The polemicist Éric Zemmour was sentenced Thursday on appeal to a fine of 15,000 euros for a virulent diatribe against Islam and immigration delivered during a political meeting in 2019. Denouncing
“hate speech”
exceeding
“the admissible limits of freedom of expression"
, the Paris Court of Appeal found him guilty of public insults based on origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion, as well as provocation to racial hatred.
Éric Zemmour will also have to pay 1000 euros in damages and 2000 euros in procedural costs to four anti-racist associations.
During a
“convention of the right”
organized by relatives of the former deputy of the National Front (now RN) Marion Maréchal on September 28, 2019, Éric Zemmour castigated
“colonizing”
immigrants and an
“Islamization of the streets »
, then describes the veil and the djellaba as
“the uniforms of an army of occupation”
.
Remarks marked by “excess”, “contempt” and intended to “generate fear”
For these comments, Éric Zemmour was fined 10,000 euros at first instance, in September 2020, by the Paris Criminal Court.
But he was acquitted on appeal a year later, on the grounds that the disputed comments did not target
“all Africans, immigrants or Muslims, but only a fraction of these groups”
.
The general prosecutor's office and anti-racist civil party associations had formed a power before the Court of Cassation which, in February 2023, ordered a new trial of the president of Reconquête!
before the Paris Court of Appeal.
This judged on Thursday that, in his remarks marked by
"excess"
and
"contempt"
and intended to
"generate fear"
, Éric Zemmour had called
"expressly for combat"
and thus urged
"explicitly to discrimination, hatred or violence”
against Muslims.
For Samuel Thomas, the president of the association La Maison des potes, civil party, this conviction is a
“great victory”
, even if Éric Zemmour was not sentenced to an additional penalty of ineligibility.
Éric Zemmour's controversial and provocative outings on Islam, immigrants and French history have earned him several legal proceedings and convictions.
He was notably condemned in 2011 for having affirmed that
“most of the traffickers are black and Arab”
, in 2017 for having said that France was the subject of an
“invasion”
and a
“jihad”
aimed at
“ "to Islamize it"
, then in 2022 for having qualified unaccompanied migrant minors as
"thieves"
,
"murderers"
and
"rapists"
.