US President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday denounced “terrorism” and left-wing violence in France as French police braced for a weekend rally for a dead far-right protester.
The US administration weighed in on the death of Quentin Deranque after French President Emmanuel Macron called on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had expressed shock over the 23-year-old protester’s killing, to keep out of France’s affairs.
Deranque died from head injuries after being involved in a fight on the sidelines of a protest against a politician from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party in the French city of Lyon last week.
Photo: AFP
His death has fanned tensions ahead of municipal elections next month and presidential polls next year and sparked a war of words between Macron and Italy’s right-wing prime minister Meloni, who has warm ties with Trump.
US State Department Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers said the killing of Deranque showed “why we treat political violence — terrorism — so harshly.”
“Once you decide to kill people for their opinions instead of persuade them, you’ve opted out of civilization,” she wrote on social media. “We will continue to watch this case.”
The US State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism posted: “Violent radical leftism is on the rise and its role in Quentin Deranque’s death demonstrates the threat it poses to public safety.”
Meloni said the killing of Deranque was “a wound for all of Europe.”
Macron replied by saying everyone should “stay in their own lane,” but Meloni said that the French president had misinterpreted her comments.
Macron said there was no place in France “for movements that adopt and legitimize violence,” and urged the far right and hard left to clean up their act.
Deranque’s supporters have called for a march in his memory on Saturday in Lyon.
French Minister of the Interior Laurent Nunez said he had planned an “extremely large police deployment” with reinforcements to ensure security.
The rally is expected to be attended by 2,000 to 3,000 people, as well as counterprotesters.
“I can only ban a demonstration when there are major risks of public disorder and I am not in a position to contain them,” he told the RTL broadcaster.
Jordan Bardella, the president of anti-immigration RN, has urged party members not to go. LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard warned on social media the event would be a “fascist demonstration” that “over 1,000 neo-Nazis from all over Europe” were expected to attend.
Two people, aged 20 and 25, have been charged with intentional homicide in relation to Deranque’s fatal beating, according to the Lyon prosecutor and their lawyers.
A third suspect has been charged with complicity in the killing.
Jacques-Elie Favrot, a 25-year-old former parliamentary assistant to LFI lawmaker Raphael Arnault, has admitted to having been present at the scene but denied delivering the blows that killed Deranque, his attorney said.
Favrot said “it was absolutely not an ambush, but a clash with a group of far-right activists,” he added.
Opinion polls put the far right in the lead for the French presidency in 2027, when Macron must step down after the maximum two consecutive terms in office.
In snap parliamentary polls in 2024, Macron’s supporters and the left, including the hard left, had
allied against the far right.
After the Lyon killing, several voices on the more moderate left have rejected another such alliance with LFI.
Socialist party official Pierre Jouvet on Friday said its politicians could in rare cases ally with LFI candidates in the second round of municipal elections next month if they reject “political violence”.
Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin warned against what he described as France’s “Charlie Kirk moment,” referring to an ultraconservative influencer who was shot and killed in September in the US.
“It’s a moment aimed at delegitimizing part of the political spectrum and casting the triumphant far right as a victim,” the moderate right-winger wrote on social media.
“Let’s stay vigilant,” he said. “Let’s not concede ground to the far right.”
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