It’s been a brutal month in France but one would barely know it from the reaction of much of the political and media class. Their attention has been focused on a rapper called Médine, who was invited at the start of August to appear at the Green party’s summer conference, which opened in the Channel port city of Le Havre on Thursday.

In the time between being invited and the conference, the 40-year-old rapper of Algerian descent became embroiled in a social media brouhaha after he described the Jewish writer Rachel Khan as a ‘ResKHANpée,’; this is a crass play on words, ‘rescapée’ (survivor) being the word for someone who survived the Holocaust. Khan’s grandparents came through the holocaust.

Extreme violence has become so commonplace in France it is barely mentioned in much of the media

Médine subsequently apologised for his ‘clumsiness’ but insisted that his tweet was not anti-Semitic. He commented: ‘I’m part of those who put the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism on the same level.’

The Greens’ national secretary, Marine Tondelier, refused to withdraw Médine’s invitation, despite an outcry in some quarters. She insisted that the rapper’s presence in Le Havre would be an opportunity to ‘talk about anti-Semitism’.

Not everyone in the party agreed, however, and several prominent Green figures have boycotted the conference, among them the mayors of Bordeaux and Strasbourg. Edouard Philippe, Prime Minister of France between 2017 and 2020 and now the mayor of Le Havre – and also expected to run in the 2027 presidential election – also declined an invitation to attend on account of the rapper’s participation.

In the same week that journalists and politicians were wringing their hands about a stupid tweet from a rapper, two youngsters were shot dead in the Mediterranean city of Nimes. The first was a ten-year-old, caught in the crossfire of a turf war between drugs cartels, and the second was an 18-year-old, reportedly a dealer shot dead by a rival. A resident who heard the gunfire that killed the teenager told reporters: ‘It’s shocking, we’re kids. I’m 22, I’m a kid. We’re going through something crazy’.

The witness knew the victim, who had just finished his equivalent of A-Levels and had plans to continue his studies. It’s alleged the 18-year-old was dealing drugs to pay for his education, a line of work that can pay as much as €1,000 (£857) a week. ‘He wanted a bit of pocket money, he tried to look for a job and there weren’t any,’ explained the witness. ‘When you don’t have a driving licence and you look like an Arab, you can’t get a job,’ he said.

Nimes is 80 miles up the coast from Marseille, the centre of France’s bloody drugs war. Seven people have been shot dead in the city this month alone, bringing the total for such killings this year to nearly 40. A fortnight tomorrow, England play Argentina in Marseille at the rugby world cup, and the authorities must be praying that a supporter is not caught in a crossfire should another shootout erupt.

President Emmanuel Macron spent two days in Marseille in June as part of an initiative to bring hope and restore order to the city, but his visit clearly has not had the desired effect. It is symptomatic of a leader who presides over a country that is spiralling out of control and where extreme violence has become so commonplace it is barely mentioned in much of the media.

At the end of July, for example, a 46-year-old man was beaten to death during the annual festival of Bayonne when he asked a group of youths to stop urinating in the street. No one has been charged with the crime. A fortnight later a woman was so savagely raped in her own home in Cherbourg that the medical staff who treated the 29-year-old were reduced to tears by the extent of her injuries. An 18-year-old with a long history of unpunished violence is in custody.

Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, will be in Nimes today an attempt to reassure locals that republican law still prevails. It was the same message Macron gave to the people of Marseille two months ago, so the words are likely to be met with a degree of scepticism, even if a unit of the elite CRS, the French riot police, have been deployed in Nimes.

Darmanin appears to believe that the situation is now so grave in France that the likely result will be the victory of Marine Le Pen in the 2027 presidential election, a scenario he described in a newspaper interview this week as ‘fairly likely’. Darmanin has aspirations for the top job in France but he is tainted by association with an administration that has allowed violent crime to soar unchallenged.

Tackling this phenomenon of violent crime should be the priority of France’s political class, not grandstanding about the doltish tweet of a rapper.