The media and French politics reacted very modestly to the news that a small town in the south of France was barbarically raided by a horde of 500 men of North African background and the whites were stabbed to death.
French government spokesman Olivier Véran visited Crépoli, the site of the November 18 mass stabbing, on Monday.
"Thomas is another victim of the barbarism that prevailed in France"
- pointed out the president of the second largest parliamentary party, the National Compact, Jordan Bardella, who in a Facebook video appealed to the relatives of the fatal victim and 17 wounded in the mass stabbing attack. Meanwhile, a demonstrator who participated in the protest against the Crépoli attack was lynched.
"There is a danger that the balance will be shaken, that our society will fall apart"
- declared government spokesman Olivier Véran, who visited the city of Crépol, south of Lyon, to personally express his condolences to the relatives of the victims.
It's not just news
The media and most of the French political sphere were remarkably restrained, considering the gravity of what happened, they hardly reacted to the stabbing of a 16-year-old boy named Thomas and another person participating in a ball in a small town in the southern part of the country. On November 18, a - based on the video recordings of the incident - of North African background
a gang of young men ransacked the Crépol village hall of 500 people, where the locals were holding a ball.
The attackers, who screamed: "We're here to stab the whites!", without any reason or precedent, stabbed those present en masse, seriously injured 17 local residents, and stabbed Thomas to death. The boy came to the ball from a nearby settlement.
The murder of Thomas is not just news about a fight: there is a danger of the disintegration of our society, said Olivier Véran, who visited the scene on Monday. The government spokesman is the only high-ranking official to visit the site since the incident. The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron expressed his regret for what happened at an event where he met with mayors, the Liberal Prime Minister Élisabeth
And Borne called for restraint, strongly condemning the participants of the demonstration against the mass stabbing held in Thomas's case.
After nine days
Olivier Véran traveled to the scene nine days after the death of the 16-year-old teenager from Drôme. The purpose of the government spokesman's visit was to
express the nation's support and solidarity with the victims, the local residents and the elected representatives of the village.
The spokesman, who in his brief statement to journalists believed that the country was on the edge of the abyss, also stated that things must be said boldly.
Feel free to say it
"48 hours after the arrest of nine suspects in the case, there is still no information about the suspects. Has their first name become a state secret?”
- raises the question of the conservative newspaper BVoltaire. There is a complete news blackout in the matter: according to the newspaper and other authorities
it is likely that the first name of the suspects (in addition to the usual last name abbreviated with a period) is not made public because it would reveal their North African origin.
While the French reader wants to hear names, the eighty people who gathered on Sunday in the town of Romans-sur-Isère, near Crépol, wanted more. They wanted to express their protest about what happened.
They visited the perpetrators
According to the police information published in the press, the knife-wielders are from this settlement, and they left here in their cars to attack the unsuspecting partygoers.
The participants of the demonstration were reported by all French media as a group of far-right demonstrators.
French news channel LCI spoke to outraged local residents who condemned the protesters for disrupting their usual quiet Sunday.
The LCI mentions a protester who was taken out of his car by unnamed perpetrators and assaulted.
The perpetrators came forward
Even more outspoken is Le Parisien, which also refers to the event's participants exclusively as far-right. The paper quotes Drôme's prefect of police, Thierry Devimeux, who says that one of the participants in the demonstration was attacked in the evening.
they forcibly dragged him out of his car and abused him so badly that he had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. The protester's car was set on fire by the attackers.
Known: Lyon and the areas south of the city are already among the regions densely populated by North Africans.
Their crime was that they were young French in France
"In a village of five hundred people, made up of hard-working people, the people living there were having a ball when a gang attacked them. They came with the intention to kill, and this cost the life of 16-year-old Thomas," Jordan Bardella summarized what happened in his video message addressed to French youth, published on Facebook.
"The loss for Thomas and his friends was that they were young Frenchmen in France. It saddens us and shakes us up," he continued. "It's the same barbarism every time.
It's always the same faces, the same indignation, because the same plot is repeated - and then?
Then what happens? Nothing!" he answered his own question.
Change pavement, clothes
Bardella addressed the young French, who all suffer from the lack of security in our country. According to him, Thomas is the latest victim of the barbarism that prevailed in France.
"Young French! Who judges you for being members of a generation
who are murdered because you don't give someone a cigarette,
or because of a bad look or simply because you are in the wrong place at the wrong time? Who judges you for pushing a barbarian who has come to ruin your celebrations, to kick away your match balls in football or rugby?” (the murdered 16-year-old Thomas was an enthusiastic player of the local rugby team - ed.) - this is how he addressed the young people.
"Who judges you for daring to enter certain streets at certain hours? And who nags you to change sidewalks because you can't walk on that side? Who dictates to you what kind of clothes you can wear?" - asked Bardella, who, among other things, called on the young people to:
"Reject this daily terror that limits your freedom through intimidation and violence!"
The president of the party, which has been placed under strict quarantine in French political life and mass media, indicated: "It is indeed possible to punish criminals and deport foreign criminals."
Featured image: MTI/EPA/Yoan Valat
