A disturbing video that emerged this week — of a young black man dragging a white child and her grandmother out of their family home — has become an immediate propaganda opportunity for France’s far-Right. Within a few minutes of the 30-second clip appearing on social media, politicians who have spent their careers talking about immigrants defiling the indigenous population were recycling their warnings.
Various Right-wing figures pointed out that the attempted kidnapping took place in the refined southwest city of Bordeaux, in a quartier once dominated by traditional French families. There was even a beloved pet Labrador looking on as the attacker stuck his foot in the door to stop grandmother and child, aged 73 and seven, from hiding. He then pulled both to the pavement, attempting to run away with the little girl before she managed to escape.
Marine Le Pen, runner-up in France’s last two presidential elections, led the chorus of politically charged outrage, tweeting: “This aggression in Bordeaux is symbolic of the delinquency that our fellow citizens suffer today — a gratuitous and increasingly violent delinquency. No city, no village, no neighbourhood is preserved from the development of this insecurity.”
Le Pen remains doyenne of the Rassemblement National (RN), a party with deeply racist antecedents, and one that is still obsessed with linking social breakdown to newcomers — especially those who look like the attacker in the video.
Other reflections about the Bordeaux video tweeted by Le Pen to her near three million followers included “The worsening of delinquency is notably linked to the explosion of anarchic immigration,” and “We must drastically resolve the problem of massive immigration, which is partly responsible for the explosion of insecurity.”
Éric Zemmour, another former presidential candidate with a massive following thanks to his work as a TV pundit and newspaper polemicist, was just as forthright, saying: “How horrific. Bordeaux today. This is what they have done to our country. French, wake up”.
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