PARIS (ِِDispatches) - Emmanuel Macron is taking legal action against a wealthy billboard operator who displayed posters depicting him as Adolf Hitler.
Lawyers for the French president are suing after the large images appeared in the Var in the south of France.
The posters, one of which appeared at the entrance to the Mediterranean town of Toulon – capital of the Var and home to an important naval base – showed Macron represented as the Nazi leader, with his toothbrush moustache, in full uniform and with the swastika armband altered to read LREM – La République En Marche – the president’s governing centre-right party. The accompanying slogan reads: “Obey. Get vaccinated.”
Michel-Ange Flori, who created and pasted the image on billboards, told the local newspaper he had been summoned by local police. “They confirmed that there had been a complaint from the Elysée,” Flori told Var-Matin. “I was surprised and shocked.”
He later tweeted: “In Macron-land, showing the Prophet Muhammed is satire, making fun of Macron as a dictator is blasphemy,” referring to the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo’s controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed.