These videos predate the French election results.
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Fact check: Old, unrelated footage of French protests falsely linked to election results.
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Two videos circulating on social media claiming to be footage of recent protests taking place across France.
The claims and the video suggest that France will now become an “Islamic” state.
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This comes after a coalition of left-wing and centre parties came together to win France’s general election on Sunday, July 7th, according to opinion polls.
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This unexpected result put President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition in second place, beating the far-right.
An archive of posts can be found here.
An archive of posts can be found here.
(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)
What is the truth? These videos are old and unrelated to the recent election results.
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The first video was filmed in 2019 and shows Algerians protesting against former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was set to win a fifth term in power.
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Another video shows pro-Palestinian protests in France on June 1, before the election results were announced.
How did we know the truth? We started by doing a reverse image search on Google for some of the video’s keyframes to find older versions of the video.
Video 1: I noticed that the flags people were holding looked similar to the Algerian flag.
By comparison, it is clear that people were holding the Algerian flag.
(Source: Wikipedia/Screenshot/Modified by The Quint)
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Using this as a hint, I tried searching for keywords in English, and found the following: France 24 upon March 10, 2019.
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The headline was “Thousands join Algerian protests in Paris, other French cities.”
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Thousands of people reportedly gathered at Paris’ Place de la Republique to protest against President Bouteflika’s decision to run for a fifth term.
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Protests have seen ethnic Algerians and students take to the streets.
The report included footage of the protests.
(Source: France24/Screenshot)
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I found a video uploaded to the official YouTube channel. AP Archives.
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This video is March 15, 2019 The headline read: “Thousands rally in Paris against Algerian president.”
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It showed footage of people shouting slogans and protesting against President Bouteflika in Republic Square.
a Vox Algerians were reportedly protesting against the ailing president, who was reportedly seeking a fifth term in office.
Video 2:
A reverse image search revealed an old X (formerly Twitter) post shared on June 1st, prior to the election being announced on July 7th.
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A quick search on Google Maps revealed the location to be Place Bellecour in Lyon, France.
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Taking the hint, we used the location to search for relevant keywords on Google and found several reports on recent protests.
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Shared Reports Bfmtv Lyon and Lyon Capital On June 1, several people gathered at Lyon’s Place Bellecourt, saying they supported Palestine and called for a ceasefire.
Conclusion: Old and unrelated footage of protests in France is being wrongly linked to the election results.
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