Iran’s state-controlled Press TV here says that Zemmour “was convicted for saying that France has been ‘colonized’ by Muslims, even though colonization is done by a group with power, whereas France’s Muslims are on the bottom of the nation’s social ladder.”
Yes, of course. This is indeed a historically unprecedented type of colonization. But the idea that a group at the bottom of a nation’s social ladder could not possibly take power is, to say the least, unsupported by history.
Note also how this piece from Press TV has the same tone and resorts to the same tropes that we constantly see in the Western establishment media: any opposition to mass Muslim migration into Europe is “Islamophobia” and “racism,” Muslims are the new Jews, etc. The latter claim is as offensive as it is risible. Jews during the Nazi period weren’t committing terror attacks or boasting of imminent conquest. Nor is anyone calling for a mass extermination of Muslims; nor criticism of jihad violence and Sharia oppression tantamount to such a call.
“France’s despised Eric Zemmour guilty of Islamophobia,” by Ramin Mazaheri, Iran’s state-controlled Press TV, September 19, 2019 (thanks to Henry):
France’s most notorious far-right thinker, Eric Zemmour, has finally been convicted of Islamophobic speech.
He was convicted for saying that France has been “colonized” by Muslims, even though colonization is done by a group with power, whereas France’s Muslims are on the bottom of the nation’s social ladder.
Zemmour said that a young woman wearing a hijab was equal to a violent act of war, which gave far-right sympathizers more cover to attack Muslim women. Zemmour apparently does not believe in France’s tradition of personal liberty, because he said Muslims must choose between Islam and France….
France’s laws against hate speech are incredibly weak, which only encourages more hate speech – Zemmour will only be forced to pay a fine of just 3,000 euros. Despite his most recent conviction, there is no indication that French news outlets like Le Figaro, BFM TV and countless other top media will stop regularly interviewing Zemmour.
The sad irony is that Eric Zemmour is Jewish, and yet he uses the same racist rhetoric that the French used against Jews at the turn of the 20th century and in Nazi-occupied France.