Rasmus Paludan, the French publication Marianne, tells us, is “far-right,” which means that Marianne wants its readers to despise Rasmus Paludan. But in its essentials, he was going to do nothing different from what Samuel Paty did, and Samuel Paty is now celebrated in France as a hero and martyr for the freedom of speech. Either France is going to protect the freedom of expression or it is going to submit to Sharia. If Paludan had been murdered for burning a Qur’an, would that have made him more palatable to French authorities?
“Rasmus Paludan, Danish anti-Islam activist, arrested in Paris while going to burn Korans,” by Paul Conge, Marianne, November 11, 2020 (thanks to Breitbart):
According to our information, this far-right agitator from Denmark was arrested in Paris before he was able to carry out his auto-da-fé project. The activist, banned from French soil, will be expelled in the evening.
He defied his ban on French territory and was about to burn Korans at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe. But Rasmus Paludan, a Danish far-right agitator, was unlikely to succeed. He was arrested on November 11 in Paris, around 2:30 p.m., in his car, before taking action, Marianne learned from a judicial source. This 38-year-old nationalist YouTuber will be expelled from France in the evening. He failed to disrupt Armistice commemorations.
Anti-Islam agitprop specialist
Little known in France, Rasmus Paludan, a specialist in anti-Islam agitprop, has been noticed in recent years for YouTube videos in which he makes auto-da-fés of the Koran, sometimes by brushing it with pig’s blood or by wrapping it in bacon. Provocations that he has recently repeated in several European capitals, such as Stockholm and Copenhagen.
A lawyer by profession, Paludan in 2017 founded the identity micro-party Stram Kurs (“Hard Line”) to promote his radically Islamophobic line and has been leading it ever since. Although he appears, for his detractors, to be a political clown, with his colorful ties and his outrageous remarks, the man who was condemned in 2019 for his racist remarks managed to garner 1.8% of the vote in the last legislative elections in Denmark. This was insufficient, however, to send a deputy to the Folketing, the Danish parliament.
Rasmus Paludan, who is said to be under ban on French territory, arrived in Paris on the evening of November 10. In an irregular situation, he was arrested while getting into his car, and was placed in administrative detention in the premises of the Department for the Control of Migration Flows (DCFM), which reports to the Paris Police Prefecture.
His auto-da-fé project had benefited from a few relays in the French far-right webosphere.
He will be deported this evening.