A prominent right-wing media figure was attacked by antifa militants in the Brittany region of France this week, the latest incident in a trend of leftist violence in the country.
Erik Tegner, a journalist and founder of the conservative publication Frontières, was confronted after leaving a bar with friends on Wednesday night. Several videos of the encounter have emerged on social media, including some posted by “antifascist” accounts, showing people surrounding and physically grabbing Tegner.
“I was assaulted last night by 150 antifas on the island of Groix in Brittany during my vacation, a figure confirmed by the surveillance cameras,” Tegner said in a social media post after the incident. “A complaint has just been filed. Thank you for your messages of support. No one will ever silence me. Brittany deserves better!”
“They threw alcohol in my face, they jumped on me repeatedly,” he later recounted to French outlet CNEWS. “They held me, they shoved me. Their goal was to throw me out. They pushed me right toward the sea. They wanted to put me in the water.”
The number of people who confronted Tegner is not immediately apparent from available footage. Antifa protesters in Brittany previously showed up in large numbers to protest Tegner’s opening of a craft brewery in the region in May.
Multiple right-wing government officials and leaders of the National Rally party, such as Jordan Bardella, have publicly expressed support for Tegner.
“The far left is the camp of intimidation, physical violence, and cowardice,” Bardella said of the incident. “Justice must severely condemn these extremists who have no place in French political life. It is time for French society as a whole to become aware of the danger of the far left’s political violence!”
Tegner is a divisive figure in French politics due to his strident anti-immigration positions and questionable journalistic practices. He was convicted by the Bobigny Criminal Court in June for publishing a report on mass migration in France that listed the names of 10 prominent immigration lawyers in France.
The court, ruling that the report was ultimately aimed at “doxing” the lawyers, gave him a suspended six-month sentence, an $11,500 fine, and ordered him to pay out $2,300 in damages to each of the 10 lawyers.
Tegner was previously attacked alongside his fiancee at an event in Côtes-d’Armor last summer. A group of agitators surrounded the couple while they were dining at a restaurant, and it eventually escalated into a physical altercation in which one of the harassers grabbed Tegner by the neck. Their assailant was convicted of group violence in September 2025, being ordered to pay a fine and damages.
French police have become increasingly intolerant of radical political groups in recent months, with authorities in Paris issuing bans on far-right and far-left protests within the capital city due to safety concerns. At least 39 people were arrested in one day in May after failing to abide by the protest ban.
“While demonstrators must be able to gather in complete safety, the ban orders must be respected and confrontations between far-right and far-left activists cannot be tolerated,” Paris police said at the time.
The issue of politically motivated group violence reached a boiling point in February of this year when Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old conservative student in the city of Lyon, was beaten to death by a mob of antifa militants.
Deranque’s death occurred following a street brawl near a conference center where the left-wing France Unbowed was holding an event. He was reportedly present to provide protection for right-wing women’s organization Collectif Némésis.
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Videos from the brawl show a group of masked militants punching and kicking a man on the ground, believed to be Deranque. Eleven people were arrested in the aftermath of the student’s death, and two have been charged with murder.
The killing of Deranque has been a unifying force on the French Right, as well as an issue of concern for the White House, which held an international summit on left-wing terrorism last month.