Paris (AFP)

A debate organized Thursday by the small left-wing party Génération.s, stumbled on the question of "racialism", a concept refused by Senator Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, others like LFI deputy Danièle Obono defending the right for "people racialized "to" self-organize ".

"Racialism is totally opposed to the concept of republican universalism," assured Ms. Lienemann, elected from the Republican and Socialist Left.

"I find the rise on the stage of + racialism +" dangerous and disturbing "and" when I hear the word + racialized +, or our republic is + racist +, it puts me beside myself ".

"There is racism" in France "but the fundamentals of our Republic are not," she added.

"The law prohibiting the veil in school" or "the wearing of the full veil" in public space "are progressive laws which allow emancipation within the framework of our secularism".

According to Danièle Obono, “Marie-Noëlle Lienemann's intervention sums up the amalgamation and incomprehension” around this debate.

"Racialized people are targeted," she added, defending the right of "those concerned to self-organize" to defend themselves.

Génération.s, founded by the former PS presidential candidate Benoît Hamon and now in the environmental movement, organized this videoconference debate on the theme of the Republic a little before the one that opposed in the evening on France 2 Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, and Marine Le Pen, President of the RN, on Islamism and immigration.

Julien Bayou, national secretary of EELV, denounced during the debate "massive and systematic discrimination against blacks and Arabs".

"The Republic is failing with regard to its promise", he said, while "the environmentalist project leaves no one by the wayside".

PS Senator Laurence Rossignol was to participate in the debate but ultimately declined due to the participation of Ali Rabeh, Génération.s mayor of Trappes, in conflict with a professor of philosophy, Didier Lemaire, who denounces "the progression of a hold ever stronger community "on its students, as well as" the state's lack of strategy to defeat Islamism ".

"The mayor of Trappes is at the heart of a controversy", "the debate is a trap" and "I do not want to give my backing," Ms. Rossignol told AFP.

Ms Lienemann also expressed her "unease" about this.

© 2021 AFP