Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old student and nationalist activist, died over the weekend following a violent confrontation with Antifa activists in Lyon two days earlier. According to witnesses and video footage, he was ambushed by a group of at least six masked individuals. They struck him repeatedly, including with iron bars, putting him in a coma and causing a severe brain injury that eventually proved fatal.

The news has sent shockwaves across France, with the National Assembly even holding a minute of silence for Deranque on Monday. In the last 24 hours, 11 suspects with ties to the radical Left were arrested, and parallels were quickly drawn with the death of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk. Deranque’s death did not take place on a campus, but it did follow his involvement in a protest against a far-Left MP speaking at a university. He certainly did not have the global reach and influence of Kirk, but the people who killed both men clearly share a common belief that threats violence against nationalists is a legitimate tool.

Violent Antifa-type radical organisations have been a common feature in French activism for years. In 2013, activist Clément Méric died in a fight after trying to ambush far-Right skinheads in Paris. In 2016, Antifa organisations provided the muscle against the Socialists’ labour law reforms. During the Gilets Jaunes protests, they managed to infiltrate the movement and fought against the police using “black bloc” tactics. Some have even provided protection services to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) and other Left-wing parties.

LFI itself is also drawing the Kirk parallel, with its leaders accusing the Right of trying to use the Trump playbook to blame this act of violence on the Left. But radical groups have been forging ever closer links with political parties. Raphaël Arnault, one of the cofounders of La Jeune Garde — the main organisation implicated in Deranque’s death — was elected as an LFI MP in 2024. He was convicted in 2022 for intentional group violence after assaulting an 18-year-old. One of his own parliamentary assistants, Jacques-Élie Favrot, is among those arrested for Deranque’s death. And while Mélenchon is now denying all ties with La Jeune Garde, only last April he lauded it as an “allied organisation, linked to LFI” before adding “well done young men, keep going!”

These organisations have not just assaulted skinheads. In 2024 in Paris, a 15-year-old was allegedly followed into the metro by a group of masked individuals from La Jeune Garde, who threatened and even hit him according to some sources. Reports indicate he was called a “dirty Zionist” and “dirty Jew”. In 2022, then-student activist Hanane Mansouri (who is now a Right-wing MP) was assaulted by Antifa activists.

The logic of their violence appears crystal-clear according to the political scientist Jean-Yves Camus: “To the Left of the Left… everything that isn’t one of them is fascist, and if they’re not fascist, they are accomplices of fascism. It’s a civil war rhetoric.” And they’ll find backing for their ideas from the radical intellectual milieu keen to denounce micro-aggressions as violence, while also lauding actual violence as a legitimate political weapon against oppression. The journalist and sociologist Nicolas Framont last year published an essay praising “Saint Luigi” Mangione, the American accused of murdering a health insurance CEO.

France is no outlier. In 2024 Europol counted 21 terrorist attacks or attempted attacks from Left-wing or anarchist cells across the EU for every one from Right-wing cells and 24 from jihadist groups. And these radical Left-wing organisations across Europe are in regular communication with Antifa groups helping their allies in other countries. Il Giornale reports that Arnault was in Rome when foreign Antifa members beat up four Right-wing activists. Arnault had joined “fellow antifascists” in Britain during the anti-immigration riots of August 2024.

With the ongoing criminal investigation and following Favrot’s arrest, LFI could end up being uncomfortably implicated. But even short of legal repercussions, Deranque’s death and the exposure of the personal and ideological links of the party with militia-style organisations will only continue to marginalise it politically. Its Left-wing allies, who have begrudgingly accepted working with LFI in past elections, will find the political costs of their association increasingly steep.

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François Valentin is a political analyst and co-host of the Uncommon Decency podcast.

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