Claude Chollet, who is the founder and managing editor of the Observatoire du Journalisme, explains to Remix News that a new regime of preventive censorship, unique in its kind within the EU, marks a new stage in the authoritarian drift of the liberal left in France in the face of popular discontent and dissent over key issues like immigration and freedom of speech.
You are the secretary of the Iliad Institute for the Long European Memory and it was you who spoke on behalf of this institute after the French government’s preemptive ban on its symposium, which had been scheduled for May 21. You spoke of a return to preventive censorship in France, as the Iliade Institute has never been convicted of any illicit activity or speech, but has simply been labeled “far right” by Emmanuel Macron’s governing team. Looking back, can you tell us more about this ban and what it means for freedom of expression and freedom of association in France?
I think we need to go back to the sequence of events that led to the ban. Our event was scheduled for Sunday, May 21, at 3 p.m. On Friday at 5 p.m. on the Médiapart website, which is a far-left general information site, an article by a French pseudo-historian, Nicolas Lebourg, appeared about Dominique Venner, the historian to whom we wanted to pay tribute with this symposium, on the anniversary of his suicide at Notre Dame Cathedral. This article was based on confidential police files.
Two hours later, at 7 p.m., the Paris police prefecture prohibited our tribute, even though it was a private event held in a private venue. Attendance was to be by invitation only. In its ban, the police paraphrased the Médiapart article.