This is the chronicle of a town and a neighborhood separated by 20 kilometers. And for much more. It is the story of a murder and the reaction it has unleashed. And how the death of a teenager at a rural party reveals deep fears in a society and fuels divisions.
The town is Crépol, 500 inhabitants, a church, a cafe, a supermarket and an old nightclub. The neighborhood is called La Monnaie and belongs to the small city of Romans-sur-Isère, 30,000 inhabitants.
Crépol, a living image of deep France, is inhabited mainly by white French people of European and Christian origin. The typical place where nothing ever happens. Children or grandchildren of Muslim immigrants live in La Monnaie, a banlieue or suburbs with its usual blocks of buildings from the seventies and endemic problems of violence and marginalization.
In Crépol, many are convinced that the murder, early on November 19, of a 16-year-old teenager during a popular dance was the result of what some call a “punitive expedition.” According to testimonies cited in the press in the following days, the attackers said they were going after a white Frenchman.
“When you go to a party with knives, you don’t take them to the restaurant,” observes a neighbor from Crépol. The woman refuses to give her name, like others interviewed this week in Crépol and La Monnaie.
In the La Monnaie neighborhood, in Romans-sur-Isère, where some of the young people who participated in the attack came from, they see it differently. They believe that what happened that fateful night in the old Crépol nightclub was an incident out of control. Other testimonies have told it: someone from the town touched the long hair of a stranger, calling her “little girl,” the title of a popular song by rapper Jul. And she got into trouble. “A fight that ended badly,” says a resident of La Monnaie. Nothing else.
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For now, there are more unknowns than certainties. Justice must clarify what happened that morning. There are nine accused.
But the death of Thomas Perotto—captain of the rugby team and a boy “happy and appreciated by everyone,” according to a message in Crépol’s condolence book—has unleashed demons in France. As if in the few kilometers that separate Crépol from La Monnaie, between green valleys and hills, a conflict between French people was brewing.
On November 25, dozens of hooded far-rightists armed with baseball bats and iron bars, some of them from other parts of France, gathered in the La Monnaie neighborhood. It was one of the largest demonstrations of force by the violent ultras in decades. The police stopped things from escalating. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has called for the outlawing of three organizations involved.
The controversy had already ignited in political and media Paris. While a part of the left treated Thomas’ murder as just another event, a part of the right and the extreme right considered that Crépol came to confirm his predictions.
Serious words have been spoken these days. There is talk of a France where “armed militias” from the banlieues “They organize raids,” according to Marine Le Pen, leader of the first opposition party, the National Rally. Where, in the words of the ultra talk show and failed candidate for the Elysée in 2022, Éric Zemmour, a “francocidal”. Translated: a genocide of French people. Marion Maréchal, Le Pen’s niece and Zemmour ally, sees in Crépol “the prolegomena of the civil war.”
The left and the Government accuse this right of adding fuel to a fire that feeds radical groups like those that acted in La Monnaie a week ago. This right, in turn, accuses the Government, the left and what they call the media bubble of closing their eyes or sweeping under the carpet violence that threatens the unity of the country.
It rains this autumn Thursday in Crépol. The streets, empty. You have to turn away from the road that crosses the town and take a path next to the river to reach the festival hall. The doors and windows are still sealed with gendarmerie tape. At the main entrance, there are bouquets of flowers and candles. And an oil painting where, on a green background of mountains, several messages are written in red, the color of blood. “Live”. “Never lower your head.” “Resist against the rabble.” “Granddaughters of the Vercors Resistance.” The Vercors is the mountain massif, near Crépol, that during the Second World War was one of the strongholds of the Resistance against the Nazis.
At the entrance to the Town Hall, the book of condolences allows us to glimpse the trauma of this place that is still in mourning and silent. “A stolen life, a broken family and entire towns that support you,” someone has written. And another: “Wow!”
In the Café de las Colinas they talk about Thomas. From the reactions in Paris.
—A lot of nonsense is being said.
This is Thierry Michalet, a retired hairdresser who has stopped for a coffee and a sparkling water. He is 62 years old, has a goatee and an earring. And he clarifies:
—It was said that it had been a confrontation between gangs. No. They came to attack. It was premeditated. They brought knives.
Michalet remembers with nostalgia the summers of his childhood near Castellón. He explains that one of his sons, who lives in Strasbourg, has told him that now, when he says that he is from Crépol, everyone knows him.
—This is a small town without stories in which the peace has been broken.
“The night of November 18 to 19 marks the importation of unleashed violence from abroad in towns where such barbarity seemed inconceivable,” he wrote in The Figaro, Victor Delage, founder of Terram, a laboratory of ideas dedicated to the study of territories. “No one feels safe because these events no longer occur only in so-called sensitive territories.” Read the cities and their banlieues.
Le Mondein an editorial, has denounced “the indecent instrumentalization of anger” for the murder of Thomas Perotto. “Social networks and far-right media,” the newspaper denounces, “have orchestrated a campaign directly calling for revenge and hatred, hammering with messages that linked Thomas’ death to immigration and a confrontation between the France of the bell towers and that of the suburban neighborhoods.”
Thursday, 3:30 p.m. Calm in La Monnaie, the neighborhood where at least some of those accused of the Crépol crime came from. The banlieue where a few days later the ultras came looking for more fighting.
There are six police vans in a parking lot. Agents come out, some in plainclothes. They enter, with trained dogs, several buildings. “They are looking for weapons,” comments a local journalist who attended the scene. On the street, groups of men watch and murmur. “The mothers are afraid,” says one who, like the rest, refuses to have his name mentioned. “The far right plays a dangerous game,” he says.
A young man approaches the journalist. He is 22 years old and says he knows some of the detainees: “In this country there are French-French and French-Arabs but, for the former, the latter are not French. And there is a background of rivalry between the two. And sometimes the spark jumps.”
There are events that end up being more events. Because they bring out the worst nightmares. Because they are the perfect fuel for extremists. In the end, one boy is left dead. A town and a banlieue bewildered. And a country once again before the mirror of its fears and obsessions.
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