President of the Cercle Droit & Liberté, Thibault Mercier is a lawyer and essayist
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“Freedom, for what purpose?”
From this question attributed to Lenin, Georges Bernanos drew a lecture delivered at the end of the Second World War, evoking the cynical disaffection for freedom that had taken hold of so many consciences.
A century later, it is our political “elites” who could make this declaration of the Bolshevik leader their own, while not a month passes without a new restriction on freedom of opinion perfecting our legislative arsenal.
After the much-discussed CNews-Reporters Without Borders ruling by the Council of State last February, it is now our deputies who are illustrating their disenchantment with free opinion by voting on March 6 at first reading a bill aimed at controlling and punish the comments you might make… in private.
See instead: non-public insult and provocation to discrimination or hatred based in particular on race, sex, sexual orientation or even gender, could soon constitute an offense punishable by a fine of 3 750 euros.
And this in order to
“preserve our republican pact and protect our fellow citizens”
we can read in the explanatory statement of the proposal.
Not content with controlling - drastically - public speech, the State will now come into your home to ensure that no word can undermine republican legality.
“The criminal sanction must be guaranteed and systematic,”
write the deputies behind the proposal.
We must reread Philippe Muray and his rants on the “envy of the criminal” and the modern manic-legislative psychosis which wants each space of freedom from which the law is absent to be a legal void to be filled by laws and regulations…
After the excesses of the #MeToo movement, it will soon no longer be the withdrawal of
post-coitum
consent that could land you at the police station but rather the comments made on the pillow...
Thibault Mercier
Remember that during the Covid-19 period, the State required you to
“not be more than six people at the table”.
From now on, will the very content of the discussions that you will have with your guests pass through his caudal forks?
Be careful if you offend a guest during a political debate after having gone a little too hard on the Chablis as an aperitif.
Not one word is higher than the other!
Any normally constituted adult who has been shocked or insulted is free not to set foot in your home again.
But this is a time for hygiene, both physical and mental, in our great Western hospice.
The objective of pacifying morals displayed by the deputies may seem laudable, but is this really the role of the State to penalize our anger and our outbursts?
And what about
“provocation to hatred or discrimination”
particularly because of sexual orientation or gender.
Will Jessica denounce Grandpa René's transphobic remarks when leaving the next New Year's Eve dinner?
We could laugh about it but it is thanks to denunciation that this law can be implemented in practice.
Once is not customary, Orwell was wrong in 1948 and there will be no need to install a telescreen in every house to monitor what could be going on there.
The culture of denunciation promoted by the government will take care of this.
“Denounce each other”
published Benoît Duteurtre a few years ago, a satire in which he imagined a government promulgating a “denounce and protect” law to fight against sexism.
Could pillow talk land you in the police station?
Should we recall the importance of disagreement and divergence of opinions, both private and public, still unequaled tools for arriving at compromise and the truth?
Are we going to have to surround ourselves in our homes with people who only think like us to avoid any criminal repression?
This new law perfectly illustrates this logophobia, this hatred of free thought (Muray again) which
“places above any attempt at problematization, in the sphere of the sacrosanct, certain things and certain beings because they- These are considered to be part of the inviolable elements of the new world
.
Also read: Bérénice Levet: “Hannah Arendt was a school of freedom and liberation for me”
As for the abolition of the boundary between public and private, it characterizes totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt told us.
And one wonders if the deputies of the Renaissance group at the origin of this bill know their political literature.
The question is of course rhetorical... In this same vein, what can we say about the "citizenship courses" and other "courses to combat racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination" that the law provides for as an additional penalty and which resemble a real citizen re-education company?
If there is one law to propose, it is the one to create a “safe space” within our homes so that the State cannot enter.
It is therefore rather a principle of inviolability - immaterial - of the home that our deputies should vote for rather than fanning the “penalophile embers”.