How an antifa street killing exposed a deep national crisis in France

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.