The rapper, invited to the summer universities of LFI and the Greens, is at the heart of a controversy, in particular following an anti-Semitic message published on X.
French rapper Médine, at the heart of a controversy in France after a tweet deemed anti-Semitic which he later regretted, was canceled from a festival where he was to perform on Friday August 23 in Namur, Belgium, announced Wednesday the organizers.
In a press release, the Les Solidarités festival explains “give up comingof the rapper,with some consternation but for the sake of appeasement». «Today, following a tweet – the content of which we do not share – and despite the artist’s apologies and explanations, a wave of reactions, sometimes hateful, sometimes more balanced, swept the web and were reported by the press. Despite ourselves, the festival is now a victim of this“, add the organizers.
Médine is a controversial rapper in France, already accused in the past of taking positions “homophobic» or taxed with «islamist“. In a post two weeks ago on social network X (formerly Twitter), he called essayist Rachel Khan, a Jew and granddaughter of deportees, “resKHANpee».
“Awkward Tweet”
An expression that he later regretted, denying himself of being anti-Semitic. He renewed his apologies in two interviews with the French press on Wednesday, on the eve of his participation in a political debate at the summer days of the EELV (ecologists) party in his hometown of Le Havre.
«Anti-Semitism is a poison, I have been fighting it for a long time“says the 40-year-old singer on Wednesday in the newspaper The Parisian. About the controversial tweet, he adds: “It’s a mistake, I admit it“. He assures that he hadnot in mind the history of his family» when he published this «clumsy tweett” in response to a message from Ms Khan calling him “garbage”.
Several figures of the Belgian political class seized on Tuesday the controversy which swells in France, a centrist deputy seeing in the fact of tolerating the words of Medina a way of “trivializing evil”. Georges-Louis Bouchez, the president of the French-speaking liberals, one of the parties of the coalition in power, had implicitly asked for the deprogramming of Medina in Namur. “Can we ask for a little decency by not having this person come?“Wrote Mr. Bouchez on the X network, also accusing the French rapper of being “openly anti-police”.