Barred From Canada, Anti-Semitic Comic Dieudonne Performs in Montreal Via Video
MONTREAL —After being barred from entering Canada, controversial French comic Dieudonne M’bala M’bala still managed to present a show in Montreal — via video link.
Some 600 tickets reportedly were bought up by loyal fans of the man convicted multiple times in France and Belgium for hate speech, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and defending terrorism.
They paid $40 a ticket to see the comedian on a big screen in an east-end reception hall on Monday.
Dieudonne’s last conviction was May 10 in France for using material that included accusations of Jewish involvement in the slave trade and deriding the Holocaust.
That was the same day the Canadian Border Services Agency informed him he had to take a flight back to France.
Still, promoter Louis Tall said Dieudonne’s show, called En Paix (In Peace), was all part of a sincere effort to rehabilitate his image.
“We are trying to promote something about peace, about love, not about racism and anti-Semitism,” CJAD radio quoted Tall as saying.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO