French Jewish leader blasts politician who called Macron ‘President Rothschild’

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group, calls comments by The Republicans’ secretary general Fabien Di Filippo ‘revolting’

By JTA 31 August 2018, 10:39 pm

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Fabien Di Filippo in the garden of the Quatres Colonnes in the Palais Bourbon, Paris, France, June 21, 2017. (Antoine Lamielle/Wikimedia Commons/JTA)

A top representative of French Jewry condemned harshly what he called anti-Semitic rhetoric of a Republican politician who called the republic’s leader “President Rothschild.”

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, on Thursday wrote on Twitter that he considered The Republicans’ secretary general Fabien Di Filippo’s comment about President Emmanuel Macron to be “revolting.”

“Following the revolting tweet, featuring anti-Semitic language from the 1930s, of the secretary general of The Republicans,” Kalifat wrote, he has asked that party’s president, Laurent Wauquiez, issue “a firm condemnation” and an “exemplary sanction” of Di Filippo.

But Di Filippo on Twitter denied that he had made any anti-Semitic references in his tweet about Macron, who used to work for the Rothschild Bank after joining it in 2008.

“Naturally, the expression ‘President Rothschild’ was a reference to the past functions of banker Emmanuel Macron,” Di Filippo wrote, adding Macron was “disconnected from our realities.” His reference to the Jewish banker family “had no other connotation,” he added.