As François Hollande has informed us, the French government believes in freedom of speech — and nothing will stand in the way of its protection. Not murder, not terrorism, not — wait. Per the BBC:
Controversial French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala has been detained by police for a Facebook comment appearing to back Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly.
His is one of dozens of cases opened by authorities in a crackdown on condoning or threatening terrorism.
Justice Minister Christiane Taubira said words of hatred and contempt had to be fought with the “utmost vigour”.
Dieudonne already has convictions for inciting anti-Semitism and the courts banned several one-man shows last year.
A judicial source quoted by AFP news agency said he was due to be released on Wednesday evening but would face trial at a later date.
It is downright impossible to simultaneously hold the positions: a) that you believe in freedom of speech, however offensive that speech may be; and b) that you have to fight words of “hatred and contempt” “with the utmost [legal] vigor.” This is why, in order to dodge the charge that they are opposed to free expression, the advocates of government censorship tend to claim that the expression that they wish to prosecute isn’t actually expression at all. “Hate speech isn’t actually speech,” they will say, in the hope that nobody will notice just how utterly disingenuous this claim is. “Hate speech is violence!”
Sadly, Dieudonne is not the only person who has fallen afoul of the authorities since the shooting. The Huffington Post reports that France has
ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and those glorifying terrorism and announced Wednesday it was sending an aircraft carrier to the Mideast to work more closely with the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants.
Authorities said 54 people had been arrested for hate speech and defending terrorism since terror attacks killed 20 people in Paris last week, including three gunmen. The crackdown came as Charlie Hebdo’s defiant new issue sold out before dawn around Paris, with scuffles at kiosks over dwindling copies of the satirical weekly that fronted the Prophet Muhammad anew on its cover.
Dieudonne is an utterly hideous human being, as, I imagine, are most of the others who have been arrested. But that’s not really the point, is it? In a free country, one is allowed to be a hideous human being without being punished for it. By prosecuting those who are offensive, France is not acting like a free country.
More to the point, France is not acting like a fair country. A common complaint among Muslims is that the West will tolerate verbal criticism of Islam but that it will not permit any barbs to be cast at the Jews. As a rule, this is nonsense. But how exactly do we imagine it looks when a celebrity is arrested for “anti-Semitism” while half the country is saying, “Je suis Charlie” with impunity?
Mistake.