Did a racist demonstration take place recently in Paris? This is what a video actively broadcast on social networks and spotted by the RFI editorial staff in Nairobi claims to show, wrongly. Internet users who share it denounce “ an anti-black march in the streets of the capital while Macron colonizes New Caledonia “. In reality, this video is a montage intended to fuel tensions.
In the image, dozens of demonstrators march in the street. Some display Palestinian flags and red flags, marked with the logo of the NPA, the New Anti-Capitalist Party. First inconsistency, this political movement and pro-Palestinian activists are not known for defending xenophobic ideas.
The scene, which we have geolocated, takes place in front of the Opéra Bastille, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. To date it, we compared dozens of photos of demonstrations and identified the May 1, 2024 parade organized during the traditional Labor Day. The press service of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) confirmed this to us.
On the sound side, we first hear racist testimonies from activists who we do not see in the image. Some take up the slogan “ Calais to the Calaisians “.
Activist – Manipulated video soundtrack
Second inconsistency, we know that the images show a demonstration in Paris and not in Calais, a city in the north of France. We then hear a journalist speaking. He also mentions a demonstration in front of the town hall of Calais.
Journalist – Manipulated video soundtrack
Complete soundtrack – infox
Importantly, his tone closely resembles the intonation used in television documentaries. So we did a keyword search on online video platforms to find out where this soundtrack came from. As a result, the extract actually comes from a television documentary produced in 2016 by journalists from Enquête Exclusive magazine at the time of an action by the far-right collective “Sauvons Calais”. A report broadcast on the French television channel M6, in March 2016.
The original soundtrack comes from this report, freely accessible on YouTube.
Unrelated images with soundtrack
What we see therefore has no relation to what we hear. Someone deliberately mixed images of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in May 2024 in Paris, with the soundtrack of a report filmed in Calais eight years earlier, with the aim of misleading Internet users and fueling tensions . Compared to deepfake or other sophisticated montage, this manipulation technique costs nothing to produce, requires very little technical knowledge, but can be enough to misinform.
Analysis of the accounts that share this video shows that several Internet users push this video on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. Our editorial team in Nairobi also informed us that the fake news is currently spreading in French, but also in Swahili, in different WhatsApp groups.