The following is an exclusive interview with Cassandre Fristot, a young woman who was arrested and put on trial for taking part in a demonstration against the health pass in Metz, France, and for denouncing those responsible for the health restrictions on a cardboard sign. The scapegoat method chosen by the French government to discredit these protests is reminiscent of the way the Yellow Vests movement was repressed in France and is not unlike the methods used by the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe to isolate and discredit opponents and protesters.
You were arrested the day after you participated in the demonstration against the health pass that was held on Aug. 7. Your arrest followed the spread on social networks of a photo where you were seen holding a sign calling out as “traitors” the people responsible for the current health policy and restrictions in France. Since some of those people whose names were on the placard you were holding are Jewish, it was said to be of an anti-Semitic nature, which you have denied from the beginning. What charges were eventually brought against you?
I learned about the charges while in police custody since it was the Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity in Paris that was asking me questions through the police officers in Metz. I asked them why it was so, and they told me that I was accused of praising crimes against humanity and that I had incurred up to five years in prison and a fine of €45,000 for anti-Semitism. I answered their questions. There were a lot of police interrogations; it was tiring. There was no indication of the time in the premises where the questioning was taking place or anywhere else. It was only later that I realized that the interrogation had gone on for so many hours.
How long did it last?
It could be three or four hours in a row. I was put back in the cell for a while, I do not know how long. Then I was taken out for further questioning. It lasted a day and a half. The questions were a bit probing, so I asked them for an explanation. They told me on the second day of custody: you are accused of public incitement to racial hatred and you risk up to one year in prison and a fine of €45,000. I expressed my surprise as to the charge having changed. They explained to me that they can, during the interrogations, adapt the charge. Obviously, the authorities had to find something that suited them.
The trial took place one month after my arrest, which is unusually fast. I am reminded right now of the migrant in Nantes who set fire to a cathedral and was left free until he slit the throat of a priest. This happened while I was in custody. It was extremely shocking.
When my trial took place on Sept. 8, I was facing up to one year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000, but the public prosecutor only requested a three-month suspended prison sentence – which is still enormous, obviously – and three years’ ineligibility.
He also added: “I ask the court to reflect on the way civil parties have set out their arguments.” Something had clearly displeased him in the attitude of the civil parties.
When my trial took place on Sept. 8, I was facing up to one year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000, but the public prosecutor only requested a three-month suspended prison sentence – which is still enormous, obviously – and three years’ ineligibility. He also added: “I ask the court to reflect on the way civil parties have set out their arguments.” Something had clearly displeased him in the attitude of the civil parties.
The judge ruled on Oct. 20 and gave me a six-month suspended prison sentence for public incitement to racial hatred. In the end, I was not fined but I have to pay damages to the civil parties as well as their lawyers’ fees, that is €9,702 in all.
At the same time, you are deprived of the possibility to earn money since you were suspended from your job as a German teacher even before being convicted, right?
Yes, but I am not without resources. I have been suspended for four months, until mid-December. I am still paid my basic salary, but after December 16 it was made clear that my employer should normally summon me for a disciplinary procedure. So for the month of December, I will only get half a salary, as the suspension period ends on Dec. 16. Moreover, it is illegal to have another paid activity when one is in the public sector unless I get the agreement of the superintendent of schools in my case, but I am currently in litigation with him over the fact that the suspension he issued to me was not motivated. I should have been given the motives according to the law.
Let us talk about the source of your problems: your cardboard sign pointed to people involved in the health restrictions in France, with the question “Who?” and the name “traitors”. It just so happens that among these officials you designated, who are indeed people connected with the health restrictions, almost two-thirds have been identified as Jews. Is that right?
I do not know who identified these people. I am not interested in such questions. My aim was to target those responsible for the management of the health crisis and its dramatic consequences for the French people and to cover different spheres. It is not just the political sphere. There is of course the media sphere. There is the financial sphere with people who are not elected but who pay for society to go in a certain direction, that of the Great Reset, that of a society without contact. I am told that my holding this sign is a case of incitement to racial hatred. However, on this placard, all the people named are white Caucasian people, like me. And then you know, a person can be born into a particular religious denomination, but they can very well change or even abandon it, and even become an atheist. On my sign, I asked the question “Who?” In other words, who is in charge, who is in control. I do not see what the problem is. While in custody, I linked all these names, one by one, to their responsibilities in the crisis. The media, which often quote what the accused say, never quoted this part of my testimony. As for the word “traitors”, what worried the investigators was that, according to them, traitors are tried and sentenced to death. But my resistance is made with a piece of cardboard. I am not threatening anyone, and a traitor is also someone who has lied or betrayed his or her word.
How do you explain the fact that the interior minister himself reacted so quickly and brutally to your sign, singling you out as a target for the public prosecutor’s office and the media, as well as the so-called “anti-racist” associations? He posted your picture saying “This sign is despicable. Anti-Semitism is a crime, not an opinion. Such words will not go unpunished.”
There are three things to take into account here.
The first thing is that this accusation of anti-Semitism is not, in the end, what I was convicted of, since I was convicted of incitement to racial hatred. Since their statements came before the trial, none of those people and ministers who trampled on the presumption of innocence were able to explain why they thought there was anti-Semitism on the sign. And by the way, none of the people named on my sign filed a complaint against me.
The second thing is that those people, who themselves tweeted the photo and are responsible for it being published on social networks, saw in it that the basic French person understood what was happening: the emergence of a coercive global governance that drastically reduces the freedom of peoples to the benefit of the economic, financial, and political elites. In order to discredit this message, which is that there is no longer any personal sovereignty and that Covid has been used for very dark purposes, what better way than to wave the red rag of anti-Semitism?
The person wearing the sign thus becomes a scapegoat and a pariah, and anything that might come out of his or her mouth is discredited forever. By extension, anyone who says that there are people responsible for managing the crisis with interests that escape us, that the people are not consulted, and that global governance is on the way – Macron said it again at COP26 and so it is not a conspiracy theory – will be labeled “anti-Semitic.” This is how my placard was instrumentalized by the authorities and the media.
The third thing is that I did have this sign in my right hand, but I did not want to denounce the evil without proposing a remedy. That is why, in my left hand, even though it is not visible in the main photo that was circulated, I was holding the flag of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with a cross. This intrigued the investigators who asked me many questions about this and about royalism because they thought I was radicalized since I had a Bible on one of my shelves.
We all know very well that this government and the shadow government, the deep state, in France are anti-Catholic. They do not want a religion that expresses itself in the public space, and above all, they want to suppress any spiritual aspiration as far as possible in order to turn people into materialistic consumers.
The media followed the government on this instrumentalization of your sign, which should come as no surprise if you’re familiar with the French media. The prosecutor’s office carried out the orders of the executive, and this is not surprising either, since this is what usually happens. On the other hand, the fact that the judge followed and even went further than the prosecutor’s request must have surprised you, right? They say that judges are independent…
I do not believe a word of it. I think the judge was probably pressured. The civil parties clearly threatened the judge by saying: “France is watching you, you cannot get away with it, there has to be a prison sentence, we cannot no longer have suspended sentences.” One after another, the civil parties attacked her almost personally, which I found very shocking.
Moreover, the excessive media coverage of this case, with the media slandering me, dragging me through the mud, even claiming that I had made a Hitler salute based on a photo featuring someone else and without rectifying this false information afterward, as they should have done, meant that my trial was in fact held in the media for a month before the court hearing on Sept. 8.
These are the same media that usually do their best to remain neutral and very cautious about all those criminals who kill, rob, maim, or slit throats on the street.
The civil parties who sued you in court were those French associations subsidized by the state, right?
Of course, yes, since the business of these associations is to attack people all the time to make money, and these associations are in the pay of the government or the government is in their pay for political purposes: we must not talk about certain things. They are the guardians of silence.
These were the usual so-called “anti-racist” associations, weren’t they?
Not only those. There was of course SOS Racism, LICRA, and others, but there was also B’nai B’rith, i.e. Jewish Freemasonry, even if they officially deny being a Freemason organization. There was also the French college of physicians, the Ordre des médecins, which said it wanted to take legal action to support doctors who have been victims of anti-Semitism on my sign. I think they were referring to the current Minister of Health Olivier Véran and his predecessor Agnès Buzyn. However, their request to be a civil party was rejected and the college of physicians is not one of the associations to which I now owe legal fees.
The desire to discredit the popular protest movement against vaccine segregation has certainly played a major role in your condemnation. Do you think that the fact you were a member of Marine Le Pen’s National Front for a short time in the early 2010s has also played a role as a presidential election is approaching?
Indeed, the first argument for saying that my sign was anti-Semitic was my past in the National Front. Yet there are very close links between the National Front and Israel. But the aim is to have an influence on the elections, to discredit Marine Le Pen, probably to the benefit of Mr. Zemmour I suppose, and to turn people away from this party when Le Pen is the only one to say that she is against compulsory vaccination and against this health pass, which is a tool for population control.
Have you appealed your conviction?
No, but it is not because I accept it. However, in order to go to appeal, one must gather the necessary financial means, and above all, the associations that persecuted me did not get what they asked for: a ban on teaching, ineligibility, a prison sentence, and a fine of up to 45,000 €.
I am not going to risk a fine of that magnitude on top of the damages, plus the additional legal fees of the other side that will have to be paid if my conviction is upheld or aggravated. I do not trust the justice system in my country. I could not avoid this trial because it was imposed on me and now I prefer to stay away from this justice system which is an instrument of power.
And since I am speaking for Remix News, I would like to say to all those inhabitants of the Central and Eastern European countries that I do not know but who we are told have remained more traditional and religious than in Western Europe, that this is precisely what we must do: keep our faith and pray to protect ourselves from these forces that are evil, even demonic.
Finally, can you tell us, since you are now very recognizable, whether you have been faced with any unpleasant situations when going out? Are there people who make derogatory remarks or are aggressive towards you?
No, never. All I have had to deal with are expressions of support and sympathy, including from people on the left and from people of the Jewish faith who have sent me letters. I have received many such letters, including from elderly people, over 90, who lived through the German occupation and who have told me that they would have never thought they would see again such situations where people are persecuted in our country for their political opinions, for who they are, and for what they think.
