Kemi Seba

Kemi Seba is a French and Beninese black supremacist and pan-African agitator who has gained notoriety for spreading antisemitic, pro-Kremlin and virulently anti-French conspiracies.  A key player in the fomented backlash against France and French and Western interests in the Sahel region and across West Africa, he was designated by the US State Department in November 2022 as “a prominent purveyor of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda”. Jeune Afrique magazine subsequently revealed that in 2018 and 2019 Seba received more than $440,000 from the pro-Kremlin mercenary Wagner Group, since rebranded as the Africa Corps. At the time the mercenary organization was controlled by the Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash in Russia in August 2023.

“Seba claims to support the principle of African problems – African solutions, as does the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs when promoting  Russia’s image writ large in Africa,” the State Department said. “However, Russia’s deployment of certain Kremlin-friendly African voices to push its disinformation masks the Kremlin’s own neo-colonialist agenda. During the October 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, a conference with close affiliations to Prigozhin-linked, U.S.-sanctioned entities and individuals, Seba proclaimed a solid partnership with Russia, which he claims is helping African countries steer away from imperialist powers and reclaim their sovereignty and self-determination.”

BLACK SUPREMACISM

Born in Strasbourg in 1981, Seba’s real name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi.  In 2004 he founded the black supremacist Tribu Ka party, but the group was dissolved in 2006 for incitement to violence and antisemitism. Undeterred, in 2007 Séba set up Generation Kemi Séba, followed by the Movement of the Damned of Imperialism in 2008. In 2010 he took the lead of the French branch of the New Black Panther Party, before creating the organization Pan-African Emergencies in 2016.

A figure in the so-called "Dissidence" movement, Seba is a close associate of French antisemitic activist Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala. He draws part of his inspiration from the Nation of Islam movement of Louis Farrakhan, for whom he was a newspaper seller in his youth. On several occasions Séba has cited Khalid Abdul Muhammad, one of the most radical figures of Farrakhan’s movement, as one of the thinkers who had the most influence on him.

ANTISEMITISM

At the beginning of 2006, in the midst of the Ilan Halimi affair – when the young Jewish man was kidnapped in Paris and tortured for three weeks before being left for dead by the “gang of barbarians” led by the subsequently convicted Youssouf Fofana – Seba sent an email to several Jewish organizations. As reported by Le Figaro he threatened them in these terms:

"Whether our brother [Youssouf Fofana] is guilty or not, we warn you that if by chance, you felt like touching even a single [hair of his] instead of letting him have a fair trial, we will take careful care of your rabbis' sidelocks."

The Movement of the Damned of Imperialism (MDI) established by Seba claims to be "open to all PEOPLE DESIRING [sic] TO PUT AN END to the hegemony of the imperialists (American-Zionist Axis, ILLUMINATI, and other imperialist occult groups)". Seba has asserted his opposition to miscegenation and advocated a "single ideal: de-Zionization". The negationists Serge Thion and Ginette Skandrani and the conspiracy theory-propagating videographer Salim Laïbi, alias Le Libre Penseur (The Free Thinker”) have also been involved with MDC. Nationalist and antisemitic blogger Boris Le Lay, suspected of being the operator of the neo-Nazi website Démocratie Participative (Participative Democracy) appears on the MDI organizational chart as "responsible for external relations for the European zone".

Although Seba claimed in the past to be a worshiper of the ancient Egyptian god Aton, he converted to Islam after a stay in prison. In April 2009, he was given an 8 month suspended sentence for incitement to racial hatred for stating that international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, or the World Health Organization were “run by Zionists who impose on Africa and its diaspora living conditions so excruciating that the Auschwitz concentration camp may seem like a paradise on earth."

Earlier, he had made public appeals to "kill the Zionists":

In August 2009, Le Monde reported statements made by Seba in an interview for a website, where he declared a preference for Hitler over Bonaparte: "It is a racist vision to say that Hitler was the absolute evil of humanity. [...] At least under Hitler, blacks found work [...], because they were recruited into the armies to fight against the Nazi peril."

BLACK PANTHER MEETS AHMADINEJAD

In May 2010, Seba and his friends gathered in the city of Martin Luther King, Atlanta, as part of an international congress organized at the initiative of the New Black Panther Party.

Since his appearance on the media scene in 2006, Seba has undoubtedly changed strategy. The one who has long called himself the "fara" (guide) also seeks to capture the audience of young people from the French suburbs by surfing on conspiracy theories.

In 2015, Seba was received several times by then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to discuss, he said, "the need to strengthen ties between African resistance and revolutionary resistance in Iran".

His book published in 2016, Obscure Epoch, is prefaced by the conspiracist rapper Mathias Cassel, alias Rockin'Squat.

Since 2016, Kemi Seba has sometimes been portrayed in mainstream media outlets as a mere "anti-imperialist" polemicist, "Franco-Beninese" or "pan-Africanist", without always recognizing his extremist positions and judicial record for incitement to racial hatred.

“RUSSAFRIQUE”

From Senegal, where he settled in 2011, Kemi Seba launched on August 19, 2017, a "continental and diasporic resistance call of African youth against Françafrique" and continued: "Our generation has only one mission; stop chattering, and put an end in the streets to neocolonialism." That same day, he was shown burning a 5,000 CFA franc note. In early September 2017, accused of being a "serious threat to public order," he was expelled to France.

On October 22, 2017 he spoke from Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin, where he now lives, about his organization Pan-African Emergencies, which he chairs. A few weeks later  he met in Moscow with the Russian far-right ideologue Alexandre Douguine. According to Seba, this "exchange with [...] the most important theorist and political advisor in Russia, focused on metaphysics and geopolitics. We shared our views on the fact that neither communism, nor liberalism, nor nationalism can bring salvation to our respective peoples".

Elected by the Africanews channel as African political personality of the year 2017, Seba met the Guadeloupean trade unionist Élie Domota in February 2018, on the sidelines of a cultural festival organized in Guadeloupe. Facebook photos of the meeting, the highlight of Kemi Seba's "anti-imperialist tour", show Domota sporting a broad smile and embracing the anti-CFA activist. Domota also signs one of the prefaces of Seba's book, Free Africa or Death (2018), alongside five other personalities including the French footballer Nicolas Anelka, Alexandre Douguine, and the American actor of Beninese origin Djimon Hounsou.

• In September 2018, Seba was received in Rome by deputies and executives of the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S), including the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Manlio Di Stefano.
• In January 2019, Seba announced his entry into politics and the launch of the Beninese Pan-Africanist Party (PPB).
• On March 16, 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, he denounced a "bacteriological war". Referring to the positions of the Chinese diplomacy spokesman Zhao Lijian, Seba claimed that the coronavirus would have been "conceptualized" [sic] in the United States, then spread in Iran and China: "I ardently hope that people stop being in 'Mamadou in wonderland' thinking that diseases fall from the sky. There are people who want population reduction, that's called Malthusianism".

ANTI-FRENCH DIATRIBES

Interviewed in mid-January 2021 in Mali on the Africable television channel about Operation Barkhane, he said: "Why does the French oligarchy want to stay here at all costs? Because there are a certain number of resources that the French oligarchy needs. When you want to break into a place, it's better that there's a conflict in the house you want to steal from. [...] It's the burglar's strategy, create a diversion and steal in the meantime. [...] As Michel Collon said, there are groups that are claimed to be terrorists who receive weapons from powers that claim to be the world's justifiers", repeating an argument widely disseminated that Islamist terrorists are actually armed by the West.

In a video recorded in early September 2022, as the French army left Mali, he became even more explicit: "the French authorities provide information, intelligence, and even weapons to the terrorists (...) Today, in the behavior of the French authorities, there is a desire to densify, to give as many means as possible to the terrorist forces so that they destabilize Mali so that France can resettle because Mali is an extremely powerful geostrategic place, which France needs to be able to shine and to secure access to resources".

In early November 2021, following his arrest in Burkina Faso and his expulsion to Benin, Kemi Seba announced that he had chosen lawyer Juan Branco to defend him, presenting him as a "French anticapitalist activist and writer" and a "leading figure at the bar" (sic).

ANTI-UKRAINE

In March 2022, Seba granted a nearly two-hour long interview to Éric Morillot. He explained that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, although democratically elected, "is objectively at best a puppet, at worst a willing tool of the neoliberal elite [...], an influence agent of Western imperialism in this region".

Seba is designated by the US State Department, along with the Swiss-Cameroonian Pan-African activist Nathalie Yamb, as one of two key influencers “co-opted…to promote Russia’s interests across the continent, including African voices calling for the removal of French and Western influence across the Sahel while encouraging more Kremlin influence. These influencers allow Kremlin-linked entities to maintain plausible deniability of Russia’s hand in African affairs, while attempting to mold African opinions favorable to the Kremlin’s policy goals.”

In early February 2024, commenting on the knife attack at the Lyon train station in Paris by an individual of Malian nationality, in a speech imbued with references to pan-Africanism, Kemi Seba denounced the "action of an unbalanced person manipulated by French services".

On February 22, 2024, during a visit to French Guiana, he held a conference at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Cayenne. Received by two Guyanese deputies who are members of the Communist group of the National Assembly (GDR-NUPES), he also received the Medal of Honor from the city from the hands of the mayor of Cayenne, Sandra Trochimara (New Force of French Guiana - left-wing diverse).

FRENCH NATIONALITY IN QUESTION

On February 29, 2024, Seba revealed that the Ministry of the Interior had initiated on February 9, 2024, a procedure for stripping him of his French nationality under Article 23-7 of the Civil Code due to "a constant and current resolutely anti-French stance, likely to seriously harm French interests and of a nature to characterize manifest disloyalty to [France]".

Extremely active on social networks, Kemi Seba has more than 1.3 million followers on Facebook and more than 251, 000 on X. With 218,000 subscribers, his YouTube channel has accumulated more than 14 million views since 2016.

(Last updated on 03/13/2024)