JONATHAN TURLEY We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. I wrote earlier about the prosecution of famous actress Brigitte Bardot for saying in 2006 that Muslims were ruining France in a letter to then-Interior Minister (and later President) Nicolas Sarkozy. Bardot, an animal rights activist, has been repeatedly hit with such criminal complaints for criticizing different groups. Now she has again been fined for calling the the inhabitants of La Reunion “savages” for their continued sacrificing of animals in religious rituals.
Bardot, 87, was fined 20,000 euros ($23,000) by a court on France’s Indian Ocean island of La Reunion over a 2019 letter in which she condemned the continued sacrificing of goats by the island’s Hindu Tamil population, which she described as “degenerate savages.” She declared that “the natives have kept their savage genes” and referred the “cannibalism of past centuries.” She described the population as “a degenerate population still soaked in barbarous ancestral traditions.”
Her spokesman Bruno Jacquelin was also fined for sending the statement to several media outlets at her request…
