How a Political Killing Took Over French Municipal Elections

Typically, municipal elections tend to remain local affairs. Safety and security, cleanliness, city budgets, and access to services such as health care and education top the list of civic concerns in selecting mayors. This year in France, days before its thirty-five thousand cities and towns vote in the first municipal elections since 2020, another top-line order has been added, subtly shifting electoral dynamics in local races across the country: the shadow of political violence.

On February 14, neofascist activist Quentin Deranque died, succumbing to injuries sustained two days earlier during street skirmishes between far-right groups and anti-fascists in Lyon. Video footage shows Deranque, a member of several neofascist groups, being beaten by members of the anti-fascist movement La Jeune Garde, some of whom were later revealed to be linked to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’smovement, La France Insoumise (LFI).

Taking place almost exactly one month before elections, Deranque’s death and its political repercussions have had the effect of a fragmentation bomb, sending tiny pieces of shrapnel across the country. In the weeks after his death, France’s National Assembly observed a moment of silence for the young identitarian activist; LFI, already demonized by much of the French political class, was legally qualified as a “far-left” party and had to evacuate its Paris headquarters in a credible bomb scare; bouts of retaliatory violence against left-wing institutions occurred in cities across the country from Lille in the north to Toulouse in the south; and Nazi salutes were thrown as far-right groups marched in his memory in Lyon and across the country.

This atmosphere has shifted the terms of debate in municipal races that normally focus on bread-and-butter issues onto the complex topic of political violence.

From Marseille, thirty-one-year-old theater production assistant Baptiste Colin tells me that “local debates have taken a back seat, which is a shame.” “It seems to me that we’ve hardly succeeded anywhere in running [the 2026 municipal elections] as truly local elections,” he explains. “We really only have discussions at the national level — for or against Emmanuel Macron, for or against Mélenchon, for or against [former interior minister Bruno] Retailleau.”

In the Phoenician port city, a televised debate between leading candidates veered into unplanned sparring over Deranque, leading the incumbent left-wing mayor Benoît Payan to lament in French daily Le Monde that, “The half hour on Quentin wasn’t among the planned topics. . . . We wanted to talk about Marseille.

“Instead of debating local policy, some candidates may be pressured or decide willingly to position themselves within a broader ideological struggle,” Rim-Sarah Alouane, a legal scholar and researcher in public law at the Université Toulouse Capitole, tells me.

In Lyon, this struggle took place on the walls of city property. Days after the killing, businessman Jean-Michel Aulas, running under the banner of a coalition of right-wing parties and currently leading in the polls, took out a tribune in a local paper calling on his competitor, Green Party mayor Grégory Doucet, to display Deranque’s picture on city hall. While Deranque’s portrait was not ultimately put up there, it was shown on a nearby building belonging to the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of which Lyon is a part — and which is run by the Right.

To Alix, a twenty-eight-year-old public policy student who lives in Lyon, Aulas’s call for an homage to Deranque was a “political error.” “He wasn’t a choirboy,” Alix — who insists that he’s more interested in hearing about urban planning than political violence in the municipal elections — tells me of Deranque.

Nonetheless — as the Marseille debate showed — it seems that taking a stance on the killing, and often assigning fault, has become a prerequisite for this year’s municipal elections. “Today is not the time for controversy. It is a time for solemn reflection, respect, and solidarity,” Thierry Tsagalos, a candidate for the far-right National Rally in Montpellier wrote on X after Deranque’s death. “Let us remain united. Let us remain dignified. And let us not forget Quentin.” The post was nonetheless accompanied with several hashtags, including the names of LFI politicians Raphaël Arnault (cofounder of the Jeune Garde anti-fascist group) and Rima Hassan (who had spoken at a conference the day the violence broke out in Lyon) and, in all caps, the word “ASSASSINS.”

The French far right has sought to capitalize on the killing to make inroads in cities where they previously struggled to exist, suggesting — despite historical statistics that prove otherwise — that it’s the Left and not the Right that’s responsible for political violence in France. In Tours, a city in the Loire Valley, a meeting for the far-right National Rally held after Deranque’s death was “packed,” with some attendees forced to sit on the floor, Pascal Montagne, a local photojournalist, tells me. “It was very successful, whereas before that wouldn’t have been the case.” A “Quentin bump”? Not necessarily, Montagne cautions — the far right was already rising locally before the killing.

As Philippe Marlière has written in the Guardian, the consequences of the Deranque death have also played out in local left-wing alliance-making in advance of the municipal elections — important, too, because city councils help determine the make-up of the French Senate. Despite being part of a broad left-wing coalition in snap elections held in summer 2024, LFI has found itself isolated — and physically threatened, with multiple aggressions of campaign staff signaled across the country. In Paris, a spokesperson for LFI’s Sophia Chikirou tells me that, contrary to media reports and some polling, the attacks against the left-wing party have actually “mobilized widely” in favor of the party. “A lot of new party activists have signed up. On the ground we have the impression many people are going to vote.”

In Paris’s diverse tenth arrondissement, LFI list head Marion Beauvalet says that despite initially worrying about the impact it might have on her campaign, Deranque’s death “is not at all a topic that comes up.” “For many people, the issues that are important are local ones,” including housing, childcare, and the cost of living.

Colin, the theater producer in Marseille, who situates himself on the left, insists that these local issues matter. “A town hall that pivots right will make a difference for associations like mine,” many of which are subsidized by municipal governments. “A town hall that pivots to the far right, that makes an even bigger difference.”

He brings up a recent football competition between Marseille, where he lives, and Lyon, where he grew up, as an example of France’s division. At the match, Lyon fans carried signs with Deranque’s face. Marseille fans responded with a different sort of message: “Marseille against racism.”