Since 2012, the French actor Omar Sy has lived in Los Angeles. One of his houses has included a sprawling villa with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, an outdoor pool and a jacuzzi. With luxury like that perhaps it’s not surprising that Sy – known to British audiences for his role in X-Men, Jurassic World and Lupin – rarely returns to the Republic. But he’s in town this week to promote a book, and has been using his time in television studios to warn the good folk of France about the danger of voting for the ‘extreme right’.
First, however, as befits a millionaire actor who lives in a very big house in La La land, Sy began his tirade by lamenting the erosion of the Republic’s principles of liberty, egality and fraternity. And why has this happened? Because of ‘people who are spitting out their hatred and trying to revive a France of the past with very set ideas’. These people who, continued Sy, ‘have promoted these ideas in the past have taken France to some very, very dark places. I’m just saying be careful because it concerns us all.’
The French don’t appreciate being hectored and lectured by stars of stage, screen and sport
Although he didn’t name names, he had in mind all right-wing parties. Sy referenced a recent tweet by Marion Marechal, vice-president of Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest party, in which she asked ‘Where’s mum?’. Her question was directed at a photo posted by two gay men of their baby. Marechal has been accused of ‘homophobia’, including by gay members of the government – despite the fact surrogacy is illegal in France.
Sy also indirectly attacked the French police, saying: ‘When I talk about Adama or Nahel, it’s for the group, it’s for all of us’. Nahel was the 17-year-old with a lengthy rap sheet who was fatally shot by police last summer when he sped away from a vehicle checkpoint. Adama Traoré died in police custody in 2016, reportedly from heatstroke, though his family contest this version.
Sy could have namechecked another name or two had he wished: 13 year-old Samara, beaten unconscious outside her school by her classmates last month because she refused to wear a headscarf; or Shamseddine, bludgeoned to death by the brothers of a girl he had flirted with. But he didn’t because they would run contrary to Sy’s assessment of France as a country in the grip of far-right politicians and police.
His remarks were applauded by the far left. ‘Thank you Omar Sy for those words. And support in the face of the racist pack,’ tweeted the MP Manuel Bompard, campaign manager for La France Insoumise (LFI).
This is the party that this week has had one of its senior figures, Mathilde Panot, investigated for ‘apology for terrorism’. Last week, another figure within the party, Rima Hassan, running in the European elections, was probed for the same offence. Both accusations concern statements pertaining to Hamas’s attack against Israel on 7 October.
Another of LFI’s MPs, Danièle Obono, described Hamas as ‘a resistance movement’ back in October. It was such comments that led to the party being excluded from a remembrance service in February to honour the 42 French-Israelis murdered by Hamas.
The National Rally were represented and one of France’s most prominent holocaust campaigners, Serge Klarsfeld, has spoken of his satisfaction in seeing the party shed the anti-Semitism of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. In contrast, he expressed his profound despair that the LFI has become the inheritor of this bigotry.
As in London, parts of Paris have become dangerous for Jews because of rampant anti-Semitism; earlier this month a Jewish woman was raped by a man who said he was avenging Palestine. These facts appear to have passed Sy by. As has another pertinent point, one I made two years ago on the eve of the second round of the presidential election.
The main reason Frenchmen and women vote for the National Rally, I explained, was not because they are racist or anti-Semitic – it is because they are anxious about the future. Increasingly, they struggle to pay their energy bills, clothe their kids and feed their families. Times are hard and they feel that successive governments have cast them aside. They don’t appreciate being hectored and lectured by stars of stage, screen and sport, as was the case two years ago.
Poverty is not a problem with which Sy and his ilk have to contend. He is a fine actor and a privileged man, as he proved in 2022 when he arrived at the Cannes film festival in a private jet. It was a mode of transport somewhat at odds for an actor who in the past has spoken of the need for people to change their behaviour in the face of the climate crisis.
The age when luvvies and celebrities could talk down to the little people is over. We’ve seen through their cant and we’re tired of it. Keep your private thoughts in your private jets.
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