France’s Marine le Pen to stand trial
The charge? “Inciting racial hatred”
It was about nine years ago that I realized how weakly France, and much of Europe, champions the right of freedom of speech as compared to the United States. The context of that learning was a French libel trial, but I’m also aware of Europe’s hate speech laws, which I deplore.
So it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that this sort of thing can happen—and is happening—in France today:
Marine Le Pen, head of France’s far-right National Front party, will face trial in October on a charge of inciting racial hatred for having compared Muslim street prayers to the occupation of France by Nazi troops during World War II, Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday.
The charge, which relates to comments that Le Pen made to a group of party activists in eastern France 2010, creates an unfortunate distraction for the far-right leader as she seeks election in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region in December.
“It’s an occupation of swathes of our territory, of neighborhoods in which religious law is applied,” she said at the time. “Indeed there are no tanks, no soldiers, but there is an occupation just the same, and it weighs on the inhabitants.”…
“It is scandalous that a politician should be sued for expressing their opinions,” Le Pen told Le Monde newspaper, reacting to the ruling. “I will go before the court in order to say so.”
The trial is due to take place in the middle of a hotly-contested election campaign.
It seems that it is now considered a form of secular blasphemy (not an oxymoron) to state the truth about the conflict between many of the Muslim inhabitants of the nations of Europe and the non-Muslim majorities in those nations. And it is especially chilling to time a trial such as this, with a charge that amounts to the criminalization of “mere speech,” so that it is poised to impact a major election.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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And in England, an MP can be whisked off to the chokey for the crime of reading a Churchill speech aloud in public.
Yay Europe! So civilized. We’ll see the same thing here soon though, so I guess we shouldn’t laugh.
As far as I am aware, the United States is the only country on earth with a 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech.
Geert Wilders (head of PVV Party for Freedom in the Netherlands) has mentioned this many, many times and wants European countries to adopt one.
He, too, has been prosecuted and is being prosecuted, for remarks about Moroccans and muslims.
Canada has one, but its Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t have quite the same force as the American Constitution, so the effects are not identical.
Canada has one exactly like Europe has one: i.e. not a guaranteed right, but rather a statement of principle that is in each case to be balanced against other statements of princple. In effect, it only “protects” uncontroversial speech, which needs no protection in the first place. As far as I know the USA is the only place where the freedom of speech is a right. Laws that are targeted against speech are forbidden no matter how compelling the government interest in suppressing the speech in question.
(In the USA compelling government interest only comes into the equation if the law in question does not target speech, but merely restricts it as unavoidable collateral damage in the course of doing something else entirely. In such cases, if there is no way for the government to achieve its non-censorship-related goal without censoring the speech, and the goal is important enough, then it may do so. But if there’s some way to achieve the goal while leaving speech free, or if a court finds that censorship is the real goal, and the purported goal is merely a ruse, then the law will be struck down.)
“In the USA compelling government interest only comes into the equation if the law in question does not target speech, but merely restricts it as unavoidable collateral damage in the course of doing something else entirely.”
Like, for example, yelling “stage play!” in a crowded fire station?
So, kind of like The Code of the Pirate Brethren.
More a guide than a law…
No, I don’t think we will. Refer to the 2nd Amendment.
Send home the band, lower the flags, burn the ships at mooring.
In most of Eurabia now you can get thrown in jail for repeating what a Muslim hate preacher said in a mosque. And for quoting the Quran and other of Islam’s most sacred texts.
For instance, about four years ago Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted by an Austrian court of hate speech for pointing out Muhammad liked little girls. And I an cite the Hadith that say he did; that he married his favorite wife Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine.
Since Muhammad is the supreme moral example and Allah commands Muslims to imitate him (you don’t see Chrisians wearing first century garb and growing their beards and hair like Jesus, but that’s how far devout Muslims will go to follow Muhammad’s example), this is why forced child marriage is so popular across the Islamic world.
So on the one hand Muslim clerics will accuse authorities in Muslim countries (soon to include Eurabia) of insulting Islam and Muhammad by not allowing men to marry children. But on the other Eurabian authorities will convict people of insulting Islam and the Prophet (technically “denigrating religious beliefs” but there is only one religion in Europe you can’t “insult”) if non-Muslims point out pedophilia is an Islamic practice.
In effect, European authorities are enforcing Islamic “blasphemy” sanctions under cover of protecting people from “hate.”
A grotesque irony is that the coddling of Islam is often justified with reference to the horrible history of genocidal action against Jews. So: “Because our parents and grandparents did terrible things to Jews, we must be all means import more people who harbor a theological or congenital hatred of Jews (and don’t like us much more), and then make it absolutely forbidden to criticize their ideology.”
Because that makes so much sense.
The Muslims are invading Europe precisely because it’s rich, but also weak, unconfident, and wracked with guilt.
Everything we have in the west is a result of a culture, and that culture is based upon the principles of Western civilization. Yet these invaders are being let in by leaders who are embarrassed by their own countries and Western civilization.
One of the tenets of Western civilization is freedom of speech. It is the principle of freedom of speech that has led (not all by itself) to our political and consequently our economic and technical advancements that these invaders find so desirable.
Yet no one can defend it. So it’s a pipe dream to imagine that in Germany, for instance, Muslims will assimilate and become good Germans, working in factories building German cars and oh by the way paying high taxes to support elderly German pensioners. Why would they assimilate when they and the European political class agree there is nothing good about Western culture. Muslims, on the other hand, learn that Islam (the complete religious and political ideology) is superior to all others.
I recall hearing about the Turkish gastarbeiter being a thorny cultural problem in Germany many years ago. They were seen as part oppressed victim, part nuisance.
If the German authorities today really believe they can do better at “integrating” far larger numbers of Muslims from cultures that are even more foreign, they are certainly deflating stereotypes about Germans being smart.
But Frau Merkel is confident that the children will learn German in school, so it’s all good. And Anjem Choudary speaks English. QED.
Western Civilization is no longer taught in US high schools or colleges. 99% of the population doesn’t know what it is.
In case there are any here who don’t, it’s the mixture of the Greek philosophical tradition with the Biblical tradition. It’s probably illegal to say that in Europe.
Just as Hitler used the mechanisms of the Democratic process to achieve power and impose total dictatorship in Germany, the Muslims are using every tool of the Democracies legal systems to impose their dictatorship on the West.
“When we are few among you and weak, we ask for freedom and tolerance, because that is your way.
When you are weak and few amongst us, we extend no freedom nor tolerance, because that is our way.”
Only a few Euros have figured out that the speech you hate is the speech you need to protect.
The best comment I read this week was the observation that among the unreligious and the anti-religious there is a belief that all religions are equivalent.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I don’t think that view is confined to the unreligious and the antireligious. Many Christians (especially clergy, reflecting Divinity School fashion) seem to believe that Muslims deep down have the same spiritual impulses as devout Christians, and that only the external forms differ. And Christian theology does encourage sincere outreach in a way that Islam does not.
Carly Fiorina said that any religion is good in a leader because “religion teaches humility.” She is still profoundly clueless about Islam, though she’ll probably be glad to tell you how many Muslims she has met and dealt with.
You can hardly call those people Christians. I am reminded of the Episcopalian priest Seattle who after 20 or so years as a priest became a Muslim. But she also insisted on remaining a priest.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/i-am-both-muslim-and-christian/
Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive at the most fundamental level. If you’re going to be a Christian you have to believe in the divinity of Christ. If you don’t then you are simply not a Christian. On the other hand, Islam teaches that the Christian belief that Christ is God is the ultimate act of figh or blasphemy, assigning partners to Allah. And that Jesus himself is going to return as a jihadi and lead an army against Christians and throw them into hellfire for committing figh.
It’s impossible to reconcile the two. Yet this Episcopalian, who was the director of faith formation at her church, saw no conflict. But then a lot of nominally Christian denominations no longer believe in or teach any of that Jesus stuff, so they’ll believe anything now.
It took her bishop six months to defrock her. I don’t see why it would have taken six minutes but then I’m not Episcopalian.
I’m amused when people try to make the case that all religions teach basically the same thing. They don’t; they teach wildly different things. It is generally the irreligious or non-religious that fall for that. Bernie Sanders thinks “all the world’s great religions” teach the golden rule. Yeah, good luck finding the golden rule in Islam.
And Islam doesn’t teach humility; not toward non-Muslims. According to the Quran chapter 98 verse six the people of the book (Christians and Jews) who reject Islam, “Those are the worst of creatures.” But according to chapter 3 verse 110 of the Quran, when talking about the Muslims, “You are the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind.” So disbelievers are lower than creatures like pigs or dogs, why Muslims are the best people on Earth.
Like I said, Islam doesn’t teach Muslims to be humble. Not toward non-Muslims.
I meant to spell the word for blasphemy as fiqh.
I am fond of saying that “all of man’s gods are man made.” That phrase is unique, at least when doing a search.
Our man made gods can and will be as varied as our art and literature.
Atheist Eric Allen Bell sees Islam as a threat and not Christianity. He used to think all religions were the same until he went to do a documentary on Islamophobia and stopping a Mosque. There are many atheist that see Isl;am as the ONLY real threat from religion. Some used to be Muslims.
https://www.facebook.com/EricAllenBell?fref=ts
https://twitter.com/Ayaan
No, not all religions are equal, just as not all people are equal. But it is a fundamental principle of liberal democracy that the government and the law must treat all people and all religions as if they were equal. Just as the law may not take into account the fact that people of one race are more likely than people of another to commit violent crimes, it may not take into account the fact that followers of one religion are more likely than followers of another to commit violent crimes.
Coming soon to a city near you.
That scribbling sound you hear is Attorney General Loretta Lynch taking notes to pass to John Roberts for inclusion in the next Supreme Court decree.
While she languishes in a French jail cell, she will start writing a book. The working title is “Ma Bataille”…
You need to ask only one question going forward: “What would Mohammad do?”
No joke, free speech is available if you repeat the leftist mantra PERIOD. Newspapers work with hackers to dox bloggers here in Sweden. It is scary because depending on the topic you can be singled out for repercussions which can range from online harassment, street confrontations, damage to your home, physical assault and in some cases worse. They don’t need brownshirts here because everyone is so afraid not to tow the party line and work to insult and ostracize nonconformists. People have lost their jobs when it has been discovered that they are members of the Sweden Democrats(SD) which is one of the largest political parties in terms of support(few register because they are afraid, I’m not registered for the same). Hotels will not rent out halls for meetings for SD, when they do they are harassed on television and in the newspapers until they cancel the bookings. The kicker is that the Sweden Democrats are really no more to the right than the RINOs in DC.
The DEBATE program on TV here this week in Sweden was highlighting the fact that immigrants are occupying private homes, property and public lands. Shanty towns are popping up all over the place. Frustrations are getting high, a former police chief has stated that citizens are going to take the law into their own lands because there is no clear legal path for a property owner or a town for that matter to evict squatters which in some case number in the hundreds right now from privately and publicly own property. It is getting bad here.
Some of this vid has English but if you watch you can get the gist.
Uppdrag granskning – EU-migranterna – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2070&v=Qpq0Ee7o-XM
Don’t forget this little gem…
“Obamacare would not have passed if Senator Ted Stevens had been re-elected in 2008. But two Alaska federal prosecutors, assistant U.S. attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, charged him with accepting tens of thousands of dollars of illegal contributions, and obtained a felony conviction on October 27, 2008, just days before the election. The only problem: they had illegally withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, and the conviction was overturned. But the damage had been done, and the longest-serving Republican in the Senate at the time had neen turned out of office, replaced by Democrat Mark Begich, who provided the crucial 60th vote to pass Obamacare.” Thomas Lifson
Concerns also have been expressed about the timing of the Stevens case, with the indictment coming just months before Stevens was up for reelection in his home state. The jury verdict against Stevens came eight days before Election Day. Subsequently, he lost to Democrat Mark Begich in an extraordinarily close contest, the effects of which benefit the Democrats. There are 60 members in the Senate’s Democratic Caucus, giving the party a firewall against bill-derailing filibusters. Had Stevens been able to keep his seat, Democrats would have 59 members, one short of the key 60-member vote.
DiGenova says that the “consequences of what the prosecutors did are remarkable” and the harm incalculable. “Had things been different, Stevens would have been elected. Prosecutors actually determined the outcome of the balance of power in the U.S. Senate by their misconduct. They affected politics in the United States,” he adds.
On April 7, 2009, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia unleashed his fury before a packed courtroom. For 14 minutes, he scolded. He chastised. He fumed. “In nearly 25 years on the bench,” he said, “I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.”