There’s this French billionaire named Bollore who is Islamophobic and racist as fuck. The thing is that he is not just rich which is already bad but he is slowly getting the monopoly on a lot of medias . Written and tv press but also publishers… He is dangerous as fuck and uses these medias he bought to further and normalize his far right white supremacists ideas. And depending on next year’s elections it could get worst because right now he doesn’t have a complete monopoly thanks to the European laws that France is forced to follow but under a far right government these laws would be meaningless. For example he bought the Publisher Hachette which means that he now control 80% of school books. It didn’t have an effect on school books yet (at least to my knowledge) but under a far right government they would bring back the school books focusing on the “positive aspects of colonialism” among other things.
Now that man own Canal+ (tv network that is also the biggest sponsor of French cinema) since 2014. And he is on the way to own UGC (biggest movie theater franchises of France) totally by 2028. Which means that he would have a monopoly on the French movie industry and choose what is made and what isn’t and what is distributed and what isn’t. French celebrities and people in the movie industry finally woke up and 600 of them signed a column on Liberation to warn against Bollore’s monopoly saying that we must oppose him.
Canal+ reacted by saying that they simply will never work with people who signed this column which means that the people who signed were virtually fired from ever working in the French movie industry.
Except that Canal+ reaction is so close to censorship that it’s getting more people to sign the column as a protest and it’s getting international.
But what’s interesting is that the Cannes Film Festival ended in May 23. 6 out of the 7 French movie competing for the biggest prize of the festival had at least one person who signed the column involved in the making of said movie. The supreme irony is that the one French movie that was nominated while not having anyone who signed involved in the making of the movie is a movie about Jean Moulin a French resistant who fought the Nazis.
The movie about resisting and fighting against Nazis against the far right and fascism is the one movie where none of the people involved thought it would be a good idea to do the bare minimum and sign a column against the far right and fascism.
