Is the Press freer in the United States than in Europe?
What follows below is the author’s translation of his piece in French (Fall 2012). The original text in French can be accessed here or here. It is published in Réfléchir et Agir, a political-cultural quarterly published in France. It can be roughly categorized as non-conformist “national-anarchist” journal with critical articles on art, literature and politics. The journal has published interviews with prominent French personalities from cultural and political life (Brigitte Bardot, Jean Raspail, Alain de Benoist, Vladimir Volkoff, etc).
America does not yet know freedom-killing laws that have by now become the trademark of the Federal Republic of Germany and France. Compared to the French Penal Code, especially the Fabius-Gayssot law, or the dreaded Section 130 of the Criminal Code in Germany, the famous First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution opens up avenues to freedom of expression that one could only dream about in Europe. Intellectuals who write for newspapers labeled “racist” or “extreme rightwing”, or heads of U.S. institutions who voice doubts about the official casualty figure of the Jewish Holocaust, such as The Barnes Review or The Institute of Historical Review, could be liable to a 4-year prison sentence in Germany, or subject to heavy legal fines in France. None of this exists as of yet in America, where one can see even proscribed European scholars such as Robert Faurisson and David Irving as guests of honor of different revisionist groups. Moreover, openly anti-Black, indeed racist gatherings are not uncommon in America, just as wearing the Waffen SS uniform, or sporting the swastika by U.S skinheads, or for that matter displaying the Celtic cross in one’s own back yard — all this baggage, all of this behavior is strictly protected under the U.S. legal system.
One must not be fooled, however. American media and especially the mainstream press attuned to the System, such as The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Post, let alone the major television channels, such as CNN, are careful not to venture into open discussions of the great taboos of our postmodernity: the Jewish question and the race question. It is not fear of judicial censorship that rules over the intellectual landscape in America; fortunately there is none for the time being. Rather, self-censorship among journalists and well-known professors, or the paranoid anticipation of inadvertently crossing paths with an “evil thinker” produces unprecedented psycho-anthropological knee-jerk reflexes. Fear of social ostracism and fear of being consigned to professional oblivion turn out to be stronger antidotes than fines, imprisonment, or the loss of job [American professors with tenure can’t be fired for expressing their views on politics or scholarly issues]. Read more