Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala - OUSTED TROLL OF THE MONTH

The Troll of the Month is an incident we choose every month to expose racist and anti-religious haters and to show positive outcomes in the fight against intolerance in Europe.

Openly antisemitic French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala B’Bala has received a significant blow to his reach, as YouTube just indefinitely removed his channel from the platform. According to Google France, his channel was removed due to “repeated infringements to the YouTube community’s rules and policy.”

French organization LICRA, which Dieudonné has targeted in the past and publicly labeled as an “Israeli undercover association” (an incident which he was sentenced for in 2010), reacted to the YouTube ban in a tweet (below).

Here at Get the Trolls Out!, we have been following Dieudonné’s history of antisemitic hate speech for a while now. This past May, he was our Troll of the Month precisely because of the blatantly antisemitic content within two of his YouTube videos posted in May. One of the videos included Dieudonné mockingly acting out a conversation between a Holocaust survivor and a Holocaust denier. As a result, French organizations LICRA and CRIF sued him for incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial.

To date, his repertoire of hate also includes countless instances of antisemitism and Holocaust denial within various public forums. As far back as 2003, LICRA sued Dieudonné for a sketch on a public TV show where he used a Nazi gesture and exclaimed “Isra-Heil!”. Since then, he has been involved in multiple trials and found guilty of hate speech, condoning terrorism, Holocaust denial and mockery, tax fraud, and money laundering.

As one member of LICRA states, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala is used to spreading antisemitic content in his shows and on social networks. He often slips through the net of justice by asserting that he only wants to promote free speech and humour. Throughout the current global pandemic, Dieudonné has capitalized off of the chaos by publishing more harmful videos. YouTube’s removal of his channel is good news for antiracist activists and anyone looking to stop the spread of hate online, especially given his large audience on other mainstream social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

With YouTube finally taking a firm stance against this particularly harmful troll, they have also effectively set a precedent for other social media platforms to follow in their footsteps in banning Dieudonné. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook should also consider banning him in order to further limit his ability to spread hate speech to mass audiences.

As part of the Get the Trolls Out! project, we keep an eye out for new accounts created by banned users trying to regain their following. If you come across any such suspicious accounts, let us know via Twitter at @GetTrollsOut.