Covert Russian network exploited French riots on social media, EU report says
A covert Russian network sought to exploit last month’s riots in France by using social media to blame the unrest on uncontrolled immigration and portray the government as having lost control, according to an internal EU assessment seen by Reuters.
A separate internal assessment, compiled by France’s foreign ministry and also seen by Reuters, found that social media accounts linked to Israel and to the US MAGA movement also pushed “hostile narratives” around the riots, linking them to radical Islamism and migration.
— Reuters, Nov. 9.
When I asked who did the looting, people split. “Angry people, poor people,” one resident said. “Nobody steals for pleasure.” An older man disagreed. “They’re people from elsewhere, madame. People who are here to wreck things.”
Many of the looters seen in videos online appear to be immigrants or second-generation immigrants.
— Alexandra Lavoie, Rebel News, Nov. 4.
“No, it’s not France here”: Rebel News asks Saint-Denis residents if their city is still French
For more than a thousand years, the kings of France were buried in the basilica at the centre of town. Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette are there. In 1793, a revolutionary mob broke open the tombs and threw the bodies into a pit. Then came the factories, and the workers who ran them: from Italy and Spain first, then after the war from North Africa, Portugal and West Africa. For close to a century the city was run by communists, who built the public housing that newcomers kept arriving for long after the factories closed.
Today, of every three people on the street in Saint-Denis, one is an immigrant and one is the child of immigrants. France forbids counting religion, but the department has more Muslim places of worship than any other in the country, and in 2015 its top state official estimated that nearly one resident in two was Muslim.
This fall, Saint-Denis was one of the centres of the high school revolt that turned into riots across France.
— Lavoie, Nov 3.
Videos circulating online showed masked thugs, many of them from immigrant backgrounds, taking to the streets, smashing windows and setting fires.
— Lavoie, Oct. 29.
Hanson warns France’s riots will reach Australian cities unless mass migration ends
— Pauline Hanson, One Nation leader and Putin fangirl, tweets; Ruble News is there, Oct. 18.
