by Lola Salem, Telegraph
Quentin Deranque was killed after showing support for a feminist protest group against mass migration
On the evening of Feb 12 in Lyon, a small group of young women gathered for what has become, for them, a routine act of civic defiance.
They are members of Némésis, a feminist collective founded by Alice Cordier who argues that women’s rights and dignity are being eroded by mass immigration and Islamist pressure. Their activism is deliberately confrontational but non-violent: they place banners on university buildings, organise silent demonstrations, and use sharp slogans about sexual violence and forced marriages. In exchange, Némésis’ members are used to being shouted at, followed, and threatened.
Because Némésis occupies an ideological space the French Left detests – feminist, anti-Islamist, unapologetically critical of immigration – their events rarely pass quietly. Alice and her peers are accused of being “far-Right”, “racist”, “fascist”. Their meetings are generally targeted for disruption. Venues are pressured to cancel bookings. And so security becomes an existential necessity.
On Thursday, that protection included a 23-year-old man, Quentin Deranque, along with several other young men who had come to support their female friends as they gathered on the margins of a conference held at Sciences Po Lyon where the controversial MEP Rima Hassan spoke. Hassan has publicly aligned herself with activist networks that present confrontation as a legitimate political tool. Her language of struggle and rupture has drawn criticism for blurring the line between democratic protest and coercive activism.