This is how dictatorships begin.
Ten people were just found guilty in France for “cyberbullying” the country’s first lady, according to France24. These weren’t threats. Nor violence. Nor blackmail. It was speech — ugly, stupid, conspiratorial speech, in this writer’s opinion — aimed at a powerful public figure who sits at the very center of the French political class.
Let’s be clear: The claim that French first lady Brigitte Macron is secretly a man is absurd, unserious, and a distraction from real problems. What Macron allegedly has hiding in her skirt has little bearing on unchecked immigration, a brutal economy, or rampant crime.
But free societies don’t criminalize speech because it’s foolish or offensive. They tolerate it precisely because the alternative — empowering the state to decide what mockery, speculation, or ridicule is allowed — is the first step toward something far darker.
And that’s the uncomfortable question hanging over Europe right now.
How did the continent that gave the world the Enlightenment, that stood shoulder to shoulder with the Allies against genuine totalitarianism, arrive at a place where police and courts are deployed to punish online insults?
When governments start policing thoughts and jokes in the name of “harm,” they aren’t protecting democracy so much as they’re crossing a line toward hollowing it out.
A Paris court has now crossed that line, and that should make anyone who values free expression deeply uneasy.
On Monday, judges handed down guilty verdicts against 10 individuals (eight men and two women) accused of “cyberbullying” Macron, for circulating crude, false, and conspiratorial claims about her gender and sexuality — speech that some may find offensive, yes, but nonviolent and political in nature.
And these punishments were not symbolic wrist slaps. Defendants were ordered to undergo mandatory “cyberbullying awareness” programs, while others received suspended prison sentences of up to eight months, which is a rather remarkable escalation for online speech offenses involving no threats and no physical harm.
The message from the state was unmistakable: Say the wrong thing about the wrong person, and the justice system will intervene.
In justifying the convictions, the court cited comments it deemed “particularly degrading, insulting, and malicious,” including speculation about transgender identity and even lurid accusations of pedocriminality due to the 24-year age gap between Brigitte and her husband, French President Emmanuel Macron.
Yet by positioning itself as the arbiter of acceptable opinion and tone, the French government has done far more damage than any internet troll ever could by normalizing the idea that political speech, however distasteful or pointless, is no longer protected when it embarrasses those in power.
……..Any politician, spouse, or government-adjacent figure can now claim subjective distress as grounds to silence critics, satirists, or online provocateurs. Once personal discomfort becomes the metric for criminality, speech rights no longer belong to the public — they belong to the most thin-skinned people closest to power.
And this isn’t some hypothetical slippery slope. Europe has already slid down it.
We’ve watched police detain citizens not for shouting slogans or threatening violence, but for standing silently in public with the “wrong” thoughts. In at least one case, a woman was questioned and arrested for quietly praying outside an abortion center, accused of committing a crime without speaking a word. When the state claims the authority to punish what someone might be thinking, the distinction between free society and managed obedience isn’t slipping — it’s already collapsed.
Make no mistake, this is totalitarianism in its modern, sanitized form. No jackboots, no gulags, just bureaucrats, courts, and euphemisms like “harm,” “safety,” and “dignity” used to justify policing speech, belief, and eventually conscience itself.
Freedom of speech is under assault everywhere.
A French woman faced 10 years in prison for referring to Emmanuel Macron as ‘garbage’ on social media.
Freedom of speech in the UK, Germany, France, and Canada, has eroded.
Ireland outlawed free speech and non-mainstream media content.
The U.K. has a jackbooted response to political and social dissent. Their “Think Before You Post” campaign is a sinister form of censorship.
An American woman visiting the UK was confronted by the cops for a social media post that “upset someone”.
UK government thugs bragged about making 30 arrests a day for “offensive” social media posts.
A British comedian was arrested for criticizing trannies.
They’re harassing and arresting people who speak out against Hamas on social media. An activist was arrested after he shared a meme on X which read: ‘Fuck Hamas, Fuck Palestine, Fuck Islam. Want to protest? Fuck off to a Muslim country and protest’.
The wife of a conservative councilor was arrested and sent to prison for expressing anger over the murder of three girls by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana.
Your videos could get your jailed. The director of public prosecutions of England and Wales warns that ‘sharing online material’ of riots could be an offence.
A Jewish man was arrested and charged for mocking the leader of Hezbollah by holding up a cartoon for three minutes. The placard depicted Lebanese terror chief, Hasan Nasrallah, with a pager and the words “beep, beep, beep”. The imbecile cop thought it would “stir up racial hatred further”. Protesting against a violent, Islamic ideology masquerading as a ‘religion’ is going to ‘stir up racial hatred further’ against the Western society they want dead. That’s as retarded as their “please don’t attack us” campaign they aired in Pakistan.
Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders stood trial for criticizing Islamofascism.
German officials attempted to start a criminal investigation into a Gab social media user who allegedly called a left-wing female politician “fat.”
Here in America, the leftwing owned and operated social media is busy creating a global censorship database and a process to label political opponents “hate agents”.
During the Biden regime, every three-letter weaponized agency in the Swamp dictated which social media accounts to ban and posts to censor. They teamed up with Big Tech to control information, free speech, and debate on social media. The Dems did their part, as well.
Facebook engages in censorship and outright banning of conservative users and sites.
Twitter was just as bad. An undercover video from Project Veritas showed Twitter employees bragging on their censorship skills against conservatives.
Michael Shellenberger highlights media complicity in the EU’s crackdown on free speech.