Pinned for a pin. Since Tuesday evening, Manuel Bompard has been on the verge of reaching the trending topics on X. Not necessarily for his performance in the televised debate against Jordan Bardella and Gabriel Attal, but rather because of a clothing detail. The LFI coordinator wore a triangular red pin on the left of his navy blue suit.
No less was needed to stir up social networks. “Hamas rallying sign”, “Palestine pin”, proof of its “hatred of Israel”… the badge is, according to numerous tweets, an anti-Semitic symbol. This badge is also regularly worn by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, also accused of wearing the famous triangle in the reverse direction out of pure provocation.
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This red triangle is a symbol of workers’ demands. Originally made of leather, it was adopted on May 1, 1890 in Paris during the struggle of the same name, so that workers could recognize each other in the street. At the time, the latter demonstrated for a maximum 8-hour working day and chanted the slogan: “Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours of leisure”.
In the middle of the 20th century, during the Second World War, this red triangle was reused by the Nazis to differentiate Jews (yellow stars), homosexuals (pink badges) and political opponents in concentration camps, with this famous red triangle. It was at the end of the war that many anti-fascist activists reappropriated the badge in memory of the political deportees. The triangle has today become a symbol of the fight against the extreme right.