What is now criminal “hate-speech” in France

As reported by VFR’s friend Tiberge of Galliawatch, who is now a contributor at the Brussels Journal, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front has been convicted of racism and fined 10,000 euros for remarks he made about Muslims four years ago. The story comes from La Croix:

Jean-Marie Le Pen was fined 10,000 euros on Wednesday by the Paris appeals court for provocation to discrimination, hatred and racial violence, as a result of his remarks about Muslims printed in April 2004 edition of the extreme right-wing journal Rivarol. The 11th chamber of the court of appeals also sentenced the president of the Front National to 5,000 euros in damages to be paid to the plaintiff, the Human Rights League….

On April 2, 2004, the criminal court of Paris had condemned Jean-Marie Le Pen for an interview he gave to Le Monde on April 19, 2003, in which he declared: “The day when we have in France not 5 million but 25 million Muslims they will be our masters.” “The French people will hug the walls, they will walk on the sidewalks with their eyes lowered. And if they don’t, they will be stopped: ‘Why are you looking at me like that, are you looking for a fight?’ And you will have to run, or else you’ll be beaten,” he added.

A month later Le Pen was back on the offensive in an interview in Rivarol: “Furthermore whenever I said that with 25 million Muslims in France the French people will hug the walls, people in the audience would say to me, and rightly so: ‘But Mr. Le Pen, that is already the case now.’”

It was for these new remarks that he was convicted on Wednesday.

“The defendant pits the French against the Muslims … and attempts to arouse … a feeling of rejection and hostility towards the Muslim community,” the court decided Wednesday. “His words instill in the mind of the public the belief that the security of the French depends on rejecting Muslims and that fear and apprehension, linked to their growing presence in France, will cease if their numbers decrease and if they disappear,” the court added.

Tiberge continues:

Le Pen’s remarks make it all the more surprising that he adopted a phony and almost embarrassingly inept pro-immigrant stance for the presidential election last May, in which he was trounced.

LA adds:

Of all the amazing things today, the anti-“hate speech” laws are the most amazing. That a statement like this is called hate speech and criminalized, which means that no frank discussion of the impact of Islam on Europe is allowed, and that there are no mass popular movements in European countries to repeal these dictatorial laws, shows that Europe, as it now is, is close to death. A main effort of European traditionalist and conservative parties must be to repeal these laws.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 13, 2008 02:43 PM | Send