{"id":492555,"date":"2026-02-22T19:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T19:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/492555\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T19:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T19:05:07","slug":"france-to-summon-us-ambassador-over-comments-on-far-right-activists-death-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/492555\/","title":{"rendered":"France to summon US ambassador over comments on far-right activist\u2019s death | France"},"content":{"rendered":"

The French foreign minister, Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot, has said he will summon Charles Kushner, the US ambassador to France, over comments related to the killing of the French far-right activist Quentin Deranque.<\/a><\/p>\n

Deranque was beaten to death in Lyon last week during a fight with allegedly hard-left activists.<\/p>\n

The US embassy in France<\/a> and the US state department\u2019s bureau of counter-terrorism said they were monitoring the case, writing on X that \u201cviolent radical leftism is on the rise\u201d and should be treated as a public safety threat.<\/p>\n

Deranque\u2019s death has put France on edge, stoking tensions between left and right ahead of the 2027 presidential vote.<\/p>\n

It has also drawn international attention. Donald Trump\u2019s administration denounced what it called \u201cterrorism\u201d in France on Friday, prompting pushback from Paris.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe reject any use of this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, for political ends,\u201d Barrot told Le Monde, France Inter and France Info. \u201cWe have no lessons to learn, particularly on the issue of violence, from the international reactionary movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foreign ministry did not announce when the ambassador, the father of Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner<\/a>, would be summoned.<\/p>\n

Deranque, 23, died of head injuries after clashes on the sidelines of a 12 February demonstration against a politician from the leftwing France Unbowed party in Lyon.<\/p>\n

His death has been called \u201cFrance\u2019s Charlie Kirk moment<\/a>\u201d, referring to the killing last year of the US far-right commentator.<\/p>\n

More than 3,000 people marched in Lyon on Saturday in tribute to Deranque, with authorities deploying heavy security for fear of further clashes.<\/p>\n

The US state department\u2019s under secretary for public diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, said on Friday that Deranque\u2019s killing showed \u201cwhy we treat political violence \u2013 terrorism \u2013 so harshly\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you decide to kill people for their opinions instead of persuade them, you\u2019ve opted out of civilisation,\u201d she wrote on X.<\/p>\n

The state department\u2019s bureau of counter-terrorism separately posted: \u201cViolent radical leftism is on the rise and its role in Quentin Deranque\u2019s death demonstrates the threat it poses to public safety\u201d \u2013 a post shared in French by the US embassy account.<\/p>\n

Deranque\u2019s killing has also caused a diplomatic feud between France and Italy, whose rightwing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni<\/a>, has warm ties with Trump.<\/p>\n

She called the death \u201ca wound for all of Europe\u201d, prompting the French president, Emmanuel Macron<\/a>, to criticise her for speaking about French domestic affairs.<\/p>\n

Macron called for calm on Saturday during the Lyon march.<\/p>\n

Six men suspected of involvement in Deranque\u2019s death have been charged over the killing, and a parliamentary assistant to a radical leftwing MP has been charged with complicity.<\/p>\n

Barrot said he had other topics to discuss with Kushner during the summons, including US decisions to impose sanctions on Thierry Breton<\/a>, a former EU commissioner responsible for supervising social media rules, and Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the international criminal court.<\/p>\n

He said they had been targeted by \u201cunjustified and unjustifiable\u201d measures, that he described as attacks on EU autonomy and the independence of the international justice system.<\/p>\n

Kushner was also summoned in August last year<\/a> over a letter to Macron alleging the French state did not do enough to combat antisemitism. Foreign ministry officials met one of his representatives because he did not attend the summons personally.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s Tribune de Dimanche newspaper reported that Macron had written to Trump asking him to lift the sanctions against Breton and Guillou.<\/p>\n

Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The French foreign minister, Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot, has said he will summon Charles Kushner, the US ambassador to France,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-492555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}