Gilles-William Goldnadel is a lawyer and essayist. Each week, he deciphers the news for FigaroVox.
Three assertions that I intend to back up with facts.
First affirmation: what happens ideologically in the United States crosses the Atlantic at the speed of media sound.
Racialism, aggressive feminism, obsession with gender, wokism have landed massively on French pages and electronic screens.
Shortly before, #MeToo had prepared #BalanceTonPorc.
Second affirmation: this ideological framework which is characterized less by reflection than by the Pavlovian reflex and the stereotype leads to a media neurosis that I compared in a recent book to a raging crowd.
Third affirmation: these now obsessive and permanent prejudices have a direct effect on the legal debate in the United States, and therefore in France.
To put it more simply, the media tribunal and ideology are in the process of replacing judicial debate to the point of depriving the latter of what still remained to it of serenity.
I do not know if the jurors of the two cases cited above judged well or badly, but they judged, and I am quite sure that the ideological oriented comments which followed them are not of a nature to confer on American justice the desired serenity.
Gilles-William Goldnadel
The two recent Kyle Rittenhouse cases in the United States, like Nicolas Hulot here will support my three statements.
Kyle Rittenhouse is an 18-year-old white American who has just been acquitted in Kenosha County Court. At 17, during an Antifa riot, he killed two men and injured a third. One of the men hit him with a skateboard deck. The other had brandished a revolver at him. His lawyer pleaded self-defense which was recognized. The liberal American press immediately expressed its amazement. Better - or worse - yet, President Joe Biden has expressed his "anger" ... while at the same time recommending calm to the public.
A few days later, in another case and to quote verbatim the title of the World of November 24 "At the trial of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger killed in the United States, three white men (were) convicted" .
They too had pleaded self-defense which was not admitted.
Immediately, President Joe Biden said that justice had been well served and that he was happy.
The liberal American newspapers have said they are satisfied.
In France, Le Monde in the aforementioned article was pleased to quote the satisfaction of Reverend Al Sharpton, which he presents today as a “great defender of civil rights”.
To read also Gilles-William Goldnadel: "I no longer have confidence in the justice of my country"
A few years ago, in a vitriolic article, the same newspaper presented this black preacher - who served as a model for Tom Wolfe in his
Bonfire of Vanities
to camp out rogue pastor Bacon - as a discredited anti-Semitic racist.
I do not know if the jurors of the two aforementioned cases judged well or badly, but they judged, and I am quite certain that the ideological oriented comments which followed them are not of a nature to confer serenity on American justice, therefore the desired independence of mind.
In France, Nicolas Hulot has been plunged for a few days into an exceptional media maelstrom. Few dare to publicly defend the ancient ecological icon. A public television program, "Special Envoy", in which he is accused of rape and sexual assault triggered - in a few hours - a judicial inquiry. A previous alert had seen the government to which he belonged to show his support. Now that it is no longer there, the same government is abandoning it in the midst of a media campaign. On France Inter, Saturday morning, all that France has of women environmentalists condemned it on the spot without the slightest precaution or reservation. The arguments are asserted without restraint: #Metoo has been there and "we must believe in the words of women".
I once again formulate the following proposition which alone is likely to calm the debate: prohibit the public revealing of the identity of a person accused of a sexual offense before any indictment.
Gilles-William Goldnadel
You don't have to be a graduate of a high school to guess that Nicolas Hulot only inspired me with very measured political sympathy.
But the man - like especially the lawyer - could not accept that the games are already made and that the account of the host of "Ushuaia" is already settled before any trial.
I do not know if Nicolas is guilty but I would like to oblige everyone morally as legally as to presume Hulot innocent before any judgment.
I refuse any prejudice.
I have defended women victims of abject rape or harassed by small chiefs whose only charm was their small power.
But I am not in the worst position to assert here that there are women who are liars, mythomaniacs, singing mistresses or avengers, or even greedy for publicity.
No word is sacred until it has been judicially verified.
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In order to leave the Hulot affair, which will therefore have to be examined, men who have turned out to be ultimately innocent have been publicly thrown into this same type of moral case. They will sometimes have left their careers or their couple there. If the man is well known, then he is in a particular position of weakness and may be the subject of particular blackmail.
Reason why, I once again formulate the following proposition which alone is likely to calm the debate: to prohibit publicly revealing the identity of a person accused of a sexual offense before any indictment. This presupposes the establishment of presumptions of guilt. The accused is always presumed innocent before any final conviction, but the public's right to information becomes necessary. In this way, malicious or inconsistent accusations are largely eliminated from the noise and fury.
Race, gender, racialism and aggressive neo-feminism have deprived the judicial debate of all the serenity necessary to avoid terrible injustices.
Any lawyer will tell you that business is not won in the courtroom.
The media or ideological tribunal has become the antechamber of human justice less serene every day, and therefore tragically inhuman.
