In mid-February, shortly after I sent off the last proofs of my book “The Yellow Vests and The Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century,” which examines the “Yellow Vest” street protests that galvanized French politics in the early 2020s, a young man named Quentin Deranque died in the city of Lyon in southeastern France. Deranque was a 23-year-old far-right activist who was fatally injured in a street fight with a small antifascist group known as the Jeune Garde, or the “Young Guard,” which the media has associated with the left-wing political party La France Insoumise, or LFI. The Young Guards was formed in 2021 by an elected representative of the LFI but in the face of current events has been disbanded.
Every death from political violence, on the right or the left, is a human tragedy. But in this instance, the political fallout, which fell a few weeks before the municipal elections across France, has been particularly dramatic. Surprisingly, the LFI does not appear to have been badly damaged, and pulled through the first round of the municipal elections with strong results. But the mainstream center-left Socialist Party, among many other groups, have blamed the LFI for this violence, undermining possibilities for any left coalition in the second round of the municipal elections.
