Tuesday, January 21, 2014

OK - THE QUENELLE

because I'm tired of all the bullshit.
Nicolas Anelka, not the brightest star in the firmament, made a certain gesture in a goal celebration. He has since been accused of anti-semitism and making "an inverted Hitler salute".
This is a lie. Anelka says that he made the gesture in solidarity with his friend Dieudonné Mbala Mbala, who, we hear, is to have his children seized by the French state because the French ruling élite don't like him. DMM is a controversial figure in France, and has been accused of anti-semitism. He is fond of making the so-called quenelle in the direction of his many enemies and critics. So the "anti-Semite" makes a gesture of defiance, of dismissal, and it becomes an anti-Semitic gesture.
Is DMM an anti-Semite? He may well be. He is a friend of Jean-Marie le Pen, and that neo-Nazi can't have many black friends.
However, that doesn't make the quenelle (silly name) anti-semitic. It is a gesture much older than DMM. I quote Desmond Morris, from his book "Gestures" (1979) -

The cryptic forearm jerk
In some regions, the full-blooded gesture is considered so obscene that it is possible to be arrested for employing it in a public place. This has led to a cryptic version of it, understood by both the gesturer and his victim, but not sufficiently conspicuous to attract attention from outside the group in which it is being used. on the island of Malta, where there is a strong taboo against the full gesture, the cryptic form is no more than a mild rubbing of the left hand on the right upper arm. In other regions two fingers of the left hand are slapped on to the right upper arm. These are gestural equivalents of spoken phrases such as 'eff off', or written phrases such as 'f...off', which transmit an obscene message without actually saying or writing down the obscene word.

It seems that the Hitlerian association was invented by the ever reliable British press. To the French establishment the quenelle, or lesser bras d'honneur, was anti-Semitic. It had to cross the chamnnel to become a Nazi salute, though nothing like the kind favoured by racist football fans and the English (sic) Defence League -

Fin décembre 2013, Nicolas Anelka effectue une quenelle après un but dans le championnat anglais. Il est félicité par Dieudonné mais condamné par la ministre des Sports Valérie Fourneyron et par l'ancienne ministre des Sports Chantal Jouanno. À cette occasion la presse anglaise parle pour la première fois de cette affaire en France en désignant le geste comme un « Nazi Salute », ou « Nazi Gesture »
(Wikipedia, French language, s.v. "Dieudonné")

Jacob Cohen writes,
and speaks.


No comments: