Tain't funny, McGee

The BBC has an article by Hugh Schofield about a French guy who used to be funny, but isn't any more:

Dieudonne M'bala M'bala (photo), the man who inspired the controversial gesture known as the quenelle, is at the center of a growing row in France over the acceptable limits of free speech. More generally known by his simple stage-name Dieudonne, the one-time comedian has travelled a vast political space in the last fifteen years.
From being a staunch anti-racist who ran in elections against the National Front, and whose first stage partner was the Jewish comic Elie Semoun, he now openly attacks the Zionist-American axis of power and named Jean-Marie Le Pen as godfather of his child.
He has been condemned on seven occasions for anti-Semitic remarks, at one point describing Holocaust commemorations as "memorial pornography", and counts as allies a motley mixture from Shi'a radicals to shaven-headed far-right ultras.
But despite (or maybe because of) his estrangement from the establishment and, these days, he is now more or less totally boycotted by the media, Dieudonne retains a wide appeal in France.
Thanks to the internet, he speaks regularly to his tens of thousands of fans via Twitter and Facebook. And his videos on YouTube, which appear every week or so, can draw up to 2.5 million hits.
A classic example of his populist, provocative touch is the invention of the quenelle, which was brought to a British audience by French footballer Nicolas Anelka. The gesture has spread like wildfire because it is handmade for the "selfie" generation. For many it has become the new way of showing two fingers to the powers-that-be. But its origins are there for anyone to find out, and they are clearly anti-Jewish. There is no question that Dieudonne harbors a deeply-held animus against what he sees as the privileged position Jewish people hold in society.
So what is it that pushed Dieudonne on this journey from admired comic performer to media pariah, from hero of the bien-pensant left to best friend of Holocaust deniers?
The transition seems to have begun after 2002, the year he ran for the presidency but had to give up the campaign for lack of sponsorships. A few months later he gave a taste of things to come with an extraordinary appearance on a television chat show. Dressed as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, he gave a Nazi salute while shouting Isra-heil!
In 2004, he headed a list called Euro-Palestine at the European elections. In 2006, he made a surprise visit to the National Front's annual fair, and a month later he invited the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on stage at his theatre in Paris. That episode included the bizarre spectacle of Faurisson being presented with the "prize for unfrequentability and insolence" by a man dressed in concentration camp pajamas.
The list of provocations goes on to the present day, getting more and more outrageous. The latest is the recording of remarks concerning the broadcast journalist Patrick Cohen, of whom Dieudonne said: "When I hear him talking, I say to myself: Patrick Cohen, hmm... the gas chambers… what a shame."
The comments have triggered yet another police inquiry, as well as a new initiative by the government to try to block his forthcoming nationwide tour.
Dieudonne denies that he is anti-Semitic. He says his attacks on Israel are another matter and that anti-Zionism is a defensible political position. But he says he has nothing against Jews in general, so he is not anti-Semitic.
However there is no question, if you analyse his words and thoughts, that Dieudonne harbors a deeply-held animus against what he sees as the privileged position Jewish people hold in society. The starting-point of his political identity was the defense of black people's rights. Dieudonne is himself half-African. His father is from Cameroon, and his mother from Brittany.
As a comic, his early performances centered around the injustices felt by les noirs. Then somewhere, as his views hardened, the fight for recognition of black pain came into conflict with the pain of the Jews. It is not an unfamiliar story. In the US too, a section of the Afro-American population, represented by the Nation of Islam movement, has shown varying degrees of hostility towards Jews.
Sometimes this is expressed as anger at a Jewish "monopoly" on extreme suffering. Sometimes it is the age-old accusations: how Jews own the houses we live in and the shops we shop in. How Jews are everywhere in politics and on the television.
This is classic anti-Semitism. Dieudonne calls it fighting the "Zionist-American axis", but it amounts to the same thing. What is new is the context.
Dieudonne's dalliance with the French far-right draws the headlines because it seems so bizarre. And it is true that his bandwagon attracts a fair share of ultra-nationalists and theorists of the Jewish-capitalist take-over. His ally, the writer Alain Soral, is a prime example. However, at his stage performances many of the audience are disaffected youngsters of black and Arab immigrant background.
According to Jean-Paul Gautier, author of The Dieudonne Galaxy, these people "feel abandoned by society, they don't seem to find their place in it. So basically what he is saying is: look while you're bashing your heads against the wall, the Jews are filling their pockets. And as a message it works."
For this largely Muslim audience, putting the blame on Zionists is an easy sell.
It doesn't just explain why their co-religionists in Palestine are going under. It explains why back here in France, they are too.

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