“Legacy of Jacques Médecin: The Politics of Extremism in Nice”

Nice still retains the bitter flavor of the extremist ideas of the man who was its mayor for twenty-four years. But this cliché is perhaps a bit too simplistic.

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In Nice, Jacques Médecin always reappears. No matter how hard we try to forget it, to think it’s in the past, the former mayor, who died in exile in Uruguay in 1998, hovers over the city. An eternal legacy, a carnal relationship. In April, it was thanks to Christophe Galtier that a coin was put back into the legendary machine. “We are in the city of Jacques Médecin and our team does not correspond to what people want”would have said the former coach of OGC Nice and now at PSG – remarks (denial) revealed in a mysterious email, leading to the opening of a preliminary investigation for “discrimination on the basis of alleged race or religious affiliation”. The coach allegedly complained of having “as many blacks and Muslims in the team”.

A doctor reigned over the capital of the Côte d’Azur for twenty-four years.