It is no longer his first attempt. The Toulon prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary investigation against Michel-Ange Flori, an advertising poster from the Var, for public insult. “I seized the departmental security of the Toulon police station as part of a preliminary investigation,” Toulon prosecutor Bernard Marchal told AFP, specifying that the qualification retained could change.
The opening of this procedure, revealed by France Bleu Provence, follows the posting on a billboard of a caricature of Emmanuel Macron as Adolf Hitler. On a 4×3 format, we see the president in the guise of the former Nazi dictator with this inscription: “Obey, get vaccinated”, accompanied by the acronym LREM related to a swastika.
“I can’t be in the software”
This is not the first time that Michelangelo Flori has used his billboards to “communicate on [s] moods and current affairs ”. “I use two of my 350 billboards, one at the entrance to Toulon and one towards La Seyne-sur-Mer, which I change every two weeks. This refers to the excesses of the measures announced by the executive, then denied the next day, then amended the day after. I have the impression that we dream with all these ostentatious measures of the freedoms that they use like children in a toolbox, ”he explains to 20 minutes.
Installed last weekend, the sign has since been tagged with the word “shame”. “I am only comparing the elements of language, with a parallel on the Holocaust. I use what happened in history. It’s a metaphor, just like the work of Charlie Chaplin The dictator who the better to denounce the filthy beast, Hitler, had taken on its features. I am a provocateur, I am not agitated, I point the finger at drifts and I cannot be in the soft, ”he defends himself.
The advertising display has already been sued by BFMTV for posting “The police talk to you every day on BFM TV”, he was sentenced in summary proceedings but the judgment on the merits has not taken place. “They did not hesitate to broadcast my panel on their channel,” he emphasizes. As for the fear of a new conviction? “Not at all, I go to the beach and drink mojitos. And I always think about what I do, I am an artisan defender of freedom of expression, ”he says. Michelangelo Flori risks up to one year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros in the event of a conviction for defamation.