Deadly attack on a village festival: France sees its peaceful rural life threatened The boy from Germany who left his mark on the US: Henry Kissinger is dead

Crépol is a quiet village like you can find anywhere in France: old stone houses, a church tower and a castle ruin on the hill; There are oak and nut trees around it, under which the 500 residents look for truffles in winter.

The French are even more appalled by what has happened in the rural area of ​​the Drôme over the past two weeks. The beginning is well known: at a large village festival in Crépol, 16-year-old Thomas P., a player from the local rugby club, was brutally stabbed to death by an outsider; 16 other young people ended up in the emergency room, some seriously injured.

How this came about remains controversial to this day. According to one version, a dozen twenty-year-olds, who did not know anyone, asked in vain to be let in around two in the morning – officially because the party was coming to an end. According to another story, because they came from the immigrant district of the nearby capital, the provincial town of Romans-sur-Isère (32,000 inhabitants).

Racism against Banlieue Kids? Or precisely the ‘anti-white racism’ of armed petty criminals, as right-wing politician Marion Maréchal claims?

It is understood the attackers were already armed when they arrived. The judiciary is prosecuting six of the nine arrested for “gang-related murder”. The conservative newspaper ‘Le Figaro’ also published their mostly Arabic-sounding first names and reported how their immigrant neighborhood of La Monnaie on the outskirts of Romans-sur-Isère was dominated by drug traffickers.

Right-wing Saubanner parades and firework bombings

In the heated atmosphere, euphemistically called ’emotion modern’ by the media, this could only accelerate the spiral of violence. After a peaceful, decidedly apolitical “March for Thomas,” about 100 black-masked, non-local ultra-rightists gathered in Romans-sur-Isère at nightfall last Saturday.

Carrying baseball bats, they marched toward the immigrant neighborhood and chanted “Justice for Thomas” or “The street, France is ours.”

Police blocked the road, but could not prevent the collision. Local residents threw fireworks at the demonstrators; Youths from both sides attacked each other. An elderly eyewitness reported to the newspaper “Libération” that the extreme right had to leave soon; But one became stuck and was severely beaten, according to a video recording; Eventually he was picked up by an ambulance, naked and covered in blood.

Since then, the police have brought the situation under control. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced that he wants to ban three ultra-right groups. The most important is “Division Martel”, named after the Frankish steward Karl Martell, who repulsed the Moors who had advanced from Spain at the Battle of Tours and Poitiers in 732.

Even Le Pen condemns radical comments

But the French are not interested in the noise of battles or banlieue riots. They just want urban violence not to spread into their previously peaceful rural areas. In the wake of the Crépol affair, local newspapers are now reporting another and similar attack by pistol-wielding assailants at a community festival in October in the village of Saint-Martin-Petit, southeast of Bordeaux.

The ultras’ attack on the immigrant settlement is now counterproductive and, paradoxically, puts the entire right on the defensive. The president of the conservative Les Républicains, Eric Ciotti, was forced to condemn the attack after the left condemned his silence. The right-wing populist Marine Le Pen is also withdrawing.

After initially taking responsibility for the death of Thomas P., she now criticizes the radical position of right-wing extremist ex-presidential candidate Eric Zemmour. Its supporters had identified a “civilization conflict” followed by a “civil war” – a view Le Pen now describes as “dangerous” because it pits the French against each other. She’s not even wrong about that. (aargauerzeitung.ch)