Barbara Butch is firmly on the left but she is Jewish. The concert that was cut short

Paris. Until last April, Barbara Butch, the renowned French DJ who took centre stage in one of the most discussed tableaux at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics – appearing at the DJ booth wearing a crown, surrounded by drag queens and performers from the Parisian queer scene in what many saw as a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” – was the perfect icon of a certain strand of the left: a radical feminist, progressive, inclusive, advocate of body positivity, lesbian and LGBTQ+ rights activist. Until last April, as we were saying. That is, until Butch – born into a traditionalist Jewish family, to a bricklayer father of Moroccan origin and a secretary mother of Ashkenazi descent – signed a petition in support of a bill, the Loi Yadan (named after the centrist MP Caroline Yadan), which aimed to strengthen the fight against antisemitism following the surge recorded in France since 7 October 2023, by introducing stricter penalties and including among the punishable offences certain forms of anti-Zionism deemed discriminatory. Since then, for left-wing activists close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France insoumise (LFI), Butch has been shunned as one of those who have betrayed the pro-Palestinian cause – a friend and supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I signed an article denouncing anti-Semitism in France – the anti-Semitism I have endured on a daily basis since childhood and which has intensified since the Olympics,” Barbara Butch said at the time on Instagram, posting screenshots of the hate messages she had received. “This way of attacking me is intolerable. And when it comes from within one’s own camp, there is nothing worse,” added the woman who describes herself as “lesbian, fat and Jewish”. Last Saturday, the French artist was the target of a fresh attack by the pro-Palestinian movement. Whilst she was performing at the Cabaret Frappé festival in Grenoble, around a hundred activists armed with flags and whistles began heckling her and throwing objects and bottles onto the stage, forcing her to leave the stage in a hurry. Interestingly, this incident occurred whilst Butch was singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”, the quintessential anthem of peace and universal love. “Barbara Butch was vilified as a Jewish artist,” Philippe Meyer, vice-president of the CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives en France), stated on Cnews.

The action by pro-Pal activists was orchestrated by the local branch of LFI, which had been calling for the concert to be cancelled for weeks. Allan Brunon, head of the Mélenchonist party in Grenoble, was present on Saturday evening alongside the troublemakers who caused the concert to be interrupted and subsequently shouted “On a gagné” (“We’ve won”). In addition to supporting the proposed law against new forms of anti-Semitism in France, Butch, according to Mélenchon’s left-wing faction, is guilty of another ‘offence’: that of having accepted an invitation from the French embassy in Tel Aviv in June 2025, as highlighted in the leaflets distributed by LFI in Grenoble, which depict the DJ mixing with bloodstained hands and accuse her of being an ‘artist complicit in genocide’. “Tension has risen in recent weeks due to intimidation, culminating in objects being thrown on Saturday,” lamented the mayor of Grenoble, Laurence Ruffin, before adding: “The limits of what is acceptable in a democracy are being exceeded. This is not the way to do politics.”