This campaign is highly structured, carried out on several levels by the far right Rassemblement national (RN), the mainstream right and President Macron’s “central bloc”, with the support of the reactionary and conservative media, in the hands of large capitalist groups or billionaires such as Bolloré, Arnaud, Saade, Křetínský, Mohn, Bouygues, Dassault, Pinault, Niel and Drahi.
This new campaign of delegitimization and demonization of LFI in the political field takes on great importance because we are approaching the presidential and legislative elections of 2027 and therefore the end of an electoral cycle opened in 2017 by the election of Macron with his governments built around his chaotic political alliances in the National Assembly. The Republicans (LR) are therefore multiplying the bridges to the RN, the presumed favourite in the next elections. Macron’s “central bloc”, already in advanced decomposition, will not survive 2027, as no presidential candidate from this camp will claim either his successor or his record, like Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe. The only common point between the RN, the LR and the Macronists is that everything must be done to prevent a political union on the left around an anti-austerity programme from coming into a position of strength, as was the case in 2022 and 2024 with LFI and the Nouveau front populaire (NFP). The ruling classes are ready to consider coalitions integrating the far right, in a leading or allied role, but fear a popular alliance that runs counter to the ultra-neoliberal policies that the far right supports in France as in the rest of Europe.
The death of this fascist militant was therefore the starting point of a hateful outpouring against LFI and the Jeune Garde, a national anti-fascist organization whose activists are accused of having organized the response to the far-right commando that day in Lyon. Raphaël Arnault, elected LFI MP in 2024, is one of the founders of the Jeune Garde and his parliamentary attaché is among those indicted in this case.
The Jeune Garde was created in 2018 in Lyon and has since developed in several cities in France in the face of the multiplication of anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT attacks by far-right groups, particularly in Lyon, and attacks on the workers’ and associative movement, premises and meetings and demonstrations. The Rue89 website has recorded 102 attacks, assaults and hateful acts in Lyon since 2010. The Jeune Garde in Lyon, acting in unity with the left-wing parties, EELV, LFI, NPA, PCF among others, the CGT, Solidaires, FSU and the social movement, succeeded in combating the upsurge in far-right attacks and in obtaining the closure of premises and the dissolution of several fascist groups. Since then, it has played a very dynamic role in the organization of anti-fascist protection action. In October 2021, for example, it demonstrated in Lyon against far-right violence with Planned familial, Alternatiba, the CGT, Solidaires, UNEF, EELV, LFI, the NPA and the PCF.
At the request of the RN and the neo-fascists of Nemesis, a group whose action he claimed to support (“bravo for your fight, you know that I am very close to it” he said) LR president Bruno Retailleau, when he was Minister of the Interior, had the government adopt a decree of dissolution of the Jeune Garde in June 2025 (as well as the association Urgence Palestine). The Jeune Garde launched an appeal to the Council of State against this dissolution and there was a significant reaction from the trade union organizations of the CGT and Solidaires, the social movement, the EELV, the PCF, the NPA, in particular. The Ligue des droits de l’homme and the GISTI (Information and Support Group for Immigrants) intervened in support before the Council of State.
The Jeune Garde, presented as “the praetorian guard of Jean Luc Mélenchon” or “the armed wing of LFI”, is therefore quite simply an anti-fascist organization that works with the entire workers’ movement and contributes to building the self-defence of organizations and activists. It is now criminalized to make it almost a terrorist organization, at the instigation of Nemesis and the far right, widely followed by the government and many media outlets. It is a question of using it as a lever to isolate LFI, which has been ordered to break its ties with the Jeune Garde, and to push Raphaël Arnaud to give up his mandate.
Media narrative
For several days, in the mainstream media, the narrative of the ultra-right was taken up and broadcast in a loop: a peaceful young man, “young Quentin”, a traditionalist Catholic with no history, was the victim of an ambush, a lynching on the ground by a group of about fifteen unleashed antifas, and died two days later in hospital with several head wounds.
The background of this activist, the course of events, as reconstructed by several videos and investigations broadcast by Le Canard Enchaîné, Le Monde, Médiapart and Libération paint a rather different picture from the ultra-right’s narrative. Mediapart has retraced the profile and political career of Quentin Deranque, a member of, among others, Action française, the Audace group, heir to the Bastion Social, and the fascist group “Allobroges Bourgoin”, with which he participated in the neo-Nazi parade of 9 May 2025. [1]
He was on February 12, in front of the premises of the Sciences Po Lyon university campus, where a meeting was being held with Rima Hassan, MEP for France Insoumise and Palestinian activist. As had already been the case on several occasions, the right and the far right had sought to obtain a ban on his meeting. Having been unable to obtain it, a group of activists from Nemesis, a racist and identitarian far-right collective, decided to organize a picket in front of Sciences Po with a banner (“Islamo-leftists out of our universities”). This Nemesis group (named after the Greek goddess of divine vengeance!) has been prosecuted several times for inciting racial hatred, specializing in provocations widely publicized on social networks and “friendly” media (such as CNews or Europe 1), having tried on several occasions to provoke the feminist processions of the 8 March demonstrations, but also demonstrations of solidarity with migrants or even against a meeting of Valérie Pécresse, LR candidate in the 2022 presidential election.
This group was demonstrating in front of Sciences Po with the distant support of about fifteen ultra-right activists, including Quentin Deranque. A first altercation took place between Nemesis’ group and anti-fascist activists protecting the meeting. A second clash took place a little later, next to Sciences Po, between the group of ultra-right activists and an equivalent number of antifa activists. Following the response of the antifa, the ultra-right group retreated, dispersed, leaving only three of them, including Quentin Deranque. It was at this moment that, on the ground, he received several violent blows to the head. Without calling the firefighters or the SAMU, he left on foot with another member of his group and, after a walk of an hour and a half, his reformed group finally called the firefighters to take care of him, one kilometre from the place of the confrontation. He died two days later as a result of his trauma.
Even before his death, the media surge took up the narrative of Nemesis spokesmen saying that the fascist militant had been ambushed and lynched by a group of the ultra-left Jeune Garde, and the news channels only played a loop of the video of the last moments of the confrontation when he was knocked to the ground. A self-defence action by anti-fascist activists cannot justify these blows. This act is also far from the conception of the antifa struggle put forward by the Jeune Garde, which has always advocated the action of collective self-defence, has always been to act in connection and in unity with all the organizations of the workers’ movement, to build a collective and unitary anti-fascism in the face of the fascists, as opposed to a virilist private war. And therefore, also the opposite of what happened on February 12 when the antifas hit this fascist militant on the head.
Collective self-defence
But this should only highlight the risk, in the face of the rise in aggressions and attacks by the far right, of not putting at the heart of the concerns, in all the organizations of the workers’ movement, the construction of a collective self-defence based on the members of these organizations, with the right training. Otherwise, it is the groups that devote themselves centrally to anti-fascist political action that risk finding themselves invested with these tasks of protection and it is from this specialization that excesses or individual acts outside the framework and collective recommendations can arise. Whatever the involvement of Jeune Garde activists on February 12, what happened should not put anti-fascist self-defence on the back burner, but on the contrary make it more present in all organizations.
In a worrying shift in political life, almost all political forces, including the social democrats, are now spreading the idea of a generalized violence of the ultra-left, of which LFI is said to be the instigator. Far right leader Marion Maréchal was thus able to declare on BFM on February 17 “statistically, far-right violence is derisory compared to far-left violence, which is structural.” However, the figures, like the facts, are stubborn: in France, since 1986, 58 people have been killed by ultra-right activists, 6 by people classified as ultra-left (including 4 by the group Action directe, another, fifteen years ago, during a brawl between PSG football hooligans, and finally Quentin Deranque this month). [2]
“There is a structural decline in physical political violence compared to previous decades and today if we put aside the acts attributed to Islamists and separatists, political lethality is almost non-existent, compared to other countries in Europe and of course in the United States.” [3] But, for several years, the DGSI itself has been listing “a very worrying resurgence of violent actions and intimidation by the ultra-right in France” as the former head of the DGSI, Nicolas Lerner, told Le Monde in July 2023, a resurgence motivated according to him by a logic of war of civilization, seeking to precipitate clashes to prevent the great replacement.
Even Gérald Darmanin, then Minister of the Interior, on September 20 2025, in the daily Ouest France, declared regarding the risks of political terrorism: “There is among the ultra-politicized a small part of the ultra-left (…) which mainly attacks property. But the bulk of the threat is the ultra-right, especially in the last five years, with white supremacists and accelerationists (who are hardening up for a race war). There were no attacks committed in France, but ten plans foiled, and individuals arrested, convicted or awaiting trial.” According to a Europol report on terrorist threats in Europe, 69 members of the ultra-right have been arrested in France for preparing terrorist actions.
Manuel Bompard, coordinator of La France Insoumise, sent the newspaper Libération a list of names, indicating that “since 2022, in this country, the far right-wing groups linked to the far right have killed 12 people”: Federico Aramburu, Éric Casado-Lopez, Emine Kara, Mahamadou Cissé, Angela Rostas, Djamel Bendjaballah, Rochdi Lakhsassi, Hamid G. and Hadi R. Aboubakar Cissé, Hichem Miroaoui. Ismaël Aali, killed last January in Lyon, should be added to this list. Their murders have triggered fewer reactions than the death of the Lyon identitarian activist. Immigrants, or people of foreign origin, for the most part, which is clearly part of this obsession with a race war. Fascist activities and aggressions are increasing, stimulated by the rise of the RN and anti-fascism is a demand and a necessity of the first order.
Anti-fascism would therefore have become, in an Orwellian manipulation, the new fascism, responsible for political violence. The weekly Marianne has also put on the front page this Orwellian concentrate: “THE NEW ANTIFASCISTS” superimposing this headline in front of the photos of Raphaël Arnaud, J.L. Mélenchon and Rima Hassan. We can quickly understand that this is a reversal of values that is in no way based on reality but on the desire of the ruling classes to try to erase the landmarks and trivialize the possible arrival of a fascist party at the Elysée Palace and/or at the head of the government. A desire to transform reality by relying on the power of the media and social networks, which are devoted, more and more, to an editorial line and to openly reactionary, if not far-right, columnists.
Charlie Kirk
So in all this, there is a dangerous remake of the mechanisms that followed the death of Charlie Kirk in the USA, Donald Trump seizing on this murder to declare that “the left is the party of murder”, his acolyte Elon Musk saying that “the radical left had contributed to the murder” and, by decree, Trump declaring the entire antifa movement in the USA to be terrorists. In the wake of all this, a study by the US Department of Justice, concluding that the far right was the movement that had killed the most people in the US since the 1990s, was simply removed from the ministerial website.
The common point with Trump’s actions is, in France, to push for an identical shift and some political forces are testing the possibilities of pushing the fires. As denounced by the Green deputy Sandrine Rousseau, “anti-fascism is being hit at a time when fascism is about to come to power”. When the government spokeswoman allows herself to say “not a single LFI deputy in the Assembly” or when Renaissance deputy Aurore Bergé responds to Jordan Bardella, president of the RN, who is calling for an “anti-LFI republican front” during the next legislative elections, “start by withdrawing for our candidates against the LFI”, we see that new dikes are beginning to break.
That the right and the RN seek to gag LFI and make Mélenchon a foil incapable of gathering a sufficient number of votes on the left for the presidential election is obviously in the order of things. That Macronism is doing the same thing proves that the spokesmen of the ruling classes do not want the situation of 2024 to be repeated. Despite months of division of the left-wing parties, after the success of the RN in the European elections and the dissolution of the National Assembly by Macron, the arrival of a majority and an RN government in June 2024 has only been blocked by the strength and unity of the left, united around a series of measures to break with capitalist austerity policies. This unity, achieved, with a predominant weight of LFI in the NPF, whose deputies had formed the biggest force in the National Assembly, has become the spectre to be brought down in the perspective of 2027.
Because despite the many divisions present today on the left, the strength of the rejection of austerity policies, the growing feeling of social injustice can, with the mobilization of the organizations of the social movement as was the case in 2024, force, in one way or another, all the political forces of the left to unite electorally in the face of the neofascist danger. The freezing of any unitary and offensive dynamic on the left for several months makes this perspective more difficult every day, and the most likely is a splintering of the left-wing candidates in the first round of the presidential election, but it is nevertheless this risk of a new surge to the left in 2027 that the far right and the Macronists want to eliminate by targeting LFI.
What is more serious is that those of the Socialist Party leaders who are most opposed to the NFP experiment have taken another step in recent days, by associating themselves with the campaign of slander against LFI and the Jeune Garde, explicitly aiming to prevent any reconstitution of a political front on the basis of a break with neoliberal policies. Several statements by Raphaël Glucksmann and François Hollande were in chorus with the positions of Macron and Lecornu, calling LFI to account. This was not the case for Olivier Faure and other leaders, but they nevertheless insist (for the moment…) that there will be no withdrawal agreement for the next municipal elections on 15 and 22 March, except against the RN. This posture of rupture with LFI has clearly been at work since the adoption of a “responsible” line of support for the Macronist/LR minority governments to pass the 2025 and 2026 budgets in the Assembly and refusal to vote on motions of censure on the budgets presented and voted on by the other components of the NFP (LFI, EELV and PCF).
In fact, the aim is to tip the party into the orientation that was that of the minority around Hollande at the last congresses. This is the line which, most likely with the candidacy of Raphaël Glucksmann, hopes to reap in 2027 the electoral remnants of “left” Macronism to restore a social democracy that manages neoliberalism as Hollande’s governments were from 2012 to 2017, before they collapsed in the face of popular disavowal. Dreaming of the return of the electorate lost in 2017 to Macron, they want to cast off the moorings of the union on the left with LFI, by imposing their candidacy for 2027.
There is then a great weakening of the necessary front in the face of the far right, which is responsible for the current situation of the NFP components. Everything is overdetermined by electoral tactics. First of all, the municipal elections of next March in which, as for the 2024 European elections, the greatest disunity reigns. With very few exceptions, there are no NFP lists in the cities and, to the Socialist desire to distance itself from LFI, the latter’s strategy of anchoring a municipal presence in large and medium-sized cities, commensurate with its national electoral weight. The same is true for the prospects for the 2027 presidential election, since, without even talking about a program, the stumbling block on the left is reduced to the method of designating a candidate. LFI is clearly moving forward alone by building a Mélenchon campaign, certain that his establishment and political weight will impose him as the candidate against the RN, creating de facto, if not around an agreement, a dynamic of unity as in 2022. Glucksmann, also solo, is betting the opposite. The demonization of Mélenchon on the one hand, the agony of Macronism on the other, leaves space that could allow him to reach the second round, on a very moderate social-democratic program. The other components are trying to make do, a rally around EELV, the Après and François Ruffin, with Lucie Castet, wants to set up a primary open to the entire left (“from Poutou to Hollande” in Ruffin’s words) in October 2026 for a single candidate. LFI and Glucksmann clearly reject this, while the PS and PCF are not taking a position yet.
In these schemas, the main political forces on the left leave the activists as spectators or summoned to choose the corridor of support for this or that presidential candidate. There are of course real programmatic issues with a social democracy that saves the day for Macron’s governments and agrees to endorse austerity budgets. But there are also issues of democratic functioning in the face of the LFI which, with its weight, plans to garner support for its campaign without seeking to build the slightest unity of the campaign. These electoral disagreements weigh heavily today on the ability to organize united fronts to act together on all the issues of the day and to build a political and social balance of power capable of countering the RN and the organizations of the social movement are finding it difficult to take the lead in imposing their own frameworks and their own deadlines. There is nevertheless an urgent need to respond with a unitary activity to all the social and political questions, national and international, in which the forces of the NFP, or at least most of them, could act together in campaigns and common actions, on all these questions where the NFP put forward, at least, elements of common demands. Moreover, despite the commitments made in 2024, the main component forces of the NFP have done little to develop and maintain NFP collectives locally and nationally. However, it is here that the forces of the social and trade union movement have been united that have been the cement of the 2024 campaign. All this weighs heavily and, for the past two weeks, moreover, despite the very clear positions taken by many, there has hardly been any expression and united rally denouncing the far right and the criminalization campaign carried out against LFI following the death of the neo-fascist from Lyon.
All in all, therefore, the situation is open but quite dramatic, and the resistance asserted by LFI in the face of the attacks to which it is subjected will not be able to replace the construction of a unitary dynamic of all the forces convinced of the need for an anti-fascist front and also to maintain a program of rupture with the politicians at the service of capitalist groups and the wealthy.