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Le Pen UK visit sparks protests

Tony

Penultimate Amazing
Tony
Joined
Mar 5, 2003
Messages
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3654941.stm

Angry crowds greeted the French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen during a visit to the UK on Sunday.
Protesters hurled eggs and rubbish bins at his car as he stopped in Cheshire to endorse the British National Party.

More than 100 demonstrators turned out, pounding Mr Le Pen's car and chanting slogans denouncing him as "fascist".

But Mr Le Pen, who later attended a fund-raising dinner hosted by the BNP, said: "I don't see why I shouldn't be able to walk about freely in England."
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What's the big deal about?
 
Le Pen is Le Jerk.

People are a tad upset with him cause he's the 2nd coming of Hitler.
 
Stuff like...

"There are differences between the races. . .there are differences in the genes. . .there are simply too many immigrants, and they make who knows how many children whom they send into the streets and then claim welfare...."

In 1987, Le Pen labeled the Nazi death camps "a mere detail" of World War II. According to the web site of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), "In 1990, he was convicted of incitement to racial hatred by casting doubt on the Nazi persecution of Jews and Gypsies under a French law banning such rhetoric. He was fined the equivalent of $233,000 and has appealed the sentence to the European Court of Human Rights."

The ADL goes on to note, "In those days, Le Pen seemed to be compulsive in belittling or ridiculing Auschwitz. He was critical of a then-cabinet minister named Durafour, and in referring to him said, as in a joke and with a smile, 'Durafour-crématoire' It was a pun on "four," French for oven."
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The guy's an idiot, calling him the second coming of hitler does him credit.

I think ignoring him and ridiculing him is more effective than protesting in a disreputable way.
 
Tony said:



Which people?
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Why the good people of earth.


Come on Tony, jump on the anti Le Pen bandwagon. Not only is he a racist quasi-nazi xenophobe. HES FRENCH!! Can you imagine a better person to distain.
 
"I don't see why I shouldn't be able to walk about freely in England."
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You can, but when thousands and thousands of British citizens died fighting a guy with many of the same beliefs as you, don't be suprised if they get in a tizzy.
 
Le Pen believes, among many other things, that people with AIDS should be isolated in special sanatoria*. He is also a racist tw*t. (More a sort of xenophobic tw*t, really; his party seem to dislike anyone that's not French. Why he came here is a mystery to me.)

One of his party's slogans was "Three million foreigners. Three million unemployed. You do the math."

The party he has come to support, the BNP, is also racist. Wants an all-white Britain, kind of thing. "Voluntary repatriation" of coloured immigrants is in their manifesto.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Le_Pen -- 'In May 1987 he advocated isolating those infected with AIDS (whom he calls "sidaïques") from society by placing them in a special "sidatorium".'
 
And notice he was paying a visit to the BNP (British National Party), which is a very out-there, anti-immigrant, semi-Nazi skinhead party in Great Britain. Not the best references for LePen.

A has-been, Tony. Would have been a never-was except for the way France votes for President, which allowed him to slip past the liberal candidate and make it to the final round....
 
Tony, to put Le Pen in perspective, the socialists of france mobilized with the slogan "Vote for the crook*, not the Nazi."


*Chirac was accused of corruption at the time

Gem
 
DanishDynamite said:
So, he is anti-immigration. So what?
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It's not so much that he's anti-immigration, it's his rationale for it. He thinks that Johnny Foreigner is genetically inferior to the French Ubermensch.
 
Mr Manifesto said:


It's not so much that he's anti-immigration, it's his rationale for it. He thinks that Johnny Foreigner is genetically inferior to the French Ubermensch.
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Has he said in what regard it is inferior?
 
DanishDynamite said:
So, he is anti-immigration. So what?
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There's nothing inherently wrong with being anti-immigration.

There's plenty wrong with calling the Nazi death camps a "detail" of WWII and suggesting that AIDS sufferers should be isolated from the rest of society.

The facts that he's at the head of a racist party, that he came to this country to support a racist party, that he physically attacked an MEP, and that he practised torture in Algeria, do not exactly endear me to him either.

He's a nasty piece of work whichever way you cut it.
 
Originally posted by Mendor There's nothing inherently wrong with being anti-immigration.

There's plenty wrong with calling the Nazi death camps a "detail" of WWII and suggesting that AIDS sufferers should be isolated from the rest of society.
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I agree with the first part but not necessarily with the second.
The facts that he's at the head of a racist party, that he came to this country to support a racist party, that he physically attacked an MEP, and that he practised torture in Algeria, do not exactly endear me to him either.
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Some of those statements certainly sound unpleasant. Any links?
 
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Le_Pen
In April 2000 he was suspended from the European Parliament after physically attacking the Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 general election. This ultimately led to losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003.

It has also been established that he practiced torture in Algeria. Although war crimes committed during the Algerian War of Independence are amnestied in France, this fact was publicised by the newspapers Le Canard Enchainé and Libération and by Michel Rocard (ex-Prime Minister) on TV (TF 1 1993). Le Pen sued the papers and Michel Rocard. This affair ended in 2000 when the "Cour de cassation" (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish this fact. However, because of the amnesty, there can be no further penal issues.
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There are links from that page that you can follow for more reading.
 
From all accounts (which seem conclusive), the man is a waste of flesh.

That said, I am very uncomfortable with laws that criminalize even the dumbest, vilest, hate-mongeringest speech out there.

I think the majority of people would agree that Le Pen is wrong -- and not just wrong, but filled with a malice that should not exist in society. It is therefore an attractive notion to pass a law that prohibits him from passing along his invective-filled hate to others. The decision seems easy -- stop the "hate speech," for lack of a better phrase.

As Luke T. alludes to all of the time, the cure for bad speech is not less of it, but more. We need to allow Le Pen (and neo-Nazi's and the KKK) to express his (their) ideas, and then obliterate them by reason, not by force. We can shine the oft-invoked light of reason on his thoughts and show their ugly spots, their weaknessness, their wrong-ness. If we do not -- if society stops him through legislation, rather than examination -- then we risk having the concepts thrive in the shadows.

His ideas must be beaten in public lest they breed in private.

I know I am ploughing old ground here and am stating nothing new -- but I think that it is vital that this point is mentioned for the most objectionable, so that we keep clear the hazards of allowing distaste to distort the marketplace of ideas by accepting limits that may seem perfectally sensible when applied to one, odious individual or group.

In the US, I look at what many people seriously -- seriously -- describe as 'hate speech' under campus codes of speech or conduct and thank the Founding Fathers for seeing this point so clearly.

To steal blatantly from John Stuart Mill, we cannot simply come to "truth" and then legislate away contrary ideas. The most obvious reason for not doing so is, of course, is the idea that we might be wrong.

But the more forceful reason -- the better reason -- is that the truth is stronger when it is challenged; when the people that know it are forced to think about their own reasoning and defeat other possible "truths" in the markeplace of ideas.

Unless "truth" is fully, frequently, and fearlessly debated, it is not truth, but only dead dogma.

And if our truths of today cannot meet these ideas head on and be strong enough to defeat them in an open and full debate, why are we calling them true?

N/A
 
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