I think what you are essentially asking is whether
France's laws against hate speech are incompatible with Articles 19 and 20 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I would argue that those laws are incompatible
with the Declaration and that Galliano should not be facing criminal
charges.
Galliano's crime consists mainly, it seems, of
saying that he supported Hitler and that he wished more Jews had been killed so that the
particular people he was talking to would not have been alive today. This is clearly
offensive, but it also falls under the category of "freedom of opinion and expression"
guaranteed by Article 19.
Galliano's opinions and his
expression of them did not cause or threaten to cause any physical harm. They were
surely very hurtful, but there are many opinions that clearly should not be banned even
though they hurt other people. Once we start trying to prevent speech that hurts the
feelings of some people, we are faced with a Fahrenheit 451 type
problem where we essentially are pushed to curtail all expression because all expression
can be hurtful to some.
So, I would argue that France's
laws do violate the Universal Declaration and Galliano should not be facing criminal
charges (he should just have been fired and no other company should hire
him).
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