Outrage at French comic’s award for Holocaust denier
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Independent Minds
The black French comedian Dieudonné provoked outrage at the weekend by giving a "heroism" award to a veteran Holocaust denier.
Dieudonné, who is known for making anti-Semitic remarks in his shows, handed the spoof award for "social unacceptability and insolence" to Robert Faurisson, an academic with a string of convictions for denying the existence of Nazi death camps in the Second World War.
Among the audience of 5,000 at Le Zénith theatre in Paris were the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, several figures of the far left and a popular television host, Julien Lepers.
A stagehand dressed as a Jewish deportee with a yellow star on his chest gave M. Faurisson the award.
Dieudonné – full name Dieudonné M'bala M'bala – was once a kind of French Lenny Henry. Born to Cameroonian and Breton parents, his stand-up comedy satirised racial prejudices, including those of whites and blacks.
However, in the past five years, his shows have come to symbolise – some say foment – a new strain of anti-Semitism in France among Arab and black youths and on the "white" far left.
Dieudonné said: "I don't agree with all [M. Faurisson's] ideas. But for me, what counts most of all is freedom of expression."
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Comments
I'm more concerned with the fact that someone that doesn't agree with every part of history of decides to have a differing opinion can be locked away in prison for his thoughts or speech, that's more outrageous.
What's next? If I disagree with the history of Henry VIII will I be thrown in prison? Perhaps I will go against public opinion and regarded history and write a book about Nero as a hero of Rome and not an enemy.
Do you believe that one should be locked up because he disagrees with history? We might as well become the Soviet or Third Reich system because that's what Hitler and Stalin did, lock people up for believing stuff the totalitarian governments of the time disagreed with.
In most Muslim countries, the media is full of Jew this and Joo that.
In Israel, it's all about Amalek this, Amalek that. Amalek is the tribe the Torah says that Jews must wipe out to the last goat and sheep and in today's theocratic Israel Amalek simply means Arabs.
Dieudonne is just too stupid to hide his hatred and the prejudices he accesorizes it with. Would he commit career suicide time and time again with this sort of anti-semitic crap if he wasn't a total retard?