Gérard Filoche expelled from the Socialist Party after an anti-Semitic tweet

The Socialist Party had warned: the Gérard Filoche case would be settled quickly. It didn't take long. This figure from the left wing of the PS was excluded by his training on Tuesday, November 21, four days after the publication of an anti-Semitic tweet. This decision was approved unanimously by the national office of the PS, in the absence of Mr. Filoche.

During a press briefing on Tuesday evening, party coordinator Rachid Temal explained this exclusion:

“The socialist family (…) was hard hit by this anti-Semitic tweet. (…) We touch on the very essence of our values, including the values ​​of the Republic, humanism, the fight against racism and anti-Semitism. (…) It is not possible that a leader of the Socialist Party could tweet this tweet which takes up the anti-Semitic codes of the 30s. (…) This evening the PS took the only decision called for by this tweet. »

The former labor inspector, can no longer speak on behalf of the Socialist Party, nor be a member of our bodies. Gérard Filoche is no longer a member of the Socialist Party., insisted Mr. Temal. Gérard Filoche can however now lodge an appeal before the national commission of conflicts of the PS.

Friday evening, Mr. Filoche published on Twitter a montage where we see Emmanuel Macron, with a Nazi armband on his arm on which the dollar symbol replaces the swastika. Behind him appear entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, banker and British lord Jacob Rothschild and economist and writer Jacques Attali, against a backdrop of American and Israeli flags.

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"A dirty guy, the French will all know it together soon", had written Mr. Filoche to accompany this image taking up codes of the anti-Semitic imagination. The far-right ideologue Alain Soral is soon to be tried for the dissemination of this same montage, first published on his Equality and Reconciliation site.

Exclusion brushed against in 2014

The socialist, himself a member of the party's BN, quickly deleted his tweet. But the few minutes the message remained online was enough to trigger a wave of condemnation. The PS announced on Saturday to initiate an exclusion procedure, judging that the edit published " port [Ed] an attack on the very values ​​of socialism, as well as on the daily commitment and action on the ground of its militants against racism and anti-Semitism..

Mr. Filoche, for his part, apologized and assured that he did not know where the image came from. “Who can dare to accuse me of racism and anti-Semitism? My whole militant life testifies to the contrary! Nothing to do with Soral and all that hated gang”, he defended himself, denouncing a "cabal in pack" against him.

The case also took a legal turn on Monday, when the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation against him for "incitement to hatred or violence".

Former Trotskyist, member of the PS since 1994, Gérard Filoche has often been challenged within his party. In 2014, he had already come close to exclusion when he reacted on Twitter to the death of the boss of Total, Christophe de Margerie, calling him in particular a " bloodsucker ".