French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann has called on the US to return the Statue of Liberty to his home country over dissatisfaction with the policies of the administration of US President Donald Trump.
According to Glucksmann, a member of the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, the US has “decided to switch to the side of the tyrants”.
“We’re going to say to the Americans who chose to go over to the side of the tyrants, to the Americans who fired the researchers for demonstrating scientific freedom: ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty’.
“You have been given it as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So she will be very happy here with us,'” he said at a speech on March 16 at a gathering of 1,500 of his supporters.
“The second thing we are going to say to the Americans is: ‘If you want to fire your best researchers, if you want to fire all the people who, through their freedom and their sense of innovation, their taste for doubt and research, have made your country the world’s leading power, well, we will welcome them.'”
He called for “democratic resistance” to counter “the fan club of Trump and Musk in our country”.
In a flyer that was handed out tat the gathering, he called for building “a force that weighs, that acts, and that preserves our motto ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity!'”
As with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier, Glucksmann said he saw the surge of a “far-right international” order made up of Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Marine Le Pen, de facto leader of France’s right-wing national Rally party.
Glucksmann was particularly critical of what he called the US policy shift over Ukraine.
As a journalist and documentary filmmaker, the MEP had made a film about the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004.
He also visited Kyiv at the beginning of the so-called Euromaidan demonstrations in 2013 and later advised current Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitschko.
Glucksmann described himself at the time as a “consultant in revolution” for his Liberal and pro-European activism.
The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde), the a colossal copper sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbour, was a gift from the people of France to celebrate US independence and the enduring friendship between the two nations.
With a focus on freedom and republican values, it was officially dedicated on October 28, 1886.
