Claude Chollet sur Remix News (en anglais, première partie)

Claude Chollet, who is the founder and managing editor of the Observatoire du Journalisme, explains to Remix News that a new regime of preventive censorship, unique in its kind within the EU, marks a new stage in the authoritarian drift of the liberal left in France in the face of popular discontent and dissent over key issues like immigration and freedom of speech.

You are the sec­re­tary of the Ili­ad Insti­tute for the Long Euro­pean Mem­o­ry and it was you who spoke on behalf of this insti­tute after the French government’s pre­emp­tive ban on its sym­po­sium, which had been sched­uled for May 21. You spoke of a return to pre­ven­tive cen­sor­ship in France, as the Ili­ade Insti­tute has nev­er been con­vict­ed of any illic­it activ­i­ty or speech, but has sim­ply been labeled “far right” by Emmanuel Macron’s gov­ern­ing team. Look­ing back, can you tell us more about this ban and what it means for free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion in France?

I think we need to go back to the sequence of events that led to the ban. Our event was sched­uled for Sun­day, May 21, at 3 p.m. On Fri­day at 5 p.m. on the Médi­a­part web­site, which is a far-left gen­er­al infor­ma­tion site, an arti­cle by a French pseu­do-his­to­ri­an, Nico­las Lebourg, appeared about Dominique Ven­ner, the his­to­ri­an to whom we want­ed to pay trib­ute with this sym­po­sium, on the anniver­sary of his sui­cide at Notre Dame Cathe­dral. This arti­cle was based on con­fi­den­tial police files.

Two hours lat­er, at 7 p.m., the Paris police pre­fec­ture pro­hib­it­ed our trib­ute, even though it was a pri­vate event held in a pri­vate venue. Atten­dance was to be by invi­ta­tion only. In its ban, the police para­phrased the Médi­a­part article.

Strange­ly enough, we, as orga­niz­ers, did not get informed of the ban until 3.30 p.m. the fol­low­ing day, less than 24 hours before the planned event.

In France, there is a fast-track judi­cial pro­ce­dure that allows one to ques­tion this type of deci­sion by author­i­ties that could infringe on civic free­doms, and it can be filed with the admin­is­tra­tive court on their web­site. So, we filed two such requests at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sat­ur­day, but the admin­is­tra­tive court replied on Mon­day say­ing they were received too late.

With this ban, for which we were effec­tive­ly deprived of any pos­si­bil­i­ty to have it over­turned, the police pre­fect was of course just car­ry­ing out the orders of Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Gérald Dar­manin. And the rea­son for the ban was that com­ments could be made at our sym­po­sium against cer­tain cat­e­gories of the pop­u­la­tion based on race, reli­gion, ori­gin, sex­u­al­i­ty, etc.

This means that in France, we have now entered a world of pre­ven­tive jus­tice, where the author­i­ties spec­u­late in advance about what peo­ple might think and say. This is a com­plete rever­sal of the rule of law and in par­tic­u­lar of the 1881 press law, which pro­tect­ed not only free­dom of the press but also free­dom of expression.

In France today, they can decide that you might say some­thing bad because your think­ing is prob­a­bly not very good, it is not in line with the stan­dards of the Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man and of the Cit­i­zen — that’s exact­ly what the police pre­fec­ture told us in its ban — and so they choose to ban you.

It is unique, and it is very wor­ry­ing for the future of pub­lic free­doms, but also for pri­vate free­doms because it is no longer just free­dom of expres­sion that is at stake, but free­dom of opin­ion. Since then, we have lodged three appeals through our lawyer: one against the admin­is­tra­tive court, which should have ruled ear­li­er on our peti­tion to over­turn the ban; a sec­ond before the Coun­cil of State, France’s top admin­is­tra­tive court, to repeal the Dar­manin cir­cu­lar, which is the legal basis for the ban; and a third against the police pre­fect for polit­i­cal discrimination.

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