French President François Hollande on Tuesday brought his support for attempts to ban shows by controversial comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala who the government accuses of threatening public order with his repeated anti-Semitic comments.
Hollande’s call for local officials to ban Dieudonne from theatres comes after the French cities of Nantes, Marseille, Bordeaux, and Tours banned his forthcoming shows on the grounds of public order.
On Monday, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said he had advised city mayors and police prefects that Dieudonne's show could be banned if it was deemed to present a threat to public order.
“I am calling on all representatives of the state, particularly its prefects, to be on alert and inflexible,” Hollande said in a New Year address to civil servants.
Prefects are regional officials charged with maintaining law and order in the country.
“No one should be able to use this show for provocation and to promote openly anti-Semitic ideas,” the president stressed.
Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe has joined the Interior Minister in calling for Dieudonne to be banned from the stage. Speaking on a French radio, he likened Dieudonne to a criminal who “defends crimes against humanity”.
Dieudonne's lawyer, Jacques Verdier, said his client would immediately appeal against any ban on him performing, using France's powerful legal provisions defending freedom of speech.
"Freedom of expression is not at the whim of governments or a comedian," he said.
Dieudonne has been fined repeatedly for hate speech against the Jews.
Jewish groups have complained about his ‘’quenelle’’, a straight-arm gesture, which they call a ''Nazi salute in reverse'' and linked to a rising tide of anti-Semitic remarks and attacks in France.
Dieudonné’s supporters say the gesture, which has gained success on Internet, is simply a ‘’anti-establishlment’’ message.
But that claim has been undermined by the publication of pictures of Dieudonne fans performing the ‘’quenelle’’ outside synagogues, at a Holocaust museum, at the Western Wall and in front of the school in Toulouse where Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah killed a rabbi and three Jewish children in 2012.
The gesture has gone viral on social media and West Bromwich Albion striker Nicolas Anelka is being investigated by the English Football Association for his use of it during a soccer match. In the U.S., NBA basketball star Tony Parker, a Frenchman, has apologised for a three-year-old photo of him making the salute.
Two soldiers were sanctioned by the army in September for making the gesture in uniform in front of a Paris synagogue.
Dieudonne's popularity has exacerbated concern over a perceived resurgence of anti-semitism in France under the guise of a brand of anti-Zionism.
The 46-year-old 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.
But over the years, he has gradually veered to the extreme-right and has started making anti-Jewish comments and joking about the Holocaust. ‘’His shows are political anti-Semitic rallies,’’ says lawyer Arno Klarsfeld, son of Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. ''He rallies anti-Semites from various origins,’’ he adds.