BS BULLETIN:
- French President Emmanuel Macron attacked what he called the American conception of free speech, arguing freedom requires limits and a “common framework.”
- The comments are getting fresh attention as France faces enormous student demonstrations, school blockades and violent clashes with riot police.
- More than 250,000 people demonstrated Tuesday, according to France’s Interior Ministry, with police using tear gas and water cannons in several cities.
There is nothing quite like getting a lecture about American freedom from a European leader while riot police are firing tear gas back home.
French President Emmanuel Macron is facing a fresh wave of ridicule over comments he made during a Sept. 29 appearance at Complutense University in Madrid, where he took direct aim at the American conception of free speech.
Macron said: “The so-called American ‘free speech’ today, which some people have promoted, is the opposite of free speech.”
He continued: “There is no freedom if there is no limit to my freedom, which begins with the freedom of others and respect for a common framework. I know this when I walk down the street: my freedom cannot mean hitting you, insulting you or trashing the public space we all share.”
Those are Macron’s own remarks as published by the Élysée. He went on to argue for what he described as “public order” in the information sphere and stronger regulation of social-media platforms.
The timing of the renewed attention could hardly be more awkward.
France is currently confronting massive student protests that began over school conditions, staffing and funding and have spread across the country. More than 250,000 people participated in demonstrations Tuesday, according to the Interior Ministry, while organizers put the number at 450,000. Police fired tear gas and water cannons as violent groups clashed with authorities in Paris, Strasbourg, Rennes, Toulouse and elsewhere.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the upheaval as the most violent student demonstrations in decades. At least 215 teenagers and 85 school employees have been injured during the broader unrest, Lecornu told lawmakers, while his office said more than 700 police officers have also been hurt. Nearly 500 people were arrested Tuesday alone.
To be clear, the protesters’ stated grievances concern education — including understaffing, deteriorating school buildings and funding — rather than Macron’s comments about American speech. Many of Tuesday’s demonstrations were peaceful, with the violence occurring around portions of the protests.
But you can probably see why the optics of Macron lecturing Americans about the proper boundaries of freedom while his own government struggles to maintain public order proved irresistible online.
Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson wrote: “These people are going to cling to power even if it means burning their countries to the ground.”
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger was considerably more economical: “Emmanuel Macron is an enormous fool.”
And Dan Gainor offered Macron an unmistakably American response: “We are still free in America and @EmmanuelMacron can pound sand.”
Macron’s latest remarks aren’t a one-off, either. Speaking in Munich earlier this year, he argued that Europe needed stronger regulation of social media and asked: “How can we imagine that everything which is forbidden in the public space, racist speech, hatred speech, anti-Semitic speech and so on, could be allowed in the digital space because it would be free speech?”
Macron said Europe has its own tradition of free expression, but one in which “you have respect, you have rules, and the limit of my freedom is the beginning of your freedom.”
That is a very different constitutional tradition from America’s First Amendment.
And Americans appear more than willing to remind him of it.
MY QUICK TAKE:
Monsieur Macron, thank you so much for explaining free speech to us.
We’ll be sure to put your suggestions in the box.
There is a serious philosophical difference buried underneath all the snark here. Macron believes government has a considerably larger role in policing the boundaries of permissible speech, particularly online. America’s First Amendment begins from a much more skeptical proposition about allowing government to decide which speech is acceptable.
Macron is perfectly entitled to prefer the French model.
And Americans are perfectly entitled to look across the Atlantic and say: No, merci.
But the timing?
Oh, the timing.
When more than a quarter-million people are marching through your streets, riot police are deploying tear gas and water cannons, hundreds have been arrested and your own prime minister is describing the unrest as the most violent student demonstrations in decades, perhaps this isn’t the ideal week to explain to Americans that we’re doing freedom incorrectly.
We fought a war a couple hundred years ago that settled our need for European supervision on that particular subject.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Fox News — Macron trashes American free speech as riots grip France — internet unloads: ‘Enormous fool’
- Élysée — President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks during state visit to Spain
- Reuters — School protests sweeping France cause ‘heaviest toll in decades’
- Associated Press — French riot police fire tear gas as more than 250,000 rally nationwide for school funding
- Élysée — Macron remarks at Munich Security Conference
