Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala, the French comedian known as Dieudonne, likes to crack “anti-system” jokes that infuriate the politically correct in France. But all too often, his barbed humor veers into antisemitic rants and denigrations of the Holocaust, while the hand gesture he invented, the quenelle, is little more than an inverted Nazi salute intended to offend Jews.
For reasons yet to be determined, Dieudonne, the son of a white French woman and an African man, has made it his business to insult Jews. He may call his patter free speech, protected under the law, but that claim is disengenuous, to say the least.
Dieudonne, who strenuously denies he’s anti-Jewish, has in fact repeatedly been convicted for inciting racial hatred and antisemitism. And no less a person than France’s interior minister, Manuel Valls, confirms this. His jokes and commentaries, Valls said recently, are illegal and “no longer belong to the artistic and creative dimension.”
Launching his career in tandem with a Jewish boyhood friend, he poked fun at racial stereotypes. But about a decade ago, he crossed a red line when he compared Jewish settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to Nazis. Since then, he’s branded “the Jews” as “slave traders,” claimed that a major French Jewish organization has “total control” over France’s foreign policy, described Holocaust remembrance as “memorial pornography” and invited Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson to appear on his show.
He has befriended Jean Marie Le Pen, the former head of the National Front, who once dismissed the Holocaust as a mere “detail.” And he has met Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
Last week, after Dieudonne lamented that a prominent Jewish journalist had not been dispatched to “the gas chambers,” Valls disclosed that he would attempt to ban him from performing in France.
On Jan. 7, Valls went one step further, saying local officials would be within their legal rights if they cancelled his road shows. Taking his cue from Valls, the mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppe, a former prime minister, banned it.
On Jan. 8, the cities of Marseille, Nantes and Tours followed suit. The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, has said he may act accordingly. The time has come to put an end to Dieudonne’s intemperate outbursts, he observed.
The campaign that Valls has launched cuts across party lines. Valls is a socialist, while Juppe is a conservative. It’s clear that Dieudonne has upset politicians of all stripes, except the current leader of the far right National Front, which opposes a ban.
Dieudonne’s crude and unacceptable comments on Jews and the Holocaust are not the only cause for concern. The provocative hand gesture he introduced nine years ago, the quenelle, is catching on in France, much to the disgust and disquiet of decent people.
Of late, his fans and admirers have posted photographs of themselves performing the gesture, sometimes in front of synagogues, Holocaust memorials and street signs inscribed with the word Jew. In one particularly revolting posting, a young man posed for a photograph outside a school in Toulouse where four Jews were murdered by an Al Qaeda sympathizer.
As well, Nicolas Anelka, a leading French soccer player, has performed a quenelle during a game.
Fortunately, the authorities have not remained silent in the face of these provocations. The French army banned the gesture after two uniformed soldiers performed it outside a synagogue in Paris. And most recently, the justice ministry promised to lay charges against anyone performing the quenelle outside a Jewish site.
Dieudonne’s crude and cruel gesture has no place in polite society. Nor does Dieudonne himself.