Violence as political ...gift by Nadine Moreau

The brutal beating and subsequent death of a far-right student activist after an anti-immigration protest is more than a tragedy. It is also a political turning point and perhaps the worst possible development for a Europe already struggling to hold together its fragile democratic center.

Violence does not occur in a vacuum. It lands inside narratives that are already waiting for it. And right now Europe is full of competing narratives about identity, immigration, security and cultural survival. What happened last week handed one side of that argument exactly what it needed, a martyr.

For years, far-right movements across Europe have argued that they are victims of a hostile establishment, silenced by institutions, mocked by media and physically threatened by ideological opponents. Whether exaggerated or not that perception fuels recruitment. Images of confrontation, censorship or violence validate their claims far more effectively than any speech ever could.

A masked mob beating a young activist to death instantly transforms political rhetoric into emotional reality. The debate stops being about policies and becomes about fear, revenge and moral outrage. Sympathy shifts. Moderates hesitate. And suddenly the far right no longer appears as a disruptive force but as a persecuted one.

This is precisely why political violence from anti-fascist or extremist activist circles is so strategically disastrous. It replaces argument with spectacle. Instead of dismantling radical ideas, it amplifies them. Instead of isolating extremist movements, it legitimizes their warnings about societal breakdown.

Europe is currently navigating economic anxiety, migration pressures and a deep crisis of trust in institutions. Many citizens already feel ignored by political elites. In such an atmosphere, every act of ideological violence reinforces the belief that democratic debate has collapsed. When politics looks like street warfare, voters do not move toward nuance; they move toward order.

And order, historically, is the promise populist movements know how to sell best. The consequences extend beyond one country. Europe’s political ecosystem is interconnected. A single incident echoes across borders, feeding campaigns, speeches and online movements that thrive on grievance. Images circulate faster than facts, emotions faster than reflection. Within hours, an assault becomes proof of cultural decay, ideological intolerance or national decline, depending on who tells the story.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is how predictable it was. Escalating polarization inevitably produces actors willing to cross moral lines in the name of justice. Yet violence rarely weakens the ideology it targets. More often, it strengthens it by granting moral clarity to movements that previously struggled to gain mainstream sympathy.

Democracy survives not because citizens agree, but because they accept limits on how disagreement is expressed. Once those limits collapse, politics becomes tribal survival rather than collective problem-solving.

Those who celebrated confrontation believing it would halt the rise of hard-right politics may soon discover the opposite. Nothing energizes political movements like perceived victimhood combined with visible suffering. A dead activist becomes a symbol far more powerful than a living provocateur.

Europe does not need new heroes of outrage or martyrs of ideology. It needs political maturity, the difficult commitment to defeat ideas through persuasion rather than punishment.

The tragedy is not only that a young man died. The deeper tragedy is that his death may push Europe further into the very polarization that produced the violence in the first place. And once politics becomes fueled by vengeance instead of debate, everyone loses, even those who believe they have won.