2023-08-23 10:05:00
MEDINA. Invited to participate in the summer universities of EELV and LFI, on August 24 and 26, 2023, Médine finds himself caught in a controversy. Accused of anti-Semitism and of being a doorway to Islamism, he responds to his detractors.
Summary
[Mis à jour le 23 août 2023 à 10h05] Embroiled in a controversy and faced with the accusations brought against him by the political class, Medina responds. The invitation sent to the rapper to participate in the summer universities of Europe-Ecologie-Les Verts and La France insoumise, on August 24 and 26, 2023, was the starting point of the scandal. Left-wing elected officials rose up against the coming of the artist, frequently criticized by the right, no doubt cooled by an anti-Semitic tweet published by Medina on August 10 against the essayist Rachel Khan, Jewish and granddaughter of a deportee.
While many elected officials denounce this declaration and the rapper’s former anti-Semitic behavior, while others have for years pointed to a closeness to Islamism, the rapper denies being one or the other. “Anti-Semitism is a poison, I have been fighting it for a long time,” he assured in the columns of the Parisian, August 23. And to add: “Some deputies want to disqualify me, as they want to disqualify other minorities… All this mechanism against minorities is precisely what I have been living and fighting for twenty years.”
“Mistakes”… Medina regrets acts deemed anti-Semitic
Medina’s last controversial speaking out was just on August 10, 2023. On Twitter, the rapper called writer Rachel Khan a “resKHANpee” and a person “drifting among social traitors and literally eating.” at the table of the extreme right”. A response to the essayist who had previously called the artist “trash”. The Le Havre artist then defended himself from any anti-Semitic words in a second tweet two days later: “The unsuitable formula, which must certainly have offended people and I apologize for that, was not directed to his family. nor towards the victims of the tragedy of the Holocaust. The Parisianthe man recognizes an “error”, clumsy words of which he says he has not measured the scope in view of the history of the writer.
No ambiguity. I attacked Rachel Khan’s career path. The unsuitable formula, which must certainly have offended people and I apologize, was not directed to his family or to the victims of the tragedy of the Holocaust.
Rachel Khan treated me a few years ago
— Medina (@Medinrecords) August 11, 2023
He also describes the quenelle as an error, an anti-Semitic gesture by Dieudonné, which he made in 2014 and which has stuck with him ever since. “I regretted it, but too late and not with enough force,” he also acknowledges, reaffirming his current position in passing: “I consider the quenelle to be an anti-Semitic gesture and condemn Dieudonné.
Provocative texts and assumed commitments
If he recognizes missteps, Medina refutes the accusations of anti-Semitism and Islamism: “They take me for a bomber, while I am a deminer”. And in front of those who use his texts to disqualify him, the rapper claims to be “from the school of provocative rap […], it’s the rap that I like. If art isn’t subversive, doesn’t jostle me, doesn’t make me change, it interests me less”. create a debate. Sometimes it backfires on me. […] It happened to me to go too far, as in “Don’t Laïk” in 2015, which is for me an ode to secularism and which was not understood”.
It is therefore out of the question for the rapper to deny his texts, they are also the ones who justify the invitation of Medina to the summer universities of the two left-wing political parties. “Two left-wing parties reach out to me for dialogue, it is my duty to seize it”, he assured not without recalling a political independence: “I have a free word, which is not guided by a party or an ideology, and that is problematic.” If he assures that his commitments, including political ones, have never been associated with a party or a union, the man leads fights close to those of the left.
Medina invited by EELV and LFI
Despite the controversy and the withdrawals of several elected environmentalists to attend the university of the party, Medina intends to honor the invitation and go to the event. On August 24, in Le Havre, he must participate in a debate with Marine Tondelier, national secretary of EELV. guest of France Inter, she said that the artist “is one of the people who do not realize the scope of their words, who do not see the suffering that this can generate”. On August 26 in Valence, it is with Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI group at the National Assembly, that the rapper will exchange. According to Gallina Elbaz, vice-president of the Licra (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism), guest of RMC“there is perhaps a desire for political recovery and a form of political clientelism” behind the coming of Medina to these political events.
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2014 and the photo of Medina taking over Dieudonné’s anti-Semitic “quenelle”. 2015 and the release of the title “Don’t Laïk”, six days before the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Since that time, Medina has regularly been at the center of controversy. Multiple requests for deprogramming as for his concert at the Bataclan, misappropriation of the title of a 2005 album or even presumed links with the Muslim Brotherhood, the reproaches made to Medina are not lacking.
On Twitter, June 22, 2022, Nicolas Bay protested in a message posted on Twitter, against the documentary Medina Normandy, in part subsidized by the Normandy region. “This close to the Islamist movement of the Muslim Brotherhood had not hesitated to name one of his albums ‘Jihad'”, had criticized the political member of the Zemmourist party Reconquête!. Médine had then reproached Nicolas Bay for his ignorance of the documentary.
“In reality, everything he accuses me of is completely deconstructed in the documentary. He accuses me of being close to terrorism and extremists, while I am the first to fight them in my region, through concrete actions, such as my support for local associations! I do not accept any lessons from this Norman at the fictitious home. And I want to fight against this shameful montage made against me. This is a simple reminder to the republican order”, declared Médine then, questioned by France 3 Normandy.
An article on the Booska-P site, which cannot be found today, is regularly brandished by critics of Medina. On a screenshot of the header, the artist would affirm this sentence: “I am also an ambassador of the association ‘Havre de savoir'”. This association is regularly accused of promoting the Muslim Brotherhood as in this tweet by Philippe Vardon, member of Reconquête!. In a Facebook post published in 2014, Havre De Savoir claimed that Médine was an “ambassador” and “an active member” of the association.
On February 23, 2021, Médine announced that it had filed a complaint against LREM deputy Aurore Bergé for defamation at the Paris court. In question ? The comments made by the elected representative in March in an interview given to LCI on February 18, 2021, referring to a conference given in Medina at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS). “This Islamist rapper Medina, you know, the one who said that secularists had to be killed, is it legitimate for a school as prestigious as the ENS to give voice to those who call for murder?” she asked.
Already targeted by right-wing and far-right elected officials in 2018, Medina explained to Mediapart the reasons for filing the complaint. “It’s one too many times. I am witnessing the media turnaround of this fringe of the government which is becoming radicalized by adopting a more right-wing, even extreme right-wing discourse. I have the impression that the time for dialogue is over. All these people do not take the time to read our work”, explained the rapper from Le Havre, who said he wanted to “promote [s]rights”, claiming to be the victim of “false accusations.”
According to the rapper, Aurore Bergé “sticks an ideology to him which is, of course, not the [s]ienne.” If the member was referring in part to the song Don’t Laïk, which evokes a crucifixion of the secularists, for Medina, this “piece is a succession of absurdities, oxymorons”, and of which the chosen one took a quote out of context. “Aurore Bergé’s ignorance of rap and style is blatant. I invite her to do what she should have done before speaking on LCI”, launched the artist in the columns of Médiapart. He then wanted “a condemnation and a public apology”, but also “damages”. “My honor is at stake,” he concluded.
In 2018, Médine was to perform at the Bataclan, in Paris, on October 19 and 20. Scheduled for several months, these concerts, planned in one of the places targeted by the terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015, had aroused at the time a vast controversy linked to the words of the rapper. Associations of victims had immediately expressed their desire to have his visit banned. Right-wing, far-right and La République en Marche elected officials were indignant at the lyrics of his songs Jihad or Don’t Laïkwhich they already considered, like Aurore Bergé and Nicolas Bay, to go in the direction of the doctrines of the Islamist jihadists.
In Don’t Laïk, Medina declares in particular: “Let us crucify the secularists as in Golgotha”. Words that have not gone unnoticed. “A call to murder” had already judged Aurore Bergé at the time. Médine was then quickly explained in the face of these accusations. “I absolutely wanted to talk about the way in which a republican value such as secularism is manipulated today when, in its spirit and its letter, secularism is made to bring people together,” he said.
“Don’t Laïk is to secular fundamentalisms what Charlie Hebdo cartoons are to religious fundamentalisms”, he defended himself a little later in a column published in L’Obs. A petition had even emerged under the impetus of Grégory Roose , former departmental delegate of the FN. The concert at the Bataclan had finally been canceled, in the face of pressure and even if the concert hall mentioned a cancellation “out of respect for the victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015 and their families.” justified this decision otherwise: “Some far-right groups have planned to organize demonstrations whose purpose is to divide, not hesitating to manipulate and rekindle the pain of the families of the victims.”
During the outcry against the arrival of Medina at the Bataclan, the title of his first album was changed. Many right-wing and far-right political figures took up a visual superimposing a poster promoting the concert with the cover of an album supposedly named “Jihad”. Several things are to be deciphered in this false information. First of all, the date of the concert at the Bataclan and the release of this album are separated by 13 years so the artist did not intend to promote this opus in 2018.
Second, the title is inaccurate, because the album is called “Jihad: The Greatest Fight Is With Yourself.” This was probably not in the sense of his detractors who preferred to truncate the title “Jihad”. During an interview with Mouloud Achour at Click TV, Médine returned to this album: “I titled my album Jihad, first with a subtitle ‘The greatest fight is against oneself’, and then it was in 2005, in another context . My message at that time was for those who would be tempted to go fight and those who have a definition of this completely overused term.” The rapper wanted to recall here that etymologically, “jihad” means “effort” or “struggle” and not automatically “holy war”. Myriam Benraad, French political scientist and specialist in the Arab world, recalled in her book Jihad: from religious origins to ideology that “jihad is indisputably one of the most discussed and controversial terms in the contemporary history of the Muslim world.”
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