The French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala went on trial on Wednesday for predicting that a Jewish radio presenter would end up in the gas chamber. Fans turned out to applaud him as he arrived to answer charges of “inciting racial hatred”, reports The Independent.
He told the court in Paris that he was a “comedian, not a historian”.
Dieudonné – whose trade-mark gesture, the Nazi-style salute the “quenelle”, caused controversy last year – risks a possible prison sentence after three convictions for the same offence in the last eight years. Judgement in the case has now been delayed until March.
He will also appear in court next Wednesday on the potentially more serious charge of “apology for terrorism” after seeming to praise the Jewish supermarket killer, Amédy Coulibaly. In yet another court hearing last week, Dieudonné, 48, was found guilty of making illegal appeals to the public to pay his fines for past convictions. He was fined €6,000 (£4,490).
The rash of cases against him coincides with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. It also comes the day after the publication of statistics suggesting that anti-Semitic acts, ranging from insults to robberies to attacks on synagogues, doubled in France last year.
Dieudonné’s many fans – from the far right to “anti-Zionist” Muslim youth and the conspiracy-loving hard left – point to another coincidence. They say that the “persecution” of Dieudonné is the proof that France operates double standards on free speech.
Why, they ask, is Dieudonné prosecuted for making fun of Jews when the murdered Charlie Hebdo journalists are regarded as a martyrs to “Republican values” after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed?
The prime minister Manuel Valls responded angrily to these arguments last week. There was no comparison he said between the magazine’s “impudent” mockery of terrorists who kill for religious reasons and Dieudonné’s mockery of the Holocaust. Mr Valls called Dieudonné a “peddler of hate”.