Well, we were talking about Althusser, who was not above strangling his most strident critic. But, yes, violence was part of the West European Communist Parties' culture. Right up to the 1980s they used to taunt radicals with Trotsky's assassination. The Irish 'Workers Party' assassinated Seamus Costello, and many other Irish Republicans. The British Communist Party beat and kicked rank and file members trying to speak at the Liason Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions conference. The Greek Communist Party killed Trotskyist comrades of Cornelius Castoriadis, like Poliopoulos. In Spain the Communists had soldiers of the P.O.U.M. killed while they were fighting against Franco.
Charles Tillon, PCF member and minister of aviation in De Gualle's government ordered the bombardment of the rebellious regions of Setif and Guelma in Algeria at the end of the Second World War. Many hundreds were killed. At the time the PCF newspaper Humanite [sic] said 'These troublemakers ought to be taught a lesson they will not forget' (12 May 1945)
The Communist mayor of Vitry-sur-Seine, Paul Mercieca, had an immigrant hostel bulldozed in December 1980.
The Communist Party of Algeria (PCA) recruited heavily amongst white settlers in Bab el Oued and Belcourt, according to Michael Farrell, who also charges that many PCA members were later active in the reactionary OAS (The Battle for Algeria, Belfast: Peoples Democracy, circa 1972, p15)
Ian Birchall says that the PCF used violence against political opponents in May 1968. PCF leader Marchais said of the radicals in 1968 'These false revolutionaries must be unmasked completely' . 'More and more of them have penetrated our factories or the hostels for foreign workers, distributing tracts and other propaganda material'.
'It is in the workers' interests to pronouce themselves overwhelmingly in favour of a return to work', PCF statement, 5 June 1968 The Communist Georges Seguy boasted that the party had got student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit deported from the country: 'we forced them [the government] ... to remove the troublemakers on the eve of the election'.