French making donations for police assailant
The former heavyweight boxer Christophe Dettinger was filmed punching police officers in Paris on Saturday during protests by the yellow vests. Because he now faces a prison sentence supporters donated almost 120,000 euros for him in a single day. France's press is scandalised.
Inverted values
France's moral fundaments have unravelled, La Croix writes worriedly:
“The fact that the initiative was so successful shows just how confused the situation in France is at the moment. Normally money is collected to help victims. Here, in a strange and saddening inversion of values, it's the aggressor who's receiving support. It's time for us to come to our senses. Such aberrations could spell the end for the causes defended by the yellow vests.”
Donations an expression of freedom of opinion
Mounir Mahjoubi, French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs, has reacted with indignation on Twitter to the fund-raising campaign. For Contrepoints his comments are an attack on the freedom of expression:
“The Internet still offers a few small niches of freedom. These niches, however, make politicians uncomfortable because there's nothing they would like better than well-behaved citizens and a highly regulated Internet that gives users only the freedoms they choose to allow them (that is: practically none at all). The fact is, however, that the freedoms offered by the Internet are as vital as the freedom of expression. And they are non-negotiable. The freedom to express one's point of view, whatever it may be, or to give money to a fund-raising campaign, regardless of what it's for, should be as self-evident as an education that teaches children to think critically from day one.”