France Flirts With Dictatorship via Media “Blackout”

If you want a sense of how dictatorship starts to take hold in a mostly free, Westernized country like France – then take a look at this:

France’s election campaign commission said Saturday that it is examining the reported hacking attack on candidate Emmanuel Macron’s political movement and subsequent document leaks online.

The commission said it would hold a meeting early Saturday to discuss the attack.

It urged French media not to publish the documents, warning that some of them are “probably” fake.

French electoral law impose[s] a blackout Saturday and most of Sunday on any campaigning and media coverage seen as swaying the election, to allow voters a period of reflection before casting their ballots.

Macron is seen as the favorite going into Sunday’s runoff against far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

The 2016 election in the United States changed everything for progressives. They lost, when they felt entitled to win, and when they fully expected to win. They’re not going to let it happen again.

In the United States, leftist organizations and supporters in media, government and academia quickly got out the word that the election had been “hacked” – by Russia. No such concern had ever been uttered by any of these people before. Only once they saw someone other than their own candidate sworn into office did they become wildly concerned with Russia. No smoking gun or proof ever emerged. In fact, evidence suggesting that Obama’s aides engaged in illegal influence of the election, against Trump supporters, did start to come out, but has been widely ignored.

Now it’s the same thing in France. Only this time it’s preventative, to ensure the more leftist candidate wins, as expected. The point here? Instill doubt in people. When you instill enough doubt in enough voters—in France or the United States—that the electoral process can no longer be trusted, then you set the stage for the authorities to take over. Which authorities? The ones raising all the concern about the hacking. The very same ones who want the conventional, progressive, career politician types of officials to remain in office.

In France, it has already gone farther than the United States. France is much more socialist and progressive than the United States, for one thing. Despite that fact, the candidate the media perceives as “far right”—someone who might rock some of the establishment—has a real chance at winning the top political spot in that country. This makes them crazed with fear, because leftists and progressives only care about power. They wail about the welfare of the people, but only because so many people fall for it and it gives them power. It’s no different from politics in the United States, only it’s even more entrenched in Europe.

Think about what you’re reading. A government commission has ordered private media in France not to publish documents because the government deems them as possibly “fake news”. Free media will be put on hold, as in a dictatorship, to save the country from … dictatorship? Does this sound familiar? Isn’t this even a little bit chilling to anyone? France has been, for the most part, and despite its crippling welfare-entitlement-regulatory state, more or less of a free country, at least when it came to freedom of speech. And now its government demands a media blackout because the government has deemed some news to be “fake news”? The American Revolution—not to mention the French Revolution—started under not much different circumstances. Yet so far, people seem timid, afraid and resigned.

Once enough people lose confidence in the democratic and electoral process of their countries, then the way is clear for authorities to impose their will. That’s the great contradiction of any dictator, whether in a government, a family or a marriage. First you get people to think they cannot believe anything they see, think, hear or read. Once their confidence gets thrown off, you’ve weakened or broken their spirits. Then you get to rule them, often under the guise of taking care of them.

America, of all places, was formed on precisely the opposite mentality. America was based on the deeply held conviction that we are all, as individuals, sovereign over our own lives, and that government only exists to uphold this fact. The French were never as on board with this idea as the Americans, but France reflected a lot of this spirit throughout its history and vibrant culture over the last several centuries. And yet now, these very same French people seem ready to let their own government decide what is and isn’t valid news. Where on earth is the anger, the agitation and the outrage?

Back in the 1930s and 1940s Adolf Hitler led a much more obvious invasion of Europe. It appears that in the twenty-first century, the French and other Europeans stand ready to destroy what’s left of their own freedoms. Of course “fake news” exists. It always has and always will. But the moment you permit government authorities to become involved in determining what is or is not fake is the moment you have dispensed with truth completely.