| Dieudonné M'bala M'bala | |
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Dieudonné in 2009 |
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| Born | 11 February 1966 Fontenay-aux-Roses, Hauts-de-Seine |
Dieudonné M'bala M'bala (born 11 February 1966), generally known simply as Dieudonné, is a French comedian, actor and political activist.
Initially a leftist, he has now become a fervent anti-imperialist. He has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of the foreign policies of the United States and claims to be leading a 'justified fight' against Zionism, and Israel which he deems racist and oppressive.[1] Dieudonné has been condemned in court several times for antisemitic remarks (see below "Court convictions"). Since 1997, Dieudonné has regularly stood in parliamentary and European Union elections as a candidate at the head of fringe or splinter parties, and has tried and failed to run for two French presidential elections (2002 and 2007).
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Dieudonné was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses, Hauts-de-Seine, the son of a sociologist from Brittany who exhibits as a painter under the name Josiane Grué, and of an accountant from Ekoudendi, Cameroon, who lives there now.[2][3] Dieudonné lives with Noémie Montagne who works as his producer[4] and has five children with her, Bonnie, Merlin, Plume, Noé and Judas.[5]
In the 1990s, Dieudonné appeared on stage and on television together with the Jewish comedian and actor Élie Semoun. From the mid-1990s he appeared mostly in supporting roles in several French film comedies. His most successful screen appearance to date was in Alain Chabat's box-office hit Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra in 2002. His last screen appearance to date was in Maurice Barthélémy's box-office bomb Casablanca Driver in 2004. In 1997, the scenic duo "Élie et Dieudonné" split and each went on a solo theater career. In 1998, they reunited in a screen comedy, Le Clone,[6] which was a failure critically and financially.
Dieudonné's successful one-man shows include Pardon Judas (2000), Le divorce de Patrick (2003), and 1905 (2005). Other one-man shows were Mes Excuses (2004), Dépôt de bilan (2006) and J'ai fait l'con (2008), all understood as attacks on political and social opponents and defences of his own positions. Anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic statements made within and around these productions led to intense controversy and numerous lawsuits.[7] Following the 2005 civil unrest in France, Dieudonné also penned a play called Émeutes en banlieue (Riots in the Suburbs, February 2006). In 2009, and surrounded by scandals (see below, "Political activities"), Dieudonné launched two one-man shows: Liberté d’expression and Sandrine. While the latter was a follow-up to Le divorce de Patrick (Sandrine is Patrick's ex-wife), the former was conceived as a series of itinerant "conferences" on "freedom of expression".[8] Started on 18 June 2010 in his theater, Dieudonné's most recent show to date, Mahmoud (standing for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) is set to an openly antisemitic tone,[9] caricaturing Jews, slavery and "official" versions of history.[10]
Dieudonné's production company first acted under the name "Bonnie Productions" and now under the name "Les productions de la Plume."
Dieudonné is the owner of the Théâtre de la Main d'Or in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, which is used for both stand-up comedy and political events by himself and friends and allies such as the militant antisemitic "Tribu Ka".[11][12]
Ahead of the 2007 presidential election, the National Front paid Dieudonné 60,000 Euros for the use of the theater to train FN representatives.[13]
Dieudonné was initially active on the anti-racist left. In the 1997 legislative election, he fought with his party "Les Utopistes" in Dreux against National Front candidate Marie-France Stirbois and received 8 percent of the vote.[14] Verbally and in demonstrations, he also supported migrants without a residence permit (the so-called "sans papiers") and the Palestinians.
Since 2002, Dieudonné has attracted attention by increasingly polemical statements. In an interview for the magazine Lyon Capitale in January 2002, he described "the Jews" as "a sect, a fraud, which is the worst of all, because it was the first" and said he preferred "the charisma of bin Laden to that of Bush".[15] He subsequently failed to maintain his bid for running for the 2002 presidential election.[16]
On 1 December 2003, he appeared live on a television show, disguised as a parody of Israeli settler wearing military fatigues and a hat of Haredi (Orthodox) Jews. The sketch climaxed with a Hitler salute, after which Dieudonné shouts out a word. According to Dieudonné, he shouted "Israël", in the persona of the settler. In the following days, some news agencies stated that he shouted "Isra - Heil" or "Heil Israel".[17] [18] He was cleared of charges of antisemitism in a Paris court after the judge said this was not an attack against Jews in general but against a type of person "distinguished by their political views".[19] At the European Parliament election, 2004, Dieudonné was candidate of the extreme left-wing party "Euro-Palestine", but left a few months after the election because of disagreements with its Jewish leaders.[20]
Following this television appearance, a Dieudonné show in Lyon (at La Bourse du Travail) on February 5, 2004 was picketed and a bottle containing a corrosive product was thrown in the venue, injuring a spectator.[21][22] On 11 November, Dieudonné organized a debate with four rabbis of Naturei Karta in the Théâtre de la Main d'Or in Paris.[23]
On 16 February 2005, he declared during a press conference in Algiers, that the Central Council of French Jews CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France) was a "mafia" that had "total control over French policy exercise", called the commemoration of the Holocaust "memorial pornography" ("pornographie mémorielle") and claimed that the "Zionists of the Centre National de la Cinématographie" prevented him from making a film about the slave trade.[24] Dieudonné was also trying to appear as a spokesman for French blacks, but, after some initial sympathy, notably from the novelist Calixthe Beyala, the journalists Antoine Garnier and Claudy Siar as well as the founding members of the Conseil représentatif des associations noires (CRAN), he increasingly met with their rejection.[25]
On April 2005, he went to Auschwitz.[26]
Throughout 2005 and 2006, Dieudonné was often in the company of the senior Front National members Bruno Gollnisch,[27] Frédéric Châtillon,[28] and Marc George (also known as Marc Robert), the man who would conduct his electoral campaigns in 2007 and 2009.[29] Dieudonné also frequently appeared together with the conspiracy theorist Thierry Meyssan and the former Marxist and current right-wing radical Alain Soral, a confidant of Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen.[30] Under the influence of Soral's writings and polemics, Dieudonné was acquainted with his militant antisemitism of French nationalist inspiration.[31] In May 2006, he gave a lengthy interview to the far-right monthly Le Choc du mois.[32] Demonstrating shoulder to shoulder with Islamists, he also marched on 11 February 2006 in the Parisian demonstration against the Muhammad cartoons and traveled at the end of August 2006 with Châtillon, Meyssan and Soral in Lebanon, to meet MPs and fighters of the Hezbollah.[28] Some Jews reacted angrily to his comments on this tour. On 2 March 2005 four French Jews attacked him in Martinique. The assailants were imprisoned for a month. In May 2006 he was involved in a fight with two teenage Jews in Paris, one of whom he sprayed with tear gas. Dieudonné claimed that the teenagers attacked him first; both parties pressed charges,[33] but the lawsuits were not pursued. In France and abroad, Dieudonné became increasingly perceived as an extremist of a type until then uncommon in Europe: in the introduction to a March 2006 interview, The Independent called him a "French Louis Farrakhan... obsessed with Jews".[34]
Dieudonné wanted to finally represent politically these ever radicalized positions in the French presidential elections, 2007, but for logistical reasons he could not maintain his candidacy, whose campaign was conducted by Marc Robert (a.k.a Marc George).[35] The convicted Holocaust denier Serge Thion wrote for his campaign web site under the pseudonym "Serge Noith", as did also the longtime secretary of the Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, Maria Poumier. After the end of his candidacy, Dieudonné appeared several times publicly in the company of Jean-Marie Le Pen and traveled to Cameroon with Le Pen's wife Jany.[36] However, officially, Dieudonné called for the election of anti-globalization militant José Bové, despite Bové asking Dieudonné not to do so.[37]
On 26 December 2008 at an event at the Parc de la Villette in Paris, Dieudonné awarded the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson an "insolent outcast" prize [prix de l'infréquentabilité et de l'insolence]. The award was presented by one of Dieudonné's assistants, Jacky, dressed in a concentration camp uniform with a yellow badge. This caused a scandal[38] and earned him his sixth court conviction to date. On 29 January 2009 he celebrated the 80th birthday of Faurisson in his theater, in the midst of a representative gathering of Holocaust deniers, right-wing radicals, and radical Shiites.[39] Dieudonné and Faurisson further appeared together in a video making fun of the Holocaust and its commemoration.[40]
On Saturday 21 March 2009, Dieudonné announced that he would run for the 2009 European Parliament election in the Île-de-France at the head of an "anti-communitarist and anti-Zionist" party. Other candidates on his party's electoral list are Alain Soral and the Holocaust denier and former member of Les Verts Ginette Skandrani (also known as Ginette Hess),[41] while Thierry Meyssan and Afrocentrist Kémi Seba, founder of the "Tribu Ka" are members of the party[42] but do not run. The campaign would be conducted again by Marc George.[43] In spite of the association of Dieudonné's party with the Shiite Centre Zahra,[44] whose president Yahia Gouasmi also runs on his list,[45] his candidacy was supported by Fernand Le Rachinel, a former high ranking executive of the Front National and official printer of the party.[46] In early May 2009, the French government studied the possibility of banning the party,[47][48] but on May 24, Justice minister Rachida Dati acknowledged that, in spite of moral objections, there was no legal ground to do so.[49] On May 28, it became known that Carlos "the Jackal" also expressed his hope Dieudonné would make it to Strasbourg.[50] The Parti antisioniste finally scored 1.30% of the votes.[51]