Rabat – Agnes Cerighelli, a controversial municipal councilor of the Saint-Germain-en-Laye commune in western Paris, has gone on a Twitter rant against Muslim and North African candidates running for mayor in France’s upcoming municipal elections.
Cerighelli’s tirade began yesterday as she tweeted out photos of French politicians and Paris mayoral candidates Rachida Dati and Mounir Mahjoubi.
“Two Maghrebi candidates for Paris?! Seriously, in a few years, France has changed a lot.”
Deux candidats maghrébins pour @Paris ?! Sérieusement, en quelques années, la France a bien changé … #Paris #GriveauxGate #electionsMunicipales2020 pic.twitter.com/ihI4aIjyUb
— AgnesCerighelli (@AgnesCerighelli) February 14, 2020
“French political parties prefer to invest Maghrebi candidates of Muslim faith rather than French candidates of the Catholic faith,” she added in another tweet. “This is real discrimination!”
“Paris, capital of France, cannot be governed by a Maghrebi candidate of Muslim faith,” she continued.
“To want Paris and Marseille to be run by North Africans of the Muslim faith is to betray France, its identity, and its history.”
“The Republic is secular, France is Christian,” asserted the controversial city councilor. “Any Catholic who supports the election of a Muslim is an apostate.”
La République est laïque, la France est chrétienne. Tout catholique qui soutient l’élection d’un musulman est un apostat. #Apostasie #Catholicisme #France. ❤️?? pic.twitter.com/9QMY4TnvMo
— AgnesCerighelli (@AgnesCerighelli) February 16, 2020
She retweeted a clip of a 1993 interview of Morocco’s King Hassan II to drive her point home. In the interview, the late Moroccan King argued that North Africans in France “will never be 100% French.”
1993, le roi du Maroc, au sujet de l’intégration:
« Je vous décourage de vouloir intégrer les maghrebins, de les détourner de leur nationalité ».
« Ils ne seront jamais 100% Francais ».
« Ils seront de mauvais Francais ».
« La trame n’est pas la même ». pic.twitter.com/7aN0wm4CpF— Barn.b (@barnb66) February 10, 2020
She followed her rant with a series of targeted attacks on the mayor of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Arnaud Pericard, who recently authorized the construction of a mosque in the city.
“Any mayor who claims to be Catholic and who builds a mosque is an apostate,” she claimed. “Worse, he or she is a traitor to the French nation. Arnaud Pericard is unworthy of being mayor of our city, cradle of French catholicity.”
Cerighelli is no stranger to controversy and has found herself at the center of hate speech inquiries in the past.
As recently as January 21, 2020, a Versailles court prosecuted Cerighelli for “public insult because of sexual orientation” and “public provocation to hatred or violence because of sexual orientation” due to her inflammatory comments against the LGBT community on Twitter in 2018.
The court issued a six-month suspension from her position as city councilor and sentenced her to 140 hours of community service.
Read also: France’s Eric Zemmour: Naming Child ‘Mohammed’ Invites Discrimination
