I went to a house party once that was a lot of different nationalities of Europeans. Two French guys got increasingly drunk and belligerent about the aesthetic quality of French churches versus Irish churches. To the point they had to he asked to leave because they were close to starting a fight. I’ve met several frenfh people over the years and theres always some spontaneous comparison between something in france vs here. OPs story is not so far fetched.
I’m just making a guess here, but there could have been more attempts that were nippedl in the bud early enough that we have never heard of them, because the would-be assaains were sloppier and got caught.
I had seen the hate before and foolishly just assumed he was deserving of it. Its a horrible situation he’s in and he is being cast in a bad light because he reached out for help.