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Dieudonné M'bala M'bala
Dieudonné in 2006

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 and an anti-racism activist, he is said to be close to the far-right National Front by the media. He considers himself to be anti-communitarist and anti-zionist. He has been condemned in court several times for antisemitic remarks. 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).

Personal life

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 Cameroon, who lives there now. Dieudonné is married to Noémie Montagne who works as his producer and has five children with her, Bonnie, Merlin, Plume, Noé and Judas. The godfather of the third child, Plume, is the chairman of the Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Acting career

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, 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. 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 intinerant "conferences" on "freedom of expression".

Dieudonné's production company first acted under the name "Bonnie Productions" and now under the name "Les productions de la Plume."

Théâtre de la Main d'Or

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".

Ahead of the 2007 presidential election, the National Front paid Dieudonné 60,000 Euros for the use of the theater to train FN representatives.

Political activities

Beginnings

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. Verbally and in demonstrations, he also supported migrants without a residence permit (the so-called "sans papiers") and the Palestinians.

2002-2006

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". He subsequently failed to maintain his bid for running for the 2002 presidential election.

On 1 December 2003, he appeared live on a television show, disguised as a Haredi (Orthodox) Jew making the Hitler salute and bellowing "Isra-Heil". 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". 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.


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. 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.

On April 2005 he went to auschwitz

Throughout 2005 and 2006, Dieudonné was often in the company of the senior Front National members Bruno Gollnisch, Frédéric Châtillon, and Marc George (also known as Marc Robert), the man who would conduct his electoral campaigns in 2007 and 2009. 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. Under the influence of Soral's writings and polemics, Dieudonné was acquainted with his militant antisemitism of French nationalist inspiration. In May 2006, he gave a lengthy interview to the far-right monthly Le Choc du mois. 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. 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, 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".

2007-2009

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). 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. However, officially, Dieudonné called for the election of anti-globalization militant José Bové, despite Bové asking Dieudonné not to do so.

On 26 December 2008 at an event in Parc de la Villette Paris, Dieudonné gave the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson a "prize for maladaption and impertinence". 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 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. Dieudonné and Faurisson further appeared together in a video making fun of the Holocaust and its commemoration.

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), while Thierry Meyssan and Afrocentrist Kémi Seba, founder of the "Tribu Ka" are members of the party but do not run. The campaign would be conducted again by Marc George. In spite of the association of Dieudonné's party with the Shiite Centre Zahra, whose president Yahia Gouasmi also runs on his list, his candidacy was supported by Fernand Le Rachinel, a former high ranking executive of the Front National and official printer of the party. In early May 2009, the French government studied the possibility of banning the party, but on May 24, Justice minister Rachida Dati acknowledged that, in spite of moral objections, there was no legal ground to do so. On May 28, it became known that Carlos "the Jackal" also expressed his hope Dieudonné would make it to Strasbourg. The Parti antisioniste finally scored 1,30% of the votes.

Court convictions

  • On June 14, 2006 Dieudonné was sentenced to a penalty of 4,500 Euro for defamation after having called a prominent Jewish television presenter a "secret donor of the child-murdering Israeli army".
  • On November 15, 2007, an appellate court convicted him to a 5,000 Euro fine because he had treated "the Jews" as "slave traders".
  • On 26 June 2008, he was sentenced in the last judicial instance to a 7,000 Euro fine for his designation of the Holocaust as "memorial pornography".
  • On 27 February 2009 he was fined 75,000 Canadian dollars in Montreal for defamatory statements with anti-semitic undertones against the singer and actor Patrick Bruel.
  • On 26 March 2009 Dieudonné was sentenced to a total of 3,000 Euros for defamation after having criticised Elisabeth Schemla, a Jewish journalist who ran the now defunct Proche-Orient.Info website. He declared on 31 May 2005 that the website wanted to "eradicate Dieudonné from the audiovisual landscape" and had said of him that "he's an anti-semite, he's the son of Hitler, he will exterminate everyone".
  • On 27 October 2009, he was sentenced to a fine of 10,000 Euros for "public insult of people of Jewish faith or origin" related to his show with Robert Faurisson.

Bibliography

Books
  • Anne-Sophie Mercier, La vérité sur Dieudonné, Plon, 2005; reissued in 2009 as Dieudonné démasqué, Seuil.
  • Olivier Mukuna, Dieudonné. Entretien à cœur ouvert, Éditions EPO, 2004
Articles
  • Jürg Altwegg, Die große Show der Auschwitz-Lügner als Duett eines Komikers mit dem Geschichtsfälscher Robert Faurisson, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 6 January 2009, p. 36
  • Agathe André, Mon réveillon chez les Faurissons. Charlie Hebdo n° 864, 7 January 2009, p. 2

References

  1. Dieudonné à la fête du FN, Libération, 20 November 2006
  2. Dieudonné candidat aux élections européennes, Le Figaro, 22 March 2009
  3. "La presse se déchaîne contre africamaat à travers Dieudonné : extraits. - AfricaMaat". AfricaMaat. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  4. Denis Touret (2005-11-19). "Anne-Sophie Mercier". Denistouret.net. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  5. "Interdit de casino, « Dieudonné sera quand même là lundi, accompagné d'un huissier ! » - Actualité Dunkerque - Nord - La Voix du Nord". Lavoixdunord.fr. 2009-03-18. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  6. "Dieudonné - Biography". Imdb.com. 1966-02-11. Retrieved 2009-06-12.
  7. Le Pen : "Oui, je suis le parrain de la fille de Dieudonné", Le Point, 17 July 2008
  8. "Le clone (1998)". Imdb.com. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  9. Dieudonné : rappel des principaux faits entourant la polémique, Observatoire du communautarisme, 26 February 2005
  10. Dieudonné donne une "conférence" dans un car, Le Nouvel Observateur, 18 March 2009
  11. Les provocs de la Tribu KA, Le Nouvel Observateur, 08 June 2006
  12. Dieudonné réclame la grâce de Kémi Séba, Prochoix, 26 February 2007
  13. Le généreux coup de pouce de Le Pen à Dieudonné, Le Parisien, undated (after 2007)
  14. Dieudonné - Bouffon de cour, voir.ca (reissued on Vigile.net), 14 June 2007
  15. Dieudonné jugé raciste en cassation, L'Express, 25 October 2007
  16. Et si Dieudonné n'avait jamais existé... desourcesure.com, 24 March 2009
  17. Dieudonné, la promo par le pire, 24 heures, 07 January 2009
  18. "French comic 'not anti-Semitic'". BBC. 2004-05-27. Retrieved 2009-05-07.
  19. Dieudonné sur une pente très glissante, Euro-Palestine, 29 October 2004
  20. A Alger, l'humoriste qualifie la commémoration de la Shoah de "pornographie mémorielle", aidh.org, February 2005
  21. Stephen Smith, Géraldine Faes: Noir et Français!, Éditions du Panama, April 2006, ISBN 2755701064; Bernhard Schmid: Reise nach Beirut. Trend-online, 2005
  22. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9bhep_dieudonne-le-premier-antisemite-a-a_news
  23. Dieudonné et ses fans du FN amnistia.info, 21 December 2006
  24. ^ Châtillon, Le GUD des autres, Bakchich.info, 13 November 2006
  25. Dieudonné, côté obscur, Libération, 02 January 2009
  26. Dieudonné, le comique tripier; Alain Soral: Le sous-Marine du Front National, Amnistia.net, 28 February 2005 & 4 December 2006
  27. Laugh Riots, The New Yorker, 19 November 2007
  28. Cover of Le Choc du mois, May 2006 issue, prominently featuring Dieudonné
  29. Dieudonné agressé en Martinique
  30. "Heard the One about the racist black comedian?", The Independent, March 22, 2006.
  31. Un coup de tonnerre : Dieudonné se retire de la campagne présidentielle, Bakchich.info, 11 October 2006
  32. Dieudonné guide de Mme Le Pen au Cameroun, grioo.com, 16 March 2007
  33. Dieudonné soutient Bové, qui le récuse, L’Express, 16 January 2007
  34. Dieudonné/Faurisson : le parquet de Paris ouvre une enquête préliminaire, Le Nouvel Observateur, 31 December 2008
  35. Les étranges amitiés de Dieudonné, Le Monde, 24. February 2009, reproduced on http://france-israel.hautetfort.com
  36. Dieudonné-Faurisson : le sketch qui fait scandale, agoravox.tv, 25 March 2009
  37. Dieudonné, candidat "antisioniste" aux européennes, Le Monde, 23 March 2009
  38. Dieudonné candidat aux élections européennes, Le Figaro, 22 March 2009
  39. http://www.nationspresse.info/?p=50603
  40. Les amis très particuliers du centre Zahra, L'Express, 27 February 2009
  41. Un Juif avec barbe et chapeau sur l'affiche de Dieudonné, Rue89, 02 June 2009
  42. Le créancier du FN "s'amuse" avec la liste de Dieudonné, Le Monde, 26 May 2009
  43. "Les listes antisionistes de Dieudonné menacées d'interdiction | À la Une | Reuters". Fr.reuters.com. 2009-02-09. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  44. "France seeks poll bar for comic" by Emma Jane Kirby, BBC News, May 5, 2009
  45. Dati : "on n'a pas trouvé d'éléments" pouvant empêcher Dieudonné de se présenter aux européennes, Le Nouvel Observateur, 24 May 2009
  46. Le terroriste Carlos soutient Dieudonné, Le Parisien, 28 May 2009
  47. La liste "anti-sioniste" de Dieudonné obtient 1,30% en Ile-de-France, Agence France Presse, 8 June 2009
  48. Dieudonné renonce à faire appel de sa condamnation pour diffamation envers Arthur, La Dépêche du Midi, 19 September 2007
  49. Dieudonné condamné pour propos antisémites, Le Figaro, undated
  50. Dieudonné, star de la semaine judiciaire, Le Figaro, 26 June 2008
  51. Dieudonné condamné au Québec à payer 75.000 dollars à Patrick Bruel, Agence France Presse, 28 February 2009
  52. Dieudonné condamné pour diffamation, Le Parisien, 26. März 2009
  53. Amende de 10.000€ pour Dieudonné, Le Figaro, 27 October 2009

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