A court in Switzerland fined and sentenced a writer and pundit to 60 days in jail for calling a journalist a "fat lesbian," alarming free speech advocates across the globe.
On Monday, controversial French-Swiss polemicist Alain Bonnet, who goes by Alain Soral and is a noted Holocaust denier, was sentenced by the Lausanne court for the crimes of defamation, discrimination and incitement to hatred after he criticized Catherine Macherel, a journalist for Swiss newspapers Tribune de Geneve and 24 Heures, in a Facebook video two years ago.
The story caught the attention of numerous U.S. outlets and alarmed some stateside free speech advocates.
"Governments will say, ‘We have freedom of speech.' Sadly, what's happening worldwide is growing sentiment that there's not always freedom after speech," crisis and reputation expert Robbie Vorhaus told Fox News Digital.
Soral is no stranger to controversy and has also been repeatedly convicted in France for denying the Holocaust, which is a crime in the country. He was sentenced to jail time in 2019 over the denials.
His latest sentencing – which puts a harsh spotlight on countries that do not have First Amendment-like protections on free speech – came after he called Macherel a "fat lesbian" and criticized her work as a "queer activist." Soral also said she was "unhinged" in a social media video, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS.
"What’s Killing America" author Jason Rantz fears similar punishments would come to the United States if the far-left has anything to do with it.
"The only police that progressive-minded people believe in are the Word Police. How soon before this kind of weaponization of language comes to the U.S.? In this case, the guy seems to be a rotten person, and obviously mean spirited, but that doesn’t mean countries should criminalize speech," Rantz told Fox News Digital.
"Progressives used to share that view. What you should do with speech you don’t like is to combat it with speech you do like," he continued. "Even rotten people should have the right to express themselves — even if we don’t like it."
Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson agrees and said Americans need to be careful.
"It sounds outrageous to most Americans that someone could be sent to prison for what at worst was a crude joke. But that intolerance and repression already is present in various forms in the United States, particularly through campus speech codes and bias reporting procedures that turn one person's joke into a punishable thought crime," Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
"The problem with punishing 'hate' speech is, who gets to decide what is hate speech? Free speech then becomes subject to the whims of the people with power," Jacobson added. "Europe is just a few years ahead of us, and will be our future if we are not careful."
Tesla mogul Elon Musk, an outspoken free speech advocate, questioned the sentencing.
"What he wrote was certainly rude, but to make it a criminal offense… ?" Musk wrote on X, his social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Civil attorney Christa Ramey noted that the U.S. still has far different free speech laws than Switzerland.
"Our courts have held that all speech, even hateful speech, must be protected to preserve the rights of all of us. We do not need to worry about our citizens being jailed for their words," she told Fox News Digital.
In addition to the prison time, Soral was also ordered to pay legal fees and fines totaling thousands of Swiss francs. Pascal Junod, a lawyer for Soral, criticized the conviction as a "crime of opinion" in an email to The Associated Press. He said the case aimed to probe whether a person had "sinned against the dogmas of single thought."
Junod didn't respond to a separate request for comment.
BIDEN ADMIN ACCUSED OF VIOLATING FIRST AMENDMENT THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA COERCION
Not everyone is irked by the decision; one LGBTQ group in particular supported it.
"This court decision is an important moment for justice and rights of LGBTQI people in Switzerland," said Murial Waeger, co-director of lesbian activist group Switzerland LOS, according to the AP. "The conviction of Alain Soral is a strong signal that homophobic hatred cannot be tolerated in our society."
Fox News Digital reached out to LOS and the Human Rights Campaign, an American pro-LGBTQ advocacy group, for comment, but neither responded. Neither did Amnesty International, the global human rights group which also pushes for freedom of expression.
"We consider anyone put in prison solely for exercising their right to free speech peacefully to be a prisoner of conscience and call for their immediate and unconditional release," Amnesty International states on its website.
Soral will appeal to Swiss federal court and "if necessary" to the European Court of Human Rights, according to his lawyer.
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Macherel did not respond to a request for comment.
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