France to summon US ambassador over comments on far-right activist’s death
Official US social media accounts posted about rise of ‘violent radical leftism’ after killing of Quentin Deranque
The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, has said he will summon Charles Kushner, the US ambassador to France, over comments related to the killing of the French far-right activist Quentin Deranque.
Deranque was beaten to death in Lyon last week during a fight with allegedly hard-left activists.
The US embassy in France and the US state department’s bureau of counter-terrorism said they were monitoring the case, writing on X that “violent radical leftism is on the rise” and should be treated as a public safety threat.
Deranque’s death has put France on edge, stoking tensions between left and right ahead of the 2027 presidential vote.
It has also drawn international attention. Donald Trump’s administration denounced what it called “terrorism” in France on Friday, prompting pushback from Paris.
“We reject any use of this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, for political ends,” Barrot told Le Monde, France Inter and France Info. “We have no lessons to learn, particularly on the issue of violence, from the international reactionary movement.”
The foreign ministry did not announce when the ambassador, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, would be summoned.
Deranque, 23, died of head injuries after clashes on the sidelines of a 12 February demonstration against a politician from the leftwing France Unbowed party in Lyon.
His death has been called “France’s Charlie Kirk moment”, referring to the killing last year of the US far-right commentator.
More than 3,000 people marched in Lyon on Saturday in tribute to Deranque, with authorities deploying heavy security for fear of further clashes.
The US state department’s under secretary for public diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, said on Friday that Deranque’s killing showed “why we treat political violence – terrorism – so harshly”.
“Once you decide to kill people for their opinions instead of persuade them, you’ve opted out of civilisation,” she wrote on X.
The state department’s bureau of counter-terrorism separately posted: “Violent radical leftism is on the rise and its role in Quentin Deranque’s death demonstrates the threat it poses to public safety” – a post shared in French by the US embassy account.
Deranque’s killing has also caused a diplomatic feud between France and Italy, whose rightwing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has warm ties with Trump.
She called the death “a wound for all of Europe”, prompting the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to criticise her for speaking about French domestic affairs.
Macron called for calm on Saturday during the Lyon march.
Six men suspected of involvement in Deranque’s death have been charged over the killing, and a parliamentary assistant to a radical leftwing MP has been charged with complicity.
Barrot said he had other topics to discuss with Kushner during the summons, including US decisions to impose sanctions on Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner responsible for supervising social media rules, and Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the international criminal court.
He said they had been targeted by “unjustified and unjustifiable” measures, that he described as attacks on EU autonomy and the independence of the international justice system.
Kushner was also summoned in August last year over a letter to Macron alleging the French state did not do enough to combat antisemitism. Foreign ministry officials met one of his representatives because he did not attend the summons personally.
France’s Tribune de Dimanche newspaper reported that Macron had written to Trump asking him to lift the sanctions against Breton and Guillou.
Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report