The Quenelle

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The Quenelle

Postby nomo » Fri Jan 03, 2014 3:38 pm

I've heard the quenelle described as basically an upside-down Nazi salute: instead of the arm outstretched pointing up, it's pointing down, with the other hand touching the shoulder as if to "keep it down."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/world ... rance.html

Concern Over an Increasingly Seen Gesture Grows in France
By SCOTT SAYARE
Published: January 2, 2014

PARIS — No one seems to know just what is meant by the “quenelle,” the vaguely menacing hand gesture invented and popularized by a French comedian widely criticized as anti-Semitic, but it is clearly nothing very nice, and it appears to be spreading.

Image
Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The gesture was popularized by Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, second from left.

Image
Ian Kington/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The soccer player Nicolas Anelka, above, performing a quenelle.

Fans of the performer, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, send him photos of themselves performing the gesture in front of historic monuments, next to unwitting public officials, at weddings, under water and in high school class photographs, but also, increasingly, beside synagogues, Holocaust memorials and street signs displaying the word “Jew.” At least one young man appears to have posed for a quenelle outside the grade school in Toulouse where, in 2012, four Jews were killed by a self-proclaimed operative of Al Qaeda.

Jewish leaders, antiracism groups and public officials have pointed out that the quenelle, which is also the name of a fish dumpling that is a regional French delicacy, strongly resembles a downward-facing Nazi salute. Mr. M’Bala M’Bala, who goes by Dieudonné, insists it is nothing more than an “antisystem” joke for his initiates, most of them young men, some from the disaffected immigrant suburbs, some from the xenophobic far right.

Still, when he seethes against “the system” on stage or in his popular Internet videos, Mr. M’Bala M’Bala generally points to a supposed cabal of Jewish “slave drivers,” secret rulers who cloak themselves in the memory of the Holocaust. The performer, the son of a black Cameroonian and a white Frenchwoman, often argues that Jews have unfairly claimed a monopoly on the status of “victim.”

In the fall, military leaders discovered that the quenelle was popular with soldiers — there are plenty of photos online to show it — and the army chief of staff banned the gesture after two uniformed infantrymen were sanctioned for performing one outside a Paris synagogue. This week, a top French soccer player, Nicolas Anelka, was widely criticized for performing a quenelle during a game; Mr. M’Bala M’Bala and his followers applauded.

Tony Parker, an N.B.A. star with the San Antonio Spurs, and a teammate, Boris Diaw, both of them French, have been criticized for making the gesture. Mr. Parker, noting that the photo of him making the salute was three years old, has issued an apology saying that he was unaware until recently of the “very negative concerns associated with it.”

Mr. Anelka, like other French sports figures and celebrities seen performing the quenelle, said the gesture was not anti-Semitic. But the authorities say that they have watched the spread of the quenelle with increasing alarm. Jewish groups have pressed the government to act, though just what can be done is not clear: The traditional Nazi salute, for instance, is not expressly banned here, and any effort to ban the quenelle would raise questions of free speech. Nor would banning the gesture be likely to do much to stanch the anti-Semitism that is apparently often behind it.

But state intervention in such matters is traditional here, with racist speech strongly restricted by law, and last week the interior minister, Manuel Valls, announced that he would try to ban the humorist from performing in France.

Mr. Valls’s decision followed the broadcast of a video in which Mr. M’Bala M’Bala laments that a prominent Jewish journalist did not die in “the gas chambers.” Under French law, those words will probably be deemed “incitement to racial hatred.” Jacques Verdier, the performer’s lawyer, said they could earn his client tens of thousands of euros in fines. It is far less clear, however, if there is a legal basis for an outright ban on his shows.

“Creative freedom is certainly important,” said Mr. Valls, speaking on RTL radio. “But in the case of Dieudonné, it’s about hate. And the responsibility of a minister is to say, ‘Stop, that’s enough.’ ‘That’s enough,’ precisely because he’s having success on the Internet and in his shows, and his audience members need to have a realization.”

Mr. Valls, a center-leaning Socialist, has received support from the traditional parties of both the left and the right, though notably not from the National Front, the party of the far right, which has opposed a ban, positioning itself as a defender of free speech.

Whatever the outcome, Mr. M’Bala M’Bala, whose online videos have been viewed by millions, now finds himself at the center of a national debate — one that he appears to relish.

“I have the sense that I’m just an intermediary, today, between the people and this little handful of slave-driving rulers,” he said in a recent video. “The quenelle movement is reaching the summit. We’re at the heart of everyone’s attention: TV, radio, press, ‘La quenelle! La quenelle!' ” he said with a chuckle.

He then argued that the French president is not in fact popularly elected, but rather chosen by the leader of the Crif, France’s most prominent Jewish organization.

Still, he said that he is not an anti-Semite. Through his manager, Mr. M’Bala M’Bala declined an interview request. According to his lawyer, Mr. Verdier, the quenelle is in fact an “antisystem, antiestablishment, antileft, antiright” symbol meant to provoke the indignation of the politically correct. Mr. Verdier said his client, who introduced the gesture in 2005, “disapproves” when it is used to promote anti-Semitism.

That claim is disingenuous, public officials argue. Behind Mr. M’Bala M’Bala’s “skillfully maintained ambiguity” is “the clearest and most distinct anti-Semitism,” said an Interior Ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with internal rules.

“He’s an expert in muddling the issues,” said Col. Bruno Louisfert, an army spokesman who investigated the use of the quenelle by soldiers last year.

Crif has asked that charges be brought against anyone seen performing a quenelle outside a Jewish site. The Justice Ministry has responded favorably, said Roger Cukierman, the president of Crif.

One unintended result of the government’s intervention has been plenty of free publicity for Mr. M’Bala M’Bala, who is scheduled to begin a stand-up tour this month. The government dismisses that concern, the official at the Interior Ministry said, because the performer is quite popular already.

But a ban may not be an ideal approach for the government, some commentators have said.

Banning Mr. M’Bala M’Bala “only allows him to play the victim of the ‘establishment’ to which he claims his ‘quenelle’ is a riposte,” Arthur Goldhammer, a close observer of French politics at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, wrote in a recent blog post.

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Re: The Quenelle

Postby slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 2:51 am

Thanks for this, Nomo.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 3:40 am

Writing on the left-leaning French news site Rue 89, the journalist Pierre Haski argued that it was vital for supporters of the Palestinians to clearly denounce this popular form of anti-Semitism, as it lent support to the argument in Israel that all anti-Zionism is really just a front for anti-Semites. Mr. Haski noted that one militant supporter of Israel had written on a social network that Dieudonné “deserves a gold medal from the Israeli military for discrediting anti-Zionism.” The viral popularity of the quenelle, Mr. Haski concluded, “forces those who want to sincerely oppose Israeli policy to better define and to break with those whose agenda has nothing to do with Israel, but with a quite classic anti-Semitism.”


http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1 ... urope&_r=0

Strange how such appeals are increasingly having to be made by "supporters of Palestinians."
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 4:00 am

solace » 04 Jan 2014 07:40 wrote:
Writing on the left-leaning French news site Rue 89, the journalist Pierre Haski argued that it was vital for supporters of the Palestinians to clearly denounce this popular form of anti-Semitism, as it lent support to the argument in Israel that all anti-Zionism is really just a front for anti-Semites. Mr. Haski noted that one militant supporter of Israel had written on a social network that Dieudonné “deserves a gold medal from the Israeli military for discrediting anti-Zionism.” The viral popularity of the quenelle, Mr. Haski concluded, “forces those who want to sincerely oppose Israeli policy to better define and to break with those whose agenda has nothing to do with Israel, but with a quite classic anti-Semitism.”


http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1 ... urope&_r=0

Strange how such appeals are increasingly having to be made by "supporters of Palestinians."


When you combine the fact that

a) You have a serial liar, like Benjamin Netanyahu telliing people Israel is "The Jewish State",

with

b) Conditions for the Palestinians in both the West Bank, and Gaza in particular are probably best described as a prison, with humanitarian aid being denied, along with access to power, water, medical supplies and other such essentials,

then It becomes incumbent on all of us to think long and hard about who is to blame for this.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby BrandonD » Sat Jan 04, 2014 4:50 am

solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 2:40 am wrote:http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1 ... urope&_r=0

Strange how such appeals are increasingly having to be made by "supporters of Palestinians."


I agree, only in our upside-down culture would supporters of basic human rights be required to walk on eggshells in order not to be seen as "subversively evil".
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 6:33 am

BrandonD » Sat Jan 04, 2014 4:50 am wrote:
solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 2:40 am wrote:http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1 ... urope&_r=0

Strange how such appeals are increasingly having to be made by "supporters of Palestinians."


I agree, only in our upside-down culture would supporters of basic human rights be required to walk on eggshells in order not to be seen as "subversively evil".



I don't think anyone is asking anyone to walk on eggshells. How do you get there from "don't associate with right wing neo-nazi Jew hater types if you wanna be taken seriously?"
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 6:40 am

slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 4:00 am wrote:
solace » 04 Jan 2014 07:40 wrote:
Writing on the left-leaning French news site Rue 89, the journalist Pierre Haski argued that it was vital for supporters of the Palestinians to clearly denounce this popular form of anti-Semitism, as it lent support to the argument in Israel that all anti-Zionism is really just a front for anti-Semites. Mr. Haski noted that one militant supporter of Israel had written on a social network that Dieudonné “deserves a gold medal from the Israeli military for discrediting anti-Zionism.” The viral popularity of the quenelle, Mr. Haski concluded, “forces those who want to sincerely oppose Israeli policy to better define and to break with those whose agenda has nothing to do with Israel, but with a quite classic anti-Semitism.”


http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1 ... urope&_r=0

Strange how such appeals are increasingly having to be made by "supporters of Palestinians."


When you combine the fact that

a) You have a serial liar, like Benjamin Netanyahu telliing people Israel is "The Jewish State",

with

b) Conditions for the Palestinians in both the West Bank, and Gaza in particular are probably best described as a prison, with humanitarian aid being denied, along with access to power, water, medical supplies and other such essentials,

then It becomes incumbent on all of us to think long and hard about who is to blame for this.


Dieudonné thought long and hard about it and decided it was the Jews. He has a lot of company apparently.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 6:59 am

solace » 04 Jan 2014 10:40 wrote:
slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 4:00 am wrote:
solace » 04 Jan 2014 07:40 wrote:
Writing on the left-leaning French news site Rue 89, the journalist Pierre Haski argued that it was vital for supporters of the Palestinians to clearly denounce this popular form of anti-Semitism, as it lent support to the argument in Israel that all anti-Zionism is really just a front for anti-Semites. Mr. Haski noted that one militant supporter of Israel had written on a social network that Dieudonné “deserves a gold medal from the Israeli military for discrediting anti-Zionism.” The viral popularity of the quenelle, Mr. Haski concluded, “forces those who want to sincerely oppose Israeli policy to better define and to break with those whose agenda has nothing to do with Israel, but with a quite classic anti-Semitism.”


http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1 ... urope&_r=0

Strange how such appeals are increasingly having to be made by "supporters of Palestinians."


When you combine the fact that

a) You have a serial liar, like Benjamin Netanyahu telliing people Israel is "The Jewish State",

with

b) Conditions for the Palestinians in both the West Bank, and Gaza in particular are probably best described as a prison, with humanitarian aid being denied, along with access to power, water, medical supplies and other such essentials,

then It becomes incumbent on all of us to think long and hard about who is to blame for this.


Dieudonné thought long and hard about it and decided it was the Jews. He has a lot of company apparently.


Look at the facts that I posted.

I propose that this is where such skewed thinking will find many of its roots.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby BrandonD » Sat Jan 04, 2014 12:07 pm

solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 5:33 am wrote:I don't think anyone is asking anyone to walk on eggshells. How do you get there from "don't associate with right wing neo-nazi Jew hater types if you wanna be taken seriously?"


If any supporters of Palestinian rights are in fact making that hand gesture then yes, I would say they are treading on some sketchy ground and have a lot of explaining to do.

However, my point was a response to the idea that individual supporters of human rights should be expected to publicly denounce or distance themselves from some silly fad just to prove they aren't racist. That seems pretty absurd.

It is a popular mode of thought these days to believe that people are essentially concealing a selfish hate-motivated agenda beneath their humanitarian one. That is the mode of thought which expects people to go out of their way to prove they aren't "secretly evil" when they want to do good things. A mode of thought which is being promoted by powerful people trying to maintain the status quo around the world, and so I feel motivated to challenge it when I see it being presented.

Anyway, if I was mistakenly seeing a dragon where there was none then I apologize. Carry on.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 12:43 pm

slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 6:59 am wrote:
solace » 04 Jan 2014 10:40 wrote:
slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 4:00 am wrote:
solace » 04 Jan 2014 07:40 wrote:
Writing on the left-leaning French news site Rue 89, the journalist Pierre Haski argued that it was vital for supporters of the Palestinians to clearly denounce this popular form of anti-Semitism, as it lent support to the argument in Israel that all anti-Zionism is really just a front for anti-Semites. Mr. Haski noted that one militant supporter of Israel had written on a social network that Dieudonné “deserves a gold medal from the Israeli military for discrediting anti-Zionism.” The viral popularity of the quenelle, Mr. Haski concluded, “forces those who want to sincerely oppose Israeli policy to better define and to break with those whose agenda has nothing to do with Israel, but with a quite classic anti-Semitism.”


http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1 ... urope&_r=0

Strange how such appeals are increasingly having to be made by "supporters of Palestinians."


When you combine the fact that

a) You have a serial liar, like Benjamin Netanyahu telliing people Israel is "The Jewish State",

with

b) Conditions for the Palestinians in both the West Bank, and Gaza in particular are probably best described as a prison, with humanitarian aid being denied, along with access to power, water, medical supplies and other such essentials,

then It becomes incumbent on all of us to think long and hard about who is to blame for this.


Dieudonné thought long and hard about it and decided it was the Jews. He has a lot of company apparently.


Look at the facts that I posted.

I propose that this is where such skewed thinking will find many of its roots.


I don't think so. That excuses bad behaviour. Barbaric behaviour. Jew haters existed long before Palestine and Netanyhu you know. The "roots,"go way back;especially in France where such people happily helped the Nazis round up Jews.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:14 pm

BrandonD » Sat Jan 04, 2014 12:07 pm wrote:
solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 5:33 am wrote:I don't think anyone is asking anyone to walk on eggshells. How do you get there from "don't associate with right wing neo-nazi Jew hater types if you wanna be taken seriously?"

However, my point was a response to the idea that individual supporters of human rights should be expected to publicly denounce or distance themselves from some silly fad just to prove they aren't racist. That seems pretty absurd.
.


Silly fad? m'Kay. As you say, carry on.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:16 pm

I don't think so. That excuses bad behaviour. Barbaric behaviour.


Solace, before I answer more fully. Could you clarify whose Barbaric behaviour you are refferring to above?
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby solace » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:28 pm

slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:16 pm wrote:
I don't think so. That excuses bad behaviour. Barbaric behaviour.


Solace, before I answer more fully. Could you clarify whose Barbaric behaviour you are refferring to above?


That would be the morons doing the new nazi salute outside places where Jews were killed and elsewhere. Should have used a semi colon I guess.
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:34 pm

solace » 04 Jan 2014 17:28 wrote:
slimmouse » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:16 pm wrote:
I don't think so. That excuses bad behaviour. Barbaric behaviour.


Solace, before I answer more fully. Could you clarify whose Barbaric behaviour you are refferring to above?


That would be the morons doing the new nazi salute outside places where Jews were killed and elsewhere. Should have used a semi colon I guess.


OK Thanks. For what it's worth that deeply offends me too. Which is why Im glad i read the OP.

Surely you wouldnt deny meanwhile, that what Israel is currently doing in the occupied territories is in itself Barbaric?
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Re: The Quenelle

Postby bluenoseclaret » Sat Jan 04, 2014 1:40 pm

Much ado about the 'Quenelle'......Tim Black

The fuss sparked by Nicolas Anelka’s goal celebration has sweet FA to do with anti-Semitism.

"When West Bromwich Albion’s French striker, Nicolas Anelka, scored the first of his two goals against West Ham during Sunday’s English Premier League game, it’s fair to say no one paid much attention to his celebration. It did look to be some sort of odd pose, a symbolic gesture even, but so what? When footballers score today, they often seem to mark it with some sort of slightly cryptic gesture or, more grating still, a painfully choreographed skit usually to mark the birth of a teammate’s baby. In fact, by contemporary standards, Anelka’s decision to mark his goal against the East End’s finest by placing one hand to his shoulder, while extending his other arm to the floor, palm outstretched, was spectacularly unremarkable.

But that was at the time. Within a few hours, Anelka’s seconds-long goal celebration had become an Anglo-French scandal. It turns out that what Anelka was actually doing, according to those schooled in the semiotics of contemporary anti-Semitism, was an inverse Nazi salute, combined with a quasi ‘up yours’. While no one who actually saw it at the time recognised it as such, so byzantine was its symbolism, Anelka’s ingenious gesture was actually part of an attempt to incite Jew hate, invoke Holocaust denial and inspire an anti-Semitic lynching. Or something like that.

French politicians were quick to enlighten football fans about Anelka’s true intent. France’s sports minister, Valérie Fourneyron, accused Anelka of a ‘disgusting anti-Semitic’ gesture. Her predecessor, Chantal Jouanno, backed-up Fourneyron and declared the gesture ‘clearly anti-Semitic and known to be such’.

Ever in search of a whiff of race hate, UK’s official anti-racist quangocracy, supported by the huffing and puffing sanctimony of the media, quickly joined the fray. Anti-racist group Kick It Out said it supported an investigation, before Piara Powar, the executive director of something called Football Against Racism in Europe, suggested that Anelka was aiding and abetting the rise of the far right: ‘The rise of the far right is one of the most dangerous phenomena facing Europe right now… [and] they are active and alive in football’. A commentator in the Guardian was equally outraged: ‘It needs to be made clear to footballers that using their profile to promote messages that may incite hatred and racism is unacceptable.’ Over at the Telegraph, Henry Winter was concerned that unless the authorities clamped down on this sort of thing, Anelka’s goal celebration could ‘be adopted by xenophobes in England’. Which is surely preferable to Union Jack facepaint.

Given the volume of the by-the-numbers outrage, one could be forgiven for thinking Anelka had arranged a pogrom with West Ham’s top boys, not marked a goal with a gesture no one would have noticed had politicians, campaigners and columnists not banged on about it for days. Moreover, despite the repeated assertion that the gesture is anti-Semitic, it’s not actually clear what this combination of a salute and an up-yours really means. This much we know: the gesture itself originates with French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, known simply as Dieudonné; and it is known as the ‘quenelle’ because Dieudonné, who ran for the European Parliament in 2009 under the banner of the Anti-Zionist Movement, once said that he wanted to put a ‘quenelle’, which is both a rugby-ball-shaped blob of meat paste and slang for penis, up the arse of Zionists. Boom tish."


http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/ar ... shEENJdWXF

A Question to A Hasbara Operative

Michael Ezra,

"There is a certain type of pro-Israel activist who seem to get mortally offended by even the slightest hint of criticism against the State of Israel. I am not talking about demonising the country or anything dramatic. Merely suggesting that Bibi Netanyahu or Avigdor Lieberman might not be the greatest things since the invention of gefilte fish is enough to send these activists into an apoplexy.

I have also noticed that some of them have a distinct lack of knowledge about the country for which they are professing support. But none of this matters because there are some alway some stock responses that can be used at the opportune moment."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaUt6YcCFOU

http://hurryupharry.org/2014/01/02/quen ... /#comments#disqus_thread
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