Failed French Politician’s Racist Tweet Targets Maghrebi Doctors, Sparks Outrage

Guillaume Bensoussan, an unsuccessful candidate in the legislative elections under the Reconquête banner, unfortunately drew attention to himself on Friday, April 18, 2025, by posting a photo of a list of doctors’ names from Creil with Maghrebi-sounding names. He accompanied it with a message: "The Great Replacement is a racist and far-right conspiracy theory, episode XXXVIII". This publication, which went viral in less than four days - viewed nearly 16 million times, liked by 14,000 people and reshared 7,000 times on the social network - shocked several elected officials and doctors in Oise. Haissam Chaker, one of the targeted general practitioners, says he is "shocked because we didn’t expect such a thing at all. All these doctors here are French doctors, graduated from the French state, who have worked in universities, in French hospitals," reports franceinfo.

In the practitioner’s eyes, this post is synonymous with a "racist, defamatory and discriminatory" political campaign against a group of doctors who have been practicing in Oise for 35 years. Last year, 150,000 patients were treated thanks to Urgence Médecins Oise. Nearly 50,000 telephone consultations were also carried out to advise patients who could not travel. The structure was able to help or treat more than 200,000 people. "Whether the doctors come from Mars or Jupiter, it’s not my problem. The essential thing is that they are approved by the instances of the Medical Council which are our guarantor," says Massinissa Berghout, also a practitioner within the structure, emphasizing that he and his colleagues are above all doctors and are only there to "treat people", and not to do politics.

Angry, the mayor of Creil, Sophie Dhoury-Lehner says she does not understand "this tendency to want to attack individuals based on their name and potential origin". The municipality supports the doctors "in the direction they wish," she assures, noting that racism is not an opinion, but a crime. "This city is full of talents, the proof is, we have doctors and Creil is the city of living together," describes the mayor. And she adds: "these remarks, which tend to instrumentalize Creil, are made by people who don’t know Creil, who don’t want to know Creil".

Despite the controversy, Guillaume Bensoussan does not back down. According to his explanations, the theory of the "great replacement" would not be "racist", nor "conspiratorial", but indeed "real". The unsuccessful candidate explains that he found the photo he published on the social network X: "I was surprised that 100% of the surnames on this image were Maghrebi-sounding". However, he assures that he has nothing against these doctors who would have "all [his] sympathy". Without failing to also point out "a numerus clausus that is delirious due to its very small size for 20 or 30 years" which pushes to "look for foreign doctors" to compensate for medical deserts.

According to Haissam Chaker, the doctors of Urgence Médecins Oise do not intend to stop at denunciations. They are waiting for feedback from their referents at the Medical Council to see "what the advice is and what the course of action should be. So depending on their advice, we’ll see how things evolve," he adds. Filing a complaint is being considered.