Edinburgh Fringe artist sparks anger with ‘quenelle’ Nazi-style salute

A musician performing at the Edinburgh Fringe this week provoked an angry reaction from British Jews by performing a ‘quenelle’ salute outside Edinburgh Castle – with Fringe organisers absolving themselves of responsibility.

Alison Chabloz, whose solo acoustic show is called ‘Autumn’s Here,’ opposes Israel and has sent Israel supporters images of people performing the quenelle, an inverted Nazi salute dreamt up by a French anti-Semitic comic. 

Lawyer and anti-Semitism campaigner Mark Lewis was among those Chabloz targeted with the offensive images.

In response to a complaint, a festival organiser said: “Fringe Society do not select or programme the Festival Fringe, nor do we curate or censor content at the Festival, or censor the behaviour or actions of performers. It is not within our remit or our open access ethos to allow or refuse performers a platform for their work that is within the law.”

Chabloz said she had been the subject of a “smear campaign, including letters to my employer as well as a host of abusive blog posts and online bullying – behaviour better suited to a primary school playground”.

On her blog, she wrote: “After months of being hounded online by a small group of hard-line Zionists, I decided yesterday to dedicate a Quenelle gesture to my abusers, one of whom wrote a letter of complaint to EdFringe in a failed attempt to have my show banned.”