The ghost of antisemitism has returned to haunt France, prompting criminal action against a website that claimed Jews control the country and the prosecution of a teacher who allegedly suggested that President Macron was part of a Jewish plot.The government ordered the crackdown after incidents that showed how much the pandemic has fuelled a return of the old ugly currents that have stained French history.On Wednesday a monument in Brittany to Simone Veil, the feminist, former minister and Holocaust survivor, was daubed with swastikas.
It was the third time that monument was desecrated in a week.
Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, sent in prosecutors after a site called IlsSontPartout.com [They Are Everywhere] laid out the names and profiles of Jewish politicians, media owners, financiers and arts figures who supposedly connive to control the country. The site’s name is an allusion to Je Suis Partout [I Am Everywhere], an anti-semitic newspaper during the Nazi occupation of 1940-44.
The site attracted government attention after Cassandre Fristot, 34, a schoolteacher and councillor for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, marched in an anti-vaccine protest in the eastern city of Metz with a placard police said was “manifestly antisemitic”.It called Macron and Jewish ministers, media figures and financiers “traitors” and included the words: “Mais Qui?” [But who?].The question is the latest code for the conspiracy theory that a Jewish cabal is behind the epidemic and Macron’s imposition of health passes to compel vaccination. Fristot was charged with incitement to racial hatred.“Antisemitism is a criminal offence, not an opinion, and such expressions will not remain unpunished,” Darmanin said.Fristot received support from thousands of people on social media, who expressed their belief in the old conspiracy theory of a global cabal.
The source for the word "Qui" as a codeword for Jews comes from a June interview on French TV of French ex-general Dominique Delawarde, who in November accused a secret group of controlling the media. The host repeatedly asked him "Qui?" - Who? - is behind this cabal.
Now the antisemites are running with this question, and the answer that everyone knows.
Social media cannot police the use of the word "Who?"
This month the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Jewish human rights body, wrote to the government about a campaign that claims Jewish doctors are behind the epidemic. Shimon Samuels, director for international relations, likened it to medieval charges that Jews poisoned wells and to the 1940s round-up of Jews by the wartime government.
Antisemitism is an epidemic. We've already seen how quickly an epidemic can become a pandemic.
(h/t Jonathan H)
