🇫🇷We’re back!
🇫🇷We’re back!
It’s been just over a month, but your favourite publication is now back, fully recharged, and filled with plans! Pavel Durov arrested by the state, and France continues to look for a Prime Minister
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This week
🧠Back with plenty of plans in the bank!
🚔Pavel Durov arrested
🕵️♂️Looking for a Prime Minister
🧠Back with plenty of plans in the bank!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to The French Dispatch; I hope you all had a lovely summer!
While there was plenty of rest and relaxation as I ran around Paris during the Olympics and travelled through France, there was also a lot of planning going on in the back end of your favourite publication, and we have quite a few announcements that you can look forward to in the next few weeks!
From some new formats to new members joining the team, make sure you subscribe and keep an eye open for these ()and make sure to let us know what you think of them!
🚔Pavel Durov arrested and charged
So, let’s start this week off with a big story that has led to major tantrums from so-called “free speech absolutists”, “free thinkers”, and overall, the anglophone far-right.
As you may have seen through my various Twitter updates, Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, arrived at Le Bourget Airport on Saturday 24 August, and was promptly arrested by the French State.
The Franco-Russian citizen, who had an arrest warrant on his back since July related to Telegram, was well aware of what could happen when he traveled to France.
According to Le Monde, he had been the target of an OFMIN (The Office for Minors) investigation related to combating the presence of child Pornography on Telegram, who he had ignored. The investigation had continued to expand progressively as more and more agencies got involved.
While many immediately started speaking up against a perceived grave threat against Democracy and free speech, the biggest noise came from the Russian government, who very quickly attempted to apply pressure to the French Far-Right.
The day after Durov had been arrests, Vladimir Putin’s allies started sending signals to Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella directly that the Russian president wanted them to support efforts to release Durov from arrest.
However, once the list of 12 charges being brought against him was released, the more sensible voices out there quieted down. These included:
Complicity – web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group,
Refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law
Complicity – possessing pornographic images of minors
Complicity - distributing, offering or making available pornographic images of minors, in organized group
Complicity - acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering or selling narcotic substances
Complicity - offering, selling or making available, without legitimate reason, equipment, tools, programs or data designed for or adapted to get access to and to damage the operation of an automated data processing system
Complicity – organized fraud, Criminal association with a view to committing a crime or an offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment
Laundering of the proceeds derived from organized group’s offences and crimes
Providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration
Providing a cryptology tool not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration
Importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.
Immediately, some of the criticisms of the Governments move were stopped, with only the typical far-right wing of the internet having their screaming tantrums about conspiracies, led by Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, and other problematic actors (as always).
To further quiet these down, Emmanuel Macron stated that the Paris Prosecutors Office had moved of its own accord, as was the right of an independent judiciary, and that there were no political motivations involved.
While the criticisms continued, and while the United Arab Emirates and Russian state both requested consular access to Durov, which he refused, things continued and conspiracies began to spin out of control.
One major reason for this was Russian panic related to their struggling genocidal invasion of Ukraine, which is heavily managed through Telegram both in a military sense and in a societal, informational sense.
They also accused the French of arresting Durov at the request of the USA, with the goal being to extradite him.
Naturally, they don’t know how we operate, as France doesn’t extradite its nationals (plus, to Americans? Really?)
Finally, French authorities indicted Pavel Durov on Tuesday evening on six charges, releasing him from custody on a €5 million bail and banning him from leaving the country
The more serious charges include:
Complicity in the offences of making available without legitimate reason a program or data designed for… organized gang distribution of images of minors presenting child pornography, drug trafficking
Complicity in web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organised group
Refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law
Now while we wait and see what happens next, the reality is that this all forming a major crackdown on the ability of these messaging apps to do whatever they want, with impunity, under the guise of free speech.
Whatever side of things you fall on, I think that it’s very easy to agree that applications wholeheartedly allowing and protecting heinous activity such as the spread of child pornography, drug and weapons trafficking, and criminal activity more widely does not match the criteria of free speech.
In the majority of the western world, we have strong protections for free speech, for opinions on the world around us, and for people to contribute to society with their discussions.
The problem that we run into, more often than not, is when people abuse these rights for more vile, violent, and negative goals, such as spreading disinformation, misinformation, racism, homphobia, and other violent discourse.
But that is a whole other discussion to have, and if you want to hear about this kind of topic in future, comment below and let us know! One of our future projects may actually be a great platform for this
🕵️♂️Looking for a Prime Minister
The most recent drama’s aside, let’s do the time warp and go back to mid July, where everyone was wondering who the next Prime Minister of the French Republic would be.
And quite honestly, after an Olympic break, several rounds of negotiations, and several consultations, we still have no clue who will form a government or who will support what.
While you can look forward to a longer breakdown of the situation in your favourite publication, we can cover a few points right now.
Firstly, the case of the Nouveau Front Populaire.
While they did indeed come first, benefiting like many parties from tactical voting to stop the far-right from winning, they have been struggling to take the lead in negotiating the position of PM for several reasons.
With two of those being La France Insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who both tried to play their usual games and cost the NFP some precious time.
Effectively, almost every single party that wasn’t from the left announced nearly immediately that they would refuse to support a government that included anybody from La France Insoumise, or that supported Mélenchon as PM, and this was an idea that continued to shamble forward until roughly early August.
Naturally, this is because a lot of these negotiations are going to have an impact on the upcoming Municipal elections, and of course, the state of play for the 2027 Presidential elections.
Fortunately, Mélenchon and his acolytes had enough lucidity to say that they would be fine not being involved (and they very likely meant temporarily) in order to try to force forward a left-wing Prime Minister.
However, in their infinite wisdom, they delayed the process so long, and weakened the position of the left so much, that they almost guaranteed their situation as an opposition force again.
And this was despite Emmanuel Macron publicly floating the socialist former Prime Minister of France, Bernard Cazeneuve, as a potential PM from the left.
However, with Les Républicains having the time to organise themselves thanks to these shenanigans, they came out in August and stated unequivocally that there was no point in forming a coalition with the Socialists because they didn’t agree on their major policy platforms, which effectively killed any chance of that happening in the short term.
Negotiations always unblock things, don’t worry team.
Meanwhile, the Macronist centrist party Renaissance, also now going by the name “Ensemble pour la Republique” (UPR, and Together for the Republic en bon anglais) are maintaining a position as a pivot between the various actors and seeing now they can play kingmaker.
This is helped, obviously, by their leader being the President of the French Republic, and Emmanuel Macron is acting out his role fairly well, all things considered.
With the announcement this morning that Macron would meet with Bernard Cazeneuve on Monday morning, it will be interesting to see whether this can unblock things, or form the basis for some kind of negotiation going forward.
However, if we take the various red lines seriously, then the reality is that there will likely be no way of actually forming a stable government over the next few months, and that unless they allow free votes on topics, and try to focus the government on just figuring things out, then things will likely not work out.
Which is why I’m maintaining a prognosis that France will see another Parliamentary election in July 2025.
But again, longer piece coming soon, with a lot more information!
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Not easy to deal with 50 shades of left x)