France considers ban on comedian over antisemitism (Quenelle gesture under attack)

France is considering banning performances by a comedian who has been accused of insulting the memory of Holocaust victims and whose shows could threaten public order, the interior minister, Manuel Valls, has said.

The interior ministry is exploring legal ways to ban Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who has been fined repeatedly for hate speech and who ran in the 2009 European parliament elections at the head of an “Anti-Zionist List” comprising far-right activists.

Jewish groups have complained to the president, François Hollande, about Dieudonne’s trademark straight-arm gesture, which they call a “Nazi salute in reverse” and link to a growing frequency of antisemitic remarks and acts in France.

“Dieudonne M’bala M’bala doesn’t seem to recognise any limits any more,” said Valls. “From one comment to the next, as he has shown in several television shows, he attacks the memory of Holocaust victims in an obvious and unbearable way.”

France has Europe‘s largest Jewish minority, estimated at about 600,000, and there is a steady emigration to Israel of Jews who say they no longer feel safe. In the worst recent antisemitic incident, a French Islamist killed a rabbi and three pupils at a Jewish school last year in the south-western city of Toulouse.

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