A few days later on a show, coming short of any plausible explanation or at least something to allow the public to understand the court’s decision, an expert tried the journalist’s tone. Yes, his tone. It may be not so much his words anymore but his tone… You, I do, may ask, were his words on that day an expression of a built argument to illustrate, justify or promote the benefit of racial hatred and the racial policies the benefit inspires, after all, what defines “incitement” or wasn’t his words any of that whatever his tone may have been?

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It is unfair to leave Elisabeth on her own 3 verses 1, too often the case. It doesn’t help the debate to be balanced and confortable.

First Amend Center, a great place to go.

You’d think you have seen it all. Well, not quite and the best is still to come by the day, should you show some patience.

The now convicted journalist of something pretty disturbing, I mean “incitement to racial hatred” the court decided, something that can be opposed to him anytime, employers, some have of course asked for his firing of his actual positions, he tomorrow decides to turn his career around and applies for a position at CNN, let me introduce myself, I’m an ex con but I have paid my debt to society, oh yeah, hum, what was it about? racism…. (silence) hum yes, (may be not) Thank you for applying, we were pleased to meet you and we’re sure there is a very successful future ahead for a qualified journalist such as yourself with a very exciting overall knowledge of the profession and we wish you all the best… Thank you. Anyway, a few days later he was invited to speak at a french right wing gathering partly to take advantage of the sympathy the public showed, the court’s decision being considered crazy, partly because common sense, his books and writings in newspapers testify for him making a so serious conviction look a nonsense.

I guess it’s alright and at the same time, weird, letting me with some strange mixed feelings. Culture? I can’t prevent myself to question the interest of turning the criminal justice into a circus after what has been a difficult period with the public infuriated following several disturbing crimes on parole released convicts committed and a kind of equivalent of a probation officer had declared on tv that over a hundred thousand convicted criminals that should be in prison are in fact on the loose.

I don’t know what to think of the choice to criminalize hate speech because of the legal challenge it represents, the need of very talented and experienced judges you inevitably need and the specific risk each case brings to ridicule the criminal justice society needs to rely on, trust and revere. But if you do (criminalize hate speech) you’d expect special interests organizations to be extremely selective and show extreme restraint to make sure the legislation intended goals to protect society of ideologies of hatred and death are never ridiculed. Obviously, to use it to shut up a journalist over a few disliked words disconnected of any such ideology is a terrible mistake and show the choice to criminalize hate speech isn’t and can’t be a substitute to the free speech of the sometimes difficult relations between communities, conflicting interests and the need to be true about demands as well as objections.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/03/05/hate_speech_society_steps_in_even_if_law_doesnt/

Above, “But in voting 8-1 that Constitution protects the group’s self-expression, the court wasn’t just acknowledging the far reach of the First Amendment.The ruling also reflects a faith in Americans’ ability, independent of any government action, to condemn loathsome speech.” and I’d say underlines powerfully the Founders faith in the People and the Bill of Rights ability to teach was the right bet.

Once explored the circumstances around the incriminated words, I’m left with the most disturbing. You have one side ready to exploit in a partisan way the incident and the court‘s decision and on the other side an enterprise of silencing whoever may disagree with their political rhetoric aimed too often at hiding communities conflicts of interests. If the freedom of speech isn’t a french thing, to choose to promote it through a controversial issue around the transparency of crime statistics is I am afraid a little partisan. To be honest, that kind of political divide doesn’t help to overcome the passions that lead to the all incident on both sides, and worse, prevent to pay an extra attention  to the conditions under which one is convicted under the french laws and how works the french judicial system, obviously the criminal trial brought into light.

A first conclusion has to be the lack of public guidelines and knowledge of the legislations goals.

Looking at it and the debates that surrounded the legislation when it was adopted, the article under which he was declared guilty had nothing to do with the situation the court had to judge. How he was charged with “incitement to racial hatred” looks a mystery to me.

The legislation and the article more specifically aimed at criminalize the “incitement to racial hatred” answer to some specifics not met here. The legislation, you may understand under the historical references the law makers made when it was adopted, targeted “any propaganda tool and propaganda” serving an ideology of hatred, racial and else. The obvious conclusion, it was designed to allow courts to silence any individual or group promoting racial hatred in public using writings, public speeches, screams?, graphics and else aimed at spreading, support and explain with arguments to justify the ideology involved.

Anyhow you look at the incident involved in the case, you are miles away to me from the legislation intended goals? The conversation involved was about statistics and unless proved otherwise, the trial didn’t, the suspect does not belong to any organisation promoting an ideology of hatred and death, never promoted such an ideology, no more was any reference made during the incriminated conversation to such an ideology directly or else.

How he was charged and convicted of the crime is still by far the most interesting.

It looks that both the prosecutor who charged the suspect and the court that declared him guilty chose to assume that any form of transparency of the crime statistics up to just mention some partial results can only lead the potential audience of the show on that day to the conclusion that “genetics”, race or else is involved in defining who commit crimes, meaning their guess of the potential show’s audience interpretation and understanding of the statistics has been defining whether or not the suspect did actually commit the crime?

(Comment : Defining the suspect’s guilt through a second guess of a tv show’s audience ability to demonstrate or feel inappropriately is just insane)