Raphaël Arnault has been a hard man to catch recently. “I have to admit that lately I’ve only accepted live interviews,” he admits. On the other end of the line, we can hear the background noise of a train journey. Arnault is returning to Avignon. “I’ve become suspicious,” he continues. “You can guess why…” Not out of shyness: the new New Popular Front MP for the 1st constituency of Vaucluse is anything but a self-effacing figure. For several years, he has become the face of La Jeune Garde, an anti-fascist collective that he co-founded in Lyon in 2018. With his gaunt figure, his tattoos and his mastery of harangues through a megaphone, Arnault is a familiar figure at demonstrations in the capital of the Gauls.
Since July 7, the young man has been the “S-listed deputy.” During the legislative campaign, Arnault learned that he was registered in this intelligence services file, which includes people suspected of terrorism, but also radical political activists. This police listing does not imply any criminal charges, but it made his access to certain protected places more difficult… such as the National Assembly, where two police commanders carry out administrative investigations on each person invited to go to the Palais Bourbon, with full latitude to refuse them access to the premises. A measure of caution that his election erases: as a parliamentarian, Raphaël Arnault must be able to access the premises as he wishes. His committee appointments will not depend in any way on his security CV. “He can sit wherever he wants in committee,” assures Olivier Renaudie, professor of public law at the Sorbonne Law School. But it could be politically delicate to see him sit on the defense and intelligence committee.”
In 2018, 30,000 individuals were on the S file, including 3,000 on the far left, like him. They are suspected of a penchant for violent actions. “As I already said, I was not aware, and it is not my vocation to know,” he interrupts. A hint of annoyance breaks through. For a month, Arnault has been contorting himself to display a calm and friendly posture. The former street brawler is apparently on the way to becoming a notable peaceful figure. When he entered the National Assembly on July 9, he had swapped jeans and a T-shirt for a beige suit and a Mao collar shirt. A well-behaved child look for someone who now wants to embody the cool side of anti-fascism. “I am not violent,” he assures. “They are using this S file thing to harm me.” In February 2022, the Lyon Criminal Court sentenced him to a four-month suspended prison sentence for group violence. A man suspected of being a far-right activist was attacked on a street in Lyon. The new MP has appealed and remains presumed innocent.
Télérama, Attac and the Guignols
Arnault likes to tell his story by starting with his childhood, before the “Young Guard” years. If there was a before, why wouldn’t there be an after? He grew up in Lyon, in the Croix-Rousse district, in a “non-militant” but left-wing family. A “sixty-eighter and feminist” grandmother, executive parents, “from a working-class background, raised by studies”. We read there Telerama and we look at it The horns of info. In short, a family with “strong cultural capital”, he sums up, invoking the notion of Pierre Bourdieu discovered in high school, during his course in economic and social sciences.
At the time, the future anti-fascist was not yet quite one. A few training courses at the anti-capitalist NGO Attac, a lot of research on the Internet. And then these demonstrations against the pension reform in 2010, with his mother – he says “with mom”. The extreme right parades and increases the frustration of the young Lyonnais. “It was a first trigger: guys were doing Nazi salutes and charging at the union procession”, he says.
The transformation of the young left-wing activist into a master brawler is underway. Second turning point: when more and more of his comrades “are seduced by the anti-Semitism of Soral and Dieudonné”, he rubs shoulders with the young communists and identifies with Clément Méric, an anti-fascist activist killed in 2013 in Paris by a group of skinheads. From 2014, he joined Lyon II and toured the anarchist bookstores in Lyon. He attended conferences given by Yazidi anti-fascist soldiers returning from the front against the Islamic State. “By opposing Daesh, the Kurds were leading a fight against a supremacism built around Islam. I saw how a revolutionary process could be set up by fighting it,” he enthuses. “If they could do it in terrible conditions there, we could do it in Lyon too.”
The demonstrations against the Labor Law in 2016, in which he participated alongside activists from the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), finally convinced him of the “necessity” of action. “Far-right activists attacked us. There were more of us than them, but we were completely incapable of responding,” he says. “That’s when we understood that we had to organize ourselves.” The third “trigger” in this well-rehearsed story.
“They respond violently”
In January 2018, he founded La Jeune Garde with other activists, named after the anti-fascist groups of the 1930s. They intend to fight against the Bastion Social, an identity group occupying premises in the Vieux-Lyon district. Unlike the anti-fascist movements already present, very close to the autonomous and libertarian movements, La Jeune Garde claims to want to reconnect with a “classic” anti-fascism – a positioning that leads to rivalries in the small world of anti-fascists. “Their anti-fascism resembles that of the interwar period, very linked to the workers’ movement and the Communist Party”, says sociologist Ugo Palheta, who led a conference alongside them. Arnault will later explain that he is a “materialist Marxist”, an extension of historical Marxism. He still claims it, but assures above all that he is “pragmatic”. “I am not dogmatic,” he insists. “We must adapt to today’s society.” Without doubt one of the keys to the character.
The members of the Young Guard soon began to serve, along with others, as a very muscular security service during the demonstrations. As a spokesperson, Raphaël Arnault was an omnipresent figure at these events. “He is known on the ground. I have met him and greeted him during demonstrations and I have called on him to be careful,” says Rémi Zinck, the Green mayor of the 4th arrondissement of Lyon. “He still goes into contact.” Despite its desire to display a respectable anti-fascism, the Young Guard is regularly accused of violence. And Arnault? Zinck’s embarrassed response: “The extreme right is physically violent, so… the Young Guard responds.” The activist is used to being quick to react: in October 2023, on the sidelines of a tribute to the teacher murdered in Arras Dominique Bernard, he assured the identity activist Mila that Alice Cordier, director of the far-right feminist collective Némésis, risked “a bullet in the head” if she tried to defend the Kurdish cause.
“Fighting anti-Semitism”
However, he must master his language to fulfill the goal he has set for himself: to polish the image of anti-fascism. Once La Jeune Garde was created, he went on to appear in media outlets close to the radical left: a long live broadcast with videographer Usul or a round table at Streetpress, in the company of activists Anasse Kazib, from Révolution permanente, and Taha Bouhafs, then close to La France insoumise (LFI). But he also tries to shine beyond that. In October 2021, he took part in the show Do not touch My TV, in which he debates against Juliette Briens, an identity activist.
“He went from ‘the far right is bad’ to ‘we need to deconstruct its discourse’, to end up with ‘let’s take political action against it'”, observes Aline Guitard, deputy mayor of the 4th arrondissement of Lyon and former head of the PCF Rhône. Raphaël Arnault crossed the threshold of political debate in 2022 when he ran for the legislative elections in the 2nd constituency of the Rhône. At the time, he already teamed up with his running mate Mathilde Millat, a member of the NPA. They opposed Hubert Julien-Laferrière, an environmentalist invested by Nupes who had moved to LREM, and won 6.81% of the vote.
Since 2022, Arnault has been getting closer to the movement of the man he believes embodies “hope on the left”, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In October 2023, he took part in a conference on the far right at the Institut La Boétie, the LFI think tank. The Young Guard also appears in the company of Rima Hassan, a future MEP known for her controversial positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On June 27, eight members of its Parisian branch were indicted and placed under judicial supervision for “group violence resulting in incapacity for more than eight days in a means of collective passenger transport due to race, ethnicity, nation or religion” on the sidelines of a meeting of the politician, a month earlier. The investigation is still ongoing. The Young Guard denies any anti-Semitism. Arnault, for his part, is waiting for “the affair to deflate” and is calling for “the fight against anti-Semitism, present in our society, including on the left, as well as against Islamophobia”. “I was kept away from this story,” he says. “I was campaigning.”
“Huge” campaign machine
In Avignon, where he had no ties before being a candidate in June 2024, the Arnault machine is impressive. “Raphaël Arnault arrived with a huge machine: endless mailings, LFI and Young Guard activists who came from all over France to hand out leaflets and go door-to-door. We couldn’t fight,” sighs Philippe Pascal, a dissident LFI candidate, who also regrets the “aggressiveness” of some towards his own team.
Having come third in the first round, he immediately supported Arnault. “We had to beat the RN,” he explains. “He’s an intelligent guy. When you’re intelligent, you don’t dwell on the radicalism of your youth.” In the Assembly, the new MP promises not to make a splash for the time being. An education assistant in the city, he intends to sit on the education and culture committee. “It concerns issues of youth, sport and the media that must be brought to bear against the RN MPs,” he explains. After the streets and the ballot boxes, anti-fascism… in the National Assembly.
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