Brickbat: Thought Crime

ISA HARSIN/SIPA/Newscom

A French court has ordered right-wing political leader Marine Le Pen to undergo psychiatric evaluation for posting images online of violence committed by the Islamic State. She has been charged with disseminating images of violence that could be seen by children. Le Pen faces up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $87,000 if convicted. She says she would not comply with the court order, which is not legally enforceable.

Comments

[DiegoF]

If Marine Le Pen is under indictment for a felony, and a court has "ordered" her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation which in fact she can choose to undergo or not as she deems advantageous, I am not really seeing much of a problem here. (The outrageous nature of the criminal charges themselves are of course another matter.)

The particular lesson here is to always remember, and to tell everyone who will listen to remember, exactly what is at stake when the oh-so-civilized-and-sophisticated American Europhile class now openly and brazenly denounces the peculiar political values of our shameful little backwater and wishes we would be more like them. We know now that halfway commitments to principles like freedom of speech are inherently unstable, and prone to degenerate. This is "normal" now in the European political culture. Just a little bit less free to begin with, and there without that grace would have gone us.

We also should remember, quite a bit more than the average HnRer/Glib tends to, just how dangerous and crucial to guard a state power is at play when legal procedure and psychiatry intersect--as indeed they must to some extent. I know it's no picnic to have bums taking a dump on your front lawn, or lunatics slaughtering kids and endangering public support for 2A rights; but this is a highly toxic "cure" whose dosage we must balance quite warily with its potential efficacy.

[DiegoF]

Amendments:

P1: Clarify that the proposed evaluation is pursuant to the charges. State of mind is a relevant fact in all sorts of criminal trials and other proceedings, not just "thought crimes," which is why psychiatric evaluations are so often introduced as evidence even here in the good ol' USA. Here the "crime" in question is mean tweets about ISIS; but if, for example, Mlle. Le Pen were accused of murdering a man in cold blood who happened to be Muslim and whom she had no apparent other motive to murder, both her public statements and any psychiatric evaluation she agreed to might be introduced as evidence from one side or the other. Nothing untoward about that. The only issue is what actions can justly be declared potential crimes in the first place, as Mlle. Le Pen's clearly cannot.

P3: Clarify that, as mentioned previously, such issues do not seem to be relevant to the case of Mlle. Le Pen here.

[Fist of Etiquette]

She says she would not comply with the court order, which is not legally enforceable.

Even the Frog courts pull out the white flag on enforcing their own bullshit.

[DiegoF]

Suspicions confirmed! Le Pen treats an "order" from the French government exactly like the Hitler she is!

[Jerryskids]

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

[Rat on a train]

Only a crazy person would oppose the state. Get her psychiatric treatment.

[Cloudbuster]

You laugh, but that's exactly where this is heading.

[Inigo Montoya]

In the early years of Soviet Russia, psychiatric care was often ordered for people "crazy" enough to criticize their rulers. I wonder if the French courts are even aware of this.

In any case, while I'm not a fan of the LePen, I wonder what sort of images she was showing. If they were actual photos not doctored in any way, then it's factual rather than hateful, isn't it?

[Rat on a train]

If psychiatric treatment doesn't help, she can volunteer for work at a labor camp where she will eventually die of heart failure when enough blood drains out the bullet hole.

[SQRLSY One]

Inigo, you beat me to it! Yes, to be ***NOT*** content in your "worker's paradise" in the USSR, was to be obviously insane! Being hospitalized by the shrinks was just another way to keep you in jail (with a supposedly nicer name) and away from the public, away from being able to be a trouble-maker. This ***IS*** related (in kind if not in degree) to what the Frogs are doing!!!

I think this bullshit went on in the USSR, up into the early 1970s (offhand... Too lazy to check Google). Western shrinks stopped "playing well with others" (not going to USSR shrink conferences, etc.) in protest of the shrink business obviously being an arm of the USSR oligarchy.

[perlchpr]

If they were actual photos not doctored in any way, then it's factual rather than hateful, isn't it?

If they go against The Narrative, facts can also be hateful.

[Rockabilly]

Comrades!

Welcome to the EU!

Now comply or Die!!!

[loveconstitution1789]

If the French had only been this authoritarian in 1940, they could have allied with the Nazis.

Oh, that's right the Vichy French did.

[turco]

I appreciate George Mason more and more every day.