It’s true that there are legal protections for removing “content that is hateful, that calls to revolt and to kill.” Such immediate incitement to violence is even illegal in the United States, which has much stronger free speech protections than France and Europe.

But neither Macron, Breton nor their defenders have presented any evidence showing that hate speech or incitement to violence rather than outrage over a police killing, combined with a large and restless immigrant population that France has failed to integrate and assimilate, caused the riots.

And their calls for greater censorship come at the same moment that the Macron government has passed a new law allowing police to spy on people by secretly taking control of their phones and laptop computers and activating the microphone, camera, and GPS. The government says a judge will have to approve all spying, but it is reasonable to worry about abuses of power.

[Uh … we’ve seen this movie before, even apart from the Edward Snowden example Shellenberger cites. It’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane. It’s the silencing of dissent and debate over COVID-19 and mitigation policies. It’s the slow advance of a social-credit system run as a joint project between the executive branch of US government and Big Tech. And it needs to stop. — Ed]