A French far-right militant was pronounced dead on Saturday morning at a hospital in Lyon, succumbing to injuries inflicted during a street battle last Thursday with anti-fascist activists. Twenty-three-year-old Quentin Deranque was part of a contingent of local neofascist militants that gathered to oppose a talk by a prominent left-wing MP at a university campus in France’s third-largest city. Their counterprotest quickly escalated into clashes with left-wingers, in the latest episode of political violence in a city that has long been a hotbed for ultraright gangs.

This time, however, the confrontation proved fatal. In the days since, Deranque’s death has rapidly morphed into a national scandal revealing the French far right’s growing cultural and political clout.

The chain of events last Thursday was set in motion by the scheduled appearance at Lyon’s Sciences Po campus of Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian MP of the left-wing party La France Insoumise. That afternoon, activists of the so-called Collectif Némésis, a group that purports to fuse feminist and nationalist politics, assembled outside the school venue to picket the left-winger. Hassan is a frequent target for the French right given her unequivocal defense of Palestinian political rights and her condemnation of the French state’s backing for Israel. Némésis spokespersons now claim they had requested protection from male members of Lyon’s ultraright scene, in anticipation of a standoff with attendees of the conference.