As a large cosmopolitan city, Montreal hosts many high-level musicians and artists whose performances bring energy, dynamism and diversity to Quebec’s largest city. Alarmingly, a singer scheduled to perform in Montreal in early December has a reputation for divisiveness, promoting hatred and spreading intolerance.
Issa Lorenzo Diakhaté, who is known as Freeze Corleone and who will perform on December 4 at L’Olympia, a performance hall in the city center, has a habit of making music containing anti-Semitic lyrics.
His songs include lines comparing him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and his main propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, as well as statements such as “Every day RAF [rien à foutre] of the Shoah” (Holocaust).
In 2020, French authorities opened an official investigation into Diakhate for allegations that his lyrics promote anti-Semitism, and, in the same year, Universal Music France, which represented the rapper, severed all ties with him. despite its growing popularity, adding that “the release of the album revealed and amplified unacceptable racist language”.
Previously, the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, France’s oldest anti-racist organization, called on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music to remove his songs from their listening catalogs, citing his anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories as well as the glorification of Hitler, the Third Reich and Mullah Omar, former Taliban leader.
The owners of L’Olympia, who are Jewish, defended themselves, particularly in To have toto present the show, saying that it was not their role to screen artists and that they had no intention of canceling his appearance, while adding that ticket sales for his show were good and that the room was filling up “very well”.
While the owners profit from the sales associated with Diakhaté’s planned performance, his history of hateful comments targeting Jews is an affront to the 90,000 Jews who live in Montreal.
There is one most basic and fundamental way that L’Olympia — and indeed Montreal’s elected officials — can take to both preserve freedom of expression and express opposition to Diakhaté’s words.
Venue owners, as well as other local representatives, can speak out and add their voice to those who have done so before. In 2020, 50 politicians from French President Emmanuel Macron’s party publicly condemned the rapper.
While there is a balance to be struck between ensuring freedom of speech and avoiding hate speech, simply ignoring all criticism of Diakhaté’s lyrics is not the solution.
After all, the dangers of unchecked anti-Semitism are not without consequence.
According to Statistics Canada, Jews are the biggest target of religiously motivated hate crimes in the country. In the United States, Jews are consistently the most targeted religious group in the country, according to FBI data.
And while overt and violent acts of anti-Semitism may seem rare, they continue unabated and increase particularly in times of conflict in the Middle East. For example, during the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Gaza-based terror group, there were multiple instances where Jews were beaten. More recently, two elderly Jewish men were attacked with fire extinguishers in New York.
Frighteningly, anti-Semitism is not relegated to the fringes as one might expect. In recent weeks, Kanye West — one of the most influential musical artists on the planet — has made a series of anti-Semitic comments, both on social media and in interviews. Shortly after, Kyrie Irving, a basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets, an NBA team, promoted an anti-Semitic film to his millions of subscribers.
In both cases, after the anti-Semitic outbursts of West and Irving, the sponsors disassociated themselves from the two men, considering that they would tarnish the reputation of their company.
As Issa Lorenzo Diakhate prepares for his visit to Montreal, L’Olympia has a decision to make: will it recognize the dangers of unchecked anti-Semitism in contemporary society and act accordingly, or continue Is she simply taking advantage of the quick short-term selloffs that ignoring these stocks gives her?