The far-right essayist Alain Soral was definitively condemned for “public insult” following the publication in 2019 on the Internet of a snapshot showing him performing a “quenelle”, following the rejection of his appeal on points of law on Tuesday, according to the judgment consulted by AFP.
“The conviction of Mr. Bonnet [le vrai nom d’Alain Soral] of the head of racial public insult” is “final”, writes the Court of Cassation.
On January 6, 2021, the Colmar Court of Appeal sentenced him for “public insult on the grounds of origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion” following the broadcast on Twitter and his website of a photo taken on May 5, 2019 showing him making a “quenelle” in front of the Colmar court.
Relaxed at first instance, he was this time sentenced to pay “150 day-fine of a unit amount of 150 euros”, which means that in the event of total or partial default in payment, he will be imprisoned for a period corresponding the number of unpaid day-fines.
The “quenelle” (arm stretched downwards and opposite hand placed on the shoulder) was popularized by the polemicist Dieudonné, condemned several times for anti-Semitic statements, a gesture which he described as “anti system”.
It is however “notorious” that this gesture is “sometimes a false nose of anti-Semitism”, noted the Court of Appeal, recalling that Mr. Soral had been condemned for having done it in the middle of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin .
She noted that, “in the mind” of Mr. Soral, it therefore has an “anti-Semitic significance”. Therefore, by broadcasting a photo of him making a “quenelle”, Mr. Soral intended to “persist and sign in an anti-Semitic provocation”.
In its judgment, the Court of Cassation also declared “inadmissible” the civil action of the Jewish consistory of Haut-Rhin, which had nevertheless obtained damages on appeal.
According to the highest French court, Alain Soral will also have to pay 2,500 euros to each of the other two civil parties, the International League once morest Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) and SOS Racisme.
Mr. Soral has already been convicted twenty times, mostly for offenses of incitement to hatred, defamation and anti-Semitic insult.
In November, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed his sentence to day-fines for remarks attributing to the Jews the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States.