The company Valmonde et Cie, owner of Current Values, filed a complaint Friday against the Sleeping Giants collective for "discrimination" before the Paris judicial court, the ultraconservative weekly announced on Wednesday, boycotted by "hundreds" of advertisers according to him "yielded" to the "pressures" of anonymous cyberactivists.
Read also: The magazine
Valeurs Actuelles
sued for transphobic insult
Sleeping Giants, which presents itself as a "citizen collective in the fight against the financing of hate speech", born in the United States after the election of Donald Trump, calls out on social networks the advertisers of the very right-wing media or conveying racist, xenophobic, homophobic speeches, etc., with the aim of drying up their advertising funding.
"Denounce acts of discrimination"
Active since 2017, the French branch of the collective (27,000 subscribers on Twitter) notably targeted, in addition to Current Values, CNews and the far-right site Boulevard Voltaire. But the ultraconservative weekly claims the right not to share the “progressive ideas” of the collective, denouncing a “campaign of industrial sabotage” and “outrageous methods” to which “hundreds of large companies” have “yielded” including Toyota, Nike or Decathlon.
His complaint "aims to denounce acts of discrimination, because of political opinions, and likely to hinder the normal exercise of an economic activity", explains the weekly on its site, citing "the letter addressed to the Prosecutor of the Republic". It was filed "last Friday," told AFP the publication director of Valeurs Actuelles, Erik Monjalous, who "does not accept that anonymous people call for a boycott of an IPG title" (Information press political and general).
The Sleeping Giants "may not agree with" Current values, "it is absolutely their right, but the call for a boycott is totally illegal," said Erik Monjalous, for whom the loss of advertising revenue suffered by the weekly are "very difficult to quantify".
Contacted by AFP, a spokesperson for the collective, Daniel, assured that he did not know "anything" more "about the complaint than what" wrote "the magazine.
Considering that the "editorial line" of Current Values is "nauseating, divisive, that it exacerbates tensions" and "goes against the ethical values of many brands", the collective alerts those whose advertisements are found on the web. site of the weekly, which they do not necessarily know.
They are free to withdraw or not.
“We never insist”, assures Daniel.
In April, the online advertising agency of Current Values, the Israeli company Taboola, ended its collaboration with the weekly. In question, the controversial publication, at the end of August, of a "political fiction" depicting the deputy LFI Danièle Obono as a slave.