Disaster Marine Le Pen ordered to undergo psychiatric testing - National Fronting.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45590963

A French court has ordered far-right leader Marine Le Pen to undergo psychiatric tests as part of an inquiry into her sharing images of Islamic State group atrocities.

Ms Le Pen tweeted pictures of the court order, calling the move "crazy".

She posted the images back in 2015, including one showing the decapitated body of IS victim James Foley.

She has been stripped of her immunity as a parliamentarian and she could still face a fine or even jail.

• Who is Marine Le Pen?
• What makes Marine Le Pen far right?
• Guide to nationalist parties in Europe

As leader of what was then the National Front, Ms Le Pen was comfortably beaten by Emmanuel Macron in the second round of presidential elections last year.

Since then she has been attempting to rebuild, and the party has been rebranded as National Rally in part to try to distance it from the taint of racism.

According to the document posted by Ms Le Pen, the judge wants the tests to determine if she suffers mental illness or is "capable of understanding remarks and answering questions".

"It's crazy," Ms Le Pen tweeted. "This regime is really starting to be frightening."

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She later told reporters she had no intention of submitting to the assessment. Prosecutors told Le Parisien newspaper the request was standard procedure.

Ms Le Pen sparked an outcry when she posted the images, which she shared in response to a journalist who drew a comparison between IS and her party

The other images showed a tank running over a man in an orange jumpsuit, while another jumpsuit-clad man was shown in a cage being burned alive.

The case against her stems from French laws against circulating "violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity" and that can be viewed by a minor.

Apparently sharing the barbarism of Islam is crazy now.

 

[ICametoLurk]

There was planned a literal coup if she won.

 

[Ineedahero]

I don't understand this. What sort of violent message would incite pornography?

show bobs and vagene or i cut you

 

[mindlessobserver]

One of the great things about the Founding Fathers is they all seemed to understand and be of the mindset: "Assholes get elected all the time, how can we proactively neuter them so they can't turn this document into legalized persecution?"

Actually, the wisdom of the founders of the American Republic lies in their belief that humans are shitty creatures that get shitty ideas all the time, and that all ideas for how to run a society are liable to be shit. So they built a governing structure with the idea that people are shit as its primary principle in order to mitigate the inevitable shit that would be tried.

And it works. Compare that with every society that believed all humans are angels and decided to make a governing structure based around an utopian vision.

 

[TowinKarz]

Actually, the wisdom of the founders of the American Republic lies in their belief that humans are shitty creatures that get shitty ideas all the time, and that all ideas for how to run a society are liable to be shit. So they built a governing structure with the idea that people are shit as its primary principle in order to mitigate the inevitable shit that would be tried.

And it works. Compare that with every society that believed all humans are angels and decided to make a governing structure based around an utopian vision.

This is why progressive ideas, generally, don't work, they have no failsafe in them for people being assholes, they honestly think only the "right" people will use them in the "right" and intended way, and it only ends up empowering whiny dangerhairs to go on years-long government-backed crusades against a cake shop, or the Boy Scouts....

Only the cynic and the conservative, who've been subject to that kind of witch hunt, seem to get that laws don't prevent behavior, they empower it's opposition.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

This is why the US put the 5th Amendment in and made it illegal for laws to be that open to opinion and unconstitutional if too vague.

It's why a law against "causing bodily harm" is okay (it's objectively provable you broke the guy's arm and put him in a lot of pain) but "harming the morals of the nation" are not, (what's moral and what harms it is subjective). Nebulous terms like "harming national dignity" inserted into law will eventually be used as an end-run around the 1st Amendment or whatever it's local equivalent is and leveraged against people for political gain, no exceptions.

One of the great things about the Founding Fathers is they all seemed to understand and be of the mindset: "Assholes get elected all the time, how can we proactively neuter them so they can't turn this document into legalized persecution?"

The french thing is similar to the very nebulous and now largely antiquated American "community standards" law/guidelines against obscenity. That was a fun one, something like piss porn was legal in New York because the New Yorker's had probably seen some shit in their days, but illegal in Idaho because it would probably shock country bumpkins. That guy Max Hardcore got put in prison because the feds shipped his DVDs to a state where the actions would be deemed obscene, then prosecuted him for allowing that to happen.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

I'm having a little trouble parsing this situation out... can someone please tell me there's more to this than that a French court didn't like what a party leader says and now is challenging that person to defend her own competence? Because here in America even the courts aren't randomly hauling Alex Jones before a psych board just because a bunch of the public don't like him. I know we have a lot of brits here but if there are any frankish kiwis I'd love to hear that there is more nuance to this than just Gul Madred deciding to tell an opposition leader that there are 5 lights.

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

Remember, 100 years ago, when women who had opinions were confined to institutions and ordered to undergo therapeutic masturbation in a dingy, cold asylum?
Kind of makes bitching about a handmaid's tale costume seem stupid.