(Paris) Blows and insults continue to rain down in the second round of the legislative elections in France, targeting candidates and activists from all political sides, a symptom of the tension that is increasing in the run-up to a vote that is as decisive as it is uncertain.
No one is safe from violence, not even a sitting minister, in this lightning and extremely polarized campaign. Candidate for re-election in the Paris region, government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team were victims of “an attack during an operation to put up election posters” on Wednesday evening in Meudon.
According to a source close to the case, Prisca Thevenot and one of her colleagues were attacked by about twenty people. The minister was not hit, but her colleague and an activist (operated on Thursday on the jaw) were injured and taken to hospital.
Four people, including three minors, were quickly taken into custody as part of an investigation opened by the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office for “violence committed in a group against an elected official”.
Acts that the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, considered “absolutely unspeakable”. “We can oppose democratically, but we cannot attack each other verbally or physically, as unfortunately was the case during this campaign,” he reacted on Thursday.
That very morning, it was M’s predecessorme Thevenot to the spokesperson, Olivier Véran, who denounced the “cowardly attack” of one of his activists in Isère, in the Alps.
This 77-year-old activist was also attacked “while he was putting up posters”, which another man, “a supporter of La France Insoumise” (LFI, a radical party that is part of the left-wing coalition) “tore down before hitting him in the face”, said the former minister, deploring “a totally unprecedented context of violence in this electoral campaign”.
PHOTO BENOIT TESSIER, REUTERS
“We can oppose democratically, but we cannot attack each other verbally or physically, as unfortunately was the case during this campaign,” reacted French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
Ambient Fury
The left, however, has not been spared. Also on Thursday morning, an LFI candidate in the Paris region, Sébastien Ramage, reported the assault on his chief of staff “by an RN sympathizer” who “after shouting ‘long live Bardella’ struck him in the face.”
The president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, 28, defended his troops, accusing the “extreme left” of “violating (its) elected officials and (its) activists”.
Claiming that Minister Thevenot’s attackers were “repeat offenders from the suburbs”, he considered that far-right supporters were not “responsible for a ‘climate of hate'”.
Another left-wing candidate, Maxime Viancin, denounced a “homophobic and transphobic attack” against three of his activists “violently pushed and beaten” during a door-to-door campaign, by “a far-right activist” who allegedly told them that the RN was going to “take care of the lefties, the dykes and the trans people”.
The far right was also accused by a left-wing candidate in Paris, Danielle Simonnet, where four poster hangers were “violently attacked” on Tuesday evening “with a pepper gun and tear gas”, then “beaten and insulted as ‘bastard anti-Semites'”.
Proof, according to her, that “fascist groups are running wild all over the country”, because they are “galvanized by the possible victory of the RN this Sunday” in the second round of the legislative elections.
However, the candidates of the far-right party are sometimes caught up in the ambient fury. Like Marie Dauchy in Savoie, insulted and jostled in a market by a trader on Wednesday morning.
He spontaneously reported to the police station and was taken into custody “for repeated death threats, insults and minor violence”. While he admitted to the public insults and “hitting the complainant’s hands to make her leaflets fall to the ground”, he denied the repeated death threats, according to the Chambéry prosecutor’s office.