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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 1/14/15

France arrests comedian for Facebook comments, showing the sham of the West's "Free Speech" Celebration

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Comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala
Comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Réseau Voltaire, Author: Réseau Voltaire)
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Forty-eight hours after hosting a massive march under the banner of free expression, France opened a criminal investigation of a controversial French comedian for a Facebook post he wrote about the Charlie Hebdo attack, and then this morning, arrested him for that post on charges of "defending terrorism." The comedian, Dieudonne (above), previously sought elective office in France on what he called an "anti-Zionist" platform, has had his show banned by numerous government officials in cities throughout France, and has been criminally prosecuted several times before for expressing ideas banned in that country.

The apparently criminal viewpoint he posted on Facebook declared: "Tonight, as far as I'm concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly." Investigators concluded that this was intended to mock the "Je Suis Charlie" slogan and express support for the perpetrator of the Paris supermarket killings (whose last name was "Coulibaly"). Expressing that opinion is evidently a crime in the Republic of Liberte, which prides itself on a line of 20th Century intellectuals -- from Sartre and Genet to Foucault and Derrida -- whose hallmark was leaving no orthodoxy or convention unmolested, no matter how sacred.

Since that glorious "free speech" march, France has reportedly opened 54 criminal cases for "condoning terrorism." AP reported this morning that "France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorifying terrorism."

As pernicious as this arrest and related "crackdown" on some speech obviously is, it provides a critical value: namely, it underscores the utter scam that was this week's celebration of free speech in the west. The day before the Charlie Hebdo attack, I coincidentally documented the multiple cases in the west -- including in the U.S. -- where Muslims have been prosecuted and even imprisoned for their political speech. Vanishingly few of this week's bold free expression mavens have ever uttered a peep of protest about any of those cases -- either before the Charlie Hebdo attack or since. That's because "free speech," in the hands of many westerners, actually means: it is vital that the ideas I like be protected, and the right to offend groups I dislike be cherished; anything else is fair game.

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[Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald] Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, "No Place to Hide," is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. His forthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience in reporting a series of expose's in 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting.

Foreign Policy magazine named Greenwald one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He was the debut winner, along with "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work breaking the story of the abusive (more...)
 

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