Comedian’s Free-Speech Struggle Accentuates Rifts In French Society
Magda Fahsi ■ Dieudonné has popularized a gesture, the “quenelle,” meaning “We’re fed up,” but Jewish groups say it’s a Nazi salute in reverse. | It all started when Interior Minister Manuel Valls sent a circular – a non-binding recommendation – earlier this month to all prefects (regional police chiefs) setting out the legal remedies that exist to ban performances by Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala – better known as Dieudonné – a Franco-African humorist very popular among young people and who is starting a national tour with his latest show. But many accuse him – and his shows – of being anti-Semitic. “No one should be able to use this show for provocation and to promote openly anti-Semitic ideas,” President Francois Hollande told a meeting of senior government officials in Paris last Tuesday. “I am calling on all representatives of the state, particularly its prefects, to be on alert and inflexible.” As a result, several French cities banned Dieudonné’s performances: Marseille, Bordeaux, Tours, and Nantes, with this latest city being the opening venue of the comedian’s tour Jan. 10. The humorist nevertheless sought to reverse the prohibition through Nantes’s administrative court. The 6,000 people who bought tickets, as well as many others, eagerly awaited the decision. The court declared that prohibiting the show represented a “serious infringement of the freedom of expression, and given the absence of a motive that would have justified it,” the infringement was illegal. But the battle was not over. Valls immediately appealed to the Council of State, the highest court for public administration. And in what was undeniably the fastest decision in its history, the court announced that due to the “threat to public order” and “clear abuses of values and principles in the Declaration of Human Rights,” it considered it justified to ban the show.
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