seonaid mcgill

France is on the eve of voting one of the most shameful laws in its history: it would effectively outlaw criticism of Israel and criminalize any speech seen as even remotely sympathetic to whoever the French government chooses to designate a "terrorist group." In effect this law would turn France's foreign policy into unchallengeable dogma backed by prison time. You could literally be sent for 5 years in prison if you, for instance, call what France says are "terrorists" a "resistance group." Think for instance Nelson Mandela during the apartheid (the ANC was on every Western terrorist list) or, heck, France's own Résistance against Nazi Germany - designated as "terrorists" by the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupation. It's frankly absolutely insane. The new law is called "loi Yadan" after its author Caroline Yadan, a MP who represents French expatriates living in Israel. The U.S. has congressmen paid by AIPAC: France has cut out the middleman entirely, we have MPs whose constituency is literally in Israel. The law has already passed committee and heads to a full parliamentary vote on April 16th - 3 days from now - under a very unusual fast-track procedure. Seven of eleven parliamentary groups have said they'll vote yes and the law is expected to pass. What does the law say? Let me quote from it directly (full text here: assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/textes/…): 1) Article 1 introduces the concept of "implicit" provocation to terrorism and punishes it with five years imprisonment and a fine of €75,000 That's the one I was speaking about. Under this provision, describing anyone France designates as terrorist as a "resistance movement" - the way France describes its own Résistance against Nazi occupation - could effectively become a crime. The key concept is what does "implicit provocation to terrorism" mean? Nobody knows. And that's the point. It means whatever a prosecutor wants it to mean: a perfectly good case could be made that, for instance, quoting international law on the right of occupied peoples to resist with respect to Hamas is, in fact, "implicit provocation to terrorism." France's most famous anti-terrorism judge, Marc Trévidic, says he has never seen anything like it in his entire career (x.com/CharliesIngall…): "Implicit provocation to terrorism: do you realize what that means? Becoming a censor of other people's thoughts, trying to guess what a person really meant." 2) The same article also expands the terrorism apology offense to include "minimizing or trivializing acts of terrorism in an outrageous manner." This is even crazier: until now, "apology of terrorism" meant actually expressing a favorable judgment of "terrorist acts" (which is already insane because, as we all know, one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter). Well, under this new provision, a judge could decide that providing context, explaining root causes, or insufficiently condemning an act amounts to "trivializing" terrorism - and that would now be punishable with 5 years in prison. So, for instance, a history teacher explaining the origins of Hamas or Hezbollah is providing context - but a prosecutor could argue that contextualization is trivialization. The same reasoning could apply to a journalist, a researcher, or anyone on social media who says "yes, it was terrible, but here's why it happened." The "but" becomes a crime, as it is trivialization. 3) Article 4 expands Holocaust denial law Under current French law, denying the Holocaust is already a crime. This provision extends that crime by specifying that contestation of crimes against humanity now includes, "whatever its formulation, a negation, minimization, or outrageous trivialization" of those crimes. Again with "outrageous trivialization"! In this instance the very authors of the text - Caroline Yadan and her colleagues - explain their reasoning explicitly in the law's preamble (assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/textes/…): "Comparing the State of Israel to the Nazi regime would thereby be punishable as an outrageous trivialization of the Shoah." So while the provision is written in general terms, its architects are openly saying what it's for: making it a crime to draw any parallel between Israel's actions and those of the Nazis. 4) Article 2 creates a brand new crime: calling for the destruction of a state. The law adds to an existing 1881 press law a provision punishing anyone who "publicly, in disregard of the right of peoples to self-determination and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, calls for the destruction of a state recognized by the French Republic." Five years imprisonment, €75,000 fine. The qualifiers about self-determination and the UN Charter are meant to sound reassuring. But what does "destruction" mean? In practice, if you advocate for a one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live as equals, you are de-facto calling for the "destruction" of the state of Israel. Well, that would now be punishable by 5 years in prison 🤷 There you go. Absolutely insane: if this new law passes, and it unfortunately very much looks like it will, France - the country that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the country whose national identity is built on the Résistance - will have made it illegal to use the word 'resistance' about anyone the government doesn't like. Jean Moulin would be prosecuted. De Gaulle would be prosecuted. The only people who wouldn't be prosecuted are those who stay silent. Which, of course, is the whole point.

ANGRY YOUNG WOMEN by @emilylawford and @Scarlett__Mag It was a Wednesday night and seven members of the University of Leeds’ feminist society had invited me to join their book swap. I asked how they felt about the young men they knew. “I don’t care for them,” said a girl called Ruby imperiously. “They’re not bad people, but they refuse to call out their friends who make other girls uncomfortable. They’ll laugh at jokes that are sexist, racist, homophobic, they don’t care about political issues… I don’t think they like women a lot.” If a man is attracted to you, she said, he might talk about things like toxic misogyny. If he doesn’t fancy you, he won’t bother. “I feel like a lot of it is quite sexually motivated with men.” I asked if they’d consider dating a man with different political views. They all immediately said no. “I don’t think I’d even be friends with one,” said one girl. “They don’t see you as human.” Only one woman, Evelyn, admitted to having male friends (though she was worried this made her a “pick me”, trying too hard for male attention). Evelyn was concerned about what the men she knew were watching online. “The stuff that’s being said about women is crazy,” she said. “They’re getting all these reels, talking about, like, bad stuff about women. And I get reels of women saying bad stuff about men. I try to think, not all men are like this, but…” On the internet, women and men have never been more alienated from each other. While the toxic, often hard-right politics of the manosphere have been exhaustively documented, the new generation of female influencers are nearly as extreme – just on the other side of the political spectrum. The “femosphere” spans a range of tones: there are misandrist dating coaches who urge women to reject men altogether, and more explicitly progressive content creators who cover global and domestic politics. Exclusive polling by Merlin Strategy for the New Statesman reveals that young women, aged between 18 and 30, are by far the most progressive demographic in the UK. Young women are 26 percentage points less likely to feel positively about capitalism than young men, and much less likely to feel the economy works in their favour. Gen Z women are more likely to support causes such as feminism, environmentalism and anti-racism than young men. They also feel much more negatively towards young men than young men feel about them. I spent the last few months in search of the new left-wing young women. It wasn’t difficult – they were everywhere. But it all felt impossibly bleak. They weren’t excited about their futures. They didn’t like the men they knew, or the idea of those they didn’t. Men were just a threat who had the potential to harm or trap them. This will almost certainly make relationships harder: fewer than half of young women feel men understand them. Young women are much less likely than men to date people who disagree with their politics. People will get lonelier, and angrier. Young women are twice as likely to not want children as young men. And it’s getting worse. Women under 25 are most likely to believe things are “stacked against me, no matter how hard I try”. A significant majority of young women feel isolated from the rest of the country. The two main political parties aren’t reaching out to them specifically. Many women told me they feared a Reform government pressuring them to have babies. Many say they will vote for the Greens in the upcoming local elections, but few seem to believe that will make a difference. They don’t feel represented by mainstream politics, and they don’t think anyone cares. Cover art by Carl Godfrey