The rapper is accused of anti-Semitism, homophobia and communitarianism. The government has called on LFI and EELV not to invite him again.
The Europe Ecologie-Les Verts party remains determined to welcome the rapper Médine to his summer school. Environmentalists swept away Friday, August 11 the pressures that are growing on them as on La France insoumise (LFI) to deprogram debates with the artist accused of anti-Semitism, homophobia and communitarianism. The environmentalist party has invited Medina to a debate on August 24 in Le Havre. He will also be invited to the back-to-school meetings of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s movement, on August 26, in the Drôme.
Faced with the growing controversy, the leader of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV), Marine Tondelier, underlined in an interview with AFP the evolution and career of a personality who has “open your eyes to your mistakes” over the years. “The question of the fight against intolerance (…) inevitably involves people who did not know and who open their eyes, who deconstruct themselves, become aware, who recognize past mistakes, who move forward“, she added.
Criticisms formulated as soon as the invitations are issued
As soon as these invitations were issued at the end of July for EELV, criticism rocketed against the two left-wing parties. The artist is in fact preceded by a sulphurous reputation, maintained by certain gestures and remarks, starting with the “quenelle”, an anti-Semitic posture popularized by the humorist Dieudonné, which Médine performed on several occasions ten or so years ago. ‘years.
The one who grew up in Le Havre has always denied being anti-Semitic, without going back on his most controversial gestures or statements. However, a post published Thursday by Médine on the X network (ex-Twitter) triggered a new round of indignant messages, even among members of the government, such as the Secretary of State for Citizenship Sonia Backès and the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune, figure of the left wing of the executive.
Médine described the Franco-Gambian artist and essayist Rachel Khan, Jewish and granddaughter of a deportee, as “resKHANpée” and described her as a person “drifting among the social traitors and literally eating at the table of the extreme right“. The pun is “abject“, thundered Clément Beaune, calling LFI and Marine Tondelier to “return to reason” and to deprogram Medina. A provocation comparable to the “Durafour crematorium“launched in the 1980s by Jean-Marie Le Pen against the Minister of Public Service at the time Michel Durafour, according to about twenty deputies of the presidential Renaissance party.
“Undeniable and intolerable anti-Semitic attack”
“The allusion to the survivors of the death camps and the highlighting of the Jewish surname makes it an undeniable and intolerable anti-Semitic attack“, write these parliamentarians in a joint press release, calling “firmly” to disinvite the rapper. Accused by the Licra of “too recurrent ambiguities“on anti-Semitism, the Greens insist on the importance of maintaining a dialogue with everyone.
“For me, the fight against anti-Semitism is a cultural battle that must be fought and that must be fought everywhere and all the time, including where it is more difficult or more risky.“, says Marine Tondelier. “JI don’t know the rapper Medina or Rachel Khan. But the “word game” posted on it is outrageous – over the line despite what it claims“, replied the president of the Court of Auditors and former socialist minister Pierre Moscovici on the X network.
“To maintain Medina after this anti-Semitic pun on @KhanNRachel would be to condone this ignominy“, adds the president of the Republicans Eric Ciotti. Also under pressure, Medina had to present his regrets to Rachel Khan. “The unsuitable formula, which must certainly have offended people and I apologize for it, was not directed to his family or to the victims of the tragedy of the Holocaust“, he posted on X on Friday.
The Minister of Industry renounces to participate in the EELV summer days
Accustomed to social networks, the rapper is regularly confronted with his past positions, but also with the lyrics of certain songs, seen as hostile to secularism, close to Islamist ideas or even homophobic. In one of his last interviews, in the anti-capitalist magazine “Ballast” dated July 15, the artist says he opposes all forms of discrimination, calling for “social justice”, the fight against “the extreme right” and the end of “mechanisms of oppression which strike at the same time the LGBT populations, the racialized, the feminists”.
The Minister of Industry Roland Lescure, for his part, announced on Saturday that he was giving up going to the summer days of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts because of the presence of the rapper, whose remarks he accused of ” anti-Semitic nature,” posted. “His latest tweet about Rachel Khan is unambiguously anti-Semitic in nature. So only one decision had to be made: not to go.“, he said in an interview with Parisian.
Keen on debates with opponents of macronism, Roland Lescure also criticizes the position of the national secretary of environmentalists, Marine Tondelier, who maintained the rapper’s invitation to a debate on August 24 in Le Havre entitled “The force of culture in the face of the culture of strength”. “What leads me to cancel my presence is precisely that Marine Tondelier, who calls herself the leader of a Republican party, has decided, despite this tweet, to maintain her invitation“, he explains. “Me, I am ready to speak with everyone provided that we respect the law and the minimum decency“, adds the minister. Also invited, the former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, mayor of Le Havre, did not take a position.