Following the death of a fascist activist in Lyon, the far right and its allies are attempting to exploit this event to criminalize antifascism. Meanwhile, the institutional left is content to condemn, in generic terms, "all violence." More than ever, we must stand together to affirm the urgent need for a grassroots antifascism, and the imperative for our working class to defend itself against the violence of the far right.
On the evening of Thursday, February 12, Quentin Deranque, a fascist activist, was hospitalized in serious condition. A member of the neo-fascist group Les Allobroges Bourgoin and of the security service of Némésis, he had also been involved with Action Française. His death was confirmed 48 hours later, just hours before the press published testimonies from shopkeepers and residents corroborating a video filmed from a window showing a beating following a pitched battle. Serious journalistic investigations, which do not simply parrot the far-right narrative, are still underway, and many questions remain unanswered. In any case, this death cannot be analyzed politically outside the context that led to the event.
For years, numerous associations, trade unions, political parties, residents, and shopkeepers in Lyon have been mobilizing about the increase in violence perpetrated by the far right. How many attacks have there been on people of color? On LGBTQ+ people? On trade unionists? On activists or political figures? On local residents? How many beatings? How many armed attacks? How many hospitalizations?
For years, we have collectively warned about the establishment of fascist groups, operating openly, training in a combat gym next to the La Traboule bar, or in paramilitary summer camps, about the numerous demonstrations inciting hatred, and also about the complicity of the authorities. Indeed, the police are regularly absent from events like Thursday's, while far-right conferences are always protected by a particularly large security detail.
While the activists of Némésis generate buzz by organizing media-driven "happenings," neo-fascist militants in Lyon are preparing to kill and die for their cause. Their leaders are training radicalized and disciplined fighters to send to the front lines to confront the security forces that all of Lyon's social movements are forced to deploy for their own protection.
That antifascist groups have formed in Lyon over the years to participate in collective and grassroots self-defense is undeniable.
The fate of the young fascist activist has given the far right an opportunity to construct the image of a martyr and to escalate its violence. In the days following Thursday evening, numerous premises belonging to various left-wing trade unions and political organizations across France were vandalized, including those of La France Insoumise (LFI) but also those of Solidaires Rhône, as well as La Plume Noire, a self-managed bookstore run by the UCL in Lyon, which had already been attacked many times. Swastikas were spray-painted in the Place de la République in Paris, and Celtic crosses throughout France. Threats and calls for physical violence against activists have multiplied, some of whom have been publicly identified and publicly shamed. What the far-right now hopes for is to be able to carry out their atrocities with renewed intensity, relying on the mendacious narrative of "far-left terrorism" in order to gain political legitimacy.
The left-wing parties and political figures who denounced "all forms of physical violence" have fallen into the trap set by the far right. This naive pacifist rhetoric equates fascist violence that has persisted for over fifteen years in Lyon, targeting anything that displeases white supremacists, with an event that fuels a despicable political campaign to criminalize antifascism. Jean Messiha calls for "eradicating the antifascist scum," the far-right calls for creating new Clément Mérics, and right-wing and far-right elected officials call for classifying antifa groups as terrorists. And what is the left doing? It sends its condolences to the victim's "friends" and criminalizes antifascism. Some even go so far as to empty the word fascist of all political substance by making it a simple synonym for "violence" which could then be attributed to anyone, including anti-fascists.
UCL will not succumb to this comfortable but inconsistent demagoguery. We forcefully reiterate a persistent reality: it is primarily the far right that kills and instigates this climate of violence, in Lyon, in France, and throughout the world. We strongly condemn the reversal of the situation that the far right is attempting to impose by referring to a "lynching," a term associated with the mass racist attacks targeting Black people in the United States. Using it to describe the blows received by a white supremacist is a deadly and racist reversal.
Yes, the far right kills: drowned in the Deule River, Brahim Bouraam, Clément Méric, Federico Aramburu, Mahamadou Cissé, Djamel Bendjaballah, Rochdi Lakhsassi, Hichem Miraoui, killed by five bullets in Puget-sur-Argens in 2025... Did the murdered individuals have to be far-right to elicit a national tribute? Where are the condolences for the victims and the national tributes when Frédéric Grochain, a Kanak political prisoner, dies in his cell thousands of kilometers from his homeland on February 6th? Where are the tears from the political parties and the media that mourned Quentin Deranque after the racist murder of Ismaël Aali in early 2026 in the same town?
UCL defends a social and popular antifascism based on building mass social movements, whose strength lies in numbers, not violence. However, to renounce confrontation on principle is to condemn ourselves to the impossibility of activism in the public sphere. If we refuse to protect our demonstrations, our public meetings, our distribution of leaflets, then we are refusing to intervene politically, because the far right will not refrain from attacking us, and this is why it cannot be considered a political ideology like any other.
By singling out "the antifas" for public condemnation, these elements of the parliamentary left are howling with the wolves. They are putting themselves in a position where they will no longer be able to defend antifascist movements threatened by state repression.
Yet, more than ever, we need to stand together and hold the line.
Facing the fascists, not a step backward.
Libertarian Communist Union, February 17, 2026.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Mort-d-un-fasciste-a-Lyon-plus-que-jamais-l-urgence-de-l-antifascisme
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