to move forward!"_ At a time when the Popular Front is
celebrating its 90th anniversary
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, an anniversary celebrated during this edition, her formula resonates
with the curious young people who come to venture around these
publications.

_"Back then, arguing from time to time to clarify things didn't
prevent us from working together_ ," remarks Jérémy, 30, a supporter
of La France Insoumise wearing a vintage blue football jersey with the
LFI logo.

A statement echoed by historian Ludivine Bantigny
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on the Agora stage on Saturday: _“The Popular Front represents
strength and joy. It is an emancipatory project of justice and an
anti-fascist force. There was sometimes a certain level of hostility
between the committees, far greater than what we sometimes see today,
but the will for popular self-organization prevailed.”_ A delicate
path that everyone seems to want to take. A demanding, but essential,
path.

_Anthony Cortez_ [[link removed]]_ is
journalist at l'Humanité, author of "4.1 - The scandal of childbirth
in France" (Buchet-Chastel, 2025), "The coming confrontation. From
eco-resistance to eco-terrorism?" (éditions du Rocher, 2023) and "The
awakening of forgotten France. What if our future was in the
villages?" (éditions du Rocher, 2021)._
 
_L'Humanité (lit. 'Humanity') is a French daily newspaper. It was
previously a de facto organisation of the French Section of the
Workers’ International, and thereafter of the French Communist Party
(PCF), to which it still maintains links. (Wikipedia.) __Subscribe._
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