The knife attack on a village ball in Crépol in the south of France which took the life of 16-year-old Thomas Perrotto and left two other partygoers in critical condition last weekend has been described as a “terror attack” (attentat) by attendees. The incident has been commonly described as a “brawl” (rixe) in French mainstream media, with the implication that it was sparked by some prior dispute. But attendees and their families adamantly reject this description, insisting on the fact that the assailants – teenagers and young adults like their victims – came armed and presumably with the intention of using their weapons.
The French regional newspaper the Dauphiné Libéré visited Crépol the day after the attack to talk with some 20 youngsters, aged 16 to 18, who witnessed the attack. Some of them were accompanied by their mothers. “Some media are saying that it was a brawl or payback,” one mother told the newspaper. “That’s not true! We can’t let them say that!”
The Dauphiné article provides the account of one young partygoer who was himself wounded in the attack:
We were having fun, we were with friends, having a good time together, and towards the end [of the ball], some people turned up. I heard there was a ruckus outside, people were crowded together. I went out and I was stabbed with a knife in the shoulder and in the back. I saw my friend Thomas get stabbed, I got scared and went back into the ballroom. I saw another friend of mine get stabbed in the back, I put pressure on his wound to make a tourniquet. His kidney was hit. It was horrifying. For me, it was clearly a terror attack [attentat]. The assailants said: “We’re here to stab white people.”
A second young man confirmed this account:
It wasn’t just a fight like we’re used to, where people throw little punches at each other. We all went to village balls this summer. In a good ball, there’s always a fight at the end. Otherwise, it’s not a good ball. But it wasn’t like that. We saw between 15 and 20 people turn up. We didn’t know them. They pulled out knives. They were there to kill. We experienced it as a terror attack!
The local affiliate of France3 public television gathered similar testimony in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Maxence, a friend of Thomas, described the violence as gratuitous:
A bouncer had his fingers and wrist slashed. One of my classmates was stabbed with a knife. My best friend [Thomas] being given CPR. It’s the worst feeling in the world.
A mother described her children’s reaction:
Their first words were: there’s blood everywhere. It was all over his clothes. It was a slaughter. It was a gratuitous attack… we don’t understand.
The racial or ethnic aspect evoked in some of this testimony has been treated gingerly or not at all in the French national media. (Though an interview with Thomas’s mother in the mass-circulation French weekly Paris-Match cites concordant testimony.) The assailants are reported to have mostly come from the housing projects of la Monnaie, a troubled neighbourhood in nearby Romans-sur-Isère with a large population of North African Arab origins.
This is undoubtedly what inspired the local Islamic Association of Romans to issue a statement to the Dauphiné libéré condemning the attack. It reads in part:
We are father, mother, brother, sister, we are residents of Romans, residents of the surrounding villages and it is for all these reasons that we are deeply affected by the attack which led to the death of Thomas and has given rise to so much sorrow for his family and his friends. … As representatives of the Muslim religious community, but also as actors involved in the life of our city, we strongly condemn these despicable acts which led to the death of a young man who was barely 16.
In the meanwhile, the Dauphiné libéré has released extensive audio of its encounter with the young people who lived through that Crépol attack. The youngsters’ testimony is harrowing. Many of them, especially the young women, are sobbing as they recount the experience.
Echoing the first, the second young man quoted above explicitly states, “I clearly heard the phrase, word for word: ‘We’re here to kill white people.'”
All of the youngsters emphasise that there was no dispute, no background to the attack, no ‘payback’: that they did not even know the assailants. Again and again, they use the word attentat – the French term for a terror attack – to describe what transpired. They describe taking refuge inside the ballroom while the ‘slaughter’, as they put it, continued outside; they describe the guards or bouncers who had been hired for the evening insisting that they stay inside, even as some wanted to go back out to help their fallen comrades; they describe seeing the floors and walls covered in the blood of those who had already been wounded.
Asked how the ‘slaughter’ finally came to an end, one young man responds simply: “They finished what they came to do.”
Translations from the French by the author.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X.
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“The long overdue correction of Western democracies is now in train. The slow and painful process of restoring trust in public institutions might just have begun.”
Not true of the U.K.
The only slight cause for optimism is the impending destruction of the Tory party and their potential replacement with a actually conservative political force- but this is by no means certain.
Absolutely first class commentary on the state of the Western world today. In this country if Kneel does achieve the anticipated landslide our real battles will come over the next five years and if that is the case these five years will be shit or bust.
“The old Left-Right divide has become obsolete. Instead, the new divide is between the international technocratic elite in alliance with national elites against the interests, values and policy preferences of national populations.”
Or, in hux speak the Davos Deviants and their regional managers who make up the political executive along with the First Division Association. On top of this conglomerate of useless grifters are the largely corrupt judiciary, the management army of the NHS and our police forces.
It can only be a matter of time before the real battles begin. Sadly, I believe that blood will be spilled.
In 2017, Labour under their, supposedly, unelectable leader, Jeremy Corbyn won 40% of the vote. Under Starmer they’re about to win a landslide with 36%-38%.
Something’s wrong in the deepstate.
There’s something wrong with the notion that a ‘voter’ is someone whose only political right is to select his preferred party and that parties ought to be represented in partylament in proportion to their share of the popular vote. That’s not how the British system works and hence, such percentages are meaningless. In the UK, voters elect MPs for their contituencies. They don’t vote for parties.
So who elects the government?
As a British politician once famously put it: The purpose of the NATO is to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down. I, for one, would welcome an end to this charade. The ‘public institutions’ which claimed to protect democracy and human rights by abolishment of human society and vaccine and mask mandates are thoroughly bankrupt and this includes the political system which begat them.
At the height of the Corona madness, at least one democratic (ie, from the US party) politician went on record with stating that ‘human rights’ never meant to include the right to breathe freely and to talk to and otherwise socialise with other humans as one see fit as humans, who are notoriously nothing but carriers of highly dangerous pathogens, simply couldn’t be allowed to do that for their own safety and such is the nature of these people, may they meanwhile all again have eaten a lot of chalk to soften their hideously croaking voices.
The ‘western’ mock-democracy willingly killed itself when the WHO demanded that in 2020.
Great article. I would however challenge the claim of “Islamophobia” – what does this even mean? It is an often used slur against anyone raising reasonable criticism of the encroaching march of theocracy and/or the denial of terrible crimes committed in the majority by members of one particular religion due to “cultural sensitivity”. For example the still ongoing “grooming gangs” situation throughout the country, although that should be called what it is – paedophile rape and slavery gangs.
https://x.com/TheCriticMag/status/1747540137129423263?s=19
The link leads to an article in the Critic (from January this year) which basically seeks to exploit the situation as feminist propaganda for the “war on women” story. That’s exceedingly poor taste as the Rotherham authorities who remained intentionally blind to this certainly included both men and women and the elephant in the room is not that the abusers weren’t investigate by men because they were also men but weren’t investigated by all kinds of officials because they were muslims of Pakistani origin and it was desired to avoid possible accusations of racism.
Poor taste is actually way too mildly put. This is not a (All) men seek to rape female children!! story. It’s one about muslim gangs getting a free pass from communal authorities.
The people we should be worrying about are the traitorous izlamoPHILES: queer starmer, ed davey, greens, and red tories who indignantly huff & puff if anyone dares to point out that izlam has 50+ countries it captured and we needn’t think our country exempt from that fearful outcome.
liblabcon treachery against the rightful people of this country knows no bounds and manifests itself in its most dangerous form as a 75-year-long mass importation of an alien death cult that anyone with a smattering of history knows has world domination as its aim either by conquering countries with swords or conquering them by outbreeding the natives.
smarmer has recently been poncing in and out of various muzlim ghettoes reassuring them that he as PM will protect their rights. He doesn’t give a flying f*** about the rights of British people to their own homeland untainted by the 7thC AD savagery of izlam.
He also promised them that he will ensure that they feel ‘safe, secure, protected’. Bugger the Brits, then, they will just have to put up with jihadis, terrorism, proliferation of mosques and the loud wailing therefrom, tales of blatant misogyny in sharia courts, honour killings, muzlims telling off Brits for eating when it’s their ramadamadingdong, plus the numerous other delights that disgust us such as the cruel halal killing of animals in defiance of our animal welfare laws.
Never forgetting the mass gang-rapes of hundreds of thousands of young British girls by paedophile muzlims, which smarmer as DPP 2008-2013 certainly knew about, but did NOTHING about. Unforgivable and Unforgiven.
Anyone who hasn’t a phobia concerning izlam is an ignorant fool. The ignorant fools are about to form another government.
Nick Robinson has always been, is now, and will always be a first class tosser with a leaky brain.
‘Sunday roast with all the trimmings’ is a very stupid way to characterise a person and invites the obvious riposte of characterising Robinson as food.
Imagine a cheap ready meal well past its sell-by date left to fester in a faulty fridge until the plastic film begins to bloat and swell. One prick off a fork and there is a puff of noxious air that turns the stomach. Anyone unwise enough to unwrap it to have a peek instead of hoying it straight in the bin will turn green and perform some projectile-vomiting.
Yes, Farage as food is very wholesome compared to a sickening BBC leftard hack.