Fools Face Cretin

French fantasy public intellectual and neo-fascist Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala is seeking office. Like any world view that can’t grasp genuine pluralism of thought, instead of trying to debate and argue with him, the instinct is to bar them legally. Since strengthening the democratic instinct of the society isn’t a high priority, the idea of making certain types of politics unlawful isn’t that much of a leap.

French officials are trying to ban the rabid anti-Zionist and Jew-hating comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala from fielding candidates in the country’s June regional elections. The comic has been fined at least five times for using terms such as “memorial pornography” when referring to Jews, and he faces a trial this week for inciting hatred against Jews.

Dieudonne’s political partner is Alain Soral, formerly associated with Jean Marie Le Pen’s far-right National Front, which has preached anti-Semitic views and Holocaust denial.

The comedian's political activity has alarmed officials, and Claude Gueant, chief of staff for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, told listeners on two French radio programs that Dieudonne should not be allowed to be active in political campaigns.

Besides befriending Pépé LePen, a man living politically in the 1950s, his partner in this is punching-bag stuntman Alain Soral, a man who in spite of other public stunts tends to advocate his own currency in the public by promoting notions of “European muscular whiteness”. It’s a strange mix of hating the representations of Europe’s allies through cultural anti-Americanism and indulging anti-European nationalist notions like closing borders and propping up French employers for the French, and that old mainstay, anti-Semitism. Convincing idiots that there are greedy Jews hiding under their bed has always worked on the continent before, so we can see opportunists trying it again, and with a great deal of success.

Dieudonne responded by calling Gueant "a good little soldier of the Zionist lobby.” His political partner Soral added, “It's scandalous. What he said and where he said it - on a [Jewish] radio station for one community - shows that the highest levels of the state take their orders from the Zionist lobby in France."

Dieudonne, who is 43 years old and was once an anti-racist, has been involved in European Union elections as a candidate or head of a party since 1997.

Let’s not forget that this guy’s draw was that his act was good for relations between racial and religious communities to diffuse friction through comedy. The concept was so new and limited, it gave him a kind of sainthood from the mainstream. In reality, his comedy has been a sort of small scale version of a Nuremburg rally speech.

That isn’t an exaggeration. As to the traditionalism and going “back to basics” employing what they think is comic in place of simply exciting mobs to break merchant’s windows:

During one recent performance, with Le Pen in the audience, he invited a Holocaust denier to join him on stage in honor of his 80th birthday. Several weeks earlier, Dieudonne presented the Holocaust denier, academic Robert Faurisson, with a "prize for maladaption and impertinence” that was presented by an assistant dressed in a concentration camp uniform with a yellow star.

You’ve [haven’t] come a long way, baby. It appears that only the natives are unable to smell the funk. Either that or they take more comfort in ignoring it.