It was only after a minute's silence at the Assemblée Nationale on Tuesday, November 28, that the majority made its voice heard. After the tribute paid by parliamentarians to Thomas, the 16-year-old teenager stabbed to death on November 19 during a village dance in Crépol, southeastern France, Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti angrily denounced the "indecent demagoguery" of the far right. In response to a question from Michèle Martinez, far-right Rassemblement National (RN) MP, who used the young boy's death to condemn "barbarism," "savagery" and the fact that "lives," she said, were on "probation," the former lawyer sounded his wrath: "You actually prefer to pit rural, quiet, Catholic and white France against the France of the housing estates, the France of Mohammed, Mouloud and Rachid!" he thundered.

"Our Jewish brothers are afraid and so are our Muslim brothers. Your comments are incendiary and they're bringing ultra-right-wing militants onto the streets, who are much closer to you than they are to me," he concluded, addressing the RN MP as if he were speaking to her entire political family. The RN MPs then stormed out of the Assemblée behind their group president, Marine Le Pen, who yelled "insult" and "outrage," and promised to lodge a complaint against Dupond-Moretti.

The Elysée Palace might have said nothing but its silence marked approval. The justice minister, who is awaiting the verdict in his trial for "illegal conflicts of interest," scheduled for Wednesday, was finally taking a stand against those who, in the eyes of the president's office, "feed off the country's lack of unity."

According to the French president's entourage, Emmanuel Macron has been enraged for the last number of days that the far right's version of this "terrible assassination," in his words, is taking hold without further reaction from his majority. "A 'derealization' of the real is taking hold," sighed a person close to the president, who criticized the "insane fable" propagated by the far right about the imminence of a "civil war."

For the past 10 days, the murder of the teenager has provided a platform for the RN, eager to validate the far right's belief of a head-on collision between two opposing French worlds. According to them, one, peaceful and patriotic, is seeing its tranquility polluted by another, hateful and immigrant. "What happened a few days ago is a tragedy that expresses the daily terror experienced by millions of parents," said the party's president, Jordan Bardella, on France 2 television on November 27, referring to the murder of Thomas by "youths from housing estates" who had come to "stab white people." "In our country, there is a growing hatred among a section of young people, many of them immigrants," continued the far-right leader, speaking of "people who are undeniably from here, in France, but whose soul is elsewhere."

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