Harry's Place

Dieudonné was extremely popular among French youth of all races. Is that still the case?

According to my other half, whose French, no he’s not so popular with the yoof, and in her own words “he’s a bit of a weirdo alright”. So he and Le Pen go well together.

is Dieudonné still an “anti-imperialist”?

Last week I dated a French-Israeli girl, and Dieudonné came into conversation. When I criticised him, she defended him and described me as one of those paranoid Jews who screams “antisemitism” at everything he doesn’t like.

She explained his meeting with Le Pen as some kind of fact-finding mission, and I was prepared to write her off as ignorant, until she explained that the Jews control the French media, as well as international commerce and French and American foreign policy.

She identified as left. It was a profoundly depressing experience. It reminded me of some of the stories I’ve read of integrated, German Jews during the Nazi era who blamed all their woes on the backward, shtetl Jews. I know little about Dieudonné or contemporary French antisemitism, but I did wonder if the atmosphere in leftist circles was so noxious that some Jews are ashamed of their Jewishness, as she demonstrated in many other ways.

TJ, after reading the first couple of lines I was about to go a vague green tinge with envy and say that your date sounded quite delightful (French and Israeli? That’s surely got to be a good combo.) But then I read on. I feel for you. It’s horrible when a potential object of your affections (and target for your carefully-crafted witticisms) turns out to be a complete nutcase, isn’t it? I’m sure many of us have been there at one stage or another. In my case it was a RESPECT girl who also threw into the mix a nice bit of 9/11 trutherdom and cod-Buddhism, of all stupid bloody things.

And then it raises the inevitable question, one which I am of course far too much of a gentleman to ask (!), of “how low will you go”. Suffice to say, I’m not proud of myself. But, you know. I am a man of little self-respect and it was during a fallow period. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

How ever low one feels one may have fallen, however, nothing (thankfully) can compare with the ghastly horror of a mate of mine who had a very brief fling with an older woman who apparently had been the youngest ever colonel in the SA army, had fought in Angola, and had been trained in “non-conventional interrogation techniques”. Hmmmmmm.

I think I may have veered a little off-topic (and indeed off-taste)there. Apologies to those of nice and decent sensibilities.

Well, I don’t know a great deal about Dieudonné, but my own view is that comedy – the skill of comic to highlight the absurd or use irony etc – can be quite beyond notions of political observance. Comedy can, sometimes, be like art – we can still enjoy and recognise it, even if we disagree with the political views of the artist or comic. This is not always the case of course, as it really depends on the type of comedy involved. Its a general point – I am unfamiliar with Dieudonné’s work.

“Aside from the absolute craziness of a Dieudonné-Le Pen friendship, it can’t be helping him fan-wise.”

The fact that a popular white ostensibly right-wing French Jew hater has befriended a popular half-white, half-black ostensibly left-wing French Jew-hater, is indeed, a subject for puzzlement and chin scratching.

What can possibly be in it for the half-white, half-black ostensibly left-wing French Jew-hater?

the French media have no doubts about what this is about

http://www.metrofrance.com/fr/article/afp/2008/07/16/cng_85a9b45a94c3c7ee6e0c75a4fe64422e_d61/index.xml

“shared views on the Holocaust”

The article in Libé nearly made me cry with laughter. The Father Jack type from that church asked for a comment came up with this gem: “Anyone who asks for baptism gets to receive it. That is how it works. We are proud of living in a legal state which is 2,000 years old”. Apparently the good vicar thinks France was founded by Baby Jesus!

What’s in it for them? Well people who feel isolated and shunned by the mainstream tend to pool together for comfort. See also Respect, etc…

On a similar note Charlie Hebdo has sacked the awful cartoonist Siné for similarly dodgy comments…

Firstly, white nationalists tend to schmooze with other nationalists and anti-semites. Hence the popularity of Louis Farrakhan on the US far right and Le Pen’s own longstanding friendship with Fadlallah and Hizbullah.

Secondly, and more importantly, is Le Pen’s wish to see his daughter Marine succeed him as leader of the FN. Her strategy is to ‘dediabolise’ the party to make it more mainstream. The old man becoming godfather to Dieudonné’s daughter may, in the view of Le Pen père et fille, reinforce the message of the FN in the banlieue.

Ben, funnily enough, it all began to go wrong with her espousal of 9/11 trutherdom, and my response of “horseshit”! And also, she expressed a belief in reincarnation, and although I didn’t pursue the subject, I suppose that might count as cod-Buddhism. I suppose some people just like to believe in stuff.

The thing is, she isn’t a nutjob. She is otherwise perfectly intelligent, witty and charming, and it isn’t as though she was frothing at the mouth with these views or trying to proselytise.

In her world view, Le Pen is beyond the pale and Dieudonné is a victim of Jewish media control. I must find out how she’ll react to the news that they’re now officially on the same team, when yesterday she was defending Dieudonné against paranoid Jewish slander. Maybe it will give her pause for reflection.

The New Yorker profiled Dieudonné last year.

Dieudonné signalled his “conversion” in early 2002, in two separate magazine interviews, in which he remarked that he preferred “the charisma of bin Laden to that of George Bush” and that Judaism is “a scam. It’s one of the worst, because it’s the first.” His comments were initially taken as bizarre satire, absurdist politics à la Stephen Colbert, but it gradually became clear that Dieudonné meant what he said. No one knows why he developed this obsession. Many of his critics speculate that he used anti-Semitism as a way to increase his wealth and fame, but this seems unlikely, since he was at the peak of his career before his political “coming out,” and his extreme positions seem to have cost him many mainstream film and television roles.’

Sorry – forgot te link:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/19/071119fa_fact_reiss

do I get the distinct impression that this is one of those sites that seems anti-semitism in everything in the world?

I must say it leaves a nasty taste all this un-necessary hatred.

Thermaland @ 17 July 2008, 9:39 am :

“people who feel isolated and shunned by the mainstream tend to pool together for comfort. See also Respect, etc… ”

But does every element in the pool evapourate and dry up at the same pace? And what will the residue be like?

Dieudonné appeared at the Montréal comedy festival several years back.

He wasn’t very funny at all. His talent was minimal, far from god-given and his material tediously predictable. One anticipates the outcome of the gag a full hour before the punchline arrives.

Dieudonné is like a black Jerry Lewis, I’d say.

My dislike ( impatience with, actually) of Jerry Lewis is most intense.

Tj
All is not lost!
you should simply try to do to her what she has been doing to her own jewish Ancestry.