About a Poster
Translated from the French by Deborah Leter
If you do not spend much time in France, you would be forgiven for knowing nothing about far-right provocateur TV host Cyril Hanouna. Hanouna’s brand of brash pop-demagoguery and infotainment rose to fame on his show, Touche Pas à Mon Poste! (“Don’t Touch My TV Channel!,” a pun on the old school anti-racist slogan Touche Pas à Mon Pote or “Don’t touch my pal”), which attracted millions of viewers each night. On air, Hanouna is known to flame Islamophobic fervor, mock the LGBT community, spread disinformation, attack figures on the left, and disproportionately platform far-right politicians (including Éric Zemmour, the convicted bigot and frequent proponent of the “great replacement” theory, who announced his 2022 candidacy for president on Hanouna’s show).
Hanouna has also faced scrutiny for his links to Vincent Bolloré, the French ultraconservative billionaire and media magnate, who owns the channel that aired Hanouna’s program. Bolloré, who is currently under investigation for corruption and money laundering in a number of African countries, has been vocal in his support for a union des droites (union of the right). Hanouna is not shy about interfering to advance this agenda: In one episode before last year’s snap election, Hanouna staged a phone call between two representatives of splinter far-right movements and Jordan Bardella, the Rassemblement National’s party leader, encouraging them to form a coalition. Rumors are circulating that Hanouna is considering a run for office himself, especially in the wake of Marine Le Pen’s conviction last week for embezzlement and resulting five-year ban from seeking election.
In March, Hanouna, who is of Tunisian Jewish descent, was the subject of a controversy when the left-wing movement La France Insoumise (LFI) featured an image of him on a poster calling for an anti-fascist demonstration. The poster — one of a number produced for the event, several of which featured figures from the international right — was found by many to be antisemitic (including those sympathetic to the LFI), and led to a public retraction by LFI, before reissuing the poster with a different photograph. This statement, published by the decolonial Jewish collective Tsedek!, addresses the furor that ensued.
Tsedek!’s statement emerges against a backdrop of fractious political struggles in France that have grown since Macron’s re-election in 2022. LFI has been at the forefront of the French left’s impressive showings in recent years, including in last year’s election that saw a coalition of leftist parties place first against the threat of a far-right victory. As a result, LFI and its allies have faced consistent attempts at delegitimization from the right as well as the center, often through accusations of systemic antisemitism within the movement — one such case being the Hanouna controversy, as Tsedek! argues below.
And yet, many will see LFI’s poster and immediately recognize the similarities to the antisemitic stereotypes, familiar to audiences through Nazi propaganda films like Jud Suß and der Ewige Jude. The fact that such an image was generated using Grok, Musk’s AI software, adds another layer to the issue. Whether or not the impression is intentional, the image raises a challenge for the left: During a time in which the right, from the U.S. to Germany, is highly effective at wielding accusations of antisemitism against the left to undermine civil liberties and discredit struggles for justice and human rights, how does the left respond to instances of antisemitism, real or alleged?
The Diasporist is publishing this translation of Tsedek!’s statement as one approach to understanding and responding to the rise of the far right and the instrumentalization of antisemitism — and as a starting point for debate.
As always, the Diasporist invites responses to continue the discussion: [email protected].
— the Editors
Communiqué published by Tsedek! on March 19, 2025
For almost a year and a half now, La France Insoumise (LFI) has been the target of an intense delegitimization campaign aimed at excluding it from the so-called “republican arc” on the grounds of its commitment to counter Islamophobia and its support for the struggle of the Palestinian people, using its alleged antisemitism as a pretext. This campaign has reached a new climax in recent days, following the publication by the LFI of a poster calling for the anti-racist and anti-fascist mobilization of March 22, and depicting the grimacing face of Cyril Hanouna under which appear the words: “Demonstration against the far right, its ideas… and its representatives!” The reason given was that the poster’s iconography was disturbingly close to Nazi antisemitic imagery, and in particular to that of the propaganda film The Eternal Jew, released in 1940 and produced under the supervision of the Third Reich’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Faced with a media outcry, La France Insoumise saw fit to withdraw the poster.
Representations can have material consequences, sometimes disastrous ones, and as activists who defend a materialist analysis of racism, we need to evaluate them and take them seriously. The antisemitic representation of Jews as having money has, for instance, been translated into the reality of the world by the kidnapping, confinement, torture, and eventual murder of Ilan Halimi [a young Jewish man targeted in 2006 by a group self-described as the Gang of Barbarians, who thought Halimi was wealthy because he was Jewish]. From the point of view of the anti-racist struggle, it is therefore necessary to combat this representation, including by prohibiting the use of expressions that help to convey it.
However, equating the visuals produced by the LFI as part of an anti-fascist mobilization with the antisemitic state propaganda of the 1930s and 1940s is as politically dubious as it is methodologically fragile. Does the LFI pursue an antisemitic agenda? No. Does the LFI designate Cyril Hanouna as Jewish? No. Is this visual part of a campaign targeting Jews? No. There is nothing in the context in which this poster was produced to support the thesis that the LFI is taking an antisemitic stance. This is where it becomes apparent that denouncing antisemitic tropes or representations in absolute terms is a vacuous project, and that drawing a parallel between a poster calling for demonstrations against the far-right and a Nazi propaganda film is absurd. The antisemitic productions of the 1930s and 1940s supported policies of persecution against Jews, who were seen as foreign to the white race and enemies from within. In reality, this parallel contributes to a particularly detestable relativization of Nazism. Because — and this is so obvious that we shouldn’t have to provide a reminder — the desired material outcome represented by the Eternal Jew poster was not an anti-fascist march, but the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Antisemitism is never simply a matter of pencil strokes, but is first and foremost the result of concrete policies and discourses, as well as the effects of these discourses on the social body.
The reception of this visual cannot be analyzed outside the current context, already saturated with accusations of antisemitism, where the fight against this form of racism is being hijacked for political ends. It is this context that largely explains why a certain number of people were genuinely shocked by the poster depicting Cyril Hanouna, and why at the same time some LFI activists and leaders developed a siege mentality, making dialogue between the two perspectives difficult. So let us be clear: The conclusion to be drawn is that responsibility for this situation lies with the besiegers, not the besieged.
If we really want to combat antisemitism, those who lead these campaigns are definitely part of the problem. Turning Jews into a social and political demarcation line, as if we had no other social attachments than our Jewishness, feeds a fantasy that essentializes Jews and fuels the antisemitic representation of Jews as a foreign social body. The repetition of these campaigns sustains blurred reference points and an ambient confusion, while at the same time fueling a form of disinterest in, and even rejection of, the fight against antisemitism itself. In this instance, a major demonstration against the far right was diverted from its original purpose, with the media coverage it received devoted to portraying the only political force capable of representing an alternative to fascism as the reincarnation of the Nazi party. Everything seems to be done to cultivate a sense of isolation among Jews, while exposing them to the resentment of the rest of society. Given the slide towards fascism affecting most Western countries and the challenges we face, this is a particularly despicable and irresponsible way of stripping Jews of their autonomy and capacity to act.
In this context of considerable adversity, at a time when the fusion of the bourgeois bloc with the fascist bloc is almost complete, it is essential to refuse to give in to these diversionary tactics aiming to fracture our camp. Adopting the same rhetorical tools as the right and far right in the name of defending Jews is not a viable anti-racist strategy, and will in no way build a solid bulwark against fascism. In this context, the denunciation of tropes in the absolute alongside a refusal to grasp the context in which they unfold or their material consequences, is nothing more than a way of mistaking molts for poisonous snakes, at the risk of turning away from real dangers.
Note: Read responses by Olga Sara Rozenblum and Marianne Dautrey and Aurelia Kalisky.