The Freedom of Speech Argument in the Face of Digital Legislation: An Analysis of the French Far-Right Discourses

This thesis examines how the policies and media discourse of the French radical right mobilize the argument of freedom of expression in response to the European Union's attempts to regulate the digital space, particularly through the Digital Services Act. In a context marked by the fragmentation of the information space, the rise of populism, and post-truth dynamics, the study questions the discursive strategies that allow regulation to be presented as a form of ideological censorship. Based on a corpus of parliamentary discourse analyses and press articles, the analysis tends to use the critical discourse analysis methods developed by Teun A. van Dijk, articulating this approach with a number of theoretical contributions, in particular those of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Wendy Brown. The results highlight a set of recurring processes: lexicalized alarmism, the moral reversal of democratic principles, and a populist grammar that pits "the people" against "Brussels technocracy." Far from being anecdotal, these discourses are experienced as efforts to destabilize an order or a project in which the defense of freedom of expression constitutes, in a context of public regulation of digital technology, a counteroffensive.