The annual summer conferences for parties of the French Left begin this week against the backdrop of a row over alleged anti-Semitism from a high-profile invitee. The French rapper Médine is due to be a guest at both the conference of French green party Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV) which starts on August 24th and at the annual gathering of the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI) which begins on August 26th. Both parties have been being accused of displaying complacency over the issue of anti-Semitism by inviting the rapper.
The greens mayors of Bordeaux in the south west of France and Strasbourg in the north east both said on Monday 21st August that they would not take part in the EELV's conference at Le Havre in northern France because of the rapper's presence. Former centre-right prime minister Édouard Philippe, who was due to welcome guests in his capacity as mayor of the host town, has also indicated he will not attend the EELV gathering.
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The parties' decision to invite the rapper – who is himself from Le Havre – had already triggered a torrent of criticism from the far-right, Emmanuel Macron supporters (for whom he is a regular target) and members of the secular Printemps Republicain group, who have sought to use the invites to discredit the Left.
On August 9th the weekly publication Franc-Tireur published a story under the headline: “Médine: Europe Écologie-Les Frères”. This was a not very subtle reference to the rapper's supposed closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood. His detractors call him an “Islamist” or even “Islamo-scum”. The meaning and implications of these types of labels, which spring from language commonly employed by the far right, were deconstructed by four academics in 2018 when there were threats to cancel the singer's concerts at the Bataclan venue in Paris (scene of the bloody massacre by terrorists in 2015). He eventually cancelled them himself.
A play on words that went down badly
The rapper himself says that he has evolved politically. This change was evident in his song 'Global' in 2017 where he repented his past closeness to 'dissidence', the informal group made up of controversial figures such as Alain Soral, comedian Dieudonné and the black supremacist Kémi Séba. And the rapper recently told online periodical Ballast that he wanted to “end the mechanism of oppression that hits LGBT communities, racialised people and feminists”.
But it was the message that he published on X (formerly Twitter) on August 10th, in response to the essayist Rachel Khan (who is close to Macron's party Renaissance), that caused the biggest controversy.
Rachel Khan, who is Franco-Gambian and whose Jewish maternal grandparents perished in the Holocaust, had attacked the president of the LFI Parliamentary group Mathilde Panot – who will take part in a discussion with the rapper at her party's conference – over her “ironic use of the word 'survivor'”. The word in French is 'rescapé' and is often used when referring to survivors of the Holocaust. Panot had herself caused a row when she used the word to describe prime minister Élisabeth Borne – whose own father had survived a Nazi concentration camp.
Médine responded to Khan's attack by describing the essayist as a “resKHANpée”, a play on the word 'rescapée'. He also described the writer as someone “drifting among social traitors and literally eating at the table of the far right”. He was referring here to an article in Le Monde which revealed how in April 2021 Rachel Khan had been invited for dinner by the far-right leader of Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, at the latter's home at La Celle-Saint-Cloud in the western suburbs of Paris.
The rapper' comments, targeting the granddaughter of Jews who had been deported, were immediately criticised by members of the French government. The junior minister for citizenship Sonia Backès and transport minister Clément Beaune called on EELV and the LFI to drop him from their list of conference invitees. MPs from the ruling Renaissance party also called on the two parties to “withdraw the invitation to the Islamist and anti-Semitic rapper Médine”.
The next day Médine apologised. “There's no ambiguity. I attacked Rachel Khan's professional journey. The inappropriate expression, which must have wounded some people and for which I apologise, had not been directed towards her family nor at victims of the tragedy of the Shoah,” he wrote. He also noted that a few days earlier the essayist had made comments about him attending the EELV conference in which she described him as “trash” - a term often used by the far right - yet this remark had caused no row.
In his defence, Médine told Mediapart that plays on the word 'Khan' were very common in his family. His youngest son is called Genghis in reference to the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan, and he said he regularly puts stories on Instagram where he tells the story of the “Khan Family”, his virtual family. Guéno Fiasko, a member of the collective La Familiale, who has taken part in several activist events with Médine, including two concerts against the recent pension reforms, said: “Playing on the word 'Khan', that's Médine's and his family's world on Instagram. I'm not sure that many people were aware of Rachel Khan's origins, and it wasn't Médine's intentions at all.”
Médine himself said: “I've got in the habit of playing these word games over the past five years. When I did it I wasn't thinking of Rachel Khan's family history. When I became aware of that I apologised to the person concerned and to anyone I might have hurt. For me, the fight against anti-Semitism is on the same level as the fight against all forms of racism.”
But the damage had been done. Older accusations against the rapper immediately resurfaced, in particular relating to the anti-Semitic gesture known as the 'quenelle' which he used publicly in 2014. It is a gesture some critics have described as an 'inverted' Nazi salute and anti-Semitic.
Médine looks back on his past
During an evening event on the subject of discrimination organised by Mediapart on May 23rd this year, Médine was tackled on the issue. He apologised but sought to put his past into context, insisting that the quenelle gesture was at the start synonymous with “rebellion”. He said: “I claim the right to make mistakes. I regretted [this gesture] because imitators and the person in question [editor's note, it was invented by the controversial comic Dieudonné] gave it another meaning. With hindsight it's one of the mistakes that I have made. I sometimes get it wrong and I'm certainly not afraid to say so publicly.”
But the anti-racism group Réseau contre l’Antisémitisme et tous les Racismes (RAAR) described the rapper's response as “appalling”. In a blog on Mediapart Club the organisation wrote: “From the start the quenelle definitely had an anti-Semitic and homophobic meaning: according to Dieudonné, it was about sodomising the 'Zionists', in other words Jews, by shoving the quenelle 'right up the arse'.” The RAAR called on Médine to “explain his gesture and his past and present positions”.
The quenelle was a real mistake on my part, I carry the burden of it today. For me it's anti-Semitism and I dissociate myself from it, and I fight all forms of anti-Semitism.
When asked by Mediapart about this issue, Médine replied: “When I realised that the quenelle had an anti-Semitic meaning I disassociated myself from it, but not enough from a political point of view, in terms of ideas. That was a real mistake on my part, and I carry the burden of that today. For me it's anti-Semitism and I dissociate myself from it, and I fight all forms of anti-Semitism, including the form that went under the cover of 'dissidence' and which continues to prosper today on social networks. I face this reality head on and I associate myself with movements that fight to take it down, because I was once taken in.”
The rapper says that he was also castigated at the time by friends of his, such as geopolitical expert Pascal Boniface (with whom he wrote a book in 2012), and by the publishers StreetPass, and to have “taken [this criticism] badly” then. “But they were right about the ideological dead end in which I found myself at the time. I've told them that and apologised for having had a reactionary attitude at that time,” he said. He no longer sings the second verse of his song 'Grand Médine' as a result.
However, the row has left its mark on the Left. Médine's invitation has split the ranks of the green party in particular. The Euro MP Karima Delli used the hashtag #MedineFallaitPasLInviter – 'Médine should not have been invited' - on X. “You don't invite someone who only has a standard audience as a rapper but who on the contrary has a disproportionate audience as a conduit for the political ambivalence which holds sway these days” she wrote. The green MP Francesca Pasquini took the same approach. “There are no possible excuses,” she wrote.
The high-profile green MP Sandrine Rousseau said in her view the rapper's Tweet “was anti-Semitic, you can't deny it” but added that she wanted to debate with him. “He's changed on homophobia. I'd like him to change on anti-Semitism … You have to work with him to know if he has understood the anti-Semitic nature of this Tweet, something he hasn't said today,” she told BFMTV news channel. In addition to EELV members, the co-president of the Refondations group within the Socialist Party (PS), Lamia El Aaraje, attacked the “complacency, hypocrisy and lack of analysis” that lay behind Médine's invitation.
The national secretary of the EELV, Marine Tondelier, said that she would “pay close attention” to the singer's comments when he takes part in a debate on August 24th on the theme of “the strength of culture faced with the culture of strength” - words from his 'Rappeur 2 Force' song – and said that there could be disagreements.
On the other hand the LFI has remained united on the issue. The party's funder and presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon criticised the about-turn made by some greens because of the row. “Médine is not racist. Having invited him, why would one want to make him admit stances which are not his?” he asked. Several media outlets specialising in rap have also leapt to Médine's defence, such as Booska-P, Raplume and Kulture.
But the tone of the media treatment of the issue is dictated by far-right elements online – the 'fachosphère' - and the affair has been used opportunistically by the right and the far right to attack the leftwing parties who invited him. In the rightwing Le Figaro, for example, commentator Mathieu Bock-Côté wrote an article under the headline: “The Greens, Médine and the indulgence of Islamism”.
However, the same commentators are rather less quick to attack the racist attacks from the far right that go unpunished, the presence of two former treasurers of Marine Le Pen at a neo-fascist demonstration, the anti-Semitic graffiti found by the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) at its bookshop on August 21st which it says was “signed by two fascist groups (GUD and Zouaves Paris)”, and the anti-Semitism shown by the group Action Française.
In an interview with Mediapart in 2021 announcing legal action against the Macron-supporting MP Aurore Bergé, who had described him as an “Islamist”, Médine said he was worried about the rightwards turn taken by the media and politics. “It's once too often. I'm seeing a media U-turn by this government fringe which is in the process of becoming more radical by adopting more rightwing, even far-right, language. I get the impression that the time for dialogue is over.”
Today he still has questions over the media treatment he receives. “I think it's been very harsh, even though I modified it and immediately apologised, compared to those who excuse anti-Semites and anti-Semitic words, and who have actually been convicted of incitement to racial hatred. I get the impression that I'm paying the price for something other than the things I'm being accused of.”
Questions over the Left's handling of the criticism
While Médine accepts that he is sometimes deliberately provocative in order to spark debates and “flush out” those who take offence – usually out of Islamophobic prejudice – as he explained to a conference at the elite education institute the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) (watch here in French), he also says he is careful not to go too far. “Provocation has no point unless it provokes a debate. When it puts up an iron curtain against the possibility of dialogue, it no longer serves a purpose,” he told the ENS.
Pointing to the fact that after his tweet on Rachel Khan the rapper quickly apologised, Guéno Fiasko believes that the original message was simply a clumsy error. “He's always played the provocateur and defends it as a way of operating, he's often accepted that he plays with double meanings, but on this occasion he quickly made clear that he hadn't been doing that. You don't go and get trapped in a controversy that you have started deliberately.”
There are also indications in Médine's lyrics of a commitment against anti-Semitism, even if some detractors find the references too minor. In the track 'RER-D', a song about a case involving an assault wrongly labelled as anti-Semitic, which then had the unfortunate effect of stigmatising people from the Paris suburbs, he said: “Anti-Semitism is a cancer like Islamophobia.” In 'Heureux comme un Arabe en France', which came out in 2022, he sings “Happy like an Arab a Jew, a Roma, an Asian or a Black in France”, thus placing all racial discrimination on the same footing.
However, the philosopher Milo Lévy-Bruhl, who knows the rapper's lyrics well, remains cautious over the Left's reaction to the controversy. “On the one hand, one shouldn't stage trials over the past: the Médine that I have criticised is not the same as today's Médine, who is also facing scandalous attacks which are pure Islamophobia,” he says. But he is angry that the Left has come to the view that this is simply “anti-Semitism being manipulated by the Right, as the LFI always makes out,” he says, highlighting the “enormous silence from the Left over anti-Semitism for 20 years”.
The philosopher recalls Médine's past closeness to the 'dissidence' group and thinks that the rapper's own reappraisal of that period has been “very feeble”, given that up to 2014 he was making glowing references to Dieudonné, using the quenelle gesture and had been involved at a conference with Kémi Séba.
This explains the philosopher's cautious language when discussing the decision of the EELV and LFI to invite Médine to their party conferences. “In many respects it's completely legitimate: after so much paternalism and negativity from the Left in relation to racialised people and to working class areas, his invitation symbolises the end of a particular period of anti-racist politics, and that's a good thing,” says Milo Lévy-Bruhl. “But the risk is that all the while he fails to clarify his own past, it also indicates indifference from the Left to the issue of anti-Semitism.”
Ironically, in the song 'Global', in which Médine goes back over his past mistakes, the rapper writes: “Must stop playing the cyber-activist/By responding to them on the Web I give strength to my enemies.”
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter