This time, the criticism comes from within their own ranks. Three weeks after the announcement of the participation of the rapper Médine in the political return of the Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) party, several personalities regretted this invitation. The rapper must take part in a “text explanation” on the theme of “the force of culture against the culture of force” with Marine Tondelier, the leader of the party, on August 24. A choice denounced by several politicians, including the Minister of Industry, Roland Lescure, who canceled his visit to the EELV summer days.
But this Friday, August 18, it is the environmental MEP Karima Delli who took over the hashtag #MedineFallaitPasLInviter and expressed her disagreements with the rapper. “I am an ecologist and a woman on the left, viscerally attached to respect for people, freedom, equality, solidarity and secularism. Therefore, I cannot support, let alone endorse, the invitation of Medina “, she wrote in a series of tweets. Before pointing out the closeness of the rapper with Dieudonné, a few years ago, when the polemicist was already “immersed in the conspiracy, negationist and anti-Semitic galaxy of Alain Soral and other Robert Faurisson”. Several photos showing Medina making a “quenelle”, an anti-Semitic gesture associated with Dieudonné, have notably circulated on social networks in recent weeks. He is also accused of having attended a meeting of Kémi Seba, a black supremacist convicted of anti-Semitism.
More recently, the rapper has again sparked controversy by qualifying the essayist Rachel Khan, granddaughter of a deportee, of “resKHANpée”. An unacceptable pun for MP Sandrine Rousseau. “This tweet is anti-Semitic, there’s no doubt about it,” she told AFP. Without directly calling for his deprogramming, she sets “a condition for him to express himself, which is that he recognizes that it was a crime” or, at least, “a fault”.
Missed opportunity
Noël Mamère also regretted the presence of the rapper at the EELV summer days. “It’s a shame to see that we are lending the flank to all those who hate us and who, for the past few days, have been calling us Islamo-leftists”, deplored the former presidential candidate to France Inter. For him, the invitation of Medina contributes to discredit the environmentalist party and all of its discourse on climate change. “This is yet another missed opportunity to show that environmentalists are essential to the evolution of our society. […] At a time when everything we have been saying for almost 40 years now has been verified and validated by scientists, when the ecological crisis has become a real existential threat to humanity, it is very boring”, explains Noël Mamère. The rapper has indeed been criticized for his role as ambassador of the association Havre de savoir, close to the Muslim Brotherhoodand for his song lyrics, such as “Don’t Laïk”, where he calls to “crucify the laicards as in Golgotha”.
These criticisms are embarrassing for Marine Tondelier, who strongly defends the participation of Medina in the summer days. In an interview with AFP on August 11, the national secretary of EELV highlighted the “interesting career” of the Le Havre rapper, who would have “opened his eyes to his mistakes”. Questioned in the morning of France Inter on the accusations of anti-Semitism, she announced this Friday to maintain the invitation, while explaining, in a very laborious way, that it is necessary to know and fight anti-Semitism in all its forms, especially when it is “insidious”. “Either it is a person who, in a voluntary, assumed way, claims to be anti-Semitic. Or, and this is often the case in this country, it can be people who do not realize the scope of their words, out of clumsiness, mimicry, lack of culture or training, out of stupidity and ignorance. For me, Medina is in this case and it is up to him to explain himself”, she said, promising to be “extremely attentive to what Medina will say on August 24”. Under pressure from internal critics, Marine Tondelier has six days left to change her mind.