“Maligne comme un singe”, French Far-right Weekly Goes New Depths to Insult Minister Christiane Taubira.

Far-right Weekly says of French Minister of Justice, ” Maligne comme un singe, Taubira retrouve la banane”, Crafty (malignant)  as a Monkey. Taubira gets her banana back.

Minute (Wikipedia entry in English)  is widely available in French kiosks and newsagents.

It is not a minuscule circulation journal only sold by far-right activists.

The French Socialist-led Government has immediately reacted.

Le parquet de Paris a ouvert une enquête pour injure publique à caractère racial,  après que le premier ministre Jean-Marc Ayrault a saisi le procureur de la République de Paris au sujet de la “une” de l’hebdomadaire d’extrême droite Minute. “Nous ne pouvons pas laisser passer cela”, avait-il ajouté, en dénonçant une “une” “révoltante”.

The Paris Prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation for public racial insult, after Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault took the case to the the prosecutor of Paris. The object of the inquiry is the front page of the far-right weekly  Minute.  “We can not let this go “ , he added, denouncing a this front page as  “shocking” . Le Monde.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, co-president of the Parti de gauche tweeted, “Ils n’ont donc pas de limites. C’est même à ça qu’on les reconnaît. Pas une Minute à perdre. Les nazes en cage”. There are no limits,. There’s not a Minute to lose: put the Nazis in a cage.

The Economic Times reports,

In  the last month alone, Taubira has twice been publicly compared to a monkey, once by a group of children whose parents had taken them on a protest against gay marriage and once by an electoral candidate of the far right National Front (FN), who wrote on her Facebook page that she would prefer to see the minister “swinging from the branches rather than in government”.

Taubira said those incidents were the tip of the iceberg in terms of the hostility she has encountered since being named to one of the top four posts in the Socialist government that took office last year.

“I’ve been getting monkey and banana insults for a long time but there is also something more subtle going on that nobody has highlighted,” she said.

By way of example, the minister noted how the opponents of gay marriage had targeted her personally rather than the government as a whole and had emphasised the “Frenchness” of the protest movement.

She also pointed to the outspoken reactions that her initial appointment had provoked. These included Jean-Francois Cope, one of the leaders of the main opposition party, warning centre-right voters that: “If you vote for the FN, you get the Left and you get Taubira.”

Taubira’s concern over a perceived increase in racism — or the acceptability of racism — in French society,echoes recent warnings by various rights groups and social commentators.

Taubira is a much loved person.

This is an utter utter disgrace.

But before the British media gets hot under the collar about this we should recall that France has no equivalent of the British Daily Mail, the Express, the Star and the Sun.

In the overwhelming majority  of the French newspapers there is no daily stream of stories aimed against migrants, asylum seekers, benefit claimants and trade unions.

Indeed in most respects Minute, whose readership is tiny compared to the British hard-right press,  resembles these papers more than they will admit.