Facebook, Instagram expel anti-Semite Dieudonné

The French comedian, jailed and fined for hate speech in the past, had already been banned from YouTube.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, a French comedian infamous for his anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions, was banned from Facebook and Instagram Monday, forcing his 1.3 million followers to search for him on less popular sites. His YouTube channel had already been shut down in June due to his constant hate speech.

Facebook said it expelled Dieudonné in part because he used “dehumanizing terms against Jews” in his posts. This was “in line with our policy on dangerous individuals and organizations.”

“Banning a person permanently from our services is a decision that we always weigh carefully, but individuals and organizations that attack others on the basis of what they are do not have a place on Facebook or Instagram,” the social media giant said in its statement.

The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism called the move a “great victory” because Dieudonne’s posts “have done considerable and irreparable damage among young people.”

The comedian has been stirring controversy with overtly anti-Semitic routines for some 20 years and has been banned from performing in several French cities as a result. Due to his overt anti-Jewish performances, he was not allowed to enter the United Kingdom in 2014 and was similarly forbidden from coming to perform in Canada in 2016.

He has been convicted eight times on various anti-Semitism charges, including inciting racial hatred. French courts have forced him to pay thousands of euro in damages for defamation of Jewish individuals as well as the Jewish people as a whole. He was jailed only once, however, for two months in Belgium in 2017, and fined €9,000 for a “defamatory, anti-Semitic, negationist and revisionist” skit he had performed five years earlier.

In 2019 Dieudonne was sentenced to two years in prison by a Paris court, but on tax evasion and money laundering charges.

In 2009 he invented the “quenelle,” which is an inverted Nazi salute, pointing one arm diagonally downward while touching that arm’s shoulder with the opposite hand. The gesture took off in Europe in extremist circles and was used even by media figures and sports stars. The performer has made fun of the Holocaust numerous times, and once awarded an “insolent outcast” prize to a well-known Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson.

Dieudonné has also rubbed shoulders with some of the world’s worst Israel haters. He met with Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon in 2006, and visited with then-president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

Ahmadinejad called him “an old friend” when he paid a return call to the comedian in Paris in 2015. On his website, he has denied that Muslim terrorists were responsible for the 9/11 attack on the United States that killed over 3,000 people.

Dieudonné M’bala M’bala