The violent death of New-Right activist Quentin Deranque has suddenly made the political Left a toxic hot potato
On 12 February in the French city of Lyon, a young man was killed in a political street brawl that escalated very badly. While terrible every time it happens, his death was, unfortunately, not unprecedented. Usually, it would result in grief among the victim’s family and friends as well as a criminal investigation to punish the killers, but not a national crisis.
Everything is different, however, in this case: Since Quentin Deranque, a 23-year old data science student, committed traditionalist Roman Catholic, and New-Right (generically speaking) activist (or militant – take your pick) was beaten and kicked to death by a gang of self-appointed ‘antifascists,’ France has gone through a “drama” as a “national community” (in the words of French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot).
Thoroughly mainstream media and the experts they select have repeatedly invoked the specter of “civil war.” One has warned of entering a spiral of tit-for-tat retaliation, which is, she believes, how such fratricidal slaughters start. The podcast of Le Figaro, still France’s leading conservative newspaper, has dedicated a whole show to the question if France “is moving toward civil war.” In reality, actual civil war is not around the corner, of course, as bad as things are. But the excited and anxious references to it betray just how miserable the mood now is.
Not every detail of what exactly happened before the fatal attack on Quentin Deranque is clear yet. Some of Deranque’s friends and supporters claim that his group of male activists – present to protect a small protest by Némésis, a nationalist-identitarian women’s organization – was initially passive and remained on the defensive throughout. According to Al Jazeera, there seems to be video evidence that contradicts this account, showing the New-Right activists also on the attack some time before Deranque was savaged by masked and hooded “antifascists” from the – officially dissolved but de facto persisting ‘Young Guard’ group.
What is incontestable is that, in the end, three New-Right activists – Deranque among them – were separated from the others and cornered by their “antifascist” opponents. It is equally certain that Deranque was then beaten and kicked viciously, including when he was already lying on the ground and absolutely defenseless, hardly moving at all. Hospitalized the same day, he died two days later.
A high-profile criminal investigation has involved a lead public prosecutor, three dedicated investigative judges, the local police, and the national anti-terrorist office of the Interior Ministry. By now, the French authorities have declared that all key suspects are under arrest. Charges include “criminal association,”“aggravated violence,”“voluntary homicide,” and “complicity in voluntary homicide.”
One of the accused, Jacques-Elie Favrot – called “Jef” – is suspected of having played a leading role in the crime and faces a charge of “complicity in murder by instigation.” His case is special also in one other, crucial regard: When he isn’t busy in the streets, “Jef” serves as an official assistant to a deputy of France’s parliament, the National Assembly. And that deputy, Raphaël Arnault, is a prominent representative of France’s New-Left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), LFI. In addition, another suspect, Robin Chalendard, who is thought to have taken part directly in the deadly assault on Deranque, has also worked for Arnault.
These associations lead right into the center of a ballooning mushroom cloud of toxic political fallout that has overshadowed French politics. Reduced to essentials, the grim picture is this: France is a country in typical Euro-decline, with an electorally crumbling yet obstinate cartel of establishment parties in the self-declared “Center” which, for now, still dominates the state, the mainstream media, and many of the official institutions of the public sphere, such as universities and think tanks. And then there are the rising challengers from the New Right – the Rassemblement National, RN – and the New Left – the LFI. For now at least, they are bitter enemies, both keen to inherit power once the rotting Center finally implodes, or to at least force its remnants into a deal.
Add the fact that important municipal elections are scheduled for this month and that everyone is also already jockeying for pole position in the presidential elections to be held in little more than a year – et voilà: the perfect storm.
Shit storms very much included: Because that is what is happening to the New-Left LFI now, due not even so much to the compromising link between one of its star deputies and two suspects in an exceedingly repulsive homicide and murder case, but to the LFI’s leadership’s amazingly cack-handed and callous response to Deranque’s killing and the political challenge it constitutes.
Instead of genuine shock, a sincere willingness to reflect on Arnault’s very bad company, and, beyond that, on the relationship between violent rhetoric and lethal violence, party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has set a tone of crude forward defense: He has sentimentally reaffirmed the LFI’s rather insane fealty toward the minuscule but very toxic ‘Young Guard.’ In general, he and his surrogates have presented the ‘Young Guard’ and the LFI as victims of unfair demonization.
And, of course, in some way, the LFI really is: Inevitably, the New-Right Rassemblement National has spotted and zealously seized an opportunity to cripple its “populist” competitors with a guilt-by-association assault. RN wunderkind, leader, and likely presidential candidate Jordan Bardella has let it rip: Invoking the bad old days of the violent 1930s and speaking of “terrorist organizations,” he has warned that France has reached an “extremely dire tipping point” and demanded that all other parties subject the LFI – “the extreme Left [which] has killed” – to a regime of total ostracism and exclusion.
And yes, that ‘cordon sanitaire’ is precisely what the Germans call a ‘Brandmauer’ (firewall) and apply against their New-Right insurgents, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). It is also what the French establishment parties have long practiced against the RN itself.
This is a moment, where the New-Right RN – so long maligned as crazy radicals themselves and working hard to shed and bury precisely that image – is riding a genuine wave of public anger: According to a poll, 61 percent of French voters are ready to help “firewall” the LFI at the upcoming municipal elections. We have to hand it to you, Jordan, very, very slick – Way to turn the tables, with a little help from the clumsy folks at the LFI, of course.
At the same time, the moment is already generally auspicious for the RN, but not so much for the LFI. Consider two other recent poll results: Even before the killing of Quentin Deranque, 70 percent of French citizens agreed when the Interior Ministry officially classified the LFI as extremist, to be precise “extreme Left.”
Regarding the better prospects of the competition from the RN, according to another poll, almost a quarter (24 percent) of French citizens want a political system that is “more centralized and more authoritarian,” that is just what the RN, in effect, promises. This is a sizable number by any standards; it is also high by comparison with other European countries, such as Italy (16 percent), Poland (13 percent), Spain (10 percent), and Germany (7 percent).
So, yes, there is brass-knuckle politics in the widespread, harsh attacks on the LFI and the attempts to hold the whole party responsible for a killing committed by one street gang. Defenders of the LFI can also point to the fact that its ‘Young Guard’ friends-from-hell that have now made themselves a millstone around its neck, are, in reality, a very small group. According to French expert Christophe Bourseiller, the ‘Young Guard’ has 100 to 200 members, active in only three cities, Paris, Strasbourg, and Lyons. Finally, according to another expert, 90 percent of ideologically motivated killings in France are committed by the extreme Right, not the Left.
And yet, the LFI has no reason to expect pity. It is being treated unfairly. Frankly, duh – that is simply politics 101 among adults. Yet that makes no difference to the fact that the real question that the LFI and its supporters and sympathizers – and I, for one, at least used to be one – have to face is not about what others are doing to it. Instead – and entirely independently from the demagoguery deployed by its critics and opponents – the LFI must focus on itself and its own severe mistakes.
And not only mistakes but elementary moral failures. Brawls happen, but it is a fascist – not an “antifascist” – thing to beat and kick the political opponent already prone on the ground to death. Indeed, one of the West’s de facto most clearly fascist – and demented – politicians has just reminded us of how dear to fascist hearts such tactics are: US Secretary of Defense (or war, as he prefers) Pete Hegseth has let the world know how proud he is of hitting them – here, Iran – while they are down in a fight meant to be unfair (In reality, Iran is, fortunately, far from down, but that’s a different matter).
Those who praise and do such swinish things, defend them, or equivocate by pointing at others and their crimes and hypocrisy should not be tolerated on the Left. A Left that wants to claim elementary decency and public support must purge – yes, purge – itself of them. If the LFI and its head Mélenchon are not prepared to do so and prefer to instead circle the wagons with Hegsethian goons pretending to be ‘anti’-fascists, then the LFI will only have itself to blame for decline and defeat. And they’ll deserve it, too.