France – National Rally Politician Shares Video of Masked Gunmen to Discredit BlackLivesMatter and Muslims
This article is part of the Media Monitoring Highlights of June, a monthly overview of the most significant results of our monitoring of traditional and new media in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, and the United Kingdom.
Date of publication: 15 June 2020
Author: Jean Messiha, top member of the far-right National Rally party
Media outlet: Twitter
Link: https://bit.ly/3i7lGY6
Description of the anti-Muslim content: In mid-June, during the widespread protests for racial justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd in the USA, the French politician Jean Messiha tweeted: “Paramilitary parade of small Islamo-thug fascists in #Dijon. War weapons and handguns galore. This is how the progressive leftists have transformed France: a wasteland abandoned to Huns. You said #PoliceViolence? #StopThugs”. With these words, Messiha shared a video, taken from the platform Snapchat, showing a dozen of hooded young men in a city, swearing and displaying their guns. Some of the young men in the video can be heard shouting that that the police can “no longer resist” because it is weaker than them. Others say that they are “the Muslims”.
Myth Debunked: Jean Messiha is a far-right politician known for his provocations against Muslims and those with a migrant background. With this tweet, he is trying to both discredit the global anti-racist demonstrations and the Muslim population in France by associating them with a threatening group of criminals. Little is known about the people in the video, but Messiha used it to depict Muslims as a problem, and a threat for the country. He is using the common anti-Muslims stereotype that describes Muslims as violent. Messiha’s comment also fits in within the narrative that frames the protestors, rather than an unjust system, as the problem. While almost 1,500 complaints against police officers were filed in France last year, Messiha downplays police violence while reversing the blame on those he calls “thugs” - a racially charged term recently used by Donald Trump to refer to Black Lives Matter protesters.
More to read:
Why extreme actions shouldn’t delegitimize a protest
Why Are The Protesters Being Framed As The Problem? White Supremacy
