In 2023 Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand leader of the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI), made a fundamental miscalculation. He publicly promoted a small group of young antifascist activists. La Jeune Garde, founded in Lyon in 2018, were politically inexperienced and had organised a series of sometimes violent confrontations with far-right groups.
Members of the group, which was banned in 2025, are now suspected of involvement in a killing that has convulsed France. The victim, Quentin Deranque, was a 23-year-old mathematics student and a far-right activist.
Deranque died in Lyon on 14 February two days after a violent street confrontation that allegedly involved members of Jeune Garde. Eleven suspects, including a parliamentary aide to an LFI member of parliament, have been arrested. The assault occurred on the sidelines of a far-right protest against a conference held by Rima Hassan, an MEP for Mélenchon’s party.
Since Deranque’s death, Mélenchon has continued to defend Jeune Garde. His close ties to the organisation date from 2023, when he and other LFI figures allegedly attended a Jeune Garde summer camp. The organisation offered him a committed base of young people at a time when LFI was trying to expand its appeal beyond institutional politics to young and grassroots activists. It was an appealing partner for mobilisation.
To many of Mélenchon’s critics however, his dogged commitment to what is now a proscribed group is yet further evidence of his unwillingness to admit to an error of judgment. To do so would be to recognise that his polarising strategy is flawed, if not dangerous.
Deranque reportedly joined the demonstration in Lyon to protect members of the anti-immigrant Némésis collective, who were protesting against the conference. The killing is under investigation but it was during the protest that the 23-year-old was beaten and kicked, suffering head injuries. He later fell into a coma and died two days later.
Across France, the case has sparked outrage. In Lyon itself, far-right groups marched on 21 February to mourn Deranque. But the outcry has also rocked LFI and raised questions within the French left about the organisation and Mélenchon’s leadership.
Among those arrested are three close associates of Raphaël Arnault, an LFI member of parliament and former spokesperson for Jeune Garde. Arnault was himself convicted in 2022 for aggravated assault. Another Jeune Garde member who has been arrested in connection with Deranque’s death had previously been charged with a violent antisemitic assault on the Paris metro in 2024. That Mélenchon knowingly fostered a relationship with Arnault and helped to get him elected to parliament in 2024 casts a spotlight on problems with Mélenchon’s leadership style that have long concerned many on the left.
Deranque’s death has provoked a perhaps understandable debate in France about political violence. But considering that most victims are targets of far-right aggression, the reaction is astounding.
Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right National Rally (RN), has gone as far as to call for a cordon sanitaire to be placed around LFI – despite the fact that Until recently, such remarks would have sounded risible; today, hardly anyone would dare to publicly refute them. The RN is using the fallout to gain full acceptance into the political mainstream.
Clearly, the party views this killing as an opportunity to complete its detoxification ahead of the 2027 presidential election. The political heirs of Jean Marie Le Pen’s Front National are constantly trying to make people forget that his party, founded in 1972, brought together former Vichy collaborators, former Waffen-SS members, members of the neofascist student movement and former members of the far-right paramilitary OAS – a group that organised in defence of continued French colonisation of Algeria.
The RN has never officially repudiated its ties to French fascism. This legacy has long kept the party on the fringes, despite Marine Le Pen’s efforts to make it socially acceptable.
Nevertheless, the LFI has a problem. It is organised around Mélenchon’s autocratic control. His rejection of internal democracy, justified by considerations of political efficiency, has transformed the movement into a fortress in which a sectarian polarisation has developed, making leftwing unity difficult. By claiming that his party “has nothing to do, either directly or indirectly” with the tragedy in Lyon, Mélenchon is rejecting his ethical responsibilities as a leader.
Meanwhile, the far right is exploiting Deranque’s death to redefine anti-fascism as the “new fascism” and anti-fascists as neo-Nazis. What would France’s resistance fighters think of this reversal of roles?
The revisionism is as brazen as it is disturbing: historical reality is erased with a stroke of the pen, and the RN absolves itself of its extremist ideas, past and present. It is a perverse falsification of history. The opportunistic Macronist centre-right and the rightwing Les Republicains (LR) approve, believing that the downfall of Mélenchon ahead of the 2027 presidential election is more important than historical truth or political ethics.
The international far right is also attempting to exploit the tragedy to further its anti-left agenda. The US state department wrote on X that Deranque’s death demonstrated the threat to public safety from the rise of “violent radical leftism”. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called it “a wound for the whole of Europe”.
The French left, embarrassed, remains mostly silent. A few voices are radically opposed to LFI, notably Raphaël Glucksmann, leader of the centre-left Place Publique. Just two years ago, four leftwing parties – including LFI – joined forces to form a popular front to contest snap elections and defeat the far right. Now, in the aftermath of Deranque’s killing, Glucksmann has definitively severed links with LFI, charging Mélenchon with the “brutalisation” of politics.
The ostracisation of Jeune Garde and LFI indirectly constitutes an attack on the broader left, in France and beyond. In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Donald Trump’s administration classified Antifa as a “terrorist movement”. Trump is not just targeting fringe leftwing groups, but all opponents of his policies.
The left faces a dilemma: if it openly criticises LFI, it facilitates the ongoing anti-left offensive. If it unquestioningly supports Mélenchon, it will be seen as endorsing his deleterious strategy. The left, caught in a vice, is under threat. The right and far right are attempting to criminalise the antifascist struggle. This is not only an insult to the memory of the antifascist activists of the past, but it is also a revisionist approach that undermines French democracy.
Philippe Marlière is professor of French and European politics at University College London
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
