Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin delivered an extraordinary intellectual intervention warning that France risks sanctuarizing the far-right through false equivalence between political violence, drawing stark parallels to the final days of the Weimar Republic.
In a lengthy statement posted to social media and widely circulated across French political circles, the Gaullist statesman argued that France approaches a "point of no return" where "by fatigue, by calculation, by blindness, we risk waking up one day to discover we have sanctuarized the danger we claimed to prevent."
The intervention comes amid escalating tensions following the death of Quentin Deranque, a far-right militant killed in political violence attributed to antifascist activists. The incident has triggered calls from across the political spectrum to condemn violence "without exception"—a position Villepin accepts in principle but challenges in its practical application.
"We must denounce all violence, without exception," Villepin wrote. "But there is a certain comfort in rejecting all violence equally, a conviction of protecting oneself from any risk of being wrong. But does this really bring us closer to the truth?"
In France, as throughout the Republic, politics remains inseparable from philosophy, culture, and the eternal question of what France represents. Villepin's analysis applies French political philosophy to the contemporary crisis, distinguishing between the asymmetric nature of political violence from left and right.
"When the left is violent, it frightens and harms the politics it seeks to implement," Villepin argued. "When the right is violent, it already begins to implement its politics. And even when it loses, it wins by showing the horror of disorder and thus the necessity of order at any price, order at the price of violence."
The former prime minister invoked Weimar Germany explicitly, noting that without the intransigence of the German Communist Party—blinded by its "class against class" strategy that minimized the fascist threat—the Nazi Party might not have achieved power. "It was the fear of Bolshevism that pushed enough moderates to rally, by reflex, to those who presented themselves as the only rampart," he wrote.
Villepin reserved particular criticism for what he termed the "numerical illusion" of symmetric violence. Citing historian Nicolas Lebourg, he noted that since 1986, 59 deaths are attributed to the ultra-right, compared to six from the ultra-left. In the past five years alone, far-right militants have killed eleven victims, primarily targeted on religious and racial grounds, compared to one victim from far-left violence.
"Far-right violent groups are today much more numerous across the territory and they increase in number each day," he warned. "It is the return of the leagues"—a reference to the paramilitary organizations that threatened the Third Republic in the 1930s.
The intervention places Villepin in direct confrontation with centrist and center-left politicians who have seized on the Deranque incident to distance themselves from Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise (LFI). Villepin criticized both LFI's "belligerent posture" and its critics' opportunism.
"To hear in France center-left leaders seize the opportunity to settle scores and rid themselves of troublesome adversaries to improve their polling positions seems to me a political weakness," he wrote. "As for the right that sees this as an occasion for superficial appeasement to allow alliance with the far-right without nightmares, I no longer recognize anything in it of Jacques Chirac's vigilance."
The philosophical heart of Villepin's argument concerns democratic theory itself. He noted that while no radical left-wing regime elected in Europe has failed to return power through elections, numerous far-right regimes have achieved power through electoral means without relinquishing it—citing Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Romania.
"Far-right is not a choice like any other in a democracy, because often there is no going back," he warned.
Villepin acknowledged the risks of his intervention: "I am conscious of the risks I take in expressing myself in a period of such great polarization. People will cry out because I compare today's far-right with yesterday's. I do not say it is the same. I say there are filiations that do not permit us to distinguish them radically."
The statement addressed LFI directly, calling on the party to "clarify its positions, hold its ranks, break with all ambiguity, and make the debate prevail over permanent tension." Yet Villepin reserved his sharpest critique for those exploiting the moment to normalize the Rassemblement National.
"This crossfire on LFI, by calculation, by repositioning, by opportunism, has a mechanical effect," he wrote. "It diverts attention from the principal danger and contributes to normalizing the far-right by dispensing it from being interrogated as it should be."
Following a recent far-right demonstration honoring Deranque in Paris, manifestants left swastikas on walls—a detail Villepin noted in rejecting claims of far-right normalization. "What party accumulates condemnations of its members for antisemitism and racism? The Rassemblement National, recurrently," he observed.
The statement invoked a specific historical comparison that has reverberated through French intellectual circles: the 1933 Reichstag fire. "Must we really forget that in 1933, the Nazi Party used the pretext of the Reichstag fire attributed to van der Lubbe to ban the Communist Party and numerous opposition organizations, engaging Germany's alignment?"
This parallel drew immediate attention given Jordan Bardella's recent call for a "common front" against LFI—language Villepin characterized as "inversion of stigma" designed to "legitimize an identitarian seizure of power and justify increasingly numerous rallyings."
The intervention concluded with characteristic Gaullist elevation: "The Republic will not save itself through postures, through anathemas, through the intoxication of camps. It will save itself through clarity of words, firmness of law, responsibility of parties, and the refusal to sanctuarize the far-right under pretext of combating its adversaries."
Villepin's statement represents a significant intellectual contribution from a figure who served as prime minister under Jacques Chirac and remains influential in French conservative circles. His willingness to invoke Weimar parallels and critique the center's complicity in far-right normalization marks a rare departure from conventional political discourse.
With the Rassemblement National polling at 35-40% ahead of the 2027 presidential election—a detail "everyone tries to forget to maintain the fiction of normal political life," as Villepin noted—the warning about approaching a "point of no return" resonates with historical consciousness that remains central to French political culture.
The statement drew mixed reactions across the political spectrum. Some praised Villepin's intellectual courage in making uncomfortable historical comparisons; others accused him of overstating the threat or enabling LFI's confrontational politics. But the intervention succeeded in reframing debate from simple condemnation of violence to deeper questions about asymmetric threats to democracy itself.
As France navigates rising political polarization and the prospect of a far-right presidency within eighteen months, Villepin's philosophical intervention offers a framework grounded in Republican values and historical memory—tools French political culture has traditionally wielded when democratic norms face existential challenge.
