Sentenced at first instance to 24 months in prison including 18 months closed as well as a fine of 45,000 euros after the online broadcast of an anti-Semitic rap clip, Alain Soral was acquitted by the judges of the Court of Appeal from Paris in December.
But, according to the Court of Cassation, these magistrates had "not sought, as they should have, the true meaning of the clip, which included many anti-Semitic references".
By overturning the judgment on Tuesday, the Court of Cassation therefore annuls this decision.
The court of appeal will have to rule again in a different composition.
The offending clip, entitled "Yellow vests" and broadcast on Alain Soral's site, Égalité et Réconciliation, showed in particular a sign with the name of Rothschild as well as photos of Jacques Attali, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Patrick Drahi or even Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, thrown into the fire. The clip called for the first three cities to be "fired", while qualifying them as "parasites". The four-and-a-half-minute film also repeatedly showed President Emmanuel Macron during his speech at the dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) in 2018.
In its judgment, the Court of Appeal noted that the personalities whose photographs were thrown into the fire were not all Jewish.
According to the Court of Appeal, the clip denounced the influence that the world of finance would have on the policy led by the President of the Republic with the complicity of part of the audiovisual press.
The court of appeal had deduced that the Jewish community was not concerned as a whole.
The Court of Cassation invalidated this analysis.
"The Jewish community as a whole"
“The judges (
of the appeals court
) should have investigated whether the implication of the Rothschild bank alone, the mention of a single Israeli channel, the very name of the rap group (
Rude Goy Bit
), the vocabulary used, such as throwing photographs of Jewish figures on fire, both of which suggest the extermination of Jews during WWII, did not target the Jewish community as a whole, with non-Jewish figures presented as being manipulated by it ”, indicated the Court of Cassation.
Alain Soral was prosecuted by six anti-racism associations including Licra and Mrap for "provoking racial discrimination, defamation and public insult on the grounds of origin, membership or non-membership of an ethnic group. , a nation, a race or a religion ”.