Hate speech laws in France
The Gayssot Act sets a punishment of five years' imprisonment and a €45,000 fine for the public expression of ideas that challenge the existence of the crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany during World War II as defined in the appendix to the London Agreement of 8 August 1945.
In July 2019, the National Assembly passed the bill to enforce these rules to limit hateful content online.
In 1985, three organizations asked a court in Paris to ban the film Je vous salue, Marie by Jean-Luc Godard.
In the article, Giniewski criticizes the Pope, and states that "Catholic doctrine abetted the conception and the realization of Auschwitz".
[1] In 1997, a Christian organization asked for the removal of a poster which advertised the film The People vs Larry Flynt by Miloš Forman.
The poster depicted a miniature Woody Harrelson—the actor who played the role of porn-tycoon Larry Flynt—in a loincloth made from the American flag, and suspended as though crucified upon the pubic area of a bikini-clad woman.
[1] In 1998, a Christian organization asked to ban caricatures published by the satirical magazine La Grosse Bertha.
One of its covers represented Christ dying with the inscription: I suck (in French, "je suçe", which pronounces similarly to "Jesus") was his name by Robert Obscene and Alain Porno from the Acadébite (a play on the words Academy and penis), on inside page a cartoon with the Christ saying Why have you forsaken Me Jerk?
and the apostles at the foot of the cross carrying banners: pension forced to 33 years, Job insecurity, in back page, a drawing titled miscellaneous news item illustrated with a disemboweled slept naked woman a crucifix crashed in the vagina and on another cover under the title: the Pope at the transvestites, a drawing representing Pope John-Paul II sodomized by a transvestite who exclaims: welcome to Brazil.
[1][8] In 2002, several civil-rights organizations initiated civil and criminal proceedings against Oriana Fallaci and her publisher for the novel La Rage et l'Orgueil.
The organizations argued that the novel insulted Arabs, Muslims, and Islam, and incited discrimination, hatred, and violence on religious and racial grounds.
[1] In March 2005, Marithé François Girbaud, a brand of women's clothing, had a billboard—40 metres long—placed on a building on the Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
The billboard featured a photograph of 12 beautiful, well-dressed women and one shirtless man posed round a table in the manner of the characters in the painting The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.
[1] In 2006, the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo released a special issue which featured cartoons pertinent to Islam, including some from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
A Muslim organization initiated criminal proceedings against Philippe Val, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, for insulting a group of people because of their religion.
[1][9][11] On 18 January 2007, a tribunal in Lyon sentenced Bruno Gollnisch to a three-month, suspended prison-term and a fine of €5,000 for the offense of contesting information about the Holocaust.
[12][13] In 2007, the Supreme Court of Appeal considered a remark by a comedian during an interview published in the journal Lyon Capitale.
The Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP) filed the charge against Bardot because, in a letter to the government about throat-cutting of animals during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, she complained about "this population that leads us around by the nose, [and] which destroys our country.
"[15] In 2013 Bob Dylan was placed under judicial investigation in France for allegedly provoking ethnic hatred of Croats.
It followed a legal complaint lodged by a Croat association in France over a 2012 interview Dylan gave to Rolling Stone magazine.
[16] In April 2014, the case against Dylan himself was dropped, but the director of Rolling Stone's French edition was ordered to stand trial.
