As Elections Loom in France, a Young Activist Is Killed and Tensions Spike

Statement submission: update on the killing of a far-right activist by a far-left group tied to the main left-wing party that has significantly raised tensions in France, one month before local elections and one year before the presidential one.

The trigger event: On Thursday, February 12, Quentin Deranque, a 23 yo student active in fascist groups took part in a protest against a conference given by Rima Hassan, an MEP for the far-left party LFI, at the Institute of Political Sciences in Lyon. The protest lead to a violent confrontation between two small groups of identitarians (far-right) and antifas (far-left) in the streets of Lyon, that concluded when Duranque was thrown to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the head by several antifas; he died of his injuries two days later.

The state of the investigation: Eleven people have been arrested in relation with the murder of Quentin Deranque, and as of today, seven of them have been indicted, including three parliamentary aides – current or former – to Raphaël Arnault, who serves as an MP in Avignon for LFI: one of them for "harboring a defendant", one for "complicity to murder through instigation", and one for "voluntary homicide". Most of them were part of the Jeune Garde antifasciste, a violent far-left group founded in 2018 in Lyon, notably by Raphaël Arnault himself, and disbanded in June 2025 by the government after a series of violent incidents, including an antisemitic attack against a Jewish teenager in 2024, whom eight members of the group forced to chant "Long Live Palestine" under threat of violence.

The reactions: Representatives of all major parties have unanimously condemned the killing, with various degrees of intensity: Marine Le Pen has called on the government to imitate Trump and Orban in designating the antifa movement as a "terrorist group", while centrist and moderate left-wing parties have called on LFI to sever their ties to the Jeune Garde and expel or suspend Raphaël Arnault from their ranks in Parliament. After condemning violence, LFI has turtled around Arnault, rejected calls to distance themselves from the Jeune Garde, and countered accusations of violence by publishing a list of murders carried out by far-righters in recent years. A dozen parliamentary offices of LFI throughout the country have been vandalized and LFI's HQ in Paris was briefly evacuated on Wednesday after a bomb threat.

The consequences: There are two major elections on the horizon: the municipal elections in March 2026, and the very competitive presidential elections in April-May 2027. The two-rounds system in France pushes minor candidates to negotiate alliances/withdrawals with major candidates in the second round to consolidate their influence on the future councils in exchange for a polling boost to their senior partners. The moderate left will need LFI's votes to conquer or retain the mayorships in close races like Paris, Marseille or Toulouse, but the killing of Quentin Deranque by an LFI-affiliated group is putting those alliances in jeopardy – several high-ranking officials of the Socialist Party have already rejected any negotiation with LFI if they refused to disavow the Jeune Garde, which could tilt the scales for the right in several major cities.

In the presidential elections, only two candidates can access the second round, so the main point of tension will be the continuation or the breakdown of the "republican front" – a union in the ballot box of all political forces to prevent the far-right from taking power – if the final duel is between LFI's leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and RN's putative candidate Jordan Bardella, a possible outcome as of now. The "republican front" has weakened for years as RN's voting share grew and its leaders pursued a successful strategy of normalization and apparent moderation contrasting with LFI's strategy of radicalization; recent polling even suggest that the republican front is reverting to oppose the left and benefit the National Rally, as LFI is now considered to be a more dangerous party for democracy than RN; the killing of Deranque and its consequences could help accelerate or cement that dynamic.