BySARAH CHEMLA

The controversial French comedian Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala was convicted by the Paris Court of Appeals to pay a fine of 9,000 euros for complicity in an antisemitic insult after the publication of a video and a song entitled "C'est mon choaaa," French media reported on Thursday.

In case of non-payment, the sentence could be turned into a ten-month imprisonment.

In November 2019, the court sentenced the polemicist to a fine of 9,000 euros, while the prosecution requested ten months' imprisonment for his song "C’est mon choaaa".

Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala had denied being the singer and author of this song, that was written - according to him - by a prison inmate during a “schoolboy song workshop,” he said.

The court ruled that the lyrics referred "unquestionably, by innuendo, to the drama of the Shoah which is mocked" and the "right to humor" invoked by Dieudonné "collides with another right, that of human dignity".

The song, posted in June 2017 on Youtube, Deezer, Spotify and Apple Music, features the following lyrics: “I'm hot in my head at the barbecue. If the merguez is kosher, I may have a cord around my neck ”.

Last summer, M'Bala M'Bala was permanently banned from major online platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram because of his use of "dehumanising terms about Jews" in the name of the social media fight against hate content.

The French government has tried on several occasions to shut down the shows of Dieudonné, who attacks the "Zionist lobby" that he claims controls the world.

M’bala M’bala, 54, known by his stage name Dieudonné, is a French comedian, actor and political activist who has been convicted for hate speech, advocating terrorism, and slander in Belgium and France.
 
Dieudonne has been convicted in over 20 cases for defamation, hate speech and endorsing terrorism. Yet for his theater show of the “Sieg Heil - Isra-heil” outrage, the judge ruled that “this was not an attack against Jews in general, but against a type of person distinguished by their political views”
 
Last year, Dieudonné was fined €9,000 ($10,600) for posting an antisemitic video, was given a two-year jail sentence and fined for tax fraud and money-laundering, under arrangements that allow him to perform community service instead.
 
During the January 2015 attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, he received a two-month suspended jail term after saying he sympathized with one of the jihadists involved by announcing with defiance, “Je suis Charlie Coulibally” ( “I am Charlie Coulibally”) – Amedy Coulibaly was the lead murderer in an attack kosher supermarket, that, along with Charlie Hebdo, was part of three days of terror on the streets of Paris.
 
In 2013, Dieudonné was recorded during a performance suggesting that it was a pity that a Jewish journalist was not sent to the gas chambers. Manuel Valls, then-French interior minister, declared that Dieudonné was “no longer a comedian” but was rather an “antisemite and a racist,” and that he would seek to ban all his public events as public safety risks.
 
Dieudonné has also been known to associate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran from 2005 to 2013 and an avid Holocaust denier. Ahmadinejad tweeted in February 2015: “Visiting an old friend, a great artist,” and posted photographs of himself and Dieudonné, arms around each other, smiling. The two also met in 2009 when he visited Iran, where they reportedly discussed their shared anti-Zionist views.