The scene illustrated the rise in violence in this lightning and extremely polarized campaign. Candidate for re-election in the 8th constituency of Yvelines, government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team were victims of “an attack during an operation to put up election posters” this Wednesday evening in Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine). The events occurred around 8 p.m. According to a source close to the case to AFP, Prisca Thevenot and one of her colleagues were attacked by around twenty people. The minister was not injured, but her colleague and an activist – operated on Thursday for 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 prosecutor’s office for “violence committed in a group against a public official”. Acts deemed “absolutely unspeakable” by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. “We can oppose democratically, but we cannot verbally or physically attack each other, as unfortunately was the case during this campaign,” he reacted this Thursday during a trip to Nevers (Nièvre).
That same morning, it was Prisca Thevenot’s predecessor as spokesperson, Olivier Véran, who denounced the “cowardly attack” of one of his activists in his first constituency in Isère. This 77-year-old activist was attacked “while he was putting up posters”, which another man, a “supporter of La France Insoumise”, “tore off before hitting him in the face”, said the former minister, deploring “a totally unprecedented context of violence in this campaign” for the election.
Left-wing activists and candidates also targeted
The left is not spared, even though it has been called into question. This Thursday morning, still, the LFI candidate in the first constituency of Val-d’Oise, Sébastien Ramage, reported on the social network the assault on his chief of staff “by an RN sympathiser” who, “after shouting ‘long live Bardella’, hit him in the face”.
In the process, his comrade Insoumis Maxime Viancin – running in the 10th constituency of Loire-Atlantique – condemned a “homophobic and transphobic attack” against three of his activists. They were “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”.
The far right was also accused by Danielle Simonnet, a LFI rebel in the 15th district of Paris, 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.
Jordan Bardella accuses the “extreme left”
The National Rally candidates are sometimes also caught up in these excesses of violence. Like Marie Dauchy in the 3rd constituency of Savoie, insulted and jostled in a market by a trader on Wednesday morning. The latter spontaneously presented himself to the police and was taken into custody “for repeated death threats, insults and contraventional violence”. While he admitted to the public insults and “having slapped the complainant’s hands to make her leaflets fall to the ground”, he did however deny the repeated death threats, according to the Chambéry prosecutor’s office.
Defending his troops, RN president Jordan Bardella accused on X “the far left” of “attacking (its) elected officials and (its) activists”. Stating that the attackers of Minister Thevenot are “repeat delinquents from the suburbs”, he considered that far-right supporters are not “responsible for a ‘climate of hate'”.