"Free speech can't just apply to those you agree with," the editor of Spiked Online, Brendan O'Neill, once said. Politically correct speech does not need protecting. The United States' First Amendment exists precisely to protect the minority from the majority and to protect unpopular opinions from those who would silence them.
On March 2, French prosecutors decided that Marine Le Pen should be prosecuted for drawing attention on Twitter to the atrocities committed by Islamic State. They apparently decided that Le Pen's message, even if factually correct, should not be heard.
Le Pen's "crime," the prosecutors allege, is that in a series of tweets, she posted disturbing images of victims of Islamic State, thereby exposing the crimes against humanity that group have been committing in the Levant.
Presumably, these were potential dangers about which she thought the public should be aware. They included the beheading of the British journalist, James Foley, who was repeatedly beaten, starved, and waterboarded before his throat was slit.
Other tweets documented a Jordanian fighter pilot, Moaz al-Kasasbeh, in a cage, being burned alive, and a tank crushing a Syrian army soldier. These crimes, however, are those of Islamic State, not Marine Le Pen.
Her most objectionable crime, apparently, was to have distributed a picture of Foley's decapitated corpse with the tweet, "Daesh is THIS!"
It would be hard to disagree. Even Islamic State does not deny that these events took place. On, the contrary, it broadcast them globally. Le Pen was merely informing people, in the most striking way she could, that Islamic State is a murderous organisation that continues to slaughter innocents. She is issuing a warning.
Marine Le Pen did not suggest that all Muslims are terrorists. She did not suggest that anyone should use violence against Muslims. She did not even suggest that French people should take action against Islam.
She did not stage or misrepresent the facts. She did not share material that was doctored or false. Someone might suggest that perhaps she was attacking Islam or Muslim attitudes by distributing pictures of its activities. Even so, why should that be grounds for silencing her, prosecuting her, for stripping her of immunity, conceivably imprisoning her for three years and fining her €75,000?
 Marine Le Pen. (Photo by Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images) |
Why should Le Pen -- or anyone -- not be able to criticise or inform the public about Islamic extremism -- or anything for that matter? One would think it especially important for a politician, who is responsible for the welfare of the public, to advise it of potential threats. What, for instance, if people had not been allowed to warn people about Communism? How convenient for Communists that would have been!
In addition, what are people to do who may not have the resources to fight the bottomless war chests of the French Government? How are they ever to speak out without fear of legal retribution? Or is the real, secret, goal of the state to have no one who disagrees with it speak out?
One might object to publishing a picture of a decapitated body on the grounds of good taste, or that it would be painful for Foley's family to see. But should that be the reason for someone to face an exorbitant fine, crushing court costs, and a possible jail term? Le Pen was merely highlighting the crimes of a terrorist organisation that has already attacked France, and murdered hundreds on French streets.
Imprisoning politicians is, of course, a tidy way for a state to silence those who disagree with it. The former USSR under the KGB, and Germany's STASI, doubtless assumed it was simply a professional perk. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in fact, just guaranteed that in upcoming elections, his leading challenger, Alexey Navalney, will be unable to run. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey seems to find arresting anyone who disagrees with him a favourite pastime, with more than 113,000 – including possibly 150 journalists. Is this the model Western democracies would like?
Le Pen's message was clear: Islamic State's practices and the ideology of extremist Muslims must not come to Europe.
Unfortunately, they already have. Since the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in January 2015, the Islamic State and its affiliates have murdered more than 247 individuals. For how long can France afford to keep its head in the sand?
Le Pen, in what increasingly looks like an empty attempt to silence her, appears to be trapped in a politically motivated prosecution. The charge states that Le Pen is allegedly guilty of: "Violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity."
Regardless of your stance on the politics of Marine Le Pen, to say that she is aiming to "incite terrorism" has no basis. On the contrary, Le Pen has been virtually the only politician in France consistently raising difficult questions on how to fight terrorism. She has suggested that France must reinstate border checks to "counter terrorism." She has repeatedly said that politicians who do not stand their ground in seeing Islamism with clear eyes are failing to stand up for their country. She notes, "I'm on the ground to meet the French people to draw their attention to important subjects, including Islamist terrorism to which the least we can say Mr Macron is weak on."
As to the second element of the charge against her, if the actions of Islamic State are indecent, evil or pornographic, this does not mean that alerting people to them is -- any more than 18th century drawings informing people about the mass beheadings during the French Revolution, or Hitler's atrocities during the Second World War. Not to inform the public about them could justifiably be viewed a dereliction of duty and reckless endangerment.
As to the claim that Le Pen's tweets "harm human dignity," they do not; Islamic State does. It is important for Europeans to know about these Islamic-inspired atrocities before they start "coming soon to a theatre near you", as they have already been doing.[1]
Tellingly, the prosecution of Le Pen has come at a time when the establishment has seen the public increasingly support politicians who question the taboo subject of mass migration and its threat to Europe -- opinions that until now have been considered dangerous and "racist". One can see the electoral successes of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in Austria; Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party in the Netherlands; the AfD party in Germany and the Five Star Movement in Italy. Incumbent politicians must be terrified.
In this new trend of censorship by prosecution – as in the similar political trials of Geert Wilders, or the increasingly severe government censorship in Germany -- mainstream politicians appear desperate to hold onto their jobs.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for instance, this week finally had to accept that "there are no-go zones in Germany". For years, politicians scorned the idea that such areas exist. Counterterrorism experts, however, such as Steven Emerson and policy analysts such as Soeren Kern, as well as many others, have been warning the public about them since 2015.
In Paris, alone, there are many no-go-zones, complete with an app on how to avoid them, despite the denial of its Mayor. Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille, Grenoble, Avignon also face similar social problems.
Marine Le Pen should not be prosecuted for alerting the French citizens to the dangers of an organisation that still threatens to invade their capital and murder their children.
France may lock up Le Pen for warning Europe about Islamism, but all that would accomplish is to imprison someone for telling the truth, and to endanger the public even further.
If the opposition wish to defeat Le Pen, they are free to argue against her policies.
Otherwise one can only conclude that their objections are nothing more than playing politics.
Robbie Travers, a political commentator and consultant, is Executive Director of Agora, former media manager at the Human Security Centre, and a law student at the University of Edinburgh.
[1] They started nearly thirty years ago, on March 7, 1989, with the multi-million pound sterling bounty on the head of a British citizen, Salman Rushdie, for writing a novel, The Satanic Verses. This bounty was even recently increased. That inducement to murder was followed by an attack on the United States World Trade Center in 1993; the 9/11/2001 attacks in the U.S.; the train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004; the murder of Theo van Gogh on November 3, 2004 for having made a film; the London transit bombings of 7/7/2005, and the murders of the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015. Less than a year later, Paris witnessed more mass murders – apparently preceded by torture, reports of which were suppressed -- at the Bataclan Theatre on November 13, 2015. Next, 86 people were murdered, and more than 400 wounded, by a truck on Bastille Day, July 14, 2016; another truck murdered more people at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016. In England, more recently, there were murders near the houses of Parliament in Westminster on March 22, 2017; teenagers blown up at a music concert at the entry to the Manchester Arena on May 22, 2017, and still more people murdered on London Bridge on June 3, 2017, to name just a few. This list does not include many smaller murders and attempted murders, such as the three week long torture and murder of Ilan Halimi in 2006; the murder in Toulouse, France, of three schoolchildren and their teacher on March 19, 2012; the murder in London of Lee Rigby in 2013; the murder at a free speech event in Copenhagen in 2015. The murder of Father Jacques Hamel in July, 2016 and the torture and murder of Sarah Halimi in April, 2017-- again, to name just a few. There is not room here to start listing attempted murders in Europe that were reportedly inspired by Islam.
