The Greens remain determined to welcome the rapper Médine to their summer university and on Friday they swept away the pressures which are increasing on them as on insubordinate France (LFI) to deprogram debates with the artist accused of anti-Semitism, homophobia and communitarianism.

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 “opened his eyes to his mistakes” over the years.

“The question of the fight against intolerance (…) necessarily involves people who did not know and who open their eyes, who deconstruct themselves, become aware, who recognize past mistakes, who move forward”, he said. she adds.

The Green 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 party, on August 26 in the Drôme.

As soon as these invitations were issued – at the end of July for EELV – criticism was fired against the two left-wing parties. Because the artist is weighted with 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 several times a dozen 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 on Thursday, even among members of the government, such as the Secretary of State for Citizenship Sonia Backès and the Minister for Transports Clément Beaune, figure of the left wing of the executive.

-“Abject”-

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 social traitors and literally eating at the table of extreme -RIGHT”.

The pun is “despicable”, thundered Clément Beaune, calling on LFI and Marine Tondelier to “come to reason” and 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 around twenty deputies from the presidential Renaissance party.

“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 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. .

“I don’t know the rapper Medina or Rachel Khan. But the pun published on her is outrageous – beyond the limit despite what he claims”, replied the president of the Court of Auditors and former minister socialist Pierre Moscovici on the X network.

“To maintain Medine 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 certainly must have offended people and I apologize for it, was not directed towards his family nor towards the victims of the tragedy of the Holocaust”, he posted on X Friday.

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”.

08/11/2023 20:31:01 –         Paris (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP