French authorities are considering preventing a stand-up comic turned "anti-Zionist" militant from fielding lists of candidates in European elections next month. President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff Claude Guéant accused comedian the Dieudonné of leading an overtly anti-Semitic campaign and said: "If they are not banned, I'm sure the French will reject these lists."
Dieudonné and his ally Alain Soral, a former member of Jean Marie Le Pen's extreme-right National Front, announced that they would present candidates in at least five of France's electoral regions for June's European Parliament elections. The 42-year-old comedian, who was born in the suburbs of Paris to a French father and a mother from Cameroon, is a well-known figure in France and is going on trial on Tuesday on charges of inciting hatred against Jews. In September 2007, he was fined after he had accused Jews of "memorial pornography" and attacked "the Zionist lobby which cultivates the idea of their unique suffering ... and has declared war on the black world."
Earlier this year, Le Pen – who is the godfather to Dieudonné’s daughter – was in the audience when the comedian deliberately courted controversy by inviting on stage during his act Robert Faurisson, a 79-year-old academic who has been convicted of Holocaust denial. The participation of Dieudonné's lists in the European poll would increase community tensions in France, which is home to Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish communities and has seen outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence.
