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.


The voting and response to your reasonable comments are what disappoint me most about the Fediverse. These people aren’t against violence out of principle. They’re against violence directed at their people.
There have been multiple times I’ve had to point out in politics and news communities the irony of people on the left literally dehumanizing their opponents. Apparently, people perceived as Nazi sympathizers don’t deserve trials, because they’re not even really people. We shouldn’t tolerate the intolerant, but that’s not not the same as not giving them due process. Even the literal Nazis got trials.
We know what happens when ideological extremists take power. They kill off their opponents to preserve doing things the “right” way. That happens whether they started out believing in their racial superiority or believing the workers need to rise above their oppressors. Eventually, they turn their nations into totalitarian hellholes so the “bad” guys don’t return to power. I guess we should just start shooting Commies and Nazis dead in the streets so that doesn’t happen. Also, the “centrists” who aren’t Commies or Nazis should die because they aren’t sufficiently against Commies or Nazis depending on your frame or reference.
Yes, I try to be forgiving and think it’s mostly due to a mob mentality. Everyone wants to one-up each other to show that they’re more dedicated to the cause, and eventually that leads to cheering when others are murdered for their beliefs.
You have a good point about ideological extremists taking power. It’s what happened in Nazi Germany. It’s what happened in the Soviet Union. It’s what’s happening in North Korea.
I wish we, collectively, could understand that this has more to do with human nature rather than what’s actually being discussed. Until we reach that point, we can expect to keep making the same mistakes again and again.
Your whole thing perceives ANY act of violence as escalating into extremism, how is that not the exact same kind of totalitarian black and white authoritarian ideology just defanged and turned on its head? Anyone doing violence of any kind is just as bad as Nazis, because you were fed some pacifist pseudo religious isolated morality bullshit tale at some point that you took as an absolute truth. That’s stupid. That is simply not how the real world works.
Where does self defense fit into your enlightened pacifist worldview?
Yeah, you don’t know what your talking about and you’re making assumptions that aren’t true.
This wasn’t self defense, and I never proclaimed to be a pacifist. I said we should target the source rather than the symptoms.
I think you’re just angry and trying to fit in with your peers.
I think you just enjoy jerking yourself off up there on your pedestal. Fuck you and the moral high horse you rode in on.
We see you.
You can’t see past your blind rage.
I can’t see past your mom’s fat ass.
I can tell you’re part of the next generation.
One if these twats basically told you you should die for defending Nazis, and all you did was say the guy shouldn’t have been beaten to death.