{Paris mayor Bertrand Delano\u00eb has come out against the controversial comic Dieudonn\u00e9 M’bala M’bala whose trademark gesture of an inverted Nazi salute has alienated many and sparked fervent debates beyond France.}<\/p>\n
\u201cDid our elders fight for civilized values for us to cowardly surrender them to criminals?\u201d Delano\u00eb asked on the \u201cGrand Rendez-vous\u201d with Europe 1, iTELE and Le Monde.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in 2014, the year of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Paris, France and the camps,\u201d he said, adding that Dieudonn\u00e9 is a person who glorifies these crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n
Known usually by his first name, Dieudonn\u00e9\u2019s shows laden with vitriolic humour and what he calls anti-Zionist, rather than anti-Semitist remarks, have drew the ire of the French government \u2013 including French Interior Minister Manuel Valls \u2013 which is currently trying to ban his shows on the premise of inciting disorderly public conduct.<\/p>\n
RFI<\/p>\n
\u201cHe must be fought with all the rigors of the law,\u201d said Delano\u00eb, adding that freedom of expression must be respected but within the boundaries of human dignity.<\/p>\n
Born in Paris to a Cameroonian father and French mother, Dieudonn\u00e9 once garnered thousands of fans to his shows absent of hateful lines and actually appealed to left-wing crowds.<\/p>\n
He created sketches with his former childhood friend and Jewish comic Elie Semoun that tackled discrimination and racism.<\/p>\n
But a departure to the far-right in the early to mid-2000s saw him lash out at Jews and belittle and make fun of the Holocaust during his shows and public appearances.<\/p>\n
In 2009, he ran on an anti-Zionist platform in the European elections and made Jean-Marie le Pen, the founder of the National Front Party, the godfather of his son.<\/p>\n
A week ago the comic shocked many \u2013 and not for the first time \u2013 as he said of a well-known Jewish journalist: “Me, you see, when I hear Patrick Cohen speak, I think to myself: ‘Gas chambers … too bad (they no longer exist).”<\/p>\n
Dieudonn\u00e9 \u2013 which means \u201cgod given\u201d \u2013 has been put on trial numerous times for racial slurs and has personally described himself as \u201cnon-Jewish, non-Muslim, not really black and not really white.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Paris mayor Bertrand Delano\u00eb has come out against the controversial comic Dieudonn\u00e9 M’bala M’bala whose trademark gesture of an inverted Nazi salute has alienated many and sparked fervent debates beyond France.} \u201cDid our elders fight for civilized values for us to cowardly surrender them to criminals?\u201d Delano\u00eb asked on the \u201cGrand Rendez-vous\u201d with Europe 1, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049826,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11995.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11995.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11995.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11995.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11995.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11995.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11995"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11995"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}