Justice sentenced, this Friday, the director of publication of the far-right weekly Rivarol, Jérôme Bourbon, to a fine of 8,000 euros, with the possibility of imprisonment in the event of non-payment, for contesting a crime against the humanity and incitement to hatred towards the Jews.
Fabrice (known as Jérôme) Bourbon, 49, was sentenced to 80 day fines of 100 euros, for comments made in a video of October 3, 2020, published on the Rivarol YouTube channel, then deleted.
“If we do not designate the enemy, we are failing in our duty”
He commented on the news and mentioned in particular the Vel d’Hiv roundup, during which some 13,000 Jews were arrested on July 16 and 17, 1942 by French police and gendarmes before being assembled at the Vélodrome d’Hiver to be sent to a concentration camp. Jérôme Bourbon declared in particular: “Once again I am not saying that to validate what happened, I am simply saying that we often lie by omission when finally saying that it was the fight against the Jews etc. while the French government of Marshal Pétain has always opposed any kind of persecution or attack whatsoever on French Jews ”.
In its judgment, the court found him guilty of negationism by stressing, among other things, that “to affirm the conviction that the French Jews were saved by Marshal Pétain contains at the same time the negation of the latter’s participation in the policy of extermination of the Jews led by the Nazi regime (…) and of the deaths of those who succumbed to these abuses ”. In the same video, Jérôme Bourbon addressed the “yellow vests” movement and the Covid-19 pandemic, alluding to the “financial, ideological foundations” of the Republic and “its lobbies”, then to the “Jewish question”. “If we do not designate the enemy, we are failing in our duty,” he said.
More than fifteen convictions
The defendant takes up a “notorious anti-Semitic prejudice” and presents the Jews as an “enemy” while speaking of a “war to be won”, which constitutes a provocation to hatred and violence towards the Jewish community, judges the court . Jérôme Bourbon, on the other hand, was released from the prosecution concerning an article in Rivarol of September 2, 2020, for a procedural matter. The prosecution had requested a six-month suspended prison sentence.
Jérôme Bourbon has been convicted fifteen times, in particular for incitement to hatred, contestation of crimes against humanity and racist insult. In November 2020, he was sentenced to three months’ suspended imprisonment and fines for publications deemed anti-Semitic.