Robert Ménard
In 2008, he created, with her, the publishing house Mordicus and released a book of interviews between Dieudonné M'bala M'bala and Bruno Gaccio under the title Can we say everything?, echoing the book by Raoul Vaneigem, Nothing is sacred, everything can be said, criticizing the Gayssot Law, defending the freedom of expression of Holocaust deniers, prefaced by Robert Ménard himself ; interviews of Alain Soral in the Medias magazine and of Dieudonné again on Sud Radio, in 2012.[1] A Rue89 post claims Ménard became the focus of significant controversy after an interview with France Culture in which in response to a question about the case of the kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl he made a statement which some have interpreted as saying that the use of torture could be justified in some circumstances.[3] Ménard resigned from his role as secretary-general of RWB in September 2008[4] and became director-general of the Doha Center for Media Freedom in Qatar which opened in October 2008.[9] In May 2015, Ménard violated French law by attempting to record the religion of schoolchildren in his city, claiming that 64.9% were Muslim, based on their first names.In October 2016, he launched a poster campaign claiming that "The state is imposing them on us: That’s it, they are coming" in response to an announcement that the French government would be relocating 40 asylum seekers from Calais Jungle to Béziers.[12] In March 2018, he announced he would seek a second term in the 2020 municipal elections, running once again as an Independent because of disagreements he has with certain policies promoted by the National Front.[16] In a 2022 interview with Der Spiegel, he self-described as "an authoritarian mayor" and stated that Le Pen "says things that others don’t dare say because they have a bad conscience.