In America we are
accustomed to celebrities publicly virtue-signaling their conformist
Progressive contempt for flyover Americans and spewing their profane hatred of
President Trump in interviews and social media. They have every right to do
this, and without fear of government suppression, because the United States is (for
now) blessed with a degree of freedom of speech found nowhere else in the world.
Meanwhile in Europe, one of the most celebrated entertainment icons in France’s
history has been criminalized and fined repeatedly for speaking her mind.
Breitbart News reports that Brigitte
Bardot, former sizzling sex symbol and current fierce animal rights activist, is
being charged – yet again – with hate speech and incitement to racial hatred,
this time after condemning the religious practices of some inhabitants of the
French-ruled island of Réunion near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Réunion is largely Christian, but a Hindu minority
still carries on certain rituals involving the gruesome sacrifice of goats,
dogs, and cats. Animal rights groups have long condemned abuses there. The
84-year-old Bardot, who in 1986 created an organization dedicated to
animal protection called The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, bluntly expressed her displeasure
in a letter to the authorities of the island, in which she declared the
practices to be “demonic” and sadistic, and labeled those responsible as “aboriginals
who have kept the genes of savages.”
Unsurprisingly, the prefect of Réunion did not
take this criticism kindly and called on the courts to indict Bardot for
inciting racial hatred. Equally unsurprisingly, Bardot was unapologetic and declared
that she fully intended to keep speaking out against the abuse of animals everywhere.
In 2004, in another book, A Cry in the
Silence, Bardot was convicted for linking Islam to the 9/11 terror attacks (!)
and again for denouncing the Islamization of her beloved France. “I do
not hold religious Muslims in high esteem,” she stated in her introduction, decrying
the inhumane
halal method of animal sacrifice during the festival of Eid. “We were
disturbed by their barbaric practices; we went to court; we condemned their unacceptable
behavior which left homes covered in blood, and filled rubbish chutes with
skin, bone and oozing brains. To no avail!” She also wrote, “Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean,
dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to
our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its
own.” For these comments, in June, 2004 Bardot was convicted for a fourth time by
a French court and fined 5,000 euros.
In 2008, Bardot
was convicted of inciting racial/religious hatred for writing a letter to
Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Interior Minister of France, objecting again to French
Muslims ritually slaughtering sheep by slitting their throats without first anesthetizing
them. She also plainly stated that she was “fed up with being under the thumb
of this [Muslim] population which is destroying us, destroying our country and
imposing its habits.” She was fined 15,000 euros.
In a 2013 online article about Bardot’s
numerous convictions, author Michèle Finck poses the question, “Should a
world famous actress be allowed to denounce an ‘overpopulation’ by foreigners?” Finck’s
conclusion is no: “I believe these convictions were justified. This
series of cases illustrates that, despite the right to free speech being worthy
of protection, it should not be used to incite hatred against a group of
people. As such, free speech cannot be invoked to legitimise Islamophobic
comments.”
The problem, of course, is that criminalizing “hate
speech” or “Islamophobia” empowers those who get to determine what qualifies
for those labels. It empowers those who exploit those laws to silence their
critics. That is precisely why such categories have been invented and pushed
relentlessly by factions who want to undermine the free speech of others in
order to advance their own agenda. The result is that France and too many other
Western countries live under the thumb of de facto Islamic blasphemy
laws, where any criticism of Islam, no matter how legitimate, is silenced as
“hate speech” and “racism” (even though Islam is not a race).
Thus, British citizens cannot tweet their
outrage about Muslim rape gangs without incurring a visit from the police. Austrian
free speech activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff cannot “defame” Islam’s prophet
Muhammad without being hauled before the European Court of Human Rights. And even someone
of Brigitte Bardot’s beloved status cannot say something as arguably true as
the fact that mass Muslim migration is radically transforming European culture without
incurring onerous fines and even possible imprisonment (which Bardot has
narrowly avoided). In America too we are facing challenges to our First
Amendment from the radical left and their Islamic allies, which we must resist
at all costs.
Bardot, who abandoned her movie career over 40
years ago, may be a misanthropist (in her forthcoming book she declares that
she finds peace only with animals), but she loves her country and her culture. “I
am very patriotic,” she affirms. “I was raised by a father and a grandfather
who fought for France and instilled in me a love of my homeland. I am not
proud of what France is today.” Recently she has expressed support for the
Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protest movement and for Front National leader
Marine le Pen, whom she endorsed in the 2017 French presidential election,
calling her “the Joan of Arc of the 21st century.” (Bardot's current husband –
her fourth – is Bernard d'Ormale, former adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, father
of Marine and former leader of the Front National.)
When she challenges the multiculturalist government
elites by daring to voice valid concerns about the Islamization of her country,
Brigitte Bardot speaks for
millions of Europeans wrestling with the same threat but who don’t have her cultural
status, her financial resources – and her fearlessness.
From FrontPage Mag, 3/26/19
