The murder in France of a teaching assistant is a tragedy that defies stereotypes

LeMonde

2 days ago

The legitimate public emotion stirred up by tragic events – and the political use that can be made of them – often pushes those in power and the opposition to rush to express compassion for the victims, interpret the events and, on the spot, promise measures intended to prevent them from reoccurring. Just hours after the murder on Tuesday, June 10, in the eastern French town of Nogent, of Mélanie G., a 31-year-old teaching assistant at the Françoise-Dolto middle school, killed by one of the school's 14-year-old pupils, President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister François Bayrou raced to denounce a "senseless wave of violence," as Macron put it, and a "rising wave," according to Bayrou, offering unconvincing remedies such as banning the sale of knives to minors and experimenting with metal detector gates.
The reality is clear: Once an extremely rare occurrence, knife attacks against school staff and teenagers have become increasingly common in recent years, both in France and abroad, as have violent acts committed by minors – even though overall juvenile delinquency has declined. Yet the unfortunate lack of long-term statistics on the use of bladed weapons makes it difficult to analyze these tragedies objectively. This is all the more challenging as, after each tragedy, the right and far right tend to dominate the debate by pushing their favored issues: immigration, "lost neighborhoods," "lawlessness," a "culture of excuses" and so on.
Yet the Nogent murder defies all these stereotypes. Was it in a troubled suburb? No, a rural middle school. A security lapse? No, the incident occurred in full view of the gendarmes. Immigration? Not relevant. Negligent parents? No, the prosecutor stated that the suspect's family was "united and professionally integrated."
This has not stopped far-right leader Marine Le Pen from subtly and scandalously brandishing the issue of immigration by accusing "barbarians." Yet the staunchly right-wing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has carefully avoided playing the same card, and acknowledged that "the response cannot solely be security-based."
The murder in Nogent is ill-suited to the usual attempts at security- or identity-based instrumentalization, and it should, rather, inspire a political and civic mobilization around much broader and more inclusive themes: the overall place and integration of young people in society, their mental health, as well as the role of video games and digital platforms in fostering a fascination with violence, disconnecting people from reality and eroding the sense of the value of human life.
On this issue, a warning from a commission of experts, in its April 2024 report to the president, should not be ignored. It recommended setting the age of "digital majority" at 15 – in other words, banning access to social media platforms before that age.
Rather than promising supposedly immediate, but fundamentally unrealistic, "solutions" to tragedies that are, in truth, very difficult to prevent, and rather than feeding the idea that elected officials are powerless, the answers lie in a broad policy of prevention and education for everyone, parents and teenagers alike, addressing the risks of dehumanization, isolation and violent behavior that are exacerbated by our increasingly digital, individualized and virtual world.