Riots in France: Misinformation spread to discredit protesters, French immigration policies

Issued on: 04/07/2023 – 13:38Modified: 04/07/2023 – 13:40

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• In the wake of the clashes caused by 17-year-old Nahel’s death at the hands of police, a number of photos and videos have been taken out of context to target the rioters and criticise French immigration policies.

• English-speaking anti-migrant accounts have been sharing images of “armed rioters” or burned cars … but they were filmed long before the current protests, and sometimes not even in France. 

• Hindu nationalist accounts, which often spread misinformation targeting the Muslim community, shared a video claiming to show the ongoing unrest, but it was actually taken from a movie. They also shared another video claiming to show a residential building on fire … but it was not impacted by the riots. 

• A pro-Russian account shared a video claiming that snipers have been seen in Paris. The video is old.

• And misinformation has also been spreading in French: anti-migrant accounts have shared manipulated videos to criticise French migration policies. One of them comes from a challenge on TikTok while another was taken in the United States. 

Fake videos shared en masse by far-right English-language accounts

Paul Golding, leader of Britain First, a far-right British party, shared a video on July 2 of a group of masked and armed men. He described the group as “armed rioters show[ing] off their arsenal of weapons in France”. The post has been viewed more than a million times.

To find out where this video really came from, we did a quick reverse image search with the InVid WeVerify extension (click here to find out how). We found an article in the French daily Le Parisien, which explains that armed men gathered in Dijon to defend their neighbourhood after a weekend of clashes with members of the Chechen community in June 2020. 

At the time, Chechens had conducted a punitive expedition to avenge a young man from their community who had allegedly been attacked a few days earlier.

So it had nothing to do with the recent riots.

Another account, which has shared anti-migrant sentiments before, posted a video on July 2 showing a dozen cars aflame in what appears to be a large parking lot or car dealership. The caption reads: “Marseille: Rioters set fire to a parking lot filled with brand new vehicles.” The tweet has more than 130,000 views. 

However, when we searched the keywords “parking lot” and “burnt cars”, we found an article from The Guardian with photos of the same blaze. The fire broke out last April in an auction lot in Perth, Australia, destroying more than 60 vehicles. The cause of the fire is still unknown.

Hindu nationalists relay false information targeting Muslims

A video posted on July 1 shows cars falling from the top of a parking garage, crashing into other vehicles in the street and exploding from the impact.

The caption, in Hindi, on the video reads, “France elected a secular liberal Macron as president rather than a nationalist woman, see the result.” The user who shared the video regularly contributes anti-Muslim articles in the Indian media. 

The same video was also published by another account sharing posts in Hindi. 

Here again, we did a keyword search on Google to find the source of the image, typing “cars falling from parking garage”. The video was actually filmed in Cleveland, Ohio. It shows the filming of the eighth film in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, released in 2017. You can watch the scene in the movie here. 

Another Indian account, which regularly shares posts targeting Muslims, posted a video of a residential building supposedly set on fire by rioters in France. An imposing building can be seen in the dark with red smoke billowing from it. “Extremists have set fire to a residential building in the town of Grigny,” reads the caption. The post has nearly 50,000 views.

We were unable to find the source of this video. However, we did find a reaction to this video from the prefecture of Essonne, the department where Grigny is located. The prefecture explains: “It was a vehicle fire that spread to two trees. The fire was put out by the Sdis 91 [departmental fire and rescue service] and the area was secured by the national police force. The nearby building was not affected in any way.”

Misinformation about riots shared by French anti-migrant accounts

On July 2, a Twitter account claiming to support French far-right politician Éric Zemmour posted a video of a Portuguese-speaking woman hastily trying to fill her shopping trolley in a supermarket. The author commented: “What do you want them to tell their kids, they do the same!”, suggesting that the mothers of rioters regularly steal from shops.

Using the username displayed in the video, you can find the original video on a Brazilian influencer’s TikTok channel.

The video actually shows a timed challenge in Brazil, the aim of which is to do your shopping as quickly as possible. 

Another Twitter user that regularly posts anti-migrant content also claimed that a Louis Vuitton shop was looted by rioters. The video, posted on June 30 and viewed more than 340,000 times, shows a group of young people smashing windows and breaking into a Louis Vuitton shop.

A search for “Louis Vuitton” and “looting” turns up the original video. It was filmed in Portland, in the United States, during protests following the death of George Floyd in May 2020.

However, Louis Vuitton shops have indeed been targeted by rioters in France, as reported by Europe1 and Actu.fr.

A pro-Russian account shares a video taken out of context

Another video posted on Twitter, which has more than 900,000 views, shows a man on a roof, clearly aiming his rifle at a van. The user, @Sprinter99880, claims that this is a sniper on the rooftops of Paris. The video was also shared by accounts claiming that “Muslim rioters” had stolen “rifles from police vans”.

While the FRANCE 24 Observers team was unable to identify the context in which the footage was shot, we did find the same video on Twitter dating back to March 2022, more than a year before the riots began.

And we’ve debunked posts shared by @Sprinter99880 before, like here. The Twitter account has previously shared content criticising cultural diversity in France. 

France has seen riots and looting since 17-year-old Nahel M. was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on June 27 in Nanterre, just outside Paris. Nahel’s death rekindled long-standing accusations of systemic racism among security forces. Hundreds of arrests have been made in the protests. On July 4, tensions seemed to be dwindling, one week after Nahel was killed.