The majority of French voters believe that the far-left La France Insoumise party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon have poorly handled its response to the alleged Antifa killing of a conservative student in Lyon and has been too “complacent” in the face of the violence of the so-called anti-fascist movement.
Earlier this month, on the sidelines of a protest opposing a lecture from Syrian-born MEP Rima Hassan of the La France Insoumise (LFI/France in Rebellion) party at the Sciences Po University in Lyon, 23-year-old student Quentin Deranque suffered fatal brain injuries after being beaten to the ground.
Police have so far charged seven people in connection with the killing, including multiple members of the banned Antifa cell, the Jeune Garde (Young Guard), which was co-founded by LFI lawmaker Raphaël Arnault in 2018. Two of those charged were also in the employ of Arnault in his capacity as an MP in the French National Assembly as recently as this month.
Despite apparent connections to the LFI party, which has previously boasted of its ties with the Antifa group and opposed the government’s ban on the organisation, the party leadership, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has attempted to deny responsibility and refused to distance itself from Arnault.
The defiant stance from the radical left party has seemingly won them few favours with the voting public, with an Odoxa-Backbone Consulting survey for Le Figaro finding that 57 per cent view the LFI party as being too “complacent” towards “anti-fascist” activists.
Furthermore, 56 per cent of respondents said that the leftist party did not react “as it should have” following the death of Deranque, compared to just 11 per cent who deemed their response as being appropriate.
Demonstrating the significance of the killing, 73 per cent said that the “Quentin Deranque affair” was more than a minor incident, and that it indicated a rising level of political violence in France.
The ramifications of the killing may be long-lasting, with divisions on the left breaking out into the public, with former Socialist President François Hollande and likely leftist presidential candidate Raphaël Glucksmann both calling for a cordon sanitaire against electoral alliances with the LFI in the future.
According to the survey, this appears to be a widely held position, with 76 per cent of voters saying the Socialist Party and its allies should no longer partner with Mélenchon and his radicals. Intriguingly, this included 81 per cent of Socialist voters.
While much of the focus has been on the radical left in the wake of the killing, Rassemblement National (National Rally/RN) President Jordan Bardella has suggested that the political establishment, including top Macronist figures in Paris, is complicit, given their history of alliance with Mélenchon when it suited their purposes.
Indeed, during the second round of voting in the 2024 legislative elections, then Prime Minister Gabriel Attal struck a grand bargain with the leftist New Popular Front coalition of the Socialists and Mélenchonists to engage in tactical voting to prevent the populist National Rally from taking control of the parliament.
The issue of tactical voting appears to be a greater challenge for the LFI now, with 61 per cent of those surveyed saying they would back candidates merely to block an LFI candidate in the upcoming municipal elections, compared to 44 per cent who said the same of the National Rally.
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