The Toulon prosecutor's office on Tuesday, July 20 opened an investigation for "
public insult
" against a Var poster who represented President Emmanuel Macron as Adolf Hitler on two large panels to denounce the anti-Covid vaccine constraint.
To read also: Health pass: these French people who denounce a
"
segregation
"
"
I seized the departmental security of the Toulon police station as part of a preliminary investigation
," Toulon prosecutor Bernard Marchal told AFP, specifying that the qualification retained could change. If the former offense of "
insulting the President of the Republic
" was repealed in 2013 after a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights condemning France, the Head of State is protected from injury and of public defamation like any ordinary citizen, even if prosecutions, sometimes perceived as an attack on freedom of expression, are extremely rare.
"
Obey, get vaccinated
", proclaims the incriminated poster which represents President Emmanuel Macron in the uniform of the Nazi leader Hitler, with a small mustache, a wick on his forehead and the logo of the presidential movement LREM hijacked as a swastika .
The message has been posted in recent days on two large advertising panels of four meters by three meters located in La-Seyne-sur-Mer and at the entrance to Toulon, where a shocked person had tagged the word "
Shame
".
Used to controversial campaigns
Its author, Michel-Ange Flori, is a Var poster owner of 400 panels between Bandol and Hyères, accustomed to controversial campaigns on the two panels that he reserved to comment on the news in his own way.
He had signed up alongside the yellow vests.
"
You see Hitler, but you can see Stalin there, or I see Charlie Chaplin in The Dictator,
" he told AFP.
These posters aim to question "
this democracy where decisions are taken without discussion during a health council
," he explained.
Read also: In Moscow, the incredible story of Adolf Hitler's skull
In 1999, his first poster at the time of the straw huts in Corsica titled: “
Corsica: presumed guilty. Prefect: presumed innocent. Chevènement: selective innocence
”, had earned him 36 hours in police custody. In 2019, the BFMTV channel obtained its conviction for a poster titled: "
The police talk to you every day on BFMTV
". At the hearing, the display had pleaded “
the right to parody and freedom of expression
”.
