The New Leviathan Blog

Ethnicity: right-thinking limitations on the right of expression

French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was found guilty Wednesday by the Paris Court of Appeal of provoking discrimination, hatred or racial violence for comments made in April 2004 about Muslims in France. At first instance, he had escaped any conviction, the Paris criminal court having “cancelled the proceedings” against him. On Wednesday, the 11th chamber of the Court of Appeal sentenced the president of the National Front to pay a fine of 10,000 euros and to pay 5,000 euros in damages to the Human Rights League, civil party. On April 2, 2004, the Paris Criminal Court convicted Jean-Marie Le Pen for an interview with the daily Le Monde, on April 19, 2003, in which he declared: “The day we will have in France, no longer 5 million but 25 million Muslims, they are the ones who will be in charge.” “And the French will level the walls, go down the sidewalks and lower their eyes. When they don’t do it, we say to them ‘what are you looking at me like that, are you looking for a fight?’

And you just have to run, otherwise you’ll get hard,” he added. A month later, Mr. Le Pen returned to the charge in an interview with the far-right newspaper Rivarol: “D’ as much as when I say that with 25 million Muslims among us, the French will raze the walls, people in the room said to me, not without reason: “But Mr. Le Pen, that is already the case now”. It is for these new comments that he was sentenced on Wednesday. “The defendant pits the French against Muslims (…) and tends to arouse (…) a feeling of rejection and hostility towards the Muslim community,” the court considered on Wednesday. “His remarks instill in the mind of the public the conviction that the security of the French requires the rejection of Muslims and that the concern and fear, linked to their growing presence in France, will cease if their number decreases and if they disappear “, she added. (L’Echo, 03/12/2008)

We will not defend here either this court decision, nor Mr. Le Pen. However, we can only wonder about the function that this type of decision fulfills. This is not a question of justice, but of theater, a theater which, on the one hand, stigmatizes a politician by applying qualifications to him which harm his image, and on the other hand, poses a priori that the situations mentioned are not real. But these comments, after all, are very banal, and reflect situations felt by many people. This theater aims, by making an example, to promote – and this is not new – silence on certain social situations. Should we therefore think that the legislative arsenal put in place in many countries aims to curb the reactions of the native population to the migratory flow? It is highly probable. In any case, it is not by silencing a part of the population that we will eliminate the problem. This amounts to resorting to the mechanism of repression, taking the risk that social pathologies develop as a result, reappearing, here, elsewhere, in another form… A vibrant civil society is one which will regain its full civic rights, including full freedom of speech on all essential subjects.