Macron against Meloni: 'Don't comment on what happens to others'
The French president, worried about an outbreak of political violence between the right and the left, responds to the Prime Minister's tweet
Each to his own. French President Emmanuel Macron responds directly to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on the issue of the lynching of Quentin Deranque: in a short speech with a républicain character (in the French meaning of the term) against the political violence of the left and the right Macron said that "as for the other political comments I see, I am always struck by seeing people who are nationalists, who do not want to be disturbed at home, they are always the first to comment on what happens to others. Let everyone stay at home and the sheep will be well looked after'.
An explicit reference to Giorgia Meloni
"Are you talking about Giorgia Meloni?" a reporter asked him. "You got that right," replied the president, on a visit to New Delhi.
Italy's Prime Minister had written a message of condolence and condemnation of the incident on X. "The killing of young Quentin Deranque in France is a fact that shocks and grieves deeply. The death of a young man in his early twenties, attacked by groups that can be traced back to left-wing extremism and overwhelmed by a climate of ideological hatred that crosses several nations, is a wound for the whole of Europe. No political idea, no ideological opposition can justify violence or turn confrontation into physical aggression. When hatred and violence take the place of dialogue, it is always democracy that loses'.
Macron: 'The parties must clean up their act internally'
No direct polemic, but in France and especially in Lyon, long the scene of frequent clashes between right and left - perhaps even minutes before Deranque's killing - the risk is that of a resurgence of political violence. The effort by Macron therefore has a more articulated meaning than simply condemning left-wing extremism, which was not lacking even in the days before the assault. The sentence on Meloni was not by chance preceded by a broader reflection on political violence: 'No group that resorts to violence,' the president had just said, 'has legitimacy in the Republic and I say this with great force. Yes, extreme parties must clean up their act, in this case the extreme left, but also the other extreme parties, even the right, which sometimes has militants in its ranks who justify violent action'.
"Among the elected members of the extreme parties who sit in the National Assembly, there are many respectable people," Macron also said: "There are ideas that I fight, in which I do not believe, but they have voters..." "Nothing could justify violent action," he added, "either on one side or the other, and not even in a direct confrontation that is deadly for the Republic. Those who make calls to defend themselves, "do not simply commit a political error, they commit a moral error," he explained: "They create the conditions for what happens. Everyone, everywhere, must clean up their act. In a republic, there is no place for movements that adopt violence, that legitimise it, because democracy is based on respect and peace'.
