The rapper Médine defended himself on Wednesday from accusations of anti-Semitism, denouncing a “poison” and pleading “clumsiness” on the eve of his coming to the summer days of environmentalists, who continue to tear themselves apart in public on this invitation which has become “a trap”.
After two weeks of controversy, Medina comes out of silence. A clarification in two interviews at Le Parisien and Paris-Normandie, to apologize again for his message on X (ex-Twitter) qualifying the essayist Rachel Khan, Jewish and granddaughter of deportees, of “resKHANpée” .
“It’s a mistake, I admit it,” he says, explaining that he “didn’t have his family’s history in mind” when he posted this “awkward tweet” in response to a message from Ms. Khan calling it “rubbish”. “I am accused of anti-Semitism and that crushes me,” he laments.
“Anti-Semitism is a poison, I have been fighting it for a long time,” he says.
However, he still has to justify himself for this quenelle made almost ten years ago with the polemicist Dieudonné. “I thought (it) was freedom of expression,” he says, saying he understood “too late” that it was an “anti-Semitic rallying sign”.
The rapper admits to “dragging a number of balls”, like old homophobic remarks – “a language error” – or the song “Don’t Laïk”, “an ode to secularism that has not been understood” according to him. He also rejects the Islamist label: “I am not a communitarian (…) I do not want slots for Muslim women in swimming pools (nor) special menus in canteens”, he says.
No way for him to give up the debate scheduled for Thursday at the end of the day, in his hometown of Le Havre, with the boss of EELV Marine Tondelier. “I maintain my presence”, slice the artist, convinced that his detractors seek to “discredit the left through (him)” and castigating a “anti-racism of living room”.
Except that these explanations do not in any way calm the climate among the Greens. “It’s not enough”, again estimated the deputy Julien Bayou on France 2, putting a little more pressure on his party leader to whom he assured “trust (re) trust to frame the debate” and ” interrupt it if the clarification is not there”.
Ms. Tondelier showed confidence during a press conference from the Océane city, hoping in an extract broadcast by BFMTV that Médine will make “the link between her oppression of racialized people who grew up in a working-class district” and “the victims of ‘anti-Semitism’ during their exchange. “If he can get that out of it, I think it will be positive.”
But for the head of the European list, Marie Toussaint, the damage is done. “We had everything wrong from A to Z”, she declared on France Info, judging that “the problem is not Medina, it’s us”.
“We looked for the buzz, we got it, in the worst way possible” and “we set a trap for ourselves”, she insisted, noting that environmentalists “are (doing) accuse both by the friends of Medina and by (his) enemies”, which “proves that there is something wrong”.
And to reply in passing to Jean-Luc Mélenchon who charged the Greens “subject to what will be said of the hypocrites”. On the contrary, “we are not subject to anyone and certainly not to Mr. Mélenchon”, she retorted, telling the Insoumis leader that “when we have an ally who is in difficulty, we do not take advantage of it to put his head under water”.
Message not received by the coordinator of LFI, Manuel Bompard, who denounced at the same time on RMC and BFMTV the “odious, misleading and infamous process used with regard to Medina” and the “fault” of the ecologists who “give in to a campaign orchestrated by the far right and taken over by the macronie”.
A “despicable cabal” also condemned by the head of the Insoumis deputies, Mathilde Panot, who repeated on France Inter that the “committed rapper” is “not anti-Semitic” and said she was “happy that he came to the summer university” of his party on Saturday in the Drôme, after that of EELV.
23/08/2023 12:33:11 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
