Five years ago, I wrote a column criticizing Democratic and Republican members of Congress who joined the media in gushing over an address from French President Emmanuel Macron as he called for European style censorship. Free speech has been in a virtual free fall in France for decades and Macron is a major voice in that movement. This week, the French added another outrage to Macron’s legacy by promising to prosecute three citizens who protested the President by flipping him off at an event. The use of “Le Doigt” could now land them in “La Prison.”
The three will be prosecuted under France’s abusive criminal code that allows for the arrest of those who engage in speech that “affect the personal dignity or the respect owed to a public official.” It is a breathtaking denial of political speech and invites selective prosecution.
If convicted, they could face a fine of 15,000 euros and potentially up to one year in prison, according to La Chaîne Info.
Macron has hit a record low in polling, but his government will now enforce respect for him through threats of incarceration.
France has been a leader in the rollback on free speech in the West with ever widening laws curtailing free speech. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.
In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French mother was prosecuted because her son went to school with a shirt reading “I am a bomb.”
A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”
Yet, our leaders (and many in the media) were ecstatic when Macron came to the Congress and called for a joint war against “fake news,” declaring, “Democracy is about true choices and rational decisions. The corruption of information is an attempt to corrode the very spirit of our democracies.”
Nothing says Democracy like jailing those who do not show you respect.
The anti-free speech wave has now reached our own shores and many like Hillary Clinton have even called on Europeans to censor Americans on social media if Twitter or other companies fail to do so.
Many have argued (falsely) that hate speech is not protected under our Constitution, including members of Congress. In France, the middle finger is not free speech when directed at a public official. Likewise, speech considered harmful or disrespectful to particular groups is barred.
It is all about instilling good virtue but punishing the wicked. After all, as Maximilien Robespierre taught the French, “Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue.”
great post
Dylan Mulvaneu said all this mean spirited talk has been very hurtful. It was just like a kick in the balls.
LOL:)
🙂 🙂 🙂
He’s OK with it as long as it improves his bottom line.
Good one, S. Meyer! 🙂
Le doigt aux droits civiques
Free speech, how about no speech. DNC announces no debates in primaries in 2024. Got to protect the big guy.
Jonathan: BREAKING NEWS! Tucker Carlson just got canned. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. This comes less than a week after Rupert Murdock had to fork out $787.5 million to settle the Dominion defamation lawsuit. Any connection? You betcha. Carlson is the sacrificial lamb. Carlson was the leader of the Fox pack spreading lies about the 2020 election and falsely claiming Dominion’s voting machines were rigged. So now Murdock can blame someone else. Not that Carlson didn’t get what he deserved. Every night he peddled racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia–all in his pursuit of white nationalism. Good riddance!
Judging from some of the comments on your blog the slavish followers of Carlson are mad as hell that Murdock would do such a thing. Are they going to leave Fox? Unlikely. Where else could they get their daily diet of right-wing conspiracy theories?
“Every night he peddled racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia”
Give us an example of each of these being “peddled” by Tucker.
Then go back to your regularly scheduled brainwashing over there on MSNBC.
Also, just fyi, the machines WERE rigged, the election WAS stolen, Biden IS illegitmate.
Now get back to your MSNBC brainwashing.
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Tweet hypothesizing about why Tucker Carlson got canned by Garbage Fox today strikes me as being the most-reasonable explanation I’ve read so far:
“Fox fires @TuckerCarlson five days after he crosses the red line by acknowledging that the TV networks pushed a deadly and ineffective vaccine to please their Pharma advertisers. Carlson’s breathtakingly courageous April 19 monologue broke TV’s two biggest rules: Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless. For many years, Tucker has had the nation’s biggest audience averaging 3.5 million — 10 times the size of CNN. Fox just demonstrated the terrifying power of Big Pharma”
.https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1650550341027475479?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1650550341027475479%7Ctwgr%5Ef6c0bd22e69c8e815cf23f5b1f58ebca96310f17%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2023%2F04%2Frobert-f-kennedy-jr-blasts-fox-news-for-ousting-tucker-carlson-and-presents-an-interesting-theory-on-why-it-happened%2F
If correct, then the firing had little or nothing to do with the recent Dominion complaint and settlement — or at most, it was Fox killing two birds with one stone — sacrificing Carlson to please the fake election gods AND fake “vaccine” gods.
At any rate, I can’t wait for Carlson to come roaring back when the time is right — hopefully sooner than later — to put the final nail in the Fake Fox coffin by providing competition that makes anything Garbage Fox has to offer look like the garbage-media garbage that it is.
Sounds a little more like killing one bird with two stones – but that aside, great comment, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Mr. Kennedy has nailed it.
That’s great!