In France, the far right has its martyr from whose death the Trump regime seeks political advantage
A French far-right militant was pronounced dead on Saturday morning at a hospital in Lyon, succumbing to injuries inflicted during a street battle last Thursday with anti-fascist activists. Twenty-three-year-old Quentin Deranque was part of a contingent of local neofascist militants that gathered to oppose a talk by a prominent left-wing MP at a university campus in France’s third-largest city. Their counterprotest quickly escalated into clashes with left-wingers, in the latest episode of political violence in a city that has long been a hotbed for ultraright gangs.
This time, however, the confrontation proved fatal. In the days since, Deranque’s death has rapidly morphed into a national scandal revealing the French far right’s growing cultural and political clout.
The chain of events last Thursday was set in motion by the scheduled appearance at Lyon’s Sciences Po campus of Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian MP of the left-wing party La France Insoumise. That afternoon, activists of the so-called Collectif Némésis, a group that purports to fuse feminist and nationalist politics, assembled outside the school venue to picket the left-winger. Hassan is a frequent target for the French right given her unequivocal defense of Palestinian political rights and her condemnation of the French state’s backing for Israel. Némésis spokespersons now claim they had requested protection from male members of Lyon’s ultraright scene, in anticipation of a standoff with attendees of the conference.
What precisely occurred in the lead-up to Deranque’s fatal assault remains unclear. The conference at Sciences Po was able to proceed uninterrupted in a campus auditorium. Outside, a handful of Némésis militants — a group that regularly disrupts left-wing events — was confronted by individuals in proximity of the elite Lyon school. Initial footage shows individuals throwing punches at the women participating in the counterprotest, resulting in moderate injuries.
But the most serious confrontations last Thursday took place several hundred meters away. Near an elevated train underpass just south of the Sciences Po campus, some fifteen far-right militants clashed with a similarly sized group of anti-fascists.
In footage that surfaced last weekend, masked activists chase away the neofascist militants, while others surround and beat what appear to be three men who were unable to escape — including Deranque. At a press conference on Monday afternoon, Lyon’s prosecutor announced that his death was being investigated as voluntary homicide. [Continue reading…]
Timothy Peace, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow’s school of social and political sciences, said that the Rassemblement National had been quick to turn Deranque’s death to its own political advantage.
“The tragedy of this young man’s death offers them the opportunity to paint the left, and LFI in particular, as the main source of political violence in France – and to distance themselves from their own problematic history with extreme and violent street movements,” he said.
Researchers on social violence in France have been quick to emphasise that far-right groups continue to perpetrate the bulk of politically motivated killings, increasingly targeting Muslims, immigrants and Jews as well as left-wing opponents. Sociologist Isabelle Sommier stressed that of the 57 deaths linked to violence between political groups recorded between 1986 and 2017, the radical right had been responsible for all but five.
In a long social media screed Thursday referencing the high-profile assassination last year of a US ultraconservative activist, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin warned that France was in danger of having its own “Charlie Kirk moment”.
“It’s a moment aimed at delegitimising part of the political spectrum and casting the triumphant far right as a victim,” he wrote. “Let’s stay vigilant. Let’s not concede ground to the far right.” [Continue reading…]
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Sunday that he would summon the US ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, over comments on the killing of a French far-right activist last week.
“We are going to summon the United States ambassador to France, since the US embassy in France commented on this tragedy… which concerns the national community,” Barrot told local media.
“We reject any instrumentalisation of this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, for political ends,” Barrot said. “We have no lessons to learn, particularly on the issue of violence, from the international reactionary movement.” [Continue reading…]