The death of a young far-right supporter in a fight with anti-fascists casts a shadow over the municipal elections in France.

ParisFrench police have arrested eleven people between yesterday and today in connection with the death on Saturday in Lyon of 23-year-old far-right activist Quentin Deranque in a mass brawl between an ultra-right-wing group and an anti-fascist group that took place after a conference by Rima Has, a member of the European Parliament from the radical left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI). Left-wing parties, including La France Insoumise (LFI), have strongly condemned the young extremist's death, while right-wing and far-right parties point to the radical left as responsible. The investigation into voluntary manslaughter has not yet determined which group the young anti-fascists who allegedly kicked Deranque at least six times, causing his death, belong to, but all indications point to them being from Jeune Garde, an anti-fascist group dissolved by the French government last year and founded by the MP. unsubmissive Raphaël Arnault. In fact, one of those arrested is one of his parliamentary assistants, who has already resigned.

According to the French press, the group of extremists had gone to the area around the university where the MEP was giving her lecture. defiant to "protect" the participants in a demonstration against the event, all of them members of the Némésis collective, made up of far-right feminists and nationalists. Quentin Deranque was allegedly part of the protective group, which later clashed with anti-fascists, something that still needs to be confirmed by the investigation.

Ultra-Catholic and nationalist

The young man was a mathematics student, an ultra-Catholic, and a far-right extremist who had been a member of or sympathized with various nationalist and Catholic movements, such as Academia Christiana and the revolutionary nationalist movement Audace. Although his family maintains that he was a "peaceful activist," he had participated in far-right and neo-fascist demonstrations in Lyon and Paris, sporting the typical ultra-right aesthetic: his face covered with a black balaclava and sunglasses, according to newspapers such as Le Figaro and Le Monde.

In the images recorded on Saturday by a person who was at the scene of the fight and published by Le Canard Enchaîné The video shows a group of ultras dressed in black and wearing balaclavas attacking another group of anti-fascists with pepper spray, flares, and even a crutch. In a second video, as the fight breaks up, Quentin Deranque is seen on the ground while some of the youths kick him before leaving. The police did not intervene.

Violence of the ultras

Saturday's fight is not an isolated incident. For years, violent far-right groups and neo-Nazi factions have been attacking anti-fascist groups like Jeune Garde. Raphaël Arnault himself was attacked by neo-Nazis in 2021 at the Gare de Lyon in Paris. Far-right groups operate in various cities, but Lyon, France's third-largest city, is their epicenter. "Lyon is a very particular ecosystem, where the radical far right is deeply entrenched. Since the early 2000s, the city has been the scene of numerous nationalist acts of violence," the newspaper reports. Le MondeThe digital media outlet Rue89 has counted 102 "attacks, assaults, and hate crimes by the radical far right" in Lyon between 2010 and 2025. "These groups often try to prevent left-wing political meetings from taking place. That's why an anti-fascist group like the Jeune Garde advocates for popular self-defense. Thursday's clash resulted in the death of an identitarian activist, but it could just as easily have been the death of an anti-fascist activist," Boulouque said on the parliamentary politics channel Public Sénat. Political war against LFI

Just weeks before the municipal elections in France, the death of the young far-right activist has ignited a political war against Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise (France Unbowed). Both the government and right-wing and far-right parties have attacked the radical left-wing party for the tragedy. "France Insoumise has been fostering a climate of violence for years. It has proven and acknowledged links with extremely violent far-left groups," said government spokesperson Maud Brégeon on the news channel BFMTV. Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally and Marine Le Pen's right-hand man, asserted that Mélenchon's party "killed" and called for a "cordon sanitaire" against LFI in the run-up to the municipal elections. "It is a political movement that has completely abandoned the Republic," the far-right leader stated on the CNews channel. Faced with the wave of criticism from Le Pen, La France Insoumise condemns the exploitation of the young activist's death. "A segment of the far right has as its political project to plunge our country into a civil war," lamented Manuel Bompard, secretary general of the radical left-wing party. In recent days, several LFI offices across the country have been vandalized, and on Wednesday a bomb threat at the party's headquarters in Paris forced the evacuation of the building.