Dieudonné fined by Swiss courts for Holocaust denial sketch just days after being handed prison sentence in France
Dieudonné has been fined by the Swiss courts for denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers in a sketch just days after being handed a prison sentence in France.
Dieudonné, whose real name is Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, is a French comedian and political activist who has been convicted for hate speech and advocating terrorism, among other offences, in France and Belgium.
A complaint was made in 2019 after Mr M’Bala M’Bala performed the sketch in Switzerland. Last week, the Swiss courts found him guilty of violating laws on racist and antisemitic content and fined him 170 CHF (the equivalent of £134) a day, for 180 days.
Mr M’Bala M’Bala, 55, claimed that the views expressed in the sketch belonged to the on-stage character and not to him. However, this excuse was not accepted by President of the Geneva Police Court Sabina Mascotto, who said: “In view of his previous statements, his positions and the absence of any humor in his remarks, he will be found guilty of racial discrimination.”
According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)” is an example of antisemitism.
Last week, we reported that Mr M’Bala M’Bala had been sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for producing videos of an “antisemitic nature.” Mr M’Bala M’Bala was also fined €10,000 last Friday after he was found guilty of “public insult to an official,” namely Frédéric Potier, the former interministerial delegate for the fight against racism, antisemitism and anti-LGBT hatred.
Earlier this year, Mr M’Bala M’Bala was instructed by the Paris Court of Appeals to pay a fine of €9,000 (over £7,700) for mocking the Holocaust in a video.
Mr M’Bala M’Bala has attacked the “Zionist lobby”, claiming it controls the world, and he has been convicted more than twenty times on charges that include defamation, hate speech and endorsing terrorism in Belgium and France. Last year, he was given a two-year jail sentence and fined for tax fraud and money laundering.
In 2013, Mr M’Bala M’Bala was recorded during a performance suggesting that it was a pity that a Jewish journalist was not sent to the gas chambers. The then-French interior minister, Manuel Valls, declared that Mr M’Bala M’Bala was an “antisemite and a racist” and he would seek to ban all his events as public safety risks.
Last summer, as social media platforms claimed to be stepping up their fight against hate content, Mr M’Bala M’Bala was permanently banned from several major online platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, for his use of “dehumanising” terms in relation to Jews.
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