Consider becoming a paid subscriber. Moreover, unlike other similar institutions, it does not limit itself to a single attack or single type of terrorism. But I was alive then. This illusion is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, however. In recent years, a series of shows of force points to a revival of neofascist violence in France. The trial of the thirteen members of the so-called Barjols group , who were arrested in for concocting a far-flung plan to assassinate Macron and conduct a spate of attacks against the Muslim community, ended this February with a series of acquittals and short-term prison sentences.
With fluid and often overlapping memberships, these groups have a taste for bombastic street protests and often prowl after left-wing activists and students. During periods of intense social movements, they fashion themselves vigilantes of order, like when a far-right gang assaulted a student occupation at the University of Montpellier in , aided by the dean of the law school.
Left-wing party La France Insoumise has also found itself in the crosshairs, with activists and events facing harassment or outright assault from fascist groupings. In the early s, according to Lebourg, the intelligence services estimated that were 7, far-right individuals susceptible to resort to violence. In late December , a sixty-nine-year-old man shot and killed three people at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris , days after being released from prison and a year after assaulting a migrant camp in the capital, injuring two with a blade.
Stories like these, though shocking, have normally been treated as miscellanea. But a recent scandal has given an unusual degree of attention to the threat posed by far-right individuals and activists.
In March, unidentified agitators firebombed the private residence of Yannick Morez, the center-right mayor of the town of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins in western France. The town had been the scene of local far-right agitation in opposition to the planned construction of a center for asylum-seekers at the behest of the national government. Morez resigned from office on May 10, accusing state authorities of ignoring the warnings and death threats that he had received. Buckling under local far-right pressure, the town of Callac, in Brittany, backed off in January from accepting a similar migrant center.
