‘Quenelle’ Creator Dieudonne M’bala-M’bala Faces Trial for ‘Gas Chamber’ Quip
Shameful Move: French comedian Dieudonne Mbala-Mbala performs the controversial ?quenelle? gesture with basketball star Tony Parker. Parker now says he didn?t know the salute has anti-Semitic overtones. Image by getty images
A French comedian who implied that a Jewish journalist belonged in a gas chamber may be tried for racial incitement for the eighth time.
Paris prosecutors on Monday ordered the opening of a criminal investigation against the comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, according to the news site 20minutes.fr. They were reacting to the airing of a television show by M’bala M’bala earlier this month on France 2, in which Dieudonne said:
“When I hear about Patrick Cohen, I say to myself: You see, the gas chambers… It’s a shame.”
Cohen, a veteran journalist for France Inter, earlier this year criticized France 2 for giving airtime to people with what he termed “sick minds.” He named Dieudonne along with Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor who is banned from entering the United States for his support for Palestinian terrorist groups; Holocaust denier Alain Soral; and Marc-Edouard Nabe, an anti-Zionist writer who has been accused of anti-Semitism.
Last month, Dieudonne, a Frenchman of Cameroonian origins, was convicted for racial incitement against Jews in another one of his shows. It was his seventh conviction for the same offense, according to LICRA, the France-based International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism.
Last week, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said that his ministry was considering banning public performances by Dieudonne because he seemed undeterred by the convictions, which came with tens of thousands of dollars in fines.
In recent months, French media have devoted increasing coverage to the spreading of Dieudonne’s ideas in French society, most notably with the increasingly popular “quenelle” gesture — a quasi-Nazi salute designed to circumvent France’s laws against displaying Nazi symbols.
Dieudonne, who prefers being referred to by his first name, also coined the phrase “shoananas” — a mashup of the Hebrew word for Holocaust and the French word for pineapple, which is seen as a way of suggesting the Holocaust is a myth without violating French laws against genocide denial.
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