The last two months have seen escalating protests across France. The demonstrations began in the name of improving educational standards, but have since expanded to include a host of other economic, political and social issues. While the protests have reportedly been largely peaceful, in the last few weeks they have also started to feature significant amounts of violence and looting, which has been met with increasing shows of force by the French authorities. The protests are still on-going, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets this past weekend, and violent clashes continuing between demonstrators and police. Similar protests have now taken place throughout Europe, including in Spain, Albania, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland. 

OHPI has observed significant amounts of hateful content in the online discourse surrounding these protests. This includes anti-immigrant hate, white-supremacy, antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate. This briefing includes some examples of this problematic content taken from social media posts about the demonstrations. 

While there is no evidence that immigrants are disproportionately responsible for the protests, much of the discourse online seeks to blame immigrants for the violence (and for a perceived general decline in Western society). The following post was made by the official account for the U.S Whitehouse on October 20th. It employs the phrase ‘third world’; an out of date expression that suggests a global hierarchy with the West at the top and the Global South at the bottom. The caption reads: ‘If you import the third world, you become the third world’. This post blames the riots in France on immigrants (without evidence) and then suggests that violence and lawlessness is an inherent part of their culture. Obviously, seeing this post from The White House’s official account is deeply concerning. 

Somewhat predictably, this post stoked a significant amount of anti-immigrant hatred. For example, the following reply suggests that the “third world” should all be deported. 

We see similar rhetoric on Instagram, with this comment blaming the riots on ‘mass uncontrolled immigration from Africa’. 

Some of the replies to The White House’s post endorse white-supremacy. The following reply demands mass deportation, and features a cartoon depicting various people of colour. Given that there are many people from the cultures depicted who were born in the USA, this post goes beyond implying that all immigrants should be deported. The implication is that the USA is a country for white people in particular. 

The idea that all non-white people should be deported from the West is oftentimes referred to as ‘remigration’, and is an idea propagated by the far-right. 

This next user writes “Import antiwhiteism… Suffer from antiwhiteism”. Once again, the suggestion is that the riots in France are the inevitable consequence of multicultural society, and that a harmonious society must be composed entirely of white people. 

We see observed a similar sentiment in some Reddit spaces, where a user attributes rioting to immigrants, who they describe as ‘savages’. 

Here we see a different Reddit user parroting the phrase posted by The White House on X. 

As well as anti-immigrant and white supremacist rhetoric, the discourse has also featured a significant amount of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate. 

The antisemitic content typically incorporates the anti-immigrant sentiment already discussed, but then also implies that Jews are deliberately encouraging mass immigration to destabilise western society or to slowly eliminate the white race. This narrative is referred to as the Kalergi Plan, and is a far-right conspiracy. This narrative dehumanises immigrants by suggesting they are instrumental in destroying western society, and also villainises Jews by suggesting that they are the ones plotting its downfall. 

In this comment from a Reddit thread about the protests we see another version of this conspiracy theory, this time applied to Israel. 

The following comments, made in response to a Youtube video about the protests, demonstrate some of the anti-Muslim hate in the online discourse surrounding these events. Generally, these comments implied that the protests and/or riots were carried out primarily by Muslims, and were a sign that Islam would soon be ‘taking over’ the west. The claim that Muslims have been the primary drivers of the riots is without evidence, and plays into harmful stereotypes about Muslims being violent and a threat to western society. 

We also see anti-Muslim hate on Reddit, with one user commenting the rioting is an ‘islamic invasion’. This comment received 125 upvotes. 

World events can act as a release valve that help to expose people’s underlying prejudices. Analysing online spaces in the wake of such events can therefore be a good way of assessing different attitudes throughout society. In the case of the demonstrations in France, OHPI has been compelled to write this briefing because of the sheer volume of hateful content that we have observed in the surrounding discourse. Much of the content is explicitly anti-immigrant, white supremacist, antisemitic and anti-Muslim. This indicates a serious problem with the way that these demonstrations are being interpreted by wider society, regardless of where one sits on the issues that have sparked the protests originally.