One to watch - 15/05/2009
Dieudonné, France
By Fiachra Gibbons/RFI
He is black, he's funny - or at least he once was - and he has set France a massive moral and legal dilemma. Can a country where memories of collaboration with the Holocaust are still raw allow an openly anti-Jewish party to stand in the European elections?
Dieudonné, once half of France's most celebrated double act with a Jewish comedian, has succeeded in putting up a list of candidates from his Anti-Zionist Party in the Paris region, despite the threat of exclusion by the authorities. A total bar from being able to stand for public office was mooted after the comedian, who has mixed French and Cameroonian parentage, brought the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on stage with him at his comedy club, urging the audience to cheer him.
Dieudonné has long been associated with the far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie le Pen, who is the godfather of one of his children. Le Pen famously dismissed the concentration camp gas chambers as a "detail of history".
Other candidates to watch:
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