The Homicide Upending French Politics
On the evening of February 12, members of a French anti-fascist group allegedly pummeled a 23-year-old neo-Nazi activist named Quentin Deranque. The attack, filmed in Lyon, left Deranque unconscious; two days later, he died from severe brain trauma. The atrocity could prove to be a boon for the far-right National Rally (abbreviated as RN in French), a party whose decades-long rise has been perhaps the most significant political development in 21st-century France. Voices on the French right have called Deranque’s killing the country’s “Charlie Kirk moment.” The comparison is self-serving and flawed—Deranque was not a public figure, and he was not assassinated—but the tragedy nonetheless poses a substantial problem for the left. The country’s left-most party, France Unbowed (LFI), has direct ties to the anti-fascist Young Guard, whose members have been charged in relation to the homicide. LFI is shedding legitimacy as a result. Thomas Chatterton Williams: The other martyr Meanwhile, the centrist bloc, led by President Emmanuel Macron, is deeply unpopular. Macron has managed to keep the RN out of government (and himself in …
