Show Banned, French Comedian Has New One

Subject: Show Banned, French Comedian Has New One Sun Jan 12, 2014 1:52 am

A French comedian said Saturday that he had dropped a show banned for its anti-Semitic language and was planning one that would cause no objections.

On Friday, France’s highest administrative court upheld a ban on a show by the comedian, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, in the central city of Tours, days after it was also banned in the western city of Nantes.

Mr. M’Bala M’Bala said in a statement that his lawyers would continue to defend the banned show in court, and that his new show, about Africa, would have none of the language that the courts found objectionable.

“We live in a democratic country and I have to comply with the laws, despite the blatant political interference,” he said. “As a comedian, I have pushed the debate to the very edge of laughter.”

Mr. M’Bala M’Bala, 46, has been repeatedly fined for hate speech, and the local authorities in several towns have banned his shows as a threat to public order.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls has urged local authorities to take a hard line in determining whether to ban the show.

Mr. M’Bala M’Bala had been scheduled to perform in the city of Orleans on Saturday, but the show was canceled by a local court after a request by the mayor.

Jacques Verdier, one of Mr. M’Bala M’Bala’s lawyers, told the television channel iTele that the new show would not run afoul of the courts.

“Let him work now,” he said.

Mr. M’Bala M’Bala’s lawyers have repeatedly said the bans infringed his right to freedom of speech.

Critics say the comedian’s trademark downward straight-arm gesture is a Nazi salute in reverse.

Mr. M’Bala M’Bala counters that it is meant to be anti-Zionist and anti-establishment, but not anti-Semitic.

“I am not a Nazi, I am not anti-Semitic,” he said Saturday.

Originally active with left-wing, antiracist groups, Mr. M’Bala M’Bala began openly criticizing Jews and Israel in 2002 and ran in European elections two years later for a pro-Palestinian party.

The founder of the French far-right National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has said he is the godfather of one of Mr. M’Bala M’Bala’s children, but his daughter Marine Le Pen, who now runs the party, has kept her distance from the comedian.

Elie Semoun, a Jewish comedian with whom Mr. M’Bala M’Bala formed a popular comic duo in the mid-1990s, said he did not understand the turn his old friend had taken.

“We worked together for 15 years,” Mr. Semoun said in a short act on French television on Saturday. “How did you support me for so long?”

“When Dieudo and I started out together, we were the very symbol of antiracism, to the point that I forgot that I was black and he was Jewish,” Mr. Semoun said. “Too bad, I loved being black.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/world/europe/show-banned-french-comedian-has-new-one.html

Show Banned, French Comedian Has New One

Show Banned, French Comedian Has New One

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