Revealed by Mediapart, a video shows activists jokingly performing an antisemitic and Holocaust-denial song at a far-right festival in 2023. The Minister Delegate announced on Monday, December 15, that she has referred the matter to the public prosecutor.
A guitar, plastic chairs around a wooden table, and an antisemitic tune to liven up a picnic. “She was a bit of a liar, my grandmother from Birkenau, with her fake number tattooed on her skin…” This Holocaust-denial parody of Eddy Mitchell’s song Couleur menthe à l’eau, sung by an activist during the 2023 edition of the annual festival of the far-right movement Egalité et Réconciliation, was revealed by Mediapart on December 13.
Appearing on France Info on Monday, December 15, the Minister Delegate for Gender Equality and the Fight Against Discrimination, Aurore Bergé, announced that she had referred the case to the public prosecutor.
Founded in 2007 by far-right ideologue Alain Soral, who is known for antisemitic tirades and has been convicted multiple times for racial or antisemitic insults, incitement to hatred, discrimination or violence, apology for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and Holocaust denial, the movement Egalité et Réconciliation has included several figures linked to the National Rally party, according to Mediapart. Among them are François Paradol, chief of staff to Jordan Bardella, Frédéric Boccaletti, National Rally MP for the Var region, and Louis-Joseph Gannat, a National Rally candidate in the 2024 snap legislative elections, who ultimately lost the party’s backing after StreetPress uncovered antisemitic posts.
At the movement’s 2023 annual festival, a video published by the investigative outlet shows a group of men gathered around a singer, who accompanies each verse on guitar amid the audience’s crude laughter. Lyrics mock Holocaust victims and concentration camps. The performer is encouraged by calls of “another one.” Sitting beside him, smiling broadly, is Jérôme Bourbon, editor of the far-right weekly Rivarol.
Speaking on France Info’s morning program on December 15, Aurore Bergé confirmed that she had taken legal action. “We will never accept the trivialization of antisemitism, wherever it comes from, whether from the far left or the far right. The public prosecutor must be able to rule on this and, I hope, clearly convict, because here the antisemitic nature leaves no doubt,” she stated, speaking the day after an antisemitic attack that killed at least 15 people in Australia.
