Considering Ethnic Group Tensions: The Symptomatic Case of French Comedian Dieudonné

This article examines the 2014 case of French comedian Dieudonne and his purported incitement to hatred through his comedy act at the time, which hit national headlines and danced along the line of acceptable speech and making fun of the Holocaust. At the same time, Dieudonne’s comedy appealed to a faction of French society that felt relegated and ignored by the French elite, a sentiment that was furthered by a clash between one religious group that has legal protections in place to protect it from Holocaust denial, versus another group that does not have similar protections in place for Islamophobic acts. This case study demonstrates how Dieudonne tapped into these sensitive areas of cultural life by engaging the communicative genres of humour and satire to draw attention to and toy with making fun of the Holocaust, though his comedy act, Le Mur (The Wall), a silly song about the Holocaust, and an arm gesture called the ‘quenelle’. Using a textual thematic analysis of online newspaper articles collected at the time from Le Figaro and Le Monde, as well as transcripts from ten in-person, semi-structured interviews conducted in Paris with activists, journalists, politicians, a lawyer, and a comedian, what the findings point to is that while Dieudonne appealed to a disenfranchised audience as a ‘provocateur’, he also highlighted how key factions of French society are struggling with inclusivity and a lack of social cohesion in a political context where laicite, the separation of religious life and political life, is sacrosanct.


Introduction
France has often been cited as being a hotbed for a rise of anti-Semitism, with recent political moves to put measures in place to tackle this (BBC, 2019). At the same time, the denial of the Holocaust is prohibited by the 1990 Gayssot Act (Légifrance, 1990), yet there are no legal protections against Islamophobic acts. Furthermore, laïcité has an almost sacred position in French culture (Barras, 2013: 276), yet Taylor et al. (1994: 38) describe how identities are shaped through a process of recognising one another with equal value and respect. With this view, there is then a context where one religious and ethnic group has, for very important and historical reasons, protections in place to preserve its dignity (the French Jewish community), whereas another does not (the French Muslim community). In a religiously diverse society like France, this presents a context where frustrations over rights to recognition will arise, and a schism between a political reality that separates church and state is created with a cultural reality where religious communities and ethnic identity form an important part of daily life.
In late 2013 and early 2014, French comedian Dieudonné hit headlines for his comedic act, Le Mur (The Wall), which was touring at the time. His arm gesture, known as the 'quenelle', was a part of the act and it gained notoriety after footballer Nicholas Anelka performed it at a match in the UK (Ervine, 2017: 236). It was construed as a sign of protest against the French establishment (ibid.: 242), yet it was also interpreted as an inverse-Nazi salute (Weissbrod, 2015). Paired with a silly song, 'Shoahnanas' (Holocaust Pineapples), which made allusions to the Holocaust, as well as various provocative jokes, Dieudonné's comedy crossed the legal lines of permissible speech, and he was fined (Beardsley, 2014). Dieudonné, however, was already familiar with being fined for incitement to hatred of Jews and for anti-Semitic speech (Mazel, 2014). He was further fined when he made headlines again in early 2015 for tweeting 'Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly' (I feel like Charlie Coulibaly), after the January attacks at the Charlie Hebdo office and a Jewish shop in Paris (ibid.), an act that took place in a national context that was still coming to terms with the effects of the attack (Titley et al., 2017). What makes the Dieudonné case so interesting is not an overt denial of an event such as the Holocaust, but the systematic process of making fun politicians, a lawyer, and a comedian, with interviewees discussing the Dieudonné case, freedom of speech, creative expression, tolerance, offence, human dignity, and collective life in France (Elliott-Harvey, 2018). Starting with a brief discussion on free speech legislation from the French context, this paper addresses legal prohibitions for contesting historical events, as well as how satire, as a form of performative speech, tests the parameters of acceptable speech. The discussion continues with the Dieudonné case and how his humour inflamed national ethnic and religious tensions by addressing a disenfranchised audience, and explores notions of civic duty, nationhood, and counter-publics. What then follows is a discussion of the research design and the case study model as a 'free speech event'. The findings are split into two sections, first discussing how Dieudonné, through his comedy, acted as a socially divisive 'provocateur' appealing to an alternative audience. The second section elaborates on tensions with diversity by exploring the notions of marginalisation, inclusivity, and representation. The conclusion brings the themes of the paper together and offers considerations for future research on the topic of communicative genres and challenges with diversity and integration.

Freedom of Expression, Satire and the French Context
Freedom of expression in the French context has a legacy that is both foundational as well as contentious. Freedoms that were put into place during the Enlightenment resonate to the present day (Belavusau, 2010: 181), but they exist as freedoms under responsibility, both in legislation and in interpretation; Article 10 of the European Convention for Human Rights cites freedom of expression as a freedom under responsibility (Council of Europe, 1950: 5). Articles 19 from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (OHCHR, 1976;UN, 1948), also assert the individual's right to free expression. The former, however, is binding for 173 signatory nations (OHCHR, 2020;George, 2016: 27), while the latter is non-binding (Mchangama, 2015: 76 (Légifrance, 1789). 1 Yet the two documents that are most often cited in legal discussions on freedom of speech in the French context are the Gayssot Act of 1990 on Holocaust denial, and the Pleven Law of 1972 on racism (Légifrance, 1990;Légifrance, 1972), the former of which is relevant to the Dieudonné case.
In 1990, the Gayssot Act made the denial of the Holocaust illegal (Bird, 2000: 411), as well as racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic acts (Légifrance, 1990). As a society built on the ideals of a republic (Bird, 2000: 400), the protections put into place by this law show how 'the French law against racist speech represents a shift toward the recognition of group-based equal rights and has set in motion important transformations in public race conscious ' (ibid.: 407). The discrepancies here between individual rights and group-based rights then present a paradox over whose rights take precedence, especially with sensitive topics like the denial of the Holocaust.

One of the most notorious cases of Holocaust denial is historian Robert
Faurisson and statements that he made in the mid-1990s (Bleich, 2011b: 922 Civil and Political Rights (Bleich, 2011a: 58;OHCHR, 1993). The Committee stated that 'while [Faurisson] does not contest the use of gas for purposes of disinfection, he doubts the existence of gas chambers for extermination purposes ("chambres à gaz homicides") at Auschwitz and in other Nazi concentration camps' (OHCHR, 1993: 3). The Committee also addressed Faurisson's claim that the Gayssot Act personally impinged on his right to free expression, and 'that the incriminated provision constitutes unacceptable censorship, obstructing and penalizing historical research ' (ibid.: 5). What makes the Faurisson v. France case so interesting in relation to a discussion on freedom of speech is addressing the line between self-expression and the contestation of documented historical events. Laws like the Gayssot Act fit into what would be called 'memory laws', which prevent the negation and denial of significant events like the Holocaust (Gutman, 2016: 576 These can in turn be interpreted as a legal precedent to the prevention of individual freedom of expression, regardless of whether or not that opinion is based on truth or fact (ibid.: 577).
The values of pluralism, from a communicative standpoint, rest with a responsibility to think about the impact of language. Austin (1962: 94) states that we must ' consider from the ground up how many senses there are in which to say something is to do something, or in saying something we do something, and even by saying something we do something' (emphasis original). In performative genres like comedy and satire, there is still the relevance of how 'language mediates' (Livingstone, 2009: 5), and in what ways 'free speech events' influence how that communication and meaning-generation is established and transferred (Kreider, 2015: 80). Satire, as a genre, occupies communicative spaces in 'literature, film, and other media which is used to deflate, ridicule, and censure the perceived folly or immorality of what is represented', where 'tools include irony, sarcasm, wit, caricature, exaggeration, distortion, and parody', and 'invites the audience's moral indignation' (Daniel and Rod, 2016). Satire can also be used as a tool to address a political elite and challenge power (Corner, 2000: 32-33). 'Humour scandals' (Kuipers, 2011: 76), like the Dieudonné case which will be discussed next, allow audiences to act as ' co-authors and co-owners of the meanings produced' in creative messages (Goltz, 2015: 266).
In summary, freedom of speech can never be completely separate from legislative oversight, because these aspects will constantly be juxtaposed against interpretation and what the ethical limits might be (Maussen and Grillo, 2014: 174). Placing these elements against social responsibility, especially in instances where tragic historical events like the Holocaust are lessened or denied, is particularly interesting in the European context, because 'social peace in an increasingly multiculturalist Europe requires certain restrictions on expressions aimed at racial, ethnic, and religious (and recently also sexual) minorities' (Mchangama, 2015: 77). Here there is then the need to consider the 'moral injuries' (Veninga, 2016: 28), of both individuals and groups, in navigating contentious and provocative topics that enter into the public domain but not anti-Semitic' (Douet, 2014). Yet an infamous arm gesture that he created managed to perform two functions, where ' critics say the comic's trademark straightarm gesture is a Nazi salute in reverse' (ibid.), by performing 'the amazing double of denying the Holocaust while suggesting that the Jews deserved their fate' (Moore, 2014). The 'quenelle' originally refers to a local French dish (Le Figaro, 2014), but is known as a modernised Nazi salute (Weissbrod, 2015). Having semantic ties to the original Nazi salute, the 'quenelle' is performed by straightening one lowered arm, palm flat, with the other arm folded over the chest, also with a flat palm. What made this gesture particularly troubling, however, is not only the gesture itself, but how it was appropriated. Malik (2014) elaborated on this at the time: The popularity of Dieudonné rests on his ability to play on and to fuse many of the themes that have become so corrosive of contemporary politics, and not just in France: a contempt for mainstream politics and politicians, a sense of voiclessness [sic] and abandonment, particularly in France in the banlieues [suburbs/estates], a perception of a world out of control and driven by malign forces, victimhood as a defining feature of social identity, a willingness to believe in conspiracy theories, and the growth of new Elliott-Harvey: Considering Ethnic Group Tensions 8 forms of anti-Semitism, particularly on the left and among youth of North African origin. The reason that the "quenelle" has become so popular is that it embodies in a single gesture many of these contemporary themes. It has become for many an expression of hatred for the system (Malik, 2014).
How this appealed to certain demographics within audiences, such as French-Maghreb youths, is particularly relevant here. This is because this was an audience that some argue does not share mainstream French culture's taboos on the Holocaust, because 'they don't necessarily have the same cultural references about what happened in Europe during the Second World War' (Jean-Yves Camus, quoted in Beardsley, 2014). This was an audience that is 'so furious with "the system" that they are beyond the reach of even populist politicians' (Lichfield, 2014). Dieudonné's comedy, the 'quenelle', and a silly song that was a part of his Le Mur (The Wall) tour in 2014, all worked together to create a potentially toxic cocktail of incitement. The silly song 'Shoahnanas' is something to note here. The word 'Shoah' refers to a Jewish word for ' apocalypse' (Hietalahti, 2016: 23), and also refers to the Holocaust. Some cite the 'Shoahnanas' song as referring to 'Holocaust floozies' (Lichfield, 2014), but it is more commonly known as a song called 'Holocaust Pineapples' (Rose, 2014).
Dieudonné received fines for it and it was also removed from online video platform YouTube (Beardsley, 2014). At the time, then-Prime Minister Manuel Valls attempted to stop the tour of Le Mur, but was only able to appeal to the local governments at the Prefecture level, who had legislative powers to stop the shows (ibid.). Even after the scandal of the tour died down, Dieudonné was in the media again after the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, for tweeting, 'Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly' [I feel like Charlie Coulibaly] (Wendling, 2015). Reactions to the tweet are a study within itself; however, research points to how framing of the media in instances like these can persuade audience emotions, as was seen in the 'Je Suis Charlie' movement (Walter et al., 2016: 3956), and within French civic culture. 'Civic culture' in the sense used here refers to the combination of cultural and political life in a given society. Originating with Almond andVerba (1989, 1963), one definition of ' civic culture' is a ' dispersed idea, ranging from the perspectives surrounding types of committed civic action to the less self-conscious, intermittent and partial sense of the "civic self" that informs everyday life for many people' (Richardson et al., 2013: 5). This notion of civic culture is important when considering the Dieudonné case, and how different ethnic and religious groups see their own position, as well as that of others, in diverse contexts.
With French society being highly diverse and rich in multicultural heritage, there is still an idea of a 'brutal bargain' (Podhoretz, [1967] 2017: 15), when it concerns groups assimilating into mainstream culture. Here immigrant groups must ' accept that aspects of their old lives are lost forever, and that this is the price to be paid for the advantages of migration' (van Krieken, 2012: 468), in order to be a part of a nation and an ' everyday' civic life (Billig, 2017). Laïcité, in an effort to separate church and state, in turn forces a spotlight on ethnic groups whose identities are very much tied with their everyday religious and cultural life, yet at the same time, laïcité 'has increasingly become a sacred -non-negotiable -element of collective life' (Barras, 2013: 276).
This raises questions as to 'the ways nations are discursively narrated and reproduced' (Skey and Antonsich, 2017: 2). Society is constantly reinventing the 'imagined community' (Anderson, B., [1983] 2006), and a sense of a national 'we' (Antonsich, 2016: 40). Yet for a faction of French society, immigration and social isolation has led to an ' ethnicisation of poverty' (Wihtol de Wenden, 2007: 56), and a marginalised ' other' in the cités (projects) of large French cities (Higbee, 2001: 197). Young people in these banlieues (suburbs/estates) are the sites of ' anger of populations-for the most part postcolonial minorities-doomed to abandonment and marginalization, and with no mechanism for voicing their concerns' (Bancel, 2013: 215), until cataclysmic events like the 2005 Parisian riots broke out, in protest of the deaths of two young men who had been killed while evading police (Thomas, 2013: 63), where young people were able to vent their frustrations towards what they perceived to be the establishment and the authority. Occurrences like these can be described as a 'fracture sociale [social fracture]', which shows a 'perceived disintegration of community and civic responsibility that accompanies exclusion, violence and delinquency but also to the growing divide between rich and poor in French society' (Higbee, 2005: 123). This is often positioned as a Christian French identity, versus a Muslim immigrant identity. This Muslim ' other' has received further negative attention in recent years (Brubaker, 2017(Brubaker, : 1199, through State-sanctioned actions such as the 2011 banning of the niqab (BBC, 2018), or the 2016 burkini ban in certain parts of France (Brubaker, 2017(Brubaker, : 1202. Challenges such as these have led to discussions of a 'secular imagined community' (Sommier, 2016: 243), or a 'new contemporary sociological imagination' (Wieviorka, 2014: 633), where French culture is reinventing itself in the face of challenges by divisive influences in politics, society, and even culture: such as in the Dieudonné case.
The Dieudonné case highlights how, in a country context where there is a diversification of the national makeup, there is at the same time parts of the national audience that are not represented and do not see themselves as fitting into the mainstream. In the literature, these audiences are positioned as a part of a counterpublic, the subaltern, or subaltern counter-publics. Positioned in theories of the public sphere by Habermas (1992Habermas ( , 1989, counter-publics are sites of discourse (Waisanen, 2012: 240), that are a part of ' a social process' (Wimmer, 2005: 97), where ' emergent collectives fit less comfortably in a conception based on essential group identity' (Asen, 2000: 438). Fenton and Downey (2003: 16,24) argue that counterpublics therefore create 'the best prospects for encouraging democratisation at local, national and international level', as an ' alternative to the dominant public sphere', because they instigate discourse and change. The subaltern is a term that exists in the literature under different terminologies. Durham (2020: 163) describes the subaltern as a term that relates to how power is challenged in a given society, where it 'refers in its most basic sense to a subordinated class of people, marginalized through dominant ideologies and social formations, yet harboring the potential for resistance to power structures'. When applied to a group or community, these are 'raced, classed, gendered subjectivities that are systematically erased through the norms of civility and participation that constitute the dominant development ideology', that ' emerge through culture-centered processes as decisionmakers in articulating a development agenda and in carrying it out' (Dutta, 2018: 88). The next iteration is the notion of a subaltern counter-public, which Fraser (1990: 67) describes as 'parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interest and needs'. Subaltern counter-publics in this way ' empower the agency and intellectual autonomy of marginalised voices' (Chikonzo et al., 2019: 78). The concepts of counter-publics, the subaltern, and subaltern counter-publics link back to the Dieudonné case through the idea that his comedy appealed to an alternative public that does not identify with a socially and politically-formulated national civic identity, which in turn challenges common values of social unity and national cohesion.

Research Design
The findings from this article are from my doctoral research project, which is a comparative study between France and Denmark, with one case study from each context on free speech controversies from a creative context (Elliott-Harvey, 2018). The selection of a case study allows for the examination of how communication works in a given context and at a given time (Flyvbjerg, 2007: 391; see also : Gerring, 2004;Stake, 1995;Ragin and Becker, 1992). The Dieudonné case is recent and there is a small pool of English-language research about it, from different angles such as studies on religion (Ben-Moshe, 2015), anti-Semitism (Grigat et al., 2016;Mazel, 2014;Clavane, 2014), law and hate speech (Tsesis, 2017;Lepoutre, 2017;Keck, 2016;Mchangama, 2015), social media (Leone, 2015), colonial studies (Alzouma, 2011), humour (Hietalahti, 2016), cultural studies (Boudana, 2015), and European studies (Camus, 2006). The selection of the Dieudonné case also provided an opportunity to examine different genres within communications studies as well as from other disciplines, such as the broader social sciences, philosophy, and the arts. Finally, the case study completements a communication angle by being a 'media controversy' at the time of research. 'Media controversies' are events that occur in the media, but then are also circulated in society and culture, as defined here: Media controversies are communication conflicts that take place in the mass media. However, mass media are not only the "place" of such controversies, but also constitute them. First of all, media decide if the conflict will be "broadcast", that is, put on the agenda. As public agendas in modern societies are decisively co-determined by media, such "broadcasting" also determines the chances of a conflict becoming an issue, that is, the subject of public concerns (Sponholz, 2016: 504). Stanyer (2013: 104-105) would describe these events as ' critical moments', ones that focus attention on particular issues, because there are surrounding mediated discourses that further and progress that attention. Terminologies like these are more subtle than those on a more global scale, like what Dayan and Katz (1992) would describe as 'media events'. As a case study, the Dieudonné case inhabits an 'in-between' or liminal communicative space (Turner, [1969] 2008: 95), as a media controversy that challenges cultural notions of propriety and impropriety (Sponholz, 2016: 505), where from a methodological perspective it presents itself as a 'key incident' that offers something interesting to examine from a research point of view (Emerson, 2007: 439). The research questions of this article are: how do provocative speech acts in the creative realm test the boundaries of freedom of speech, and how do notions of nationhood, identity and diversity impact public debates about these provocative speech acts?
The data collected to approach these research questions consists of online articles and interview transcripts. Online articles about the Dieudonné case were collected from centre-right newspaper Le Figaro (315 articles), and centre-left newspaper Le Monde (201 articles), for 2013 and 2014. As quality press, these titles can be seen as a ' cultural authority', setting the stage for how events are examined and understood (Anderson, C.W., 2013: 166;2008: 249), and as a 'moral arbitrator' (Dewey, 1927), based on their respective editorial decisions and approaches (Firmstone, 2008: Elliott-Harvey: Considering Ethnic Group Tensions 13 218-222). The selected newspapers also 'have the high visibility of national organs that represent established, characteristic, political stances' (Barnes and Larrivee, 2011: 2502), and they ' are known to reflect the views of the French national elite on foreign and security policy issues' (Hellman, 2011: 58). The sampling strategy involved randomising a numbered, chronological master list of the articles from each newspaper, and then selecting the first 25 that met three criteria: they had to be over eight sentences in length, they could not be news pieces but needed to be more developed articles, and Dieudonné needed to be mentioned at least three times.
Interview transcripts were produced from ten in-person, semi-structured interviews conducted in Paris in 2015 with free speech stakeholders that consisted of activists, politicians, journalists, a lawyer, and a comedian. Interviews, as a qualitative method, allow for insight into how individuals perceive events and how they articulate these in a research context (Aberbach and Rockman, 2002: 673). The approach used here was through an ' episodic interview', where ' everyday knowledge' about the case study was shared (Bauer et al., 2000: 85). All interviews took place in Paris and seven core questions were asked in the interview schedule, covering broad opinions on freedom of speech, the Dieudonné case and creative boundaries, and how controversial topics are negotiated in a diverse context. Both English and French were spoken, and transcripts were directly translated into English for the French-language interviews.
Participants were selected through a purposive sampling method (see Table 1 for the participant overview).
The method of analysis for both the interview transcripts as well as the online articles is a qualitative method called Thematic Analysis, using NVivo as the software tool for textual analysis coding. Thematic Analysis (TA) offers an organic method of looking for emerging themes in a set of data, ones that are driven by the research context and literature. In other words, TA offers ' a form of pattern recognition within the data, where emerging themes become the categories for analysis' (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006: 82). As a qualitative method, TA offers the researcher the flexibility to adapt and revisit data through an iterative process of textual analysis that is driven by concepts (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 97, 740). The following findings examine first the media content, which encompasses a brief textual analysis of central themes and trends from within the sample, followed by the interview material, which encompasses a more in-depth textual analysis of the transcripts. The Here we segue to the interviews. Dieudonné was described in these as a 'provocateur' in various ways, from a journalist with the idea that he is 'promulgating defiance' of protective laws like the Gayssot Act [F.08], or from an activist who said he was an ' enemy of the State', who utilises 'intellectually vulnerable people in the Muslim community' to make money, but that politicians were also making him a scapegoat on the limits of free speech [F.04]. In this instance, however, another activist described how politicians were forgetting their audience and constituents, as well as the people who feel like they are being represented by Dieudonné [F.02]. This public was described by a journalist as an ' alternative public', which 'is not the same public that watches the news', and is ' another composite, misbegotten public that feels liberated by this speech', one which is 'not at all represented by the system', and one that harbours a particular rhetoric: Dieudonné reveals both necessary things and unnecessary things in society.
When he attacks taboos, he pulls people towards hateful speech that becomes a part of a cannon that then gets re-canonised into something that's a bit troublesome, a bit nauseating. That's why he's a little disturbing, since he has a fairly strong influence on a lot of people. He makes himself out to be a One sees that he can fill stadiums in a way that's extremely-it shows that there is a type of subculture. There is an audience of people who do not believe anymore in the official discourse. Who are conspirers, who do not believe anymore the mainstream media and who are in a sort of underground sphere, which is very difficult to control. [F.07] An aspect of this lack of control or contact with a given population was underscored by a radical activist, with the idea that society is changing: There is an emergence of groups that take charge, who take public responsibility, who refuse integration à la française, who refuse assimilation and who are in the process of transforming France. France is in the process of transforming and this is a cultural reality. [F.03] This resistance of having an alternative discourse of what it means to be a part of French society is where the issue of Dieudonné's comedic play of the Holocaust is situated, but it can also be twisted to provide a positive influence. An activist thought that the topic of the Holocaust must not remain taboo, because one should be able to laugh at anything, and that with laughter, healing can take place [F.02]. Another participant, who is a comedian, described how humour can help diffuse tension when it concerns combative topics: Humour de-dramatises and it de-sacralises. There are certain situations where one is so oppressed, that the only way to get out of it and to not go crazy, is with laughter. It's the only way to decompress, to make some distance in relation to a painful situation. [F.10] Humour in this sense provides a strong communicative message. A right-leaning politician described how the use of satire and caricature is in many ways more ' efficient than a long political discourse' when it concerns certain topics, but that it also serves this positive function since: There is a mania in France on individual thoughts, on the media, on the press, where we know there are some ideas that are hard to transmit, and humour and satire allow the debate to be lifted or opened when it's sometimes a little too closed in on itself. [F.06] In this way, humour and satire break down barriers between people. An activist described how humour can serve as a way to bridge people and make topics more accessible by challenging social and cultural norms and taboos [F.04]. However, when it concerns areas that are more sensitive, a journalist thought that satire helps gives those a voice when they otherwise might not have it [F.08], but the play on taboo is also what makes humour and satire challenging and able to push the boundaries of what might be acceptable speech, as another journalist put it: The only thing that's really corrosive and funny is what no one dares saying.
That's what releases laughter, laughter is liberating, and one is not liberated by words one hears every day. [F.09] Alternative discourses, however, must be offered in these instances, just as an activist highlighted: If someone wants to say that the Shoah is a joke and that it didn't exist, he has the right to say it. If he wants to say that Islam is the most rotten religion of the world, he has the right to say it; but I have the right to give an alternative discourse. [F.04] Alternative discourses in the sense used here then means that speech that incites a reaction, however extreme it might be, must be met with counter-speech that offers a different perspective on the issue. In this dialogue, a right-leaning politician thought that free speech must never be limited This frustration also feeds into negative coverage of Muslims and Islam in the media.
An activist thought that because of these perceived discriminations and the way in which the media 'forges a public opinion', mainstream society reinforces certain prejudices: The "little Frenchman" at home says: My God another Muslim, they are all the same. Where no, it's not true. And, for example, the attacks at Charlie Hebdo, the two boys who did the attack, they are boys of Arab origin but they grew up in the foster system because their parents were dead. When we said: Yes, it's them, they are of Arab origin-well it's not important that they are of Arab origin, they are French and so it was the French system that failed them. [F.02] This aspect of failure is counteracted with what another participant described as a frustration towards a perceived threat of immigrants, and a 'cultural insecurity', a term introduced by French academic Laurent Bouvet (2015), that is tied to certain frustrations with national conditions. A left-leaning politician elaborated: There are people who have a feeling of relegation, and at the same time concern about the preservation of their way of life. They have strong claims of community and identity along with an economic insecurity and fragility.

Conclusion
What the Dieudonné case study shows is that communicative contexts in the cultural realm are continuously able to challenge the boundaries of acceptable speech, as well as provide a space for the negotiation and re-examination of which to the society in which we live, but also in relation to giving voice to those who are sometimes not heard.
In summary, the findings illustrate to what degree the Dieudonné case acted as a national provocation, but also to what degree the case showed tensions and frustrations as communities situate themselves in a national context that is diversifying and reconciling with a heritage that includes the trauma of World War II, as well as a heritage that includes a postcolonial legacy. Future investigations on similar media controversies that address tensions about race, religion, and ethnicity, through creative and communicative forms like comedy, will help to shed light on how diversifying nations address challenges with integration, as their cultural, racial, and ethnic demographics engage in discourses and counter-discourses on the parameters of free expression, integration, and mutual rights to recognition.