The Price Of Order

The French are fed up! They've raised €1.6 million ($1,096,750) for the family of the officer unjustly charged with killing the 'youth', Nahel Merzouk.

From The European Conservative

By Hélène De Lauzun

French enthusiasm for the fund launched to support the policeman who shot young Nahel is not a sign to be taken lightly.

The death of young Nahel, killed at the wheel of his car by a police officer after refusing to obey, was the starting point for a week of violent riots across France. Following the arrest of the police officer responsible, an online fund was launched to support his family. The fund, set up by Jean Messiha, a close ally of the Reconquête party, ended up raising €1.6 million. Although it enjoys strong popular support, the fund has drawn vigorous criticism from the Left regarding its legitimacy.

On Tuesday, June 27th, a 17-year-old delinquent named Nahel was killed by a police officer following a refusal to obey, in murky circumstances that led to the police officer being charged with manslaughter on Thursday, June 29th. Although presumed innocent in accordance with French law, he was nevertheless taken into custody. As soon as news of his arrest broke, the polemicist Jean Messiha, a pillar of Éric Zemmour’s presidential campaign who has since retired from Reconquête, took the initiative of launching a fund to support the policeman’s family, hosted on the GoFundMe platform. 

The fund immediately met with considerable success. Day after day, the French press witnessed the dizzying rise in donations, made by a large number of anonymous individuals—more than 85,000 according to the newspaper Libération—reaching a total of €1.6 million by the time it closed on Tuesday, July 4th. The hashtag #SoutienaupolicierFlorianM rose to the top of the French Twitter trends. At the same time, another fundraising campaign was launched on the Leetchi platform, this time in support of Nahel’s mother, but it quickly became apparent that the campaign was struggling to convince and raise funds. Just over a week after the young man’s death, the fund raised just under €450,000 from around 22,000 donors, i.e., 3.5 times less. 

The enthusiasm of many French people for the fund launched by Jean Messiha is not a sign to be taken lightly. In the minds of all those citizens who have donated money, there are obviously several messages to be read: massive support for the police in general; a deep awareness of the gap between the highly questionable character of the victim and the honourable station of the police officer who shot him; and revulsion toward the country being set on fire and bleeding to death. In a way, it is the response of the grassroots, of ordinary citizens, to the media steamroller used by the Left to maintain the well-known discourse of hatred of the cop, who is painted as inevitably racist and inevitably guilty.

The subject of fund-raising is a politically sensitive one in France. At the time of the Yellow Vests crisis in 2018-2019, several campaigns had been launched in support of demonstrators who were victims of police violence. The context was very different. At that time, it was a large-scale tug-of-war between ordinary French people, most often unknown to the police, and the forces of law and order simply carrying out the instructions given by the political authorities. The sums at stake were also much smaller, around €100,000 to €150,000 each time. These funds were cancelled by the courts, under pressure from the government, on the grounds that a fund could not be set up to legitimise anti-authority rhetoric. 

This time, the situation is reversed. Those who gave their money on the GoFundMe platform did so to show their support for a police officer, a representative of law enforcement—a gesture that is much harder to disavow in high places, even if Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne had to admit a certain “embarrassment” at the fact that the fund was the initiative of a person “close to the extreme Right.”

Faced with an outcry from the Left, which was forced to helplessly observe the success of Jean Messiha’s fund, the platform sent out a very clear signal that the initiative was perfectly legal, that it had no intention of shutting the page down, and that the money would indeed be paid to the family of the police officer, Florian M. 

Jean Messiha explained that the family was “in enormous difficulty because the policeman is now in prison, his salary has been suspended, and he has legal fees to pay.” He also claimed that the family had been targeted by rioters after their address was revealed and that they also had “hotel expenses.” They may, as a result, “quickly find themselves facing a wall of debt.” Of the €1,636,200 officially raised by the controversial fund, 60% will have to be paid in gift tax, i.e., €938,000. After deducting the €68,000 in fundraising fees owed to the platform, the family will ultimately keep €625,000. 

Supporters of young Nahel—and through him all those quick to want to “smash cops”—who were stirred up by the press and left-wing parties could not stand idly by in the face of this situation, which they considered intolerable. MPs Delaporte (Parti Socialiste) and Panot (La France Insoumise) announced that they had taken the matter to court under Article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for “incitement to hatred, violence or discrimination.” This charge seems difficult to defend, given that the fund is intended for the policeman’s family. 

Lastly, Nahel’s family announced that they would be lodging a complaint against Jean Messiha on Tuesday, July 4th, for “organised gang fraud” and “concealment of this offence.” The complaint also targets “any person identified by the investigation as having participated in these offences”—in other words, all the donors who took part in the fund. The complaint also criticises the fact that Jean Messiha revealed information from Nahel’s criminal records file in order to ‘criminalise’ him and create sympathy for the police officer who fired the fatal shot. 

Jean Messiha says that he is unaffected by the complaint, which he deems to be “without legal basis,” and in return invites the donors, who are unduly accused of being swindlers, to lodge a complaint against Nahel’s family for defamation. The battle is far from over.