Dieudonné M'bala M'bala: On the Record

This page records specific public conduct. It does not claim knowledge of private beliefs or motives.

Documented record

• July 2021: In July 2021, a Swiss court found French comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala guilty of Holocaust denial over statements made during his 2019 shows in Geneva and Nyon and fined him — one of numerous criminal convictions he has accumulated in France and Belgium since the 2000s for antisemitic hate speech (e.g., a November 2015 Belgian conviction with jail time and a €9,000 fine for "defamatory, antisemitic, negationist and revisionist" remarks), and he is separately banned from entering the UK and was refused entry to Canada in May 2016 on the basis of his prior convictions; he also invented the "quenelle," a gesture French authorities' 2014 Interior Ministry circular linked to antisemitism and which has been described as a reverse Nazi salute. Source 1 Source 2

Context and response

Dieudonné denied the Holocaust-denial charges at his July 2021 Swiss trial and has contested other convictions. He has repeatedly framed his rhetoric and the "quenelle" gesture as "anti-Zionist" and "anti-establishment" rather than antisemitic, stating in his own defense: "Antisemite? I'm not of that opinion. I'm not saying I'd never be one... I don't have to choose between the Jews and the Nazis."

Where Galil stands

Our opinion: A performer with a repeated, court-adjudicated record of Holocaust denial and antisemitic hate speech, and who invented a gesture French authorities formally linked to antisemitism, isn't someone whose act we're going to platform or associate with — we don't stand with him.

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Sources manually reviewed 2026-07-27. Corrections and later context will be appended to this page.