Images of the fire at Rouen Cathedral hijacked by far-right accounts

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Images of the fire at Rouen Cathedral hijacked by far right

The investigation is still ongoing after a fire broke out on Thursday, July 11, 2024 at Rouen Cathedral in northwestern France. The fire started on the spire’s renovation site, which began in 2016, and the building did not suffer any major damage. At this stage, the accidental theory is the most likely, according to the justice system. But as soon as the disaster was announced, conspiracy theories flourished on social media, using the event to stigmatize foreigners.

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On social media, some accounts were quick to point the finger at far-left movements or people from immigrant backgrounds to explain the fire. Originally, these accounts, close to nationalist and conspiracy theorists, took advantage of the emotion aroused by the images of this 19th-century spire, surrounded by thick black smoke, to support xenophobic statements.

They rely in particular on a map that is supposed to list all the church fires that have occurred in France recently. This map has accumulated more than a million views on social networks.

After verification, the map is dated early 2019 and lists all the Christianophobic acts that occurred during the calendar year 2018. It therefore does not only count the fires that broke out in buildings, but all the acts of varying degrees of seriousness, targeting members or symbols of the Christian community.

This British far-right account publishes a map that purports to list all the arson attacks targeting Catholic religious sites in France and clearly blames migrants. The map is wrong and its legend is incomplete

This account wrongly claims that only Christian religious buildings are targeted by fires.

Contrary to the claims of some conspiracy theorists, churches are not the only places of worship to be affected by fires in France, whether accidental or intentional. Last May, the Rouen synagogue was the target of an attempted arson attack. In January 2024, a mosque was targeted in Morlaix, Brittany.

Images taken out of context resurface

These same accounts also mass-distribute images of other religious sites in flames, in order to mislead about the nature and intensity of the Rouen Cathedral fire. A reverse image search establishes that these are in fact video clips of the Nantes Cathedral fire in 2020. Other photographs, notably of the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire in Paris in 2019, are also used to generate confusion.

This X account specializing in the fight against fake news points out that photos of other burning churches have been used to sow confusion.

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The accidental track is, at this stage, privileged, as specified yesterday by the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, praising the efficiency and speed of the intervention of the firefighters on the site of the cathedral. The city hall of Rouen planned to reopen the cathedral as of this Friday, July 12, 2024.

With Louis Champier

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