French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, February 14, urged calm and restraint after the fatal beating of a 23-year-old French youth aligned with the far-right on the sidelines of a conference by a hard-left lawmaker in the southeastern city of Lyon.
The death of the young man – identified only as Quentin – has intensified tensions between France’s far-right and radical left who are both eyeing 2027 presidential elections.
He had been hospitalized in Lyon on Thursday after being attacked while providing what his supporters said was security for a protest against an appearance by hard-left MEP Rima Hassan at the Lyon branch of the Sciences Po university.
Unfortunately, optics are incredibly important to win public opinion. As a radical leftist myself, I have little to no compassion for the man who died ; nonetheless I hope this doesn’t start a pattern.
Many people see these things as entirely vibes-based, so if we don’t look like the good guys, to many people that’s enough to decide we aren’t the good guys.
Mmh… I think that tribal identification is a basic problem (the us vs their conundrum): the danger is obvious, admit this general simplified view to conform the “only two collectives” and judge them by choiced individuals and not by the root ideas and what they bring, if humans cannot overcome this instinct they will remain ants that follow queens for no good reason…
I think the world needs less radical left and more militant left.
We’ve tried talking for the last 80 years or so. Its not working so well. So maybe we need to bring back the violence that defeated fascism last time.