Dieudonne's QUENELLE: STRONGARM TACTICS FROM FRANCE'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL COMEDIAN

Published on January 26, 2014

Society

WHAT IS THE QUENELLE? 

Of­fi­cially, it's a ges­ture made fa­mous about ten years ago by Dieudonné's shows, and which in­volves point­ing your arm out and down, palm fac­ing be­hind you, and putting your other hand on your shoul­der. A sign of be­long­ing to the Dieu­dos­phere. Un­of­fi­cially, at best it's an anti-es­tab­lish­ment bras d'hon­neur (sim­i­lar in mean­ing to the mid­dle fin­ger), but with a slightly dif­fer­ent mean­ing: 'Up yours with a quenelle' (a French dish com­pris­ing a roughly cylin­dri­cal blob of creamed fish or meat). At worst, it's a kind of Nazi salute. And when you take into ac­count his fans' favourite game, tak­ing self­ies in front of sym­bols of Jew­ish cul­ture, such as syn­a­gogues, it can only be seen as ha­tred.

French news­pa­per Le Monde, in an ar­ti­cle called 'the quenelle: how an anti-Se­mitic ges­ture be­came an em­blem', dis­cusses the ori­gins of this move­ment: 'Al­though it is dif­fi­cult to put a date on the pre­cise ori­gins of the quenelle, its first use goes back to the Eu­ro­pean elec­tions in 2009. He ex­plained what it meant at a press con­fer­ence at the Main d'Or the­atre: 'Shov­ing a quenelle right up the arse of Zion­ism.' This is em­bla­zoned on a cam­paign poster, where he posed with the ex­treme-right ide­ol­o­gist Alain Soral. Le Fi­garo also talks about his story: 'Ten years ago, in 2003, was one of Dieudonné's first anti-Se­mitic scan­dals. On France 3 [a major TV chan­nel – Ed.], he ap­peared in cam­ou­flage, with a bal­a­clava, his hair in payot, and an or­tho­dox Jew­ish kip­pah on his head. At the end of the sketch, he raised his arms, cry­ing: 'Is­ra­Heil!' .The co­me­dian him­self doesn't hide his true in­ten­tions: it's 'a sym­bol of not sub­mit­ting to the sys­tem' which 'will sweep away the lying elite' and which will lead to 'rev­o­lu­tion', or even 'a coup d'état'. A pow­er­ful con­spir­acy the­ory, which can be seen in this Youtube video.

QUENELLE MUGS AND T-SHIRTS

The ges­ture, deemed anti-Se­mitic, has swept through the army, the sport­ing world, and tele­vi­sion. Many celebri­ties have copied this 'fash­ion­able gim­mick' with­out even know­ing what it means. Take the ex­am­ple of the French bas­ket­ball player Tony Parker,or Yann Barthès (a fa­mous French tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter), who has since apol­o­gised pro­fusely, claim­ing on his Twit­ter ac­count that at the time he had no idea what the ges­ture meant. Less fa­mous peo­ple are also jump­ing on the quenelle band­wagon. And then find­ing it's got square wheels. Did Nabil shoot him­self in the foot? The for­mer kids' club em­ployee, in­ter­viewed by French web­site Rue89, who by his own ad­mis­sion agrees with Dieudonné, lost his job after hav­ing struck the pose in front of the chil­dren he was look­ing after. He saw the quenelle 'as a joke'.  

A per­sona non grata in the media for sev­eral years now, Dieudonné and his con­tro­ver­sies have built quite the faith­ful fol­low­ing online.​ The quenelle, as well as the of­fi­cial page which col­lects the 'best' pho­tos, is being trans­formed into t-shirts and edited logos, and stamped all over every­day ob­jects. 'It has be­come a unit of lan­guage. Here it is as a par­ody of the Face­book logo, 'a Zion­ist so­cial net­work', says la Toile. With a weak­ness for culi­nary ref­er­ences, Dieudonné hasn't stopped at the quenelle. In his anti-Zion­ist frenzy, he made the pineap­ple into an­other sym­bol, one which the lay­man wouldn't un­der­stand at first glance. Take this re­port by Slate, on the 'Quenelle Ball', yet an­other way for the co­me­dian to keep tabs on his sheep, as an ex­am­ple: 'As for the pineap­ple, ap­pear­ing through­out the evening in var­i­ous forms (fresh pineap­ple at the buf­fet, a huge pineap­ple fresco out­side, sou­venir t-shirts, cos­tumes, etc), it is om­nipresent to re­mind peo­ple of why Dieudonné was con­victed of in­cite­ment to ha­tred: the song Shoananas [from the He­brew word for the Holo­caust, Shoah, and the French word for 'pineap­ple', ananas], which he sings along with his au­di­ence at each show, based on Annie Cordy's song 'Chaud Cacao' ('Hot Cocoa). Dieudonné has ap­pealed against the judge­ment.

STILL NOT CON­VINCED?

Then you only have to read this ar­ti­cle by an AFP jour­nal­ist who had the bright idea of going to the Main d'Or the­atre, owned by Dieudonné and the only place he can still per­form, to judge for him­self with his own eyes. Some ex­tracts from his ar­ti­cle: 'In the the­atre, a wall of 'quenelles' greets the au­di­ence. Anony­mous au­di­ence mem­bers sneak a quick photo of the ges­ture in front of a 'Holo­caust' sign...' Or 'Stop with all this anti-Semi­tism... You're just giv­ing me pub­lic­ity. I'm not say­ing I never will be . I'm giv­ing my­self time to think.' The jour­nal­ist's ver­dict, sec­onded by sev­eral media out­lets, was unan­i­mous: 'In the 75-minute show, there's not five min­utes with­out a jibe at 'the Jews', 'the Jewry', 'kip­pah city', or 'slave-dri­ving bankers''.

Translated from La quenelle de Dieudonné : le bras de fer français