2019: the year Macron turned France into a police state (Le Courier des Stratèges)

That's exactly what I thought yesterday, and I can't be the only one...

There are two ways to create a police state (not mutually exclusive). The first consists in carrying out a brutal and direct coup d'etat, which makes it possible to entrust power to the police. The second consists in proceeding by small touches, by successive flashes, which dilute the perception which one has of reality… and which makes this one more acceptable. Since coming to power, Emmanuel Macron has regularly proceeded in this way, each time taking an additional step in the weakening of public freedoms in the face of police repression.

In the hubbub of the Yellow Vests, and their deviations or their excesses, people of good will may not have seen the reality of political power. While Emmanuel Macron only responded once to the demands of the Yellow Vests, police repression was constant, disproportionate and more or less deliberate to curb the revolt.

Hence hundreds of broken faces on which the IGPN has not at this stage given any answer. Nothing excludes that one day these blind people and these penguins will claim legal reparation against the State… and against the elected officials who gave the orders to fire on the crowd.

But of this drift, we could not be aware, convinced that some could be that basically, the Yellow Vests posed a new political problem which supposed new methods to be solved.

The worrying politicization of the prosecution

The same stubbornly refused to see how much, in this drift, justice, and particularly the prosecution, had agreed to be subservient to power. But the politicization of the prosecution was not limited to the extremely severe requisitions which have targeted the Yellow Vests for several weeks (the judicial review of journalist Gaspard Glanz having moreover been lifted for an excess of severity).

The indictment against Bernard Tapie, asking for five years' imprisonment for an extremely debatable and discussed affair, shows that, in the minds of the prosecutors subject to power, doubt should no longer benefit the accused.

The siege and its expeditious methods

A very serious incident occurred this week at the Paris tribunal de grande instance, which illustrates the authoritarian drift of the seat. A magistrate has requested the forcible expulsion of a lawyer in the exercise of her duties. This mind-blowing decision clearly shows that, in a democracy, the balance of power is never won in advance.

Aware that this was a dangerous dumpling, the presiding judge made a strong statement :

"Under no circumstances may the assistance of the police be used, with regard to a lawyer, in the exercise of his functions": the president of the Paris TGI sent Thursday a severe call to order after the expulsion of a lawyer from a hearing.

Nevertheless, the damage is done. Proof is given that magistrates can decide to trample on the rights of the defence.

Freedom of the press in all its turmoil

But the palm of the authoritarian drift under Emmanuel Macron goes to our internal security services, which have obviously decided to kill the freedom of the press.

We recently reported the case of these journalists summoned to entrust our big mustaches with the names of the sources who informed them about arms sales to Saudi Arabia. What we then thought was an exception is in fact a well-established practice: journalists who are too curious are now openly intimidated by the police.

So, one after the other, we learned thata journalist from Le Quotidien had been questioned, after having displeased the Minister of the Armed Forces, by the same DCRI, then that Ariane Chemin, herself, an investigative journalist at Le Monde, was the subject of the same procedure for her writings on the Benalla affair.

We will have fun with the binary opposition, cultivated by Emmanuel Macron, between the democracy of progress and the barbarism of nationalism. Nevertheless, his own democracy treats the freedom of the press and the secrecy of sources very badly, but also the separation of powers.

All of this is starting to really matter.

source: Lecourrierdesstrateges.fr

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