Extreme right wing groups are distributing pork soup to the needy in Nice and Strasbourg, raising the ire of charity associations who claim the project discriminates against Muslims and Jews in need.
Every Wednesday for the past six weeks the southern regionalist group Soulidarieta (solidarity) has been distributing the foodstuff at locations close to soup kitchens.
Soulidarieta is ideologically linked to the extreme right movement Identity Bloc. While serving soup the militants are also giving-out leaflets with the words: “Ours before the others!”.
Last Saturday, a second nationalist group “Alsace Solidarity” launched a similar initiative in Strasbourg, giving out a pork chowder they call “community soup”.
National food
“We put pork in the soup because we live in France, a country where pig has always had a major place in the citizens’ food,” says a leaflet distributed by Soulidarieta.
Right now they are just giving out soup. There is nothing illegal in that
Pierre Levy, CRIF
Jewish organisations have expressed their concern. “It’s a disgrace to discriminate between impoverished people,” said Pierre Levy, CRIF’s delegate in Strasbourg. “I read about this phenomenon in Nice but I never imagined it would reach our city.”
“There are poor and homeless Jews in Strasbourg. It’s really revolting and unbearable to see extremists use this for their propaganda.”
Anti-racist group LICRA shares the same point of view and said it was “shocked” by the nationalists’ way of “using misery”.
Political action
The Green party demanded the city hall halt these actions in upcoming weeks. They stressed that similar initiatives were stopped in Paris a few months earlier by the mayor of the capital Bertrand Delanoe. The city council of Paris prohibited the distribution because Identity Bloc didn’t get any administrative authorisation to operate in public.
“The problem is you can’t stop this phenomenon in a legal way until these people actually break the law,” explained Pierre Levy. “Right now they are just giving out soup. There is nothing illegal in that.”
“We’re waiting for an offence,” Nice deputy mayor Noel Ayrault told the AFP. “We can’t intervene,” said local police chief bureau.
Article published with permission from the European Jewish Press,
a pan-European news agency based in Belgium
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