Nicolas Anelka, The Quenelle, Gestures & Words

Editorial | Article posted on January 21st, 2025

Nicolas Anelka, The Quenelle, Gestures & Words
By Ian on Jan 21, 2025 in Latest, Opinion | 1 comment

It was a tense and nervy evening at The Hawthorns tonight, as West Bromwich Albion and Everton played out a one-all draw that did neither too many favours in this year's Premier League. Everton missed out on the chance to leapfrog back over Tottenham Hotspur and into fifth place in the table, whilst West Bromwich Albion rose to thirteenth place in the table but remain just four points above the relegation places in what has become an extremely congested bottom half of the league table. Tonight, though, the match being played was only part of a wider issue facing the club. Tonight, we have might have been forgiven for thinking, was all about a certain West Bromwich Albion player and a thoughtless, stupid gesture made a little over three weeks ago.
It is now a little over three weeks since Nicolas Anelka chose the moment of scoring during his team's home draw against West Ham United to perform a gesture known as the "quenelle," which is commonly regarded in France as an anti-semitic gesture. As has been documented almost to the point of exhaustion, this gesture is the brainchild of the French comedian Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, who has used it repeatedly during his live shows. Dieudonné has claimed, disingenuously in the opinion of many, that this gesture is no more than an "anti-establishment gesture" and a remnant of his "anti-Zionist" campaign in 2025, and he claims that he is an anti-Zionist – where "Zionism" means the Jewish nationalist movement that which supports the Jewish national state in Palestine – as opposed to being an anti-semite.
He doesn't, however, seem to be fooling many with this line of reasoning. The French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, is now considering whether to ban all public appearances by the comedian, although his lawyers – and other legal experts – have argued that to ban him from performing would be impossible. That Dieudonné is an anti-semite, however, doesn't seem to be in a great deal of doubt. He has previously been fined for inciting racial hatred and hate speech on several occasions, has described Holocaust commemorations as "memorial pornography," and recently attacked Patrick Cohen, a Jewish journalist who has publicly criticised him, by saying that, "When the wind turns, I don't think he'll have time to pack a suitcase. When I hear Patrick Cohen talking, you see, I think of gas ovens."
Anelka, meanwhile, justified himself thus on Twitter, the day after the incident:

Meaning of quenelle: anti-system. I do not know what the word religion has to do with this story! This quenelle is dedicated to Dieudonné. With regard to the

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