Dieudonne fined 130K euros for distorting Jewish French singer’s work
Court rules anti-Semitic comedian must pay damages to family of songstress Barbara for writing new, ‘humiliating’ version of song
A top French court fined anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala 130,000 euros on Thursday for distorting a famous song by a Jewish French singer.
The decision was the final ruling in a case that has been ongoing for for the past year. In July 2014, Dieudonne was ordered by a judge to pay 50,000 euros in damages to the beneficiaries of singer Barbara, after he released a video in which he rewrote her famous chanson L’Aigle Nior (The Black Eagle) as Le Rat Nior (The Black Rat), adding insults against the artist and calling her “crazy” and “senile.”
Barbara’s estate, led by nephew Bernard Serf, had sued the provocative comedian, accusing him of using anti-Semitic imagery to “humiliate” the late singer, who passed away in 1997. Barbara’s representatives demanded the video’s immediate withdrawal, as well as compensation of damages.
When the judge ruled in the family’s favor, he also ruled that Dieudonne would be fined an additional 1,300 euros for every day the video remained online. The French comedian filed an appeal against the ruling, not only claiming his song was a legitimate parody, but simultaneously delaying the removal of the video.
Dieudonne’s appeal was rejected by the High Court of Paris in January of this year, but the comedian made one final petition against the ruling, which was definitively rejected on Thursday by an appeals court.
In addition to the 50,000 euros that Dieudonne had already been required to pay, the court added a fine of 80,000 euros for his delay in removing the video — a total of 130,000 euros.
Barbara, born Monique Andrée Serf, was a Holocaust survivor who was forced to go into hiding at the age of 10 during the Nazi occupation of France. She rose to fame in the 1960s and was adored in the French-speaking world for her voice and melancholic lyrics. She died in 1997.
Dieudonne has been the subject of multiple police investigations and executive bans against his shows in France for their anti-Semitic content. He has more than 10 convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews.
He is also the inventor of the quenelle, a quasi-Nazi salute that French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called an anti-Semitic gesture of hate.
He also coined the term “shoananas,” a mash-up of the French word for pineapple and the Hebrew word for Holocaust, which mocks the genocide without explicitly violating French laws against such denials.
JTA contributed to this report.
