French Green Party Leader Wants to Shut Down X, Musk Responds

The French Green Party is currently called The Ecologists and while not a hugely successful party nationwide (they hold about 5 percent of the seats in Parliament) it has enough support in some cities that it can elect mayors. The Ecologists’ leader and presidential candidate is Marine Tondelier and from what I can tell she is a kind of AOC character.

Tondelier’s main claim to fame was helping to create a coalition of far-left groups (communists, greens, etc.) called the New Popular Front. They united under one banner with the intention of putting aside their differences to block the success of the French right, in particular Marine Le Pen. Here’s a bit of what the NY Times said about her back in 2024:

The French left has produced a new star in this garrulous, straight-talking ecologist who seems suddenly to appear on every TV and radio show and whose meadow-green jacket has become so iconic it has its own account on X.

Ms. Tondelier, 37, who was born in Hénin-Beaumont, a depressed northern town in the constituency of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, was the driving force behind the creation of the New Popular Front, herding disparate parties into a left-wing alliance that won a surprise victory in parliamentary elections this month…

“Our voters are screaming, ‘Do not betray us!’’’ Ms. Tondelier said in an interview last week in the modest headquarters of the Greens in the 10th District of Paris, an area once known principally for its two big train stations but which has, of late, acquired a hip reputation. “We have to be a government of combat, a government of action, of social justice,” she added. “It won’t be simple, easy, evident or comfortable, but we must make the effort.”

But as with any coalition of far-left groups, it’s hard to keep everyone singing from the same hymnbook (so to speak). The Nation wrote about the struggle to keep the New Popular Front together last year.

Among the wave of memes and posters produced by supporters of France’s leftist parliamentary alliance last summer, one of the more memorable ones featured a column of hearts with the message, On s’engueulera plus tard, or “We’ll argue later.” It was meant as a lighthearted plea for left-wing politicians to stop bickering and to focus on their common foes—but today, it reads as a grim statement of fact.

Seven months after unexpectedly winning a plurality of votes in snap legislative elections and denying the far-right a chance at governing the country for the first time since the Second World War, the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition—made up of France Unbowed (La France Insoumise, LFI), the Socialist Party, the Greens, and the Communist Party—is on the brink of collapse. As Sandrine Rousseau, a Green MP in the National Assembly from Paris, told The Nation in an interview, “the NFP isn’t dead, but it’s on life support.”

Tensions have brewed for months. With President Emmanuel Macron refusing to name a left-wing prime minister—opting first for conservative Michel Barnier, then center-right François Bayrou—the coalition has struggled to land on a common opposition strategy. Clashing messages and messy public disagreements between member parties have become the norm. Disappointing election results have followed suit: In January, the Macronists won a special legislative election to replace an NFP-backed MP who resigned over allegations of sexual assault; earlier this month, the right-wing Republicans won a special mayoral election in a working-class Paris suburb governed by the Communists as recently as 2020.

Who could have predicted internal squabbling and public fights among left-wing groups? In any case, Marine Tondelier is still the leader of The Ecologists and is their party’s candidate for president. 

Présidentielle 2027 : Marine Tondelier veut pouvoir interdire X en cas d’ingérences étrangères
➡️ https://t.co/w8YDEVUKaI pic.twitter.com/ngL5Mv0VZY

— Le Parisien (@le_Parisien) August 6, 2026

Recently, she announced a new plan to make sure the French right isn’t successful in upcoming elections. Her plan is to shut down X:

Cutting off X. That is the radical—perhaps provocative?—proposal put forward by Marine Tondelier, a 2027 presidential candidate and General Secretary of *Les Écologistes* (The Greens), aimed at helping shield French political debate from foreign interference—particularly from Russia, but also from the American far right…

Ban X? You’d be accused of censorship…

If X were to shut down right now for a month, it would do a world of good for public debate in France… The issue surrounding this social network isn’t just about “freedom of speech” or “freedom of enterprise.” It is a tool owned by a single individual based in the United States—someone with a supremacist ideology who clearly wants to push Europe into total submission to the US. Elon Musk has, in fact, made it very clear that he wants Marine Le Pen elected in France. This starkly highlights the hypocrisy of the National Rally’s so-called patriotism; in reality, every foreign power hostile to France has a vested interest in the party’s victory. The platform’s algorithm is rigged. The “notes” meant to clarify the veracity of posts [added beneath them] have now become a source of further fake news. Whenever I discuss environmental issues—citing proven scientific facts—everything is systematically challenged. Not to mention the cyber-harassment one faces there—especially as a woman.

Have you left X?

Personally, I have uninstalled the app, yes. I write my posts, but I let my team publish them and handle the monitoring. Politically, it is impossible to be absent from X these days because we have all become dependent on it. Not out of addiction, but because the political and media landscape is still organized around X, which has replaced—for instance—the distribution of press releases. It is a tool used by the journalists who follow us and document our campaigns. And as National Secretary of Les Écologistes or as a presidential candidate, I have to deal with it: it would be difficult to be the only one absent from what is now an essential professional tool, and to fail to counter the falsehoods circulated there about me.

Word of this plan got to Elon Musk, which I’m sure she hoped it would. He responded.

I demand that she be shut down for treason against France!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026

And now Tondelier is doing her best to milk this for clout. Here she is being outraged and talking tough.

Dear @elonmusk ,

I’m the French candidate to the French presidency you want to « shut down for treason against France » (what does that even mean …).

France does not need lessons in patriotism from a foreign billionaire who thinks he gets to decide which European political… https://t.co/UhRp260v0q

— Marine Tondelier (@marinetondelier) August 6, 2026

And here she is a day later pretending she’s worried while simultaneously begging him to say more so she can keep this going.

Mr. @elonmusk,

Since yesterday, a lot of people have been asking me the same question, so let me ask you directly.

What exactly do you mean by “I demand that she be shut down”?

I know what it means to « shut down X »

But what does it mean to « shut down » a person?

Could you… https://t.co/UhRp260v0q

— Marine Tondelier (@marinetondelier) August 7, 2026

Other far left candidates are trying to get in on the Musk attacks.

Hard-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon also slammed Musk’s attacks against Tondelier on Thursday, before accusing the French government of not doing enough to fight foreign interference.

“The French presidential election is an open bar for all the manipulators in the world,” he wrote — a criticism Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot promptly rejected.

This is the problem with being one of the left’s best known global enemies and the richest man in the world. If you say anything in response to whatever they are proposing, you wind up bringing more attention to them, which is what they want in the first place.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy HotAir’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical Left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.