This week, the world lost one of the most iconic actresses in history: Brigitte Bardot. It was a terribly sad moment for many moviegoers. However, for the free speech community, the death also brought one of the most bitter and hypocritical moments as French President Emmanuel Macron heralded Bardot as someone who “embodied a life of freedom.” As discussed repeatedly on this blog, Bardot was repeatedly prosecuted by the French government for exercising her free speech.
Bardot died at the age of 91 after spending a lifetime fighting for animal and free speech rights. That latter struggle led her repeatedly into conflict with the French government, which has long embraced wide-ranging censorship of its citizens. Macron himself is a distinctly anti-free-speech figure, despite the warm reception he received in past years from American politicians and the media.
Most recently, Macron expressed outrage at the sanctions imposed on notorious censors, including his anti-free-speech ally Thierry Breton.
Bardot rocketed to fame in 1956 with And God Created Woman, leading to a slew of other movies that highlighted her transcendent beauty. She then retired at a relatively young age and fought for animal rights. She was also a critic of what she saw as threats to the French culture from immigration, Islamic influences, and homosexuality. Many of us disagreed with some of those views, but she was exercising core rights of political speech.
Bardot once said, “I am greatly misunderstood by politically correct idiots. Politics disgusts me.”
Macron’s praise for Bardot’s “life of freedom” is reminiscent of the reaction of French officials to the massacre of editors at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine. After hounding the victims for years with criminal investigations, the French government organized a march for free speech. As predicted, it then used the killing by Islamic extremists to further crack down on free speech.
Since then, France has been a leader in the rollback of 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 teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”
This is a nation that still echoes the cry of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”). However, in today’s France, “liberté” is no longer valued. Individual rights of religion and speech are routinely sacrificed in the name of “equity” and “fraternity.”
In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss how free speech is in a virtual free fall in Europe. As we face our own growing anti-free speech movement, citizens need to take a long look at countries like France to see what awaits us down this path. Europe went down this slippery slope of censorship decades ago, and the desire to silence others has now become an insatiable appetite.
Marcon has supported figures like Breton in globalizing the reach of the infamous Digital Services Act (DSA) to curtail speech, including Americans and American companies. Bardot was the target of such laws, and Macron’s government consistently and vigorously denied her effort to live a “life of freedom” in France.
Whether you were supportive or appalled by Bardot’s political views, she was unyielding in her demand to speak freely. She was the ultimate contrarian, even saying once “I have a slight despising for humanity in general.”
Emmanuel Macron has now made me understand why Bardot preferred the company of her animals.
She was the ultimate contrarian, even saying once “I have a slight despising for humanity in general.”
A Jesuit English poet of some renown would have disagreed. Hopefully Bardot found joy in her latter years.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44399/pied-beauty
Between Trump suing, and media mergers being scrutinized by the administration, we’re quickly catching up with France.
don’t see the connection here. But you do you.
The Trump admin stopped public funding to media. US law prohibits restricting media (although both Obama and Biden disregarded that). Your attempt to create a straw man falls very flat.
Agree with other commenter. That’s a bizarre comment with no basis in reality.
https://www.themorningchronicle.net/
Your comment makes no sense. A person who commences a civil lawsuit alleging defamation is not the same as the government shutting down free speech. The tort system in the United States is designed to allow tort victims to be compensated by people who injured them. FWIW, it’s much easier to get compensated for defamation in England than in the US.
Second, the government scrutinizes mergers based on antitrust laws. Those laws are designed to promote competition by making sure one or a few companies cannot completely dominate a field and suppress competition. They promote economic freedom, they don’t hinder it.
Perhaps you are a false-flag commenter, just trying to make Trump-haters look silly or stupid (?)
ON MACRON. In the toolkit of every politician to extol the virtues of all manor of rights and freedoms, yet deny them all when power is achieved. The clever ones find a balance. The evil ones use a gun. The mediocre ones, like Macron, try to fool all the people all the time. (Homage to Lincoln)
So says the anon commenter who never had a job in the French government. Or any federal government. Really stupid comment.
President Trump, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel can you please let the American people know when the political criminals that have squandered our National wealth, corrupted our judicial system, weaponized our law enforcement agencies and fraudulently stole an election in a seditious and treasonous conspiracy in an attempted coup to transform OUR Nation into something of their own ideology. Sometimes you may have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
When?!
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
– Barack Obama
____________________
“We will stop him.”
– Peter Strzok to FBI paramour Lisa Page
_____________________________________________
“[Obama] wants to know everything we’re doing.”
– Lisa Page to FBI paramour Peter Strzok
_____________________________________________
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40.”
– Peter Strzok to FBI parmour Lisa Page
____________________________________________
“People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this [Trump] server.”
– Bill Priestap
_________________
“I had a discussion with the case team and we believe there to be predication to include former President of the United States Donald J. Trump as a predicated subject.”
– Timothy Thibault to John Crabb, U.S. Attorney’s Office, D.C.
___________________________________________________________________
The Obama Coup D’etat in America is the most egregious abuse of power and the most prodigious crime in American political history. The co-conspirators are:
Kevin Clinesmith, Bill Taylor, Eric Ciaramella, Rosenstein, Mueller/Team, Andrew Weissmann,
James Comey, Christopher Wray, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Laycock, Kadzic, Sally Yates,
James Baker, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Priestap, Kortan, Campbell, Sir Richard Dearlove,
Christopher Steele, Simpson, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, Stefan “The Walrus” Halper,
Azra Turk, Kerry, Hillary, Huma, Mills, Brennan, Gina Haspel, Clapper, Lerner, Farkas, Power,
Lynch, Rice, Jarrett, Holder, Brazile, Sessions (patsy), Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi, Obama,
Joe Biden, James E. Boasberg, Emmet Sullivan, Gen. Milley, George Soros, John McCain,
Marc Elias, Igor Danchenko, Fiona Hill, Charles H. Dolan, Jake Sullivan, Strobe Talbot,
Cody Shear, Victoria Nuland, Ray “Red Hat” Epps, Don Berlin, Kathy Ruemmler, Rodney Joffe,
Paul Vixie, L. Jean Camp, Andrew Whitney, Lisa O. Monaco, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg,
Matthew Colangelo, Merrick Garland, Juan Merchan, Timothy Thibault et al.
A good start!
Another garbage comment.