French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said he is looking for legal ways to ban controversial humorist Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, whose shows have repeatedly insulted the memory of Holocaust victims and could threaten public order.
Dieudonne has been repeatedly fined for hate and anti-Semitic speech.
Minister Valls announced the move after Jewish groups complained to French President Francois Hollande about Dieudonne's trademark straight-arm gesture, called 'quenelle', which they describe as a "Nazi salute in reverse" and his frequent anti-Semitic comments and acts in France.
''It's the Nazi salute in reverse," Roger Cukierman, head of the CRIF umbrella group of Jewish organizations, said after complaining about it to Hollande last week.
"Very clearly, Mr Dieudonne is developing a nearly professional anti-Semitism under the cover of telling jokes."
Minister Valls said Dieudonne M'bala M'bala ‘’doesn't seem to recognize any limits any more," in a statement announcing the legal review aimed at banning his public appearances.
"From one comment to the next, as he has shown in several television shows, he attacks the memory of Holocaust victims in an obvious and unbearable way," he told the daily Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France.
Dieudonne, 46, Paris-born son of a Cameroonian father and French mother, began his comedy career with a Jewish sidekick in the early 1990s and appeared in several films.
Originally active with anti-racist left-wing groups, he began openly defaming Jews and Israel in 2002. In 2009, he ran in the European Parliament elections at the head of an "Anti-Zionist List" whih included extreme-right activists.
He has been fined several times in France for defaming Jews.
When Radio France's Patrick Cohen asked on air last week if the media should pay so much attention to him, Dieudonne suggested the journalist should get ready to emigrate.
"When I hear Patrick Cohen speaking, I say to myself, you see, the gas chambers ... too bad," he said.
The French public radio said it would take legal action against the homorist following his anti-Semitic remarks against the journalist.
France has western Europe's largest Jewish population, estimated at about 600,000, but also sees a steady emigration to Israel of Jews who say they no longer feel safe here.