Considering Ethnic Group Tensions: The Symptomatic Case of French Comedian Dieudonné

Abstract

This article examines the 2014 case of French comedian Dieudonne and his purported incitement to hatred through his comedy act at the time, which hit national headlines and danced along the line of acceptable speech and making fun of the Holocaust. At the same time, Dieudonne’s comedy appealed to a faction of French society that felt relegated and ignored by the French elite, a sentiment that was furthered by a clash between one religious group that has legal protections in place to protect it from Holocaust denial, versus another group that does not have similar protections in place for Islamophobic acts. This case study demonstrates how Dieudonne tapped into these sensitive areas of cultural life by engaging the communicative genres of humour and satire to draw attention to and toy with making fun of the Holocaust, though his comedy act, Le Mur (The Wall), a silly song about the Holocaust, and an arm gesture called the ‘quenelle’. Using a textual thematic analysis of online newspaper articles collected at the time from Le Figaro and Le Monde, as well as transcripts from ten in-person, semi-structured interviews conducted in Paris with activists, journalists, politicians, a lawyer, and a comedian, what the findings point to is that while Dieudonne appealed to a disenfranchised audience as a ‘provocateur’, he also highlighted how key factions of French society are struggling with inclusivity and a lack of social cohesion in a political context where laicite, the separation of religious life and political life, is sacrosanct.