"from dieudonné to nicolas anelka: hands signal new french race row"

[ed miliband]

an interesting and disturbing article, with anelka clearly performing the quenelle today, and his manager currently defending him against charges of antisemitism, it's a story i'm going to pay attention to.


It all began with a joke, or an alleged joke, by a stand-up comedian. The “quenelle” (fish or meatball), a part-anti-Semitic, part-obscene hand gesture, has since spread like wildfire on the French-language internet. Over the Christmas holidays, it was accused of provoking three vigilante attacks by gangs of young Jewish men on a hotel, a disco and a young Muslim man in Lyon.

The French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, is now considering whether to ban all public appearances by the comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, including his popular, one-man show in his own theatre near Bastille in Paris. Members of the “anti-quenelle” Jewish vigilante gangs in Lyons, aged from 18 to 23, have been arrested.

Dieudonné (as he is usually known) has transformed himself over the past decade from a talented comedian and campaigner against the far right to a talented comedian and purveyor of anti-Semitic remarks and conspiracy theories. He has multiple convictions for racial offences.

Since Dieudonné’s 2009 “anti-Zionist” campaign in the European elections, his trademark has been the quenelle. This is a hand gesture that appears to merge the Nazi salute with a traditional, obscene French insulting hand signal, the bras d’honneur, which means, roughly speaking, “up yours”.

Thousands of examples of people “doing the quenelle” have been posted on YouTube and other sites. Disturbingly, two French soldiers were shown doing the quenelle outside a synagogue in September while on an anti-terrorist patrol.

This afternoon, French footballer Nicolas Anelka celebrated the first of two Premier League goals for West Brom in a 3-3 draw against West Ham with an apparent quenelle. The match was being shown on French TV. Anelka has been pictured performing the gesture with Dieudonné in the past.

Dieudonné, 47, and many of his admirers, ranging from the far left to the far right, insist that the “quenelle” is merely an “anti-establishment gesture”. However, critics say that it is a calculated, anti-Semitic provocation.

The gesture involves pointing downwards with one flattened hand, like an inverted Nazi salute, while clasping a shoulder with the other hand. The president of the French league against racism and anti-Semitism, Alain Jakubowicz, says that the gesture signifies “the sodomisation of victims of the Holocaust”. Dieudonné has started a legal action against Mr Jakubowicz for libel.

The gesture has spread rapidly in France. Jean-Yves Camus, a French academic who studies the extreme right, says the quenelle has become a “badge of identity, especially among the young, but it is doubtful that all of them understand its true meaning”. Dieudonné, Mr Camus adds, has become the hero of a movement which sprawls across the traditional boundaries of right and left – anti-system, hungry for conspiracy theories, convinced that the world is run by Washington and Tel Aviv. Mr Camus says that the “spinal column” of the movement is the conviction that “the Jews pull all the strings”.

Despite several convictions for anti-Semitic remarks, Dieudonné has strayed once again over the boundary between self-proclaimed anti-Zionism and outright provocation. During his one-man show, he attacked Patrick Cohen, a Jewish radio journalist who has publicly criticised him. Dieudonné said: “When the wind turns, I don’t think he’ll have time to pack a suitcase. When I hear Patrick Cohen talking, you see, I think of gas ovens.” France Inter, the radio station for which Mr Cohen works, has brought a case against Dieudonné for provoking racial hatred.

It is against this background that three gangs of young Jewish men took matters into their own hands in Lyons last weekend. One gang attacked a young man of North African origin accused of putting a photo of himself “doing the quenelle” on Facebook. The other gangs attacked a hotel and a disco, alleged to be places where the quenelle was performed regularly. Six young men face prosecution for “premeditated gang violence”.

On Friday, the Interior Ministry announced that it was considering “all legal means” to ban Dieudonné from making any more public appearances. The ministry said that the comedian’s meetings, including his one-man show, “are no longer part of the artistic domain … and risk causing public disorder”.

[ed miliband]

for the anelka story:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/dec/28/west-bromwich-nicolas-anelka-nazi-gesture

[hatzel]

his manager currently defending him against charges of antisemitism

To be fair to Keith Downing, I very much doubt he had even heard of Dieudonné or the quenelle before yesterday (putting him in the same boat as the vast majority of Brits), and he certainly wouldn't have known about the ongoing furore in France about this whole issue; he's put his foot in it by commenting when confronted with the question, despite not actually knowing enough about the situation to make a real judgement, but we shouldn't pretend that he knew what it meant to be 'Team Dieudo' - particularly in the current climate - before echoing Anelka's line that he was just dedicating the goal to a friend. That also goes a long way to explaining the somewhat confused reaction from many people here in England, for whom it is an entirely meaningless gesture.

That's the same problem the FA face. They wouldn't bat an eyelid at this seemingly innocuous gesture is nobody brought it to their attention, but the Premier League is a global spectacle, and the reality is that on the other side of the Channel, the French government/SOS Racisme/UEJF/Grand Mosque/etc. are condemning it, so I can't imagine the FA disregarding all that and saying that they won't take any action in this case because English spectators wouldn't have found the gesture offensive (or even known about the possibility of finding it offensive), even if that means wading into a French domestic affair. Not least because lambasting Spurs fans for the 'Yid Army' stuff would suddenly seem wildly insincere.

Anelka certainly hasn't helped his cause, though, by openly linking it to Dieudonné himself. Had he used the standard Dieudonnist excuse - that the quenelle is an anti-establishment protest gesture or even just a fun trend amongst the French youth (though given the manner in which it is routinely performed (http://k00ls.overblog.com/2013/12/pour-ceux-qui-pr%C3%A9tendent-que-la-quenelle-n-est-pas-un-geste-antis%C3%A9mite.html), we can legitimately ask what exactly this 'establishment' is supposed to be and/or what's 'fun' about the trend; it's not like quenellists don't themselves link the gesture with Jews, even if an individual quenellist may claim that they did not have such intentions) - then it may well have been possible to give him the benefit of the doubt, but as it stands, one need only cast an eye over Dieudonné's career/reputation/current battle with the law to realise that dedicating anything to him is more than a little sketch...

[Nakidana]

To be fair to Keith Downing, I very much doubt he had even heard of Dieudonné or the quenelle before yesterday (putting him in the same boat as the vast majority of Brits), and he certainly wouldn't have known about the ongoing furore in France about this whole issue; he's put his foot in it by commenting when confronted with the question, despite not actually knowing enough about the situation to make a real judgement, but we shouldn't pretend that he knew what it meant to be 'Team Dieudo' - particularly in the current climate - before echoing Anelka's line that he was just dedicating the goal to a friend. That also goes a long way to explaining the somewhat confused reaction from many people here in England, for whom it is an entirely meaningless gesture.

That's the same problem the FA face. They wouldn't bat an eyelid at this seemingly innocuous gesture is nobody brought it to their attention, but the Premier League is a global spectacle, and the reality is that on the other side of the Channel, the French government/SOS Racisme/UEJF/Grand Mosque/etc. are condemning it, so I can't imagine the FA disregarding all that and saying that they won't take any action in this case because English spectators wouldn't have found the gesture offensive (or even known about the possibility of finding it offensive), even if that means wading into a French domestic affair. Not least because lambasting Spurs fans for the 'Yid Army' stuff would suddenly seem wildly insincere.

Anelka certainly hasn't helped his cause, though, by openly linking it to Dieudonné himself. Had he used the standard Dieudonnist excuse - that the quenelle is an anti-establishment protest gesture or even just a fun trend amongst the French youth (though given the manner in which it is routinely performed (http://k00ls.overblog.com/2013/12/pour-ceux-qui-pr%C3%A9tendent-que-la-quenelle-n-est-pas-un-geste-antis%C3%A9mite.html), we can legitimately ask what exactly this 'establishment' is supposed to be and/or what's 'fun' about the trend; it's not like quenellists don't themselves link the gesture with Jews, even if an individual quenellist may claim that they did not have such intentions) - then it may well have been possible to give him the benefit of the doubt, but as it stands, one need only cast an eye over Dieudonné's career/reputation/current battle with the law to realise that dedicating anything to him is more than a little sketch...

Why is Dieudonné, a blatant anti-Semite, so popular? The gesture is disgusting, I can't believe it has gone viral. I've got a feeling half the people doing it don't consider it racist but just anti-establishment. :confused:

[Oulian]

Why is Dieudonné, a blatant anti-Semite, so popular? The gesture is disgusting, I can't believe it has gone viral. I've got a feeling half the people doing it don't consider it racist but just anti-establishment. :confused:

Because Dieudonné is a populist, his humour is the one popular in 1939. He mixes antisemitism with antizionism and spreads the "popular belief" that Jews are evil, control the world, and so on. The people that like Dieudonné are uneducated people looking for someone "telling them the real truth" and giving an explanation to why they are betrayed by society. That's why the quenelle is mistaken for an anti-system gesture.

[adipocere]

The quenelle is just a meme that means person x is full of shit, up to here - measured by hand on your arm. It's been conflated with antisemitism because of a shitty remark made by Dieudonné. There are laws on the books in the EU that criminalize anti-semitism that can be very useful for stopping people from doing stuff like this:
http://www.sott.net/image/image/s8/163404/full/Screenshot_02_01_2014_13_09_45.jpghttp://www.ndf.fr/files/2013/10/manuel-valls-630x350.jpg
The minister of the interior ^

[ed miliband]

The quenelle is just a meme that means person x is full of shit, up to here - measured by hand on your arm. It's been conflated with antisemitism because of a shitty remark made by Dieudonné. There are laws on the books in the EU that criminalize anti-semitism that can be very useful for stopping people from doing stuff like this:
http://www.sott.net/image/image/s8/163404/full/Screenshot_02_01_2014_13_09_45.jpghttp://www.ndf.fr/files/2013/10/manuel-valls-630x350.jpg
The minister of the interior ^



this is pure apologism, intentional or not. "shitty remark made by Dieudonné" - there's a lot more to the fucker than a single "shitty remark". the quenelle is anti-semitic, and to suggest its merely an anti-establishment (or anti-zionist) symbol is to take dieudonne and his far-right pals at face value. it's this kind of idiocy that makes the kind of far-right / far-left crossover these cretins want possible.

nothing dodgy about this, nothing at all:

http://www.thelocal.fr/userdata/images/1388414494_1388406043_quenelle_Le_point_screengrab .jpg

here's a nice photo of mr le pen performing it:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-lQrV9N3Goc0/UlmJ5g3ZMpI/AAAAAAAADh0/1OZCnl0YVW8/s288/quenelle_le_pen_gollnisch.jpgjpg

so, are they just saying anne frank is "full of shit, up to here" in this photo? how nice of them...

http://www.israellycool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Quenelle-Anne-Frank.jpeg

[DOOM]

Why is Dieudonné, a blatant anti-Semite, so popular? The gesture is disgusting, I can't believe it has gone viral. I've got a feeling half the people doing it don't consider it racist but just anti-establishment. :confused:

It's a proof that anti-semitism is still widespread in europe.
It makes me angry that so much people are still defending Dieudonné, even if his anti-semitic intensions have been pointed out at least a thousand times. They just call it a "zionist conspiracy" and turn their brain completely off.

[adipocere]

this is pure apologism, intentional or not. "shitty remark made by Dieudonné" - there's a lot more to the fucker than a single "shitty remark". the quenelle is anti-semitic, and to suggest its merely an anti-establishment (or anti-zionist) symbol is to take dieudonne and his far-right pals at face value. it's this kind of idiocy that makes the kind of far-right / far-left crossover these cretins want possible.

nothing dodgy about this, nothing at all:

here's a nice photo of mr le pen performing it:

so, are they just saying anne frank is "full of shit, up to here" in this photo? how nice of them...


So I suppose all these people are hardened neo-nazis eh? (And I wasn't even cherry picking like you, this was all on the first page of image results.)
http://www.lelibrepenseur.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Quenelle_G%C3%A9ante_TGI.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i-YMzYj26l0/UlwtY9gJ6KI/AAAAAAAAJtA/ZEc4d7YlcEo/s1600/37041_568342809900703_348229893_n.jpg

http://www.bladi.net/forum/attachments/293663_10150290208244006_9314779005_8150638_785026 8_n-jpg.55062/
(that guy is mocking Muslims, so maybe its Islamophobic too)
But according to your logic - I suppose that everyone in guy fawkes masks are just fucking nazi scum too?

http://anonymouslegions.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/picture15.png

I'm not defending Dieudonné, I don't even understand French - I'm just trying to be objective. Objectively speaking, the English language articles sound like drummed-up bullshit.

[ed miliband]

So I suppose all these people are hardened neo-nazis eh? (And I wasn't even cherry picking like you, this was all on the first page of image results.)

it's not about them being hardened neo-nazis, nobody said that, it is about them all being fucking idiots though. as has been put elsewhere:


For some the quenelle is an expression of hatred for the system, for others it is an anti-Semitic taunt. In reality it is both, and Dieudonné’s success rests on his ability to merge the two.


why are you attempting to defend it? what is there to defend here?

[Raquin]

this is pure apologism, intentional or not. "shitty remark made by Dieudonné" - there's a lot more to the fucker than a single "shitty remark". the quenelle is anti-semitic, and to suggest its merely an anti-establishment (or anti-zionist) symbol is to take dieudonne and his far-right pals at face value. it's this kind of idiocy that makes the kind of far-right / far-left crossover these cretins want possible.

nothing dodgy about this, nothing at all:

http://www.thelocal.fr/userdata/images/1388414494_1388406043_quenelle_Le_point_screengrab .jpg

here's a nice photo of mr le pen performing it:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-lQrV9N3Goc0/UlmJ5g3ZMpI/AAAAAAAADh0/1OZCnl0YVW8/s288/quenelle_le_pen_gollnisch.jpgjpg

so, are they just saying anne frank is "full of shit, up to here" in this photo? how nice of them...

http://www.israellycool.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Quenelle-Anne-Frank.jpeg
The gesture has been around for 9 or so years, this supposed racist(or "antisemitic", which I think is a lousy term by the way, it should have been superseded by "racist" a long time ago - racism against Jews isn't special or unique and doesn't deserve its own term, racism is racism is racism is racism) subcontext was conjured relatively recently by the Zionist CRIF. They are rather upset by Dieudonné's disparaging remarks about the Zionist Entity and his support and collaboration with Palestinian liberation groups. Apparently, the quenelle is now an inverse Nazi salute(the logic behind an inverse Nazi salute being racist is puzzling to me, wouldn't an inverse Nazi salute mean the opposite? i.e anti-Nazism? the mental gymnastics these Zionists have to perform, it's amazing...). Yeah, right.

Anyhow, what exactly do those photos prove? That out of the millions of Europeans(a few million just in France itself) that have used the gesture, a few dozen have uploaded photos of themselves using it in what might be argued to be a racist fashion? But your example are just awful. The Aushwitz guy is in Poland, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial guy is in Germany and so are the Anne Frank guys. What do they have to do with a predominantly French gesture and the gesture's French comedian inventor? And Le Pen? Him and his daughter are class-a racist fucks but how does Jean-Marie's use of the gesture prove in any way that it has anti-Jewish connotations? The victims of the FN's racism are immigrants. Asians, Africans, Middle Easterns, and especially Muslims of those origins, but of course Jena-Marie only gets persecuted for his Holocaust
revisionism/denialism, because that is so much more worse.

[Raquin]

it's not about them being hardened neo-nazis, nobody said that, it is about them all being fucking idiots though.
American(or British?) observers know better than those idiotic Frenchies what a French gesture means, naturally. Without a doubt.

[Devrim]

I don't live in the UK or France. I am not really aware of the implications of this gesture in France or of how it is going down in England. However, I do follow the Premier League, and the thing that really struck me about this is how people, ex-professionals and commentators on the radio and TV have responded by saying how terrible this al is, and how he deserves at least a five match ban. Of course racism is not acceptable, but it seems to me very strange that people are demanding at least a five match ban for someone who makes a gesture that none of them really understand, and how somebody who called somebody a "fucking black ****", which I presume the meaning of which is clear to everybody, only got a four match ban. It may seem beside the point, but one of these two people was a black foreign man, and one of them was white and the captain of the English national football team. I wonder which was which.

Devrim

[Raquin]

But according to your logic - I suppose that everyone in guy fawkes masks are just fucking nazi scum too?

No, those people wearing Fawkes masks aren't Neo-Nazis, son. They are just sympathizers of an underground conspiracy which is trying to overthrow the government of the UK and institute a Catholic theocracy in England on the Pope's orders.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I guess I don't understand this gesture. Exactly what context would it be used in? I don't get the photo that looks like it's from a wedding reception or a family reunion with the entire family doing it for the camera, not when put side by side with the dudes doing it in a situation that does look pretty anti-semitic like the auschwitz one and the anne frank one.

[ed miliband]

The gesture has been around for 9 or so years, this supposed racist(or "antisemitic", which I think is a lousy term by the way, it should have been superseded by "racist" a long time ago - racism against Jews isn't special or unique and doesn't deserve its own term, racism is racism is racism is racism) subcontext was conjured relatively recently by the Zionist CRIF. They are rather upset by Dieudonné's disparaging remarks about the Zionist Entity and his support and collaboration with Palestinian liberation groups. Apparently, the quenelle is now an inverse Nazi salute(the logic behind an inverse Nazi salute being racist is puzzling to me, wouldn't an inverse Nazi salute mean the opposite? i.e anti-Nazism? the mental gymnastics these Zionists have to perform, it's amazing...). Yeah, right.

Anyhow, what exactly do those photos prove? That out of the millions of Europeans(a few million just in France itself) that have used the gesture, a few dozen have uploaded photos of themselves using it in what might be argued to be a racist fashion? But your example are just awful. The Aushwitz guy is in Poland, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial guy is in Germany and so are the Anne Frank guys. What do they have to do with a predominantly French gesture and the gesture's French comedian inventor? And Le Pen? Him and his daughter are class-a racist fucks but how does Jean-Marie's use of the gesture prove in any way that it has anti-Jewish connotations? The victims of the FN's racism are immigrants. Asians, Africans, Middle Easterns, and especially Muslims of those origins, but of course Jena-Marie only gets persecuted for his Holocaust
revisionism/denialism, because that is so much more worse.


so, you're reducing dieudonne's numerous statements on jewish people everywhere to anti-zionism? that's some pretty nasty ground you're stepping on. yeah, anti-zionism isn't antisemitic, but the likes of dieudonne use anti-zionism as a fig leaf to cover up their deeper motives.

http://i-cms.linternaute.com/image_cms/original/1885363-noemie-montagne-la-femme-de-dieudonne-protege-sa-quenelle.jpg

alain soral, pictured in this photo - and the photo at auschwitz above is a key figure on the french far-right... and a good friend and political ally of dieudonne. le pen is the godfather of one of dieudonne's kids... why are you brushing over this, ignoring it? i think it needs to be discussed when we're talking about dieudonne, the quenelle and so on.

[ed miliband]

and if people choose to think everything they read about dieudonne and the quenelle is from a zionist news source, here are some sources you can't accuse of being so:

http://quartierslibres.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/peau-noire-white-power-dieudonne-au-secours-des-skinheads/

http://albruxelles.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/dieudonne-soral-lanticapitalisme-des-imbeciles/

[Raquin]

so, you're reducing dieudonne's numerous statements on jewish people everywhere to anti-zionism? that's some pretty nasty ground you're stepping on.
I'm not stepping on squat and I'm not reducing Dieudonné's anything to anything. I haven't said a single word in his defense. I'll admit his ruffling the feathers of the French ruling class I find very amusing but besides that, I don't have anything to say in his defense.


yeah, anti-zionism isn't antisemitic, but the likes of dieudonne use anti-zionism as a fig leaf to cover up their deeper motives.
He doesn't have deeper motives, he's just stirring shit up to publicize himself. As far as his political activity goes he's only really involved himself when it comes to issues like agitating for trolling Israel, immigrant rights, sticking up to the poor and so on, i.e, our side of the fence.


alain soral, pictured in this photo - and the photo at auschwitz above is a key figure on the french far-right... and a good friend and political ally of dieudonne. le pen is the godfather of one of dieudonne's kids... why are you brushing over this, ignoring it? i think it needs to be discussed when we're talking about dieudonne, the quenelle and so on.
Eh, Alain Soral isn't a key figure on the French far-right. He's a sort of weird incoherent mixture of both right-wing ideas and far-left Marxism and communism. These days he's pretty irrelevant actually.

Anyways, like I said, I'm not defending Dieudonné or any of his buddies. I'm denying that the quenelle is inherently racist. Dieudonné ≠ quenelle.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

My aunt from Belgium loves Dieudonné, and she's leftist, so i have to doubt the guy is a neo-nazi.
I honestly don't know much about him.

No, those people wearing Fawkes masks aren't Neo-Nazis, son. They are just sympathizers of an underground conspiracy which is trying to overthrow the government of the UK and institute a Catholic theocracy in England on the Pope's orders.

Now you're being silly.

Symbolisms are not eternal, no one (or a small minority) still uses Fawkes mask with that intention.

[ed miliband]

I'm not stepping on squat and I'm not reducing Dieudonné's anything to anything. I haven't said a single word in his defense. I'll admit his ruffling the feathers of the French ruling class I find very amusing but besides that, I don't have anything to say in his defense.

the implication was that dieudonne is only accused of antisemitism because of his stance on israel. but he has said far more about judaism and jewish people than that.


He doesn't have deeper motives, he's just stirring shit up to publicize himself. As far as his political activity goes he's only really involved himself when it comes to issues like agitating for trolling Israel, immigrant rights, sticking up to the poor and so on, i.e, our side of the fence.


Eh, Alain Soral isn't a key figure on the French far-right. He's a sort of weird incoherent mixture of both right-wing ideas and far-left Marxism and communism. These days he's pretty irrelevant actually.

Anyways, like I said, I'm not defending Dieudonné or any of his buddies. I'm denying that the quenelle is inherently racist. Dieudonné ≠ quenelle.

i think the issue remains that dieudonne and his milieu represent a populist, reactionary "anti-capitalism" that needs to be challenged. even if you don't take the quenelle to be racist, i think that is unquestionable.

[ThePeoplesProf]

I'm not defending Dieudonné, I don't even understand French - I'm just trying to be objective. Objectively speaking, the English language articles sound like drummed-up bullshit.

It's clear that you don't read French. FYI, the people in the second-to-last image you posted are standing next to a street sign that says "Rue des Juifs" ("Street of the Jews" or "Jews Street"); I'm not sure which street in France has that name but that picture isn't in Paris though, I'm sure of that. I'm in Paris right now actually and, from what I've seen and read, when big groups of people do the quenelle like in the pictures you posted, they tend to be ultra-right wing (and yes) anti-semitic types, and often (though not exclusively) Catholic and with a strong royalist or monarchist bent.

I realize that not everyone reads French but if you claim to be "objective" you should at the very least make an honest attempt to genuinely inform yourself.

[SmirkerOfTheWorld]

I think that this quote from Dieudonne about a Jewish politician should put the debate to bed:

“When I hear about Patrick Cohen, I say to myself: You see, the gas chambers… It’s a shame.”

:glare:

[Nakidana]

I don't live in the UK or France. I am not really aware of the implications of this gesture in France or of how it is going down in England. However, I do follow the Premier League, and the thing that really struck me about this is how people, ex-professionals and commentators on the radio and TV have responded by saying how terrible this al is, and how he deserves at least a five match ban. Of course racism is not acceptable, but it seems to me very strange that people are demanding at least a five match ban for someone who makes a gesture that none of them really understand, and how somebody who called somebody a "fucking black ****", which I presume the meaning of which is clear to everybody, only got a four match ban. It may seem beside the point, but one of these two people was a black foreign man, and one of them was white and the captain of the English national football team. I wonder which was which.

Devrim

This is absolutely true, John Terry is vile filth and the racist hypocrisy of the English media is disgusting, but this does not detract from Dieudonné's connections to the far right and his antisemitism.


The gesture has been around for 9 or so years, this supposed racist(or "antisemitic", which I think is a lousy term by the way, it should have been superseded by "racist" a long time ago - racism against Jews isn't special or unique and doesn't deserve its own term, racism is racism is racism is racism) subcontext was conjured relatively recently by the Zionist CRIF. They are rather upset by Dieudonné's disparaging remarks about the Zionist Entity and his support and collaboration with Palestinian liberation groups. Apparently, the quenelle is now an inverse Nazi salute(the logic behind an inverse Nazi salute being racist is puzzling to me, wouldn't an inverse Nazi salute mean the opposite? i.e anti-Nazism? the mental gymnastics these Zionists have to perform, it's amazing...). Yeah, right.


You're laying it out as if Dieudonné only criticized the "Zionist entity". Actually he has made numerous racist comments about jews, had far-right people on his show and as mentioned in earlier comments has close connections with the far-right. I would let a few remarks slip if he came out and apologized afterwards, but his connections and repeated offenses makes it pretty obvious that it's not just a slip of the tongue.


Apparently, the quenelle is now an inverse Nazi salute(the logic behind an inverse Nazi salute being racist is puzzling to me, wouldn't an inverse Nazi salute mean the opposite? i.e anti-Nazism? the mental gymnastics these Zionists have to perform, it's amazing...). Yeah, right.

You're assuming an inverse gesture always communicates the opposite message. Maybe the logic is something along the lines of "let's do the Nazi salute downwards instead of upwards, so we can piss off people (who know exactly what we're referring to) without repercussions".

[Nakidana]

These articles have been making the rounds recently, both defenses of Dieudonné by Diana Johnstone.



The Move to Muzzle Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala
The Bête Noire of the French Establishment

by DIANA JOHNSTONE
Paris.
French mainstream media and politicians are starting off the New Year with a shared resolution for 2014: permanently muzzle a Franco-African comedian who is getting to be too popular among young people.
In between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, no less than the President of the Republic, François Hollande, while visiting Saudi Arabia on (very big) business, said his government must find a way to ban performances by the comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, as called for by French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls.
The leader of the conservative opposition party, UMP, Jean-François Copé, immediately chimed in with his “total support” for silencing the unmanageable entertainer.
In the unanimous media chorus, the weekly Nouvel Observateur editorialized that Dieudonné is “already dead”, washed up, finished. Editors publicly disputed whether it was a better tactic to try to jail him for “incitement to racial hatred”, close his shows on grounds of a potential “threat to public order”, or put pressure on municipalities by threatening cultural subsidies with cuts if they allow him to perform.
The goal of national police boss Manuel Valls is clear, but the powers that be are groping for the method.
The dismissive cliché heard repeatedly is that “nobody laughs at Dieudonné any more”.
In reality, the opposite is true. And that is the problem. On his recent tour of French cities, videos show large, packed theaters roaring with laughter at their favorite humorist. He has popularized a simple gesture, which he calls the “quenelle”. It is being imitated by young people all over France. It simply and obviously means, we are fed up.
To invent a pretext for destroying Dieudonné, the leading Jewish organizations CRIF (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France, the French AIPAC) and LICRA (Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme, which enjoys special privileges under French law) have come up with a fantasy to brand Dieudonné and his followers as “Nazis”. The quenelle is all too obviously a vulgar gesture roughly meaning “up yours”, with one hand placed at the top of the other arm pointing down to signify “how far up” this is to be.
But for the CRIF and LICRA, the quenelle is “a Nazi salute in reverse”. (You can never be too “vigilant” when looking for the hidden Hitler.)
As someone has remarked, a “Nazi salute in reverse” might as well be considered anti-Nazi. If indeed it had anything to do with Heil Hitler. Which it clearly does not.
But world media are taking up this claim, at least pointing out that “some consider the quenelle to be a Nazi salute in reverse”. Never mind that those who use it have no doubt about what it means: F— the system!
But to what extent are the CRIF and LICRA “the system”?

France needs all the laughter it can get
French industry is vanishing, with factory shutdowns week after week. Taxes on low income citizens are going up, to save the banks and the euro. Disillusion with the European Union is growing. EU rules exclude any serious effort to improve the French economy. Meanwhile, politicians on the left and the right continue their empty speeches, full of clichés about “human rights” – largely as an excuse to go to war in the Middle East or rant against China and Russia. The approval rating of President Hollande has sunk to 15%. However people vote, they get the same policies, made in EU.
Why then are the ruling politicians focusing their wrath on “the most talented humorist of his generation” (as his colleagues acknowledge, even when denouncing him)?
The short answer is probably that Dieudonné’s surging popularity among young people illustrates a growing generation gap. Dieudonné has turned laughter against the entire political establishment. This has led to a torrent of abuse and vows to shut down his shows, ruin him financially and even put him in jail. The abuse also provides a setting for physical attacks against him. A few days ago, his assistant Jacky Sigaux was physically attacked in broad daylight by several masked men in front of the city hall of the 19th arrondissement – just opposite the Buttes Chaumont Park. He has lodged a complaint.
But how much protection is to be expected from a government whose Interior Minister, Manuel Valls – in charge of police – has vowed to seek ways to silence Dieudonné?
The story is significant but is almost certain to be badly reported outside France – just as it is badly reported inside France, the source of almost all foreign reports. In translation, a bit of garbling and falsehoods add to the confusion.

Why Do They Hate Him?
Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala was born in a Paris suburb nearly 48 years ago. His mother was white, from Brittany, his father was African, from Cameroun. This should make him a poster child for the “multiculturalism” the ideologically dominant left claims to promote. And during the first part of his career, teaming up with his Jewish friend, Elie Simoun, he was just that: campaigning against racism, focusing his criticism on the National Front and even running for office against an NF candidate in the dormitory town of Dreux, some sixty miles West of Paris, where he lives. Like the best humorists, Dieudonné always targeted current events, with a warmth and dignity unusual in the profession. His career flourished, he played in movies, was a guest on television, branched out on his own. A great observer, he excels at relatively subtle imitations of various personality types and ethnic groups from Africans to Chinese.
Ten years ago, on December 1, 2003, as guest on a TV show appropriately called “You Can’t Please Everybody”, dedicated to current events, Dieudonné came on stage roughly disguised as “a convert to Zionist extremism” advising others to get ahead by “joining the American-Israeli Axis of Good”. This was in the first year of the US assault on Iraq, which France’s refusal to join had led Washington to rechristen what it calls “French fries” (Belgian, actually) as “Freedom fries”. A relatively mild attack on George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” seemed totally in the mood of the times. The sketch ended with a brief salute, “Isra-heil”. This was far from being vintage Dieudonné, but nevertheless, the popular humorist was at the time enthusiastically embraced by other performers while the studio audience gave him a standing ovation.
Then the protests started coming in, especially concerning the final gesture seen as likening Israel to Nazi Germany.
“Anti-Semitism!” was the cry, although the target was Israel (and the United States as allies in the Middle East). Calls multiplied to ban his shows, to sue him, to destroy his career. Dieudonné attempted to justify his sketch as not targeting Jews as such, but, unlike others before him, would not apologize for an offense he did not believe he had committed. Why no protests from Africans he had made fun of? Or Muslims? Or Chinese? Why should a single community react with such fury?
Thus began a decade of escalation. LICRA began a long series of lawsuits against him (“incitement to racial hatred”), at first losing, but keeping up the pressure. Instead of backing down, Dieudonné went farther in his criticism of “Zionism” after each attack. Meanwhile, Dieudonné was gradually excluded from television appearances and treated as a pariah by mainstream media. It is only the recent internet profusion of images showing young people making the quenelle sign that has moved the establishment to conclude that a direct attack would be more effective than trying to ignore him.

The Ideological Background
To begin to understand the meaning of the Dieudonné affair, it is necessary to grasp the ideological context. For reasons too complex to review here, the French left – the left that once was primarily concerned with the welfare of the working class, with social equality, opposition to aggressive war, freedom of speech – has virtually collapsed. The right has won the decisive economic battle, with the triumph of policies favoring monetary stability and the interests of international investment capital (“neo-liberalism”). As a consolation prize, the left enjoys a certain ideological dominance, based on anti-racism, anti-nationalism and devotion to the European Union – even to the hypothetical “social Europe” that daily recedes into the cemetery of lost dreams. In fact, this ideology fits perfectly with a globalization geared to the requirements of international finance capital.
In the absence of any serious socio-economic left, France has sunk into a sort of “Identity Politics”, which both praises multiculturalism and reacts vehemently against “communitarianism”, that is, the assertion of any unwelcome ethnic particularisms. But some ethnic particularisms are less welcome than others. The Muslim veil was first banned in schools, and demands to ban it in adult society grow. The naqib and burka, while rare, have been legally banned. Disputes erupt over Halal foods in cafeterias, prayers in the street, while cartoons regularly lampoon Islam. Whatever one may think of this, the fight against communitarianism can be seen by some as directed against one particular community. Meanwhile, French leaders have been leading the cry for wars in Muslim countries from Libya to Syria, while insisting on devotion to Israel.
Meanwhile, another community is the object of constant solicitude. In the last twenty years, while religious faith and political commitment have declined drastically, the Holocaust, called the Shoah in France, has gradually become a sort of State Religion. Schools commemorate the Shoah annually, it increasingly dominates historical consciousness, which in other areas is declining along with many humanistic studies. In particular, of all the events in France’s long history, the only one protected by law is the Shoah. The so-called Gayssot Law bans any questioning of the history of the Shoah, an altogether unprecedented interference with freedom of speech. Moreover, certain organizations, such as LICRA, have been granted the privilege of suing individuals on the basis of “incitement to racial hatred” (very broadly and unevenly interpreted) with the possibility of collecting damages on behalf of the “injured community”. In practice, these laws are used primarily to prosecute alleged “anti-Semitism” or “negationism” concerning the Shoah. Even though they frequently are thrown out of court, such lawsuits constitute harassment and intimidation. France is the rare country where the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israeli settlement practices can also be attacked as “incitement to racial hatred”.
The violence-prone Jewish Defense League, outlawed in the United States and even in Israel, is known for smashing books shops or beating up isolated, even elderly, individuals. When identified, flight to Israel is a good way out. The victims of the JDL fail to inspire anything close to the massive public indignation aroused when a Jewish person falls victim to wanton violence. Meanwhile, politicians flock to the annual dinner of the CRIF with the same zeal that in the United States they flock to the dinner of AIPAC – not so much for campaign funds as to demonstrate their correct sentiments.
France has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe, which actually largely escaped the deportation during German occupation that expelled Jewish immigrants to concentration camps. In addition to an old, established Jewish population, there are many newcomers from North Africa. All this adds up to a very dynamic, successful population, numerous in the more visible and popular professions (journalism, show business, as well as science and medicine, among others).
Of all French parties, the Socialist Party (especially via the Israeli Labor Party of Shimon Peres in the Socialist International) has the closest historic ties with Israel. In the 1950s, when France was fighting against the Algerian national liberation movement, the French government (via Peres) contributed to the Israeli project of building nuclear weapons. Today it is not the Labor Party that rules Israel, but the far right. Hollande’s recent cozy trip to Benjamin Netanyahu showed that the rightward drift of policy in Israel has done nothing to strain relations – which seem closer than ever.
Yet this Jewish community is very small compared to the large number of Arab immigrants from North Africa or black immigrants from France’s former colonies in Africa. Several years ago, a leading Socialist Party intellectual, Pascal Boniface, cautiously warned party leaders that their heavy bias in favor of the Jewish community could eventually cause electoral problems. This statement in a political assessment document caused an uproar which nearly cost him his career.
But the fact remains: it is not hard for French people of Arab or African background to feel that the “communitarianism” that really has clout is the Jewish community.

The Political Uses of the Holocaust
Norman Finkelstein showed some time ago that the Holocaust can be exploited for less than noble purposes: such as extorting funds from Swiss banks. However, in France the situation is very different. No doubt, constant reminders of the Shoah serve as a sort of protection for Israel from the hostility aroused by its treatment of the Palestinians. But the religion of the Holocaust has another, deeper political impact with no direct relation to the fate of the Jews.
More than anything else, Auschwitz has been interpreted as the symbol of what nationalism leads to. Reference to Auschwitz has served to give a bad conscience to Europe, and notably to the French, considering that their relatively small role in the matter was the result of military defeat and occupation by Nazi Germany. Bernard-Henri Lévy, the writer whose influence has grown to grotesque proportions in recent years (he led President Sarkozy into war against Libya), began his career as ideologue by claiming that “fascism” is the genuine “French ideology”. Guilt, guilt, guilt. By placing Auschwitz as the most significant event of recent history, various writers and speakers justify by default the growing power of the European Union as necessary replacement for Europe’s inherently “bad” nations. Never again Auschwitz! Dissolve the nation-states into a technical bureaucracy, free of the emotional influence of citizens who might vote incorrectly. Do you feel French? Or German? You should feel guilty about it – because of Auschwitz.
Europeans are less and less enthusiastic about the EU as it ruins their economies and robs them of all democratic power over the economy. They can vote for gay marriage, but not for the slightest Keynesian measure, much less socialism. Nevertheless, guilt about the past is supposed to keep them loyal to the European dream.
Dieudonné’s fans, judging from photographs, appear to be predominantly young men, fewer women, mostly between the ages of twenty and thirty. They were born two full generations after the end of World War II. They have spent their lives hearing about the Shoah. Over 300 Paris schools bear a plaque commemorating the tragic fate of Jewish children deported to Nazi concentration camps. What can be the effect of all this? For many who were born long after these terrible events, it seems that everyone is supposed to feel guilty – if not for what they didn’t do, for what they supposedly might do if they had a chance.
When Dieudonné transformed an old semi-racist “tropical” song, Chaud Cacao, into Shoah Ananas, the tune is taken up en masse by Dieudonné fans. I venture to think that they are not making fun of the real Shoah, but rather of the constant reminders of events that are supposed to make them feel guilty, insignificant and powerless. Much of this generation is sick of hearing about the period 1933-1945, while their own future is dim.

Nobody Knows When to Stop
Last Sunday, a famous football player of Afro-Belgian origin, Nicolas Anelka, who plays in the UK, made a quenelle sign after scoring a goal – in solidarity with this friend Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala. With this simple and basically insignificant gesture, the uproar soared to new heights.
In the French parliament, Meyer Habib represents “overseas French” – some 4,000 Israelis of French origin. On Monday he twittered: “Anelka’s quenelle is intolerable! I will introduce a bill to punish this new Nazi salute practiced by anti-Semites.”
France has adopted laws to “punish anti-Semitism”. The result is the opposite. Such measures simply tend to confirm the old notion that “the Jews run the country” and contribute to growing anti-Semitism. When French youth see a Franco-Israeli attempt to outlaw a simple gesture, when the Jewish community moves to ban their favorite humorist, anti-Semitism can only grow even more rapidly.
Yet in this escalation, the relationship of forces is very uneven. A humorist has words as his weapons, and fans who may disperse when the going gets rough. On the other side is the dominant ideology, and the power of the State.
In this sort of clash, civic peace depends on the wisdom of those with most power to show restraint. If they fail to do so, this can be a game with no winners.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/01/the-bete-noire-of-the-french-establishment/


The Shoah as State Religion?
Blasphemy in Secular France

by DIANA JOHNSTONE
Paris.
The campaign by the French government, mass media and influential organizations to silence the Franco-Cameroonese humorist Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala continues to expose a radical split in perception within the French population. The official “mobilization” against the standup comedian, first called for by Interior Minister Manuel Valls at a ruling Socialist Party gathering last summer, portrays the entertainer as a dangerous anti-Semitic rabble rouser, whose “quenelle”* gesture is interpreted as a “Nazi salute in reverse”.
For his fans and supporters, those accusations are false and absurd.
The most significant result of the Dieudonné uproar so far is probably the dawning realization, among more and more people, that the “Shoah”, or Holocaust, functions as the semi-official State Religion of France.
On RTL television last January 10, the well-known nonconformist commentator Eric Zemmour (who happens to be Jewish) observed that it was “grotesque and ridiculous” to associate Dieudonné with the Third Reich. Zemmour described Dieudonné as a product of the French left’s multiculturalism. “It’s the left that has taught us since May ’68 that it is prohibited to prohibit, that we must shock the bourgeois. It is the left that has turned the Shoah into the supreme religion of the Republic…”
Zemmour suggested that Dieudonné was provoking “the respectable left-wing bourgeoisie” and that he “reproaches Jews for wanting to conserve the monopoly of suffering and steal primacy in suffering from descendants of slavery”.
There is more than that at stake. Reminders of the Shoah serve indirectly to justify France’s increasingly pro-Israel foreign policy in the Middle East. Dieudonné opposed the war against Libya enough to go there to show his solidarity with the country being bombed by NATO.
Dieudonné began his career as a militant anti-racist. Instead of apologizing for his 2003 sketch mocking an “extreme Zionist settler”, Dieudonné retorted by gradually extending his sphere of humor to cover the Shoah. The campaign against him can be seen as an effort to restore the sacred character of the Shoah by enforcing repression of a contemporary form of blasphemy.
To confirm this impression, on January 9 an “historic” agreement was reached between the Paris Prosecutor’s Office and the French Shoah Memorial that any teenager found guilty of anti-Semitism may be sentenced to undergo a course of “sensitivity to the extermination of the Jews”. Studying genocide is supposed to teach them “republican values of tolerance and respect for others”.
This is perhaps exactly what they don’t need. The Prosecutor’s Office may be unaware of all the young people who are saying that they have had too much, rather than not enough, Shoah education.
An atypical article in Le Monde of January 8 cited opinions anyone can easily hear from French youth, but which are usually ignored. After interviewing ten left-leaning, middle class spectators who denied any anti-Semitism, Soren Seelow quoted Nico, a 22-year-old left-voting law student at the Sorbonne, who adores Dieudonné for “liberating” laughter in what he considers a stuffy conformist society of “good thoughts”. As for the Shoah, Nico complained that “they’ve been telling us about it since elementary school. When I was 12, I saw a film with bulldozers pushing bodies into ditches. We are subjected to a guilt-inducing morality from the earliest age.”
In addition to history courses, teachers organize commemorations of the Shoah and trips to Auschwitz. Media reminders of the Shoah are almost daily. Unique in French history, the so-called Gayssot law provides that any statement denying or minimizing the Shoah can be prosecuted and even lead to prison.
Scores of messages received from French citizens in response to my earlier article (CounterPunch, January 1, 2014) as well as private conversations make it clear to me that reminders of the Shoah are widely experienced by people born decades after the defeat of Nazism as invitations to feel guilty or at least uncomfortable for crimes they did not commit. Like many demands for solemnity, the Shoah can be felt as a subject that imposes uneasy silence. Laughter is then felt as liberation.
But for others, such laughter can only be an abomination.
Dieudonné has been fined 8,000 euros for his song “Shoananas”, and further such condemnations are in the offing. Such lawsuits, brought primarily by LICRA (Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme), also aim to wipe him out financially.

“Hatred”
One line in the chorus against Dieudonné is that he is “no longer a comedian” but has turned his shows into “anti-Semitic political meetings” which spread “hatred”. Even the distant New Yorker magazine has accused the humorist of making a career out of peddling “hatred”. This raises images of terrible things happening that are totally remote from a Dieudonné show or its consequences.
There was no atmosphere of hatred among the thousands of fans left holding their tickets when Dieudonné’s January 9 show in Nantes was banned at the last minute by France’s highest administrative authority, the Conseil d’Etat. Nobody was complaining of being deprived of a “Nazi rally”. Nobody thought of causing harm to anyone. All said they had come to enjoy the show. They represented a normal cross-section of French youth, largely well-educated middle class. The show was banned on the grounds of “immaterial disturbance of public order”. The disappointed crowd dispersed peacefully. Dieudonné’s shows have never led to any public disorder.
But there is no mistaking the virulent hatred against Dieudonné.
Philippe Tesson, a prominent editor, announced during a recent radio interview that he would “profoundly rejoice” at seeing Dieudonné executed by a firing squad. “He is a filthy beast, so get rid of him!” he exclaimed.
The internet Rabbi Rav Haim Dynovisz, in the course of a theology lesson, acknowledged that Darwin’s theory of evolution, which he rejects, had been proved by Dieudonné to apply to “certain” people, who must have descended from gorillas.
Two 17-year-olds have been permanently expelled from their high school for having made the quenelle gesture, on grounds of “crimes against humanity”. The Franco-Israeli web magazine JSSNews is busily investigating the identities of persons making the quenelle sign in order to try to get them fired from their jobs, boasting that it will “add to unemployment in France”.
The owners of the small Paris theater, “La Main d’Or”, rented by Dieudonné on a lease running until 2019, recently rushed back from Israel expressing their intention to use a technicality to end his lease and throw him out.
The worst thing Dieudonné has ever said during his performances, so far as I am aware, was a personal insult against the radio announcer Patrick Cohen. Cohen has insistently urged that persons he calls “sick brains” such as Dieudonné or Tariq Ramadan be banned from television appearances. In late December, French television (which otherwise has kept Dieudonné off the airwaves) recorded Dieudonné saying that “when I hear Patrick Cohen talking, I think to myself, you know, the gas chambers…Too bad…”
With the anti-Dieudonné campaign already well underway, this offensive comment was seized upon as if it were typical of Dieudonné’s shows. It was an excessively crude reaction by Dieudonné to virulent personal attacks against himself.
Irreverence is a staple for standup comics, like it or not. And Dieudonné’s references to the Holocaust, or Shoah, all fall into the category of irreverence.
On matters other than the Shoah, there is no shortage of irreverence in France.
Traditional religions, as well as prominent individuals, are regularly caricatured in a manner so scatological as to make the quenelle look prudish. In October, 2011, Paris police intervened against traditional Catholics who sought to interrupt a play which included (the apparent) pouring of excrement over the face of Jesus. The political-media establishment vigorous defended the play, unconcerned that it was perceived by some people as “offensive”.
Recently, France gave a big welcome to the Ukrainian group calling itself “Femen”, young women who seem to have studied Gene Sharp’s doctrines of provocation, and use their bare breasts as (ambiguous) statements. These women were rapidly granted residence papers (so hard to get for many immigrant workers) and allowed to set up shop in the midst of the main Muslim neighborhood in Paris, where they immediately attempted to try (unsuccessfully) to provoke the incredulous residents. The blonde Femen leader was even chosen to portray the symbol of the Republic, Marianne, on the current French postage stamp, although she does not speak French.
Last December 20, these “new feminists” invaded the Church of the Madeleine near the Elysée Palace in Paris, acted out “the abortion of Jesus” and then pissed on the high altar. There were no cries of indignation from the French government. The Catholic Church is complaining, but such complaints have a feeble echo in France today.

Why the Shoah Must Be Sacred
When Dieudonné sings lightly of the Shoah, he is believed by some to be denying the Holocaust and calling for its repetition (a contradictory proposition, upon reflection). The sacred nature of the Shoah is defended by the argument that keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust is essential to prevent it from “happening again”. By suggesting the possibility of repetition, it keeps fear alive.
This argument is generally accepted as a sort of law of nature. We must keep commemorating genocide to prevent it from happening again. But is there really any evidence to support this argument?
Nothing proves that repeated reminders of an immense historic event that happened in the past prevent it from happening again. History doesn’t work that way. As for the Shoah, gas chambers and all, it is quite preposterous to imagine that it could happen again considering all the factors that made it happen in the first place. Hitler had a project to confirm the role of Germans as the master “Aryan” race in Europe, and hated the Jews as a dangerous rival elite. Who now has such a project? Certainly not a Franco-African humorist! Hitler is not coming back, nor is Napoleon Bonaparte, nor is Attila the Hun.
Constantly recalling the Shoah, in articles, movies, news items, as well as at school, far from preventing anything, can create a morbid fascination with “identities”. It fosters “victim rivalries”. This fascination can lead to unanticipated results. Some 330 schools in Paris bear plaques commemorating the Jewish children who were deported to Nazi concentration camps. How do little Jewish children today react to that? Do they find it reassuring?
This may be useful to the State of Israel, which is currently undertaking a three-year program to encourage more of France’s 600,000 Jews to leave France and go to Israel. In 2013, the number of Aliyah from France rose to more than 3,000, a trend attributed by the European Jewish Press to the “French Jewish community’s increasingly Zionistic mentality, particularly among young French Jews, and a manifestation of efforts by the Jewish Agency, the Israel government, and other non-profits to cultivate Jewish identity in France.”
“If this year we have seen Aliyah from France go from under 2,000 to more than 3,000, I look forward to seeing that number grow to 6,000 and beyond in the near future, as we connect ever more young people to Jewish life and to Israel,” declared Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Surely, one way to encourage Aliyah is to scare Jews with the threat of anti-Semitism, and claiming that Dieudonné’s numerous fans are Nazis in disguise is a good way to do this.
But as for Jews who want to live in France, is it really healthy to keep reminding Jewish children that, if they are not wary, their fellow citizens might one day want to hoard them onto freight trains and ship them all to Auschwitz? I have heard people saying privately that this permanent reminder is close to child abuse.
Someone who thinks that way is Jonathan Moadab, a 25-year-old independent journalist who was interviewed by Soren Seelow. Moadab is both anti-Zionist and a practicing Jew. As a child he was taken to tour Auschwitz. He told Seelow that that living with that “victim indoctrination” had engendered a sort of “pre-traumatic stress syndrome”.
“Dieudonné’s jokes about the Shoah, like his song Shoananas, are not aimed at the Shoah itself,” he says, “but at the exploitation of the Holocaust described by the American political writer Norman Finkelstein.”
On January 22, on his web site Agence Info Libre (http://www.agenceinfolibre.fr/pour-la-separation-de-letat-et-de-la-religion-de-lholocauste/), Jonathan Moadab openly called for “separating the State from the Holocaust religion”. Moadab cites professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz as the first to point out the many ways in which the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion. If that is so, everyone has the right to practice the religion of the Shoah. But should it be the official religion of France?
French politicians never cease celebrating the “laicité”, the secularism, of the French Republic. Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who proclaims his own devotion to Israel, because his wife is Jewish, recently called the Shoah the “sanctuary that cannot be profaned”. Moadab concludes that if the Shoah is a sanctuary, then the Holocaust is a religion, and the Republic is not secular.
Changes are taking place in the attitude of young people in France. This change is not due to Dieudonné. It is due to the passage of time. The Holocaust became the religion of the West at a time when the generation after World War II was in the mood to blame their parents. Now we are with the grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, of those who lived through that period, and they want to look ahead. No law can stop this.
*As described in my earlier article (http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/01/the-bete-noire-of-the-french-establishment/), the “quenelle” is a vulgar gesture roughly meaning “up yours”, with one hand placed at the top of the other arm stretched down to signify “how far up” this is to be. Using the name of a French dumpling, Dieudonné started using this gesture in a wholly different context years ago, as an expression of defiance, incredulity or indifference.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/24/blasphemy-in-secular-france/


I've only just read the second one, but I notice she doesn't mention Dieudonné's connections to the far right. She explains his statements as aberrations, ie knee-jerk reactions due to virulent attacks on him.

[Sasha]

Yup, nothing antisemitic with the quenelle; http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/blogs/news/quenelle-france-racist nothing antisemitic at all..... :glare:

[Manic Impressive]

Something that has occurred to me which I haven't seen mentioned in any articles and I'm kind of suprised hasn't been mentioned here is that the gesture is supposed to represent the person fisting the person it's shown to. So an unwanted sexual assault basically.

The name quenelle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle) comes from an elongated fish meatballs dish, which is said to look like a suppository (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppository).[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle_%28gesture%29#cite_note-Lorrain-2) Hence, the phrase "mettre une quenelle" ("to give someone the quenelle "), with a gesture simulating fisting practice,[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle_%28gesture%29#cite_note-Lorrain-2) is similar to the English "up yours".[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]. The arm outstretched refers to the length of the arm going up one's bottom.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle_%28gesture%29#cite_note-3)
Dieudonné first used the quenelle gesture in his 2005 show named "1905".[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle_%28gesture%29#cite_note-Quenelle-origin-figaro-4) The first time Dieudonné used the gesture in a political context was for his 2009 European election campaign poster for the "anti-Zionist party",[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle_%28gesture%29#cite_note-Quenelle-origin-figaro-4) he stated that his intention was "to put a quenelle into Zionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism)'s butt".[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenelle_%28gesture%29#cite_note-5)
Dieudonné described it as "a kind of up yours gesture to the establishment with an in the ass dimension. But it's a quenelle, so it's a bit softer, less violent".

Obviously not everyone preforming the gesture is a Nazi. It comes from the conspiracy theorist tradition. Many conspiracy theory types would not consider themselves right wing. Yet the stories they believe come from 1930's fascist propaganda. It's interesting to see it coming full circle and rejoining the far right. Successful propaganda. I believe that the gesture has probably resonated with another group of people though. Those who believe in free speech and those determined to flout censorship of anything, with the intent of civil disobedience. So it's probably wrong that this is an anti semetic gesture to many many people. While there are obviously others who think it is, context I think is key. Not a black and white issue.

[DOOM]

How is everyone falling fot this "Anti-Zionism" shit? It's just hidden anti-semitism.
Does anyone have an article on this subject?

[Sinister Intents]

How is everyone falling fot this "Anti-Zionism" shit? It's just hidden anti-semitism.
Does anyone have an article on this subject?

Antizionism does not equate antisemitism. Antizionism is being against the fascist Israeli apartheid state. As for articles just do a search on RevLeft.

[DOOM]

Antizionism does not equate antisemitism. Antizionism is being against the fascist Israeli apartheid state. As for articles just do a search on RevLeft.

Well you just have been antisemitic.
But I don't want to discuss the double standards and the hypocrisy when it's about criticizing the Israeli state, I just asked for articles on this topic.

[Sinister Intents]

Well you just have been antisemitic.
But I don't want to discuss the double standards and the hypocrisy when it's about criticizing the Israeli state, I just asked for articles on this topic.

No I wasn't daftie, fuck you. I'm not an antisemite. Do you support the state of Israel and other shitty racist states? Do you have any idea of the treatment of Palestinians?

[motion denied]

According to your logic, Jewish people who oppose Israel are antisemitic.

Somehow, to you, the State of Israel represents all Jewish people. You're wrong.

[DOOM]

No I wasn't daftie, fuck you. I'm not an antisemite. Do you support the state of Israel and other shitty racist states? Do you have any idea of the treatment of Palestinians?

Accusing Israel of fascism (when it's clearly not a fascist state) is pure antisemitism. And the fact that you are calling me names, shows that you dont have any arguments.
And I have an idea of the treatment of the Palestinians. Yes the situation is shitty but the singular abolition of the Israeli State is pointless anti-semitic bullshit.
It's fucking hilarious how we non-Israelis are using double standards on the Israelis. In Basically every state of the world exists a huge amount of racism and sexism. But there aren't any ideologies like "antiindianism, antirussianism, antiamericanism or antizimbabwemizm" which are longing for the singular abolition of the state xy. This just happens with Israel and is a perfect example on how you antizionists are using unreflected critics to justify your antisemitism.

[DOOM]

According to your logic, Jewish people who oppose Israel are antisemitic.

Somehow, to you, the State of Israel represents all Jewish people. You're wrong.

Well I didn't say that anywhere. But yes, there is a fair amount of self-hatred.
And I also didn't say that Israel represents every jew, but it represents a fair amount of Israelis (jew or not jew).
Unless there is aRevolution, the Israelis have the same right for self-determination as every other nation in the world has.

[ed miliband]

not this here, please. i mean, there is a question around anti-zionism insofar as it seems people are willing to defend dieudonne as an anti-zionist as if that means he cannot be an antisemite. but i can't be fucked for the thread to be derailed into a back-and-forth like this.

anyway, somebody posted this elsewhere. i don't think it needs any explanation, although less eagle-eyed viewers may fail to notice the fellow dressed up as 'the boy in the striped pyjamas' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Striped_Pyjamas_(film) ), complete with judenstern:

Lr7B-qvOd34

it's no surprise that counterpunch should write a piece defending dieudonne. after all, the woman who wrote it has form - she's described le pen as 'basically left-wing', supported milosevic, etc. these people occupy the same far-right / far-left space that the likes of soral and dieudonne wish to create, and why not? on issues like globalisation, national liberation, "good [productive] capitalism" vs. "bad [parasitic, financial] capitalism" they're more or less the same. the euroright and the old, dead, euro left don't really look all too different when you take away the racism.

[DOOM]

not this here, please. i mean, there is a question around anti-zionism insofar as it seems people are willing to defend dieudonne as an anti-zionist as if that means he cannot be an antisemite. but i can't be fucked for the thread to be derailed into a back-and-forth like this.

You're right.
I'm sorry.

[GerrardWinstanley]

it's no surprise that counterpunch should write a piece defending dieudonne. after all, the woman who wrote it has form - she's described le pen as 'basically left-wing', supported milosevic, etc. these people occupy the same far-right / far-left space that the likes of soral and dieudonne wish to create, and why not? on issues like globalisation, national liberation, "good [productive] capitalism" vs. "bad [parasitic, financial] capitalism" they're more or less the same. the euroright and the old, dead, euro left don't really look all too different when you take away the racism.Nothing surprises me about Counterpunch either (for all their good points). They still take submissions from Gilad Atzmon.

[Nakidana]

Not to derail further, just a quick FYI; there was a long discussion on anti-Zionism = antisemitism here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/anti-zionism-anti-t179359/index.html?t=179359


these people occupy the same far-right / far-left space that the likes of soral and dieudonne wish to create, and why not? on issues like globalisation, national liberation, "good [productive] capitalism" vs. "bad [parasitic, financial] capitalism" they're more or less the same. the euroright and the old, dead, euro left don't really look all too different when you take away the racism.

Only you can't take away the racism...the far-right will stab them in the back first chance they get.

[ed miliband]

i think part of the problem is that some anti-zionists, fed up of the accusation of antisemitism, fall into the trap of assuming that "antisemitic" is merely a smear used against them by zionists. this leads to a situation whereby actual antisemitism is ignored or brushed over, or even pardoned on account of it actually being anti-zionist rather than antisemitic.

challenging the likes of dieudonne (or, say, the aforementioned gilad atzmon, who the swp happily courted) should be seen a prerequisite for ensuring that the much repeated line that 'anti-zionism is not antisemitic' actually holds true. otherwise, you let these people run around and you're nothing but useful idiots.

[goalkeeper]

Antizionism does not equate antisemitism. .

but of course to be an anti-semite is also to be an 'anti-zionist' in 2014 (but not necessarily the other way round it must be stressed)

[PhoenixAsh]

Accusing Israel of fascism (when it's clearly not a fascist state) is pure antisemitism. And the fact that you are calling me names, shows that you dont have any arguments.
And I have an idea of the treatment of the Palestinians. Yes the situation is shitty but the singular abolition of the Israeli State is pointless anti-semitic bullshit.
It's fucking hilarious how we non-Israelis are using double standards on the Israelis. In Basically every state of the world exists a huge amount of racism and sexism. But there aren't any ideologies like "antiindianism, antirussianism, antiamericanism or antizimbabwemizm" which are longing for the singular abolition of the state xy. This just happens with Israel and is a perfect example on how you antizionists are using unreflected critics to justify your antisemitism.

Serious?

I not only accuse Israel of fascism...I also accuse them of committing genocide....but what is even more...I also accuse Israel of not only just contradicting the Talmud and Torah but actually of antisemitism. I also would really like you to realize that neither Zionism nor Israel equal Judaism.

**

The Quenelle isn't political in origin. The gesture itself isn't even French as it has been used in Holland decades ago...only breaking off at the wrist. It has been made political by both Dieudonne and the Zionist lobby. And I am sure it is used in an anti semitic fashion by now.

[Rosa Partizan]

Serious?

I not only accuse Israel of fascism...I also accuse them of committing genocide....but what is even more...I also accuse Israel of not only just contradicting the Talmud and Torah but actually of antisemitism. I also would really like you to realize that neither Zionism nor Israel equal Judaism.

**

The Quenelle isn't political in origin. The gesture itself isn't even French as it has been used in Holland decades ago...only breaking off at the wrist. It has been made political by both Dieudonne and the Zionist lobby. And I am sure it is used in an anti semitic fashion by now.

would you please give me a definition of what genocide means to you? 'cause obviously, I must have a totally different concept of this term.

[PhoenixAsh]

"the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group""

[Sinister Intents]

would you please give me a definition of what genocide means to you? 'cause obviously, I must have a totally different concept of this term.

What's your definition? My definition would be:
gen·o·cide
ˈjenəˌsīd/
noun

noun: genocide; plural noun: genocides
1.
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular ethnic group or nation.




I just copied and pasted from a google search, but essentially I'd say roughly the same thing

[Rosa Partizan]

okay, that's fine with me. So Israel is killing large amounts of Palestinians every day, right? I mean, they got the IDF, their military power is absolutely overwhelming. How come there are plenty Palestinians left? I remember Bosnia 95, the Serb army was able to kill 7000 Bosniaks in a few days and it was classified as a genocide.

[Sinister Intents]

okay, that's fine with me. So Israel is killing large amounts of Palestinians every day, right? I mean, they got the IDF, their military power is absolutely overwhelming. How come there are plenty Palestinians left? I remember Bosnia 95, the Serb army was able to kill 7000 Bosniaks in a few days and it was classified as a genocide.

So how do you feel about the Armenian genocide?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

[DOOM]

Serious?

I not only accuse Israel of fascism...I also accuse them of committing genocide....but what is even more...I also accuse Israel of not only just contradicting the Talmud and Torah but actually of antisemitism. I also would really like you to realize that neither Zionism nor Israel equal Judaism.

**

The Quenelle isn't political in origin. The gesture itself isn't even French as it has been used in Holland decades ago...only breaking off at the wrist. It has been made political by both Dieudonne and the Zionist lobby. And I am sure it is used in an anti semitic fashion by now.

How's Israel fascistic? It's not a militaristic state ruled by one party, longing for expansion.

Jeez i hate overused catchphrases.

[Rosa Partizan]

So how do you feel about the Armenian genocide?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

Let me be honest about it, I don't feel informed (enough) to make a valid statement. The controversy about this one is big and there are good points that make all this a genocide, but I'm just not so super duper awesome informed to say def yes or no.

[ed miliband]

Yo, I said cut this out already. It's really not relevant to the discussion of Dieudonne, and there are plenty of other opportunities to discuss this elsewhere.

[Rosa Partizan]

Yo, I said cut this out already. It's really not relevant to the discussion of Dieudonne, and there are plenty of other opportunities to discuss this elsewhere.

Whenever I follow leftist discussions in general, Israel seems relevant everywhere. No matter if it's about Palestine, capitalism or worker's rights in Oceania, Israel will appear everywhere.

[PhoenixAsh]

okay, that's fine with me. So Israel is killing large amounts of Palestinians every day, right? I mean, they got the IDF, their military power is absolutely overwhelming. How come there are plenty Palestinians left? I remember Bosnia 95, the Serb army was able to kill 7000 Bosniaks in a few days and it was classified as a genocide.

Basically they are killing large amounts of Palestinians. Yet what I revered to was not the act of shooting civilians but rather the policy of gradual extermination of Palestinians.

[Rosa Partizan]

Basically they are killing large amounts of Palestinians. Yet what I revered to was not the act of shooting civilians but rather the policy of gradual extermination of Palestinians.

you might want to prove this with a non-pallywood source, huh?

[PhoenixAsh]

Debate continued here to keep this thread Ed Miliband approved ;) :P

http://www.revleft.com/vb/israel-fascisti-split-t186793/index.html?p=2717637#post2717637

[ThePeoplesProf]

Google these two words: Israel + sterilization

...and you'll learn how the state of Israel has forcibly injected Ethiopian women immigrants with birth control. The parallels to the "master race" purity of the Holocaust era are tragic and underscore the utter and unabashed hypocrisy of Israel...

(I'd post a link myself but I'm too recent of a RevLeft member, and so the site won't let me yet)

I'm curious to see how you'll respond to this!

[hatzel]

Leftoid clowns still trying to sidestep the discussion of antisemitism by talking about Israel, I see.

To give this the appropriate Gallic twist: quelle sur-fucking-prise...

[Nakidana]

So Dieudonné's been denied entry into the UK. Do you guys think he should've been allowed in despite his antisemitism? Part of me is thinking "why not let him travel and then let the local anti-racists deal with him".


Dieudonné M'bala M'bala: French 'quenelle' comedian banned from UK

Home Office warns border officials not to let controversial comic into UK to support Nicolas Anelka in 'quenelle' gesture hearing



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Kim Willsher (http://www.theguardian.com/profile/kim-willsher) in Paris
theguardian.com (http://www.theguardian.com/), Monday 3 February 2014 14.23 GMT
Jump to comments (760) (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/03/dieudonne-banned-uk-nicolas-anelka-quenelle#start-of-comments)

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/2/3/1391430937486/Dieudonn--011.jpg Dieudonné: a Home Office spokesperson confirmed that the French comic is subject to an exclusion order. Photograph: Sipa Press/REX

The controversial French comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala has been banned from entering Britain after several of his shows were cancelled in France.
Dieudonné had said he would travel to the UK to support his friend, footballer Nicolas Anelka (http://www.theguardian.com/football/nicolas-anelka), who is facing a disciplinary hearing after performing a "quenelle" – an allegedly antisemitic gesture – during a Premier League match.
The Home Office has declared the performer persona non grata and warned he will not be allowed into the country.
The Home Office has sent out a warning to airlines and other transport companies as well as border officials, that the performer, known by his stage name Dieudonné, is an "excluded" individual.
A Home Office spokesperson said: "We can confirm that Mr Dieudonné is subject to an exclusion order. The home secretary will seek to exclude an individual from the UK if she considers that there are public policy or public security reasons to do so."
Several of Dieudonné's shows were banned in France last month (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/france-court-upholds-ban-antisemitic-dieudonne-show) at the start of a 22-date tour amid fears that his stereotypical portrait of Jews and mocking of the Holocaust were a risk to public order.
Dieudonné fans and civil liberties campaigners accused the French government of attacking free speech and of censorship. The comedian rewrote his shows dropping the most offensive material.
Anelka, a striker with West Bromwich Albion, has been charged by the Football Association after performing a quenelle when he scored a goal against West Ham on 28 December.
The 34-year-old player said he was expressing his support for his friend Dieudonné, who claims to have invented the gesture, described by some as an inverted Nazi salute.
Dieudonné, who has convictions for inciting racial hatred through his antisemitic jokes and comments, insists the gesture is simply anti-establishment. However, he has failed to distance himself from groups and individuals who have posted photographs of themselves doing the quenelle outside synagogues, Holocaust memorials, Jewish schools and even at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Anelka has insisted he is "neither antisemitic or racist". The hearing is not expected before the end of February.
The document outlining the ban on Dieudonné was leaked to the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger (http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/europa/Grossbritannien-verhaengt-Einreiseverbot-gegen-Dieudonne/story/26989402). It states that the 47-year-old comic "should not be carried to the UK (http://files.newsnetz.ch/upload//3/3/33898.pdf)" (pdf).
It warned transport carriers they faced a fine of up to £10,000 if they allow him to travel to Britain.
"The above-named has been excluded from the UK at the direction of the secretary of state on 31 January 2014. Carriers required to provide data to e-Borders will be refused authority to carry him to the UK He is not eligible for carriage. If he travels he will be denied entry at the UK border."
France's interior minister, who supported the ban on Dieudonné's shows, said he was no longer artistic or funny but engaged in the "mechanics of hate".
"We cannot tolerate antisemitism, historical revisionism and racism, and the highest jurisdiction in our country has agreed," he said.
Dieudonné was questioned by police two weeks ago after a bailiff who arrived at the comedian's home to serve a writ claimed he was attacked.
The comedian is at the centre of several official and police inquiries after allegations of unpaid fines, the "fraudulent organisation of bankruptcy" and another claim that he incited racial hatred after making antisemitic remarks about radio presenter Patrick Cohen.
During one of his shows Dieudonné told the audience: "When I hear Patrick Cohen speak, I tell myself, you know, the gas chambers … a pity."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/03/dieudonne-banned-uk-nicolas-anelka-quenelle

[goalkeeper]

So Dieudonné's been denied entry into the UK. Do you guys think he should've been allowed in despite his antisemitism? Part of me is thinking "why not let him travel and then let the local anti-racists deal with him".

Well, I think we should always be hostile to the state restricting peoples freedom of movement, particularly when ideologically motivated - even if the person in question is a anti-semitic scumbag.

[ed miliband]

of course, we should be opposed to dieudonne being denied entry for the reasons goalkeeper gives. it's also great for dieudonne because it will serve arguments - "see, the zionists oppose my movements now" etc.

yeah, it's the weekly worker, but this is a decent outline of dieudonne's antisemitism, with some added details i wasn't aware of before (a connection to the iranian state, right-wing frecnh catholics, and so on):

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/995/dieudonnés-calculated-anti-semitism

[keine_zukunft]

I think there should a point made here as some people's minds seem abit blown at the moment like the photos of non white folk doing the quenelle. The guy is anti-semitic and cementing his point of view by being buddies with many notorious people on the french far right. alain soral is one but a more notable figure is his new found friendship with serge ayoub (yes he's lebanese) from the j.n.r and trioseme voie. Non white people have actually been involved with fascist politics for some time in france, there's a few in the jnr, there was the front man of evil skins who was of iranian descent and some people in the g.u.d.. you don't have to be white to be a fascist nor an anti-semite.