Wiesenthal Centre Joins Protest in Support for French President Macron as a Victim of Extremist Incitement

November 21, 2017

“Turn extreme left on our planet and you will be sure to meet the extreme right”

Paris, 21 November 2017

“Former Communist Trotskyist, turned Socialist leader and trade unionist, Gerard Filoche, is a test case for Europe,” claimed Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels.

"At last, media has registered public outrage in response to Filoche’s tweet portraying French President Macron wearing a Nazi armband with the swastika replaced by a dollar sign. Placed behind him are three Jewish personalities: communications mogul Patrick Drahi, banker Jacob Rothschild and political advisor Jacques Attali. In the background are the United States and Israeli flags," noted the Centre.

 
Filoche expressed his regret - but in antisemitic language - calling the source of the subsequent attack upon him, a ‘conspiracy’ and a 'cabal', calumnies drawn from from the notorious Russian Tsarist forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", often defined as "A Warrant for Genocide".

Attali has announced he will sue Filoche for ethnic defamation.

Filoche, whose father spent four years in a Nazi German prison camp, should have known better. Though the Socialist Party General Secretary is taking steps to expel him, he continues to claim that he did not notice the racist imagery nor realize that it originated in the French extreme right.

"Turn extreme left on our planet and you will be sure to meet the extreme right... Counter-measures taken in France can set an example and highlight the embrace of antisemitism in sister Parties such as British Labour and similar behavior in Germany, Netherlands and Scandinavia... Our Centre joins French protest in support of President Macron as a victim of extremist incitement,” concluded Samuels.

For further information, please call Shimon Samuels on +33 609 770 158, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.
 
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).