Contentious French comedian Dieudonné had what he believes is the last laugh when he presented a virtual show in Montreal on May 16, almost a week after border agents at Trudeau Airport returned him to Paris, apparently because of his lengthy hate speech criminal record.
About 700 people reportedly attended his live presentation by video link from France, held at Le Rizz, a reception hall in St. Leonard, paying $50 to $60 per ticket.
According to reports, it was a highly appreciative audience. Cars also drove by honking approval.
The show, entitled En paix, was to have run for 10 performances at a small Montreal art gallery, and then tour to Quebec City and Trois-Rivières this month.
READ: REFUSED ENTRY INTO CANADA, DIEUDONNÉ VOWS TO TRY AGAIN
Jewish groups had demanded that Dieudonné, whose full name is Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, not be allowed into Canada, citing his multiple convictions, mostly for inciting hatred of Jews, by French and Belgian courts over the past decade.
Dieudonné, 50, was unsuccessful in staging the virtual show on May 11 at another Montreal venue, the Evo Centre-Ville student residence. His local promoter, Gino Ste-Marie, charged that Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre pressured the residence to cancel his reservation of a room there.
This time, Dieudonné disclosed the location only a few hours ahead of time on his Facebook page.
The online site where tickets could be purchased advised fans to “Prepare you quenelles. Long live freedom of expression.”
The quenelle is Dieudonné’s trademark hand gesture that critics says resembles an inverted Nazi salute, but he contends is merely a repudiation of the establishment.
Ste-Marie and the owner of the art gallery, Guy Chigoho, had defended their bringing Dieudonné here on the grounds that Le paix did not contain any racist material in the legal sense.
Radio-Canada and La Presse reported that the show was fairly tame. Dieudonné did take at least one jab at Jews, comparing them to an invasive plant, and he railed against “the dictatorship” that he claims is censuring him and spoke with pride of his “12-page” criminal record.
“I do not want to draw parallels with certain human groups, but the climbing ivy, really… You invite it on your balcony and one year later, it lives with you. And you, you are in occupied territory,” he said.
Arabs were also not spared in his sketch on vegetation, comparing them to nettles that you can’t get rid of.
Elsewhere, he made mocked French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and German pilot Andreas Lubitz, who committed suicide and mass murder when he crashed a passenger plane into the Alps in 2015. He also imitated a female Quebecer from Abitibi and people from China and Cameroon, where his father was born.
As he did on Facebook, Dieudonné also weighed in on the controversy that made headlines in the francophone Quebec media over the previous week: Radio-Canada’s refusal to include a skit by popular Quebec comics Mike Ward and Guy Nantel on Quebec’s annual comedy awards show that aired May 15.
The public broadcaster stated that it was acting on the advice of its insurer, which feared legal action. A draft script of the skit, leaked to Le Journal de Montréal contained gags that might be construed as offensive to a number of groups, but purportedly had a message of upholding freedom of expression.
Among them: “Why do Jewish men give their wives gold IUDs? Because they like to get into their money.”
The banning of the skit from the Gala Les Olivier touched off a controversy, with fellow comedians wearing masks over their mouths and critics charging censorship.
READ: DIEUDONNÉ ATTEMPTS TO PERFORM IN MONTREAL VIA VIDEO, TO NO AVAIL
Ward and Nantel, who boycotted the gala, taped the skit at a comedy club and posted it on YouTube, which drew over 725,000 views the first day. This version, however, dropped the Jewish joke.
In his Facebook posting before the show, Dieudonné hailed the duo and all of the “resistance” in Quebec against the stifling of free speech.
In a radio interview earlier in the day, 98.5FM host Paul Arcand asked Dieudonné directly if his was an anti-Semite. He replied: “Not at all.”