Dieudonné’s controversial humour attracts fans across French society

The official verdict on Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, France’s most controversial entertainer, has been rendered: The country’s socialist government branded the comedian an anti-Semite and has won legal approval to ban one of his live shows.

The UK’s Football Association reached a similar conclusion this week, charging West Bromwich Albion’s French striker Nicolas Anelka for celebrating a recent goal with “a gesture which was abusive and/or indecent and/or insulting and/or improper”.

The gesture in question was the “quenelle”, a Dieudonné creation that many people think looks like an inverted Nazi salute. Zoopla, the UK property company, found it so objectionable that it decided to pull its £3m sponsorship deal from Mr Anelka’s team.

So it suggests much about the sometimes fractured and disaffected nature of present day France that Dieudonné’s many fans – who come from prosperous suburbs as well as Paris’s banlieue, the grey, urban sprawl that is home to the city’s working class ethnic minorities – fail to see something so evident to authorities.

Mohamed Gassama, a 22-year-old information technology student, says that Dieudonné’s references to Jews are no worse than the abuse long suffered by his own Muslim community.

“People make fun of Muslims all the time but nobody talks about that,” he says. “I understand that Jews have a history but we all have a history.”

Mr Gassama, who comes from a poor family in Seine Saint-Denis, the French department with one of the highest proportions of immigrants and where Muslims are estimated to account for nearly one-third of the population, thinks that the government’s crackdown is just a way of diverting attention from bigger problems.

Morgan Foret, a 28-year-old engineering student and a Dieudonné fan, is one of many young white middle-class people who also believe the ban was wrong. “The country is in crisis,” he insists. “The government should be dealing with far more important issues.”

The debate over Dieudonné is playing out at a time when discrimination in the eurozone’s second-biggest economy is growing worse.

According to the country’s National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, there were 1,539 reported acts or threats of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or anti-Islam in 2012 – a 23 per cent increase on the previous year.

A report by the French Jewish community found a 58 per cent rise in reported anti-Semitic acts or threats in 2012 compared with the previous year. Meanwhile, a study this month by Sciences Po, a leading social sciences institute, found that two-thirds of people surveyed thought that there was too much immigration in France. Three years ago, the number was less than a half.

“Hate speech is becoming a real problem in France and Dieudonné is capitalising on it,” says Aline Le-Bail Kremer of SOS Racisme, a non-governmental organisation. “He is turning it into a business.”

At a recent performance in Paris, the comedian zipped through a crisp routine in front of a small but packed house. He railed against the government. He also talked about “Shoananas”, a hybrid word combining Shoah, which means Holocaust in Hebrew, and ananas, the French for pineapples.

It has become conventional wisdom that France’s festering economic troubles are feeding the appetite for such material. The country is suffering near-record unemployment of about 11 per cent of the workforce – and a staggering one in four among young people. The mounting challenge of finding work has sharpened the feeling, in particular among French youth, that their options are diminishing.

Opinion polls suggest that the far-right National Front party will perform strongly in March’s municipal elections – at the expense of President François Hollande’s Socialist party.

In a meeting with the press this month, Marine Le Pen, the party’s media-savvy leader, distanced herself from Dieudonné. “Mr Dieudonné has nothing to do with the National Front,” she said. “I’ve never met Mr Dieudonné.”

But it is no secret that the comedian is a personal friend of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Ms Le Pen’s father and the founder of the party. Mr Le Pen, who is also godfather to one of Dieudonné’s children, once described the Holocaust as “a mere detail of history”.

Andrew Hussey, who heads the University of London’s Paris programme, argues that Dieudonné has gained a following among disaffected Muslim male youth from the banlieue by playing to their hatred of Israel through anti-Semitic ideas that play down – or even negate – the holocaust.

“Negationism is a real currency in France and Dieudonne has built a bridge between it and the banlieue,” says Mr Hussey.

But the comedian, who denies that he is anti-Semitic, has also won fans from France’s white middle classes, many of whom are only too willing to overlook allegations that he is anti-Semitic in favour of applauding him as an anti-establishment force.

Indeed, his “up yours!” irreverence towards le système has struck a chord with the growing number of people caught up in what France’s Le Monde newspaper this week dubbed the country’s “collective depression”.

“He reminds us that we can laugh about everything,” says Gaelle Masselin, a young and well-spoken Parisian who saw his show recently. “He’s very funny.”