Clashes have commenced on Twitter (“X”) between anti-racist camps which defend foreigners and migrants (Gadem) and the Moorish Movement (MM) following GADEM’s feature series on its platform entitled, “Is the Anti-racist Support and Defense Group for Foreigners and Migrants a Politicized Organization?” which MM described as “a danger for Morocco in the heart of Rabat.”
The MM criticized the association’s media activities as more a piece of misogynistic propaganda than of the defense of migrants’ rights, citing the podcast in which Gadem paid a comedian to mock Moroccan women who refuse to marry sub-Saharan men.
The movement reported that the association calls for illegal immigration to be decriminalized in Morocco and for the procedures for regularizing illegal immigrants and granting them residence permits to be simplified.
Gadem’s digital offensives are overseen by far-left sociologist Mehdi Alioua–often in consultation with the Collective of sub-Saharan communities in Morocco and the Federation of Sub-Saharan Associations in Morocco (Fasam)–and without consulting local associations or regard to popular opinion of the various components of civil society.
Another crucial aspect of the controversy is that Gadem is ignoring the official, data-driven reports compiled by the National Council for Human Rights (CNDH) at the expense of opinions emanating from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
Gadem opted to oppose the newly implemented migration policy and the unlikely initiative to regularize undocumented migrants–initiated in Morocco less than a decade ago–by carrying out a social media raid on the committees charged with reviewing the files. These committees included the Ministry of the Interior, the DGST (Territory Surveillance), and the DGED (Intelligence Agency).
Gadem has been challenging Morocco’s “discriminatory” attitude towards migrants from sub-Saharan Africa since that point, albeit with no citation of evidence to support its assertions that these migrants are victims of “violence and human rights violations.”
The group has accused Moroccan authorities of forcefully relocating migrants on the “basis of their skin color” in an attempt to “keep them as far away as possible from the border areas,” a claim that is wholly false.
Interestingly, Gadem maintains a sketchy-at-best financial picture despite its purported niche as “an association under Moroccan law” and therefore subject to the 1958 dahir “relating to the right of association.” According to the Moorish account, a bit of investigation “shows that GADEM is funded by several foreign organizations.” The “Open Society” is perhaps the most intriguing.
This ultra-liberal entity was founded by billionaire George Soros to further the cosmopolitanism he cherished. It funds three channels: NGOs, citizens’ movements, and the media. Many of his detractors actually prefer the term “globalism” over cosmopolitanism, with the former holding a more pejorative connotation.
The Twitter account continues, “Open Society destabilizes multiple regions of the world for its own interests, instrumentalizing citizens’ movements to reroute them toward its core concept of liberal democracy.”
Numerous citizen movements, including BLM in the U.S., the Arab Spring, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and various opposition movements in Africa, may all be traced back to the impact of Open Society.
MM tweeted that an NGO seeking funding from Open Society will only be accepted if it aligns with its ideological goals, which begets the question, “What financial interests do the EU (which follows GADEM) and Open Society have in supporting Gadem’s projects?”
The Moorish movement is a Moroccan extremist nationalist movement that campaigns mainly on social networks. It calls for “reviving Morocco’s glorious past” and opposing the “enemies of the nation.” It also promotes the supremacy of a “Moorish ethnic group.”