Quenelle

The "quenelle" is a vulgar gesture roughly meaning “up yours”, with one hand placed at the top of the other arm stretched down to signify “how far up” this is to be. Using the name of a French dumpling, French Cameroonian comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala started using this gesture in a wholly different context in 2005, as an expression of defiance, incredulity or indifference.

French Origins

The word quenelle comes from an elongated fish meatballs dish, which is said to look like a suppository. Its originator, Dieudonné described it as "a kind of up yours gesture to the establishment with an in the ass dimension. But it's a quenelle, so it's a bit softer, less violent". The first time Dieudonné used the gesture in a political context was for his 2009 European election campaign poster for the "anti-Zionist party", he stated that his intention was "to put a quenelle into Zionism's butt".

Wider Use

Nicolas Anelka, a striker for the UK football team, West Bromwich Albion, made the gesture at Upton Park after scoring a goal. France's sports minister Valerie Fourneyron branded the sign "disgusting." Anelka said that he gave the gesture as a show of support for Dieudonné, and suggested the salute was "anti-establishment", rather than anti-Zionist.

French Comedian Dieudonné demonstrate the quenelle - a gesture which risks landing you with a prison sentence if made in public in France - or banishment from the team if made by an English footballer

Dieudonné explains the quenelle to Sky News which became interested in him and it following controversy over its use by the West Bromwich footballer Nicholas Anelka

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Don’t Laugh! It’s “Anti-Semitic”!	article	4 February 2014	Jonathan Azaziah	All you need to know about French Comedian Dieudonne and the interests prompting both the French and UK Establishments to such ridiculous and downright nasty demonisation of him
Document:Impressions of my two days with Gilad Atzmon	article	26 February 2014	Trevor La Bonte	Trevor La Bonte describes two days spent with Gilad Atzmon during their two duo-concert appearances in Austin and Houston, Texas, USA in February 2014. Revealing especially for the light it sheds on Jewish efforts to demonise Atzmon and the extent to which ordinary citizens (in this case La Bonte's father) are intimidated into silent complicity.
Document:State repression in France only makes the Resistance grow stronger	article	29 January 2014	'The Saker'	A comprehensive explanation of what is behind the brewing grass-roots rebellion in France in early 2014
Document:The Move to Muzzle Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala	article	1 January 2014	Diana Johnstone	How a French Cameroonian Comedian has the Judaic-dominated French establishment so worried they are making embarrassing fools of themselves.
Document:The Shoah as State Religion?	article	24 January 2014	Diana Johnstone	The paranoid sensitivities of the French establishment to any and all manifestations of ridicule and satire concerning the 'State Religion' of the Shoa or Holocaust

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