French gear up for battle over ‘The Anti-Semite’

French “comedian” Dieudonne is a well-established provocateur — a Jew-baiter whose most recent show was called “Mahmoud,” after Iran’s Holocaust-denying president.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the performer’s next movie is titled “L’Antisémite” (The Anti-Semite), and features dialogue such as, “It’s clear the Jews control everything — the media, finance, politics. We no longer have a choice. We must” — here’s the ostensible punchline — “exterminate them.”

New Yorker movie critic Richard Brody reports that Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson appears for several minutes in the movie, which Le Monde says was co-produced by Iran. (A French trailer without subtitles can be viewed here.)

The film is in the news because France’s League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism is fighting to get it banned for being anti-Semitic and denying the Nazi genocide. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in France.

A lawyer for Dieudonne — whose full name is Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala — argues that his client is just kidding around.

The 46-year-old performer is no stranger to the headlines in France. Among his most famous and controversial stunts was a 2003 TV appearance that ended with Dieudonne, dressed as a religious Israeli settler, giving a Nazi salute and shouting either “Israel” or “Isra-heil!”