French Comic, Dieudonné, on Trial for Inciting Racial Hatred
French comedian Dieudonné, who went on trial this week accused of using antisemitic racial insults, claims that the offending section of the performance was only a joke: “l’attentat humouristique” (“humorous attack”). The charge, as previously reported by the Forward, was brought after an incident that took place during Dieudonné’s performance in Le Zenith Theater, Paris, December 22, 2008.
During that show Dieudonné invited academic and Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson to join him onstage. Faurisson was then presented with an award for “social unacceptability and insolence” by an assistant wearing striped pajamas and a yellow star with the note ‘Jew.’
Dieudonné, previously a popular mainstream comic, has achieved more recent notoriety for his increasingly irrational antisemitic and anti-American slander.
He has been repeatedly sued for inciting racial hatred, describing Jews in one newspaper interview as “former slave traders who have turned to banking, show business and, today, terrorist action” through support of Israeli policies.
In front of the tribunal this week, he claimed of the episode with Faurisson, “it was a spectacle, a humorous work, it was a game with the media, I gave them a humorous attack” before adding: “their hysteria on seeing antisemitism in everything seems to me suspicious and obscene…I am the barometer of freedom of expression.”
If found guilty of the charges held against him, Dieudonné could be sentenced to one year in prison or a fine of 10,000 euros. The tribunal will reach its decision by October 27th.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
