CIVICUS discusses political polarisation and far-right mobilisations in France with Aldo Rubert Echevarria, a researcher at the Research Centre on Political Action at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

The killing of young far-right activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon in February sparked large far-right demonstrations and a wave of attacks on left-wing party offices across France. These events have deepened polarisation and raised urgent questions about the state’s response to extremism and civil society’s role in defending democratic space.

What are the confirmed facts about Deranque’s death?

Deranque was violently assaulted on 12 February in the context of tensions surrounding a conference at Sciences Po Lyon, the city’s Institute of Political Studies. The controversy centred on the participation of Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian jurist and member of the European Parliament for the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party. The criminal investigation established that Deranque was beaten by several assailants and suffered a fracture and severe cranio-encephalic trauma. He died from his injuries on 14 February.

Deranque was deeply embedded in far-right networks. He was active in the monarchist far-right movement Action française, close to Catholic traditionalist circles, a regular at Academia Christiana — a gathering point for the radical far right — and a member of Les Allobroges, a small national-revolutionary group. He had also taken part in the neo-fascist 9 May Committee march in Paris in May 2025.

The media and political tributes that followed Deranque’s death initially portrayed him as a committed young Catholic activist. Later reporting, however, described extensive pseudonymous online activity marked by explicitly antisemitic, racist, neo-fascist and pro-Nazi positions, and further highlighted his involvement in confrontational activist circles, including voluntary security work, radical groups and combat training.

The violence was attributed to activists linked to Jeune Garde, a youth antifascist group founded by Raphaël Arnault, an LFI member of parliament. Right-wing voices, and particularly the far-right Rassemblement National, sought to hold LFI responsible, although the actions of some individuals do not make the party criminally or organisationally responsible. Also involved in the violent clashes was Némésis, a far-right collective presenting itself as feminist, but structured around anti-immigration, identitarian and nationalist themes. Telegram communications revealed a strategy of using female activists as bait to draw antifascist activists into confrontations, undermining narratives of a passive far right.

How was Deranque’s death politically instrumentalised?

Deranque was rapidly turned into a martyr. A minute’s silence was held in the National Assembly. A narrative was imposed of two symmetrical extremes, despite stark asymmetry in political violence: 52 of 57 deaths linked to violence between political groups from 1986 to 2017 were attributed to the far right, with only five attributed to the far left. Since 2022, eight deaths have been attributed to the far right compared with one attributed to the far left.

The case fits into a pattern that has accelerated since October 2023, when the escalation of the conflict in Gaza deepened polarisation in France. Since then, French public debate has been increasingly characterised by demonisation of the left, particularly LFI, and the normalisation of the far right, with political figures, media narratives and state responses working together to shift the boundaries of legitimate political discourse.

The analogy with the USA is instructive. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025, the Trump administration used the killing to call for crackdowns on left-wing organisations even though no collective responsibility could be established. In France, the Deranque affair has served similar purposes, transferring onto LFI part of the symbolic burden historically attached to far-right violence.

Victimisation explains the scale of the mobilisations that followed. According to local authorities, around 3,200 people gathered in a far-right march in Lyon on 21 February.

What was the state’s response to the far-right march?

The Ligue des Droits de l’Homme and SOS Racisme called for the march to be banned, but the state did not ban it. It supervised it, penalising some excesses but not preventing entirely foreseeable racist scenes from occurring.

Under the cover of mourning, neo-fascists marched giving Nazi salutes and shouting ‘dirty Arab’ and ‘dirty fucking race’. French President Emmanuel Macron called for calm and convened a cabinet meeting on ‘violent ultra or extremist groups’, announcing that state dissolution of extremist organisations would continue, and that prosecutors had been asked to investigate whether Jeune Garde, formally banned in June 2025, had secretly reformed through local satellite structures.

By allowing the march to proceed and reacting only after racist scenes occurred, the state created an appearance of action while legitimising this as democratic expression. The core issue of the normalisation of far-right rhetoric and symbolism in public space went unaddressed.

How did attacks on LFI offices affect the political climate?

Several LFI offices were vandalised under the slogan ‘Justice for Quentin’, and the party’s national headquarters were evacuated following a bomb threat. This represented an escalation from symbolic vandalism to direct threats against people and physical infrastructure, creating a climate of fear that extends to the broader left-wing movement.

These weren’t random acts of violence; they were part of a campaign to intimidate and politically isolate LFI, putting pressure on the Greens, the Socialist Party and other forces to distance themselves from it. Ahead of municipal elections held in mid-March, they deepened polarisation and complicated local alliances that electoral competition depends on.

What can civil society do about rising polarisation?

Civil society must resist three simultaneous operations: the criminalising of antifascist circles by association, the exclusion of LFI from legitimate political life and the normalising of the far right. It must condemn any politically motivated killing while rejecting the racist and authoritarian instrumentalisation of such events. It must insist on factual accuracy about the asymmetry in political violence, resisting the lazy symmetrical framing of two extremes that the government and media are using.

Civil society must defend the rule of law against the logic of reprisals. This means defending freedoms of association, assembly and expression of organisations that are being targeted, documenting violence and intimidation campaigns and providing legal and material support to activists, associations, party offices and trade unions under attack. The goal is to prevent cases like the Deranque killing being weaponised to regressively reshape the political field.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.