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The lois scélérates ("villainous laws") – a pejorative name – were a set of three French laws passed from 1893 to 1894 under the Third Republic (1870–1940) that restricted the 1881 freedom of the press laws, after several bombings and assassination attempts carried out by anarchist proponents of "propaganda of the deed".
The first law was passed on December 11, 1893, two days after Auguste Vaillant's bombing of the National Assembly on December 9, 1893 (slight injuries to twenty deputies).[1] It condemned advocacy of any crime as being itself a crime, which permitted the state to repress most of the anarchist press.
The last law was passed on July 28, 1894, and condemned any person or newspaper using anarchist propaganda (and, by extension, libertarian socialists who were current or former members of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA)):
1. Either by provocation or by apology... [anyone who has] encouraged one or several persons in committing either theft, or the crimes of murder, plunder, fire...; 2. Or has addressed a provocation to military from the Army or the Navy, in the aim of diverting them from their military duties and the obedience due to their chiefs... will be deferred before courts and punished by a prison sentence of three months to two years.[2]
Thus, free speech and encouraging propaganda of the deed or antimilitarism were severely restricted. Some people were condemned to prison for rejoicing at the 1894 assassination of French president Sadi Carnot by the Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio.[3]
The term has since entered popular language to designate any harsh or unjust laws, in particular anti-terrorism legislation which often broadly represses whole social movements.
- Anti-terrorism legislation
- Anti-Socialist Laws passed in Germany in 1878
- French Third Republic (1870–1940)
- Propaganda of the deed
- Trial of the Thirty (1894)
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