A story is spreading across social media about a “French left-wing activist” who supposedly spent her whole life defending migrants, only for those same migrants to loot her shop, beat her, spit on her and trample her. The post comes with a photograph of a distraught woman and, of course, a caption tailor-made for sharing. But before you share stories like this, at least check them. I know it is much easier to click “share”, especially when the story perfectly matches your political beliefs. But that is precisely why we ought to be even more careful.
So what actually happened? Mass protests have taken place, and are still taking place, in France, accompanied by violence, smashed shop windows and looting. One video shows a woman trying to stop looters and pleading with them to stop. That part is real. Reuters, Le Monde and other French media outlets have reported on the unrest. Everything else in the viral post is an entirely different story.
- The woman is a member of a French left-wing party and an advocate of migration.
There is no evidence for this. No party is named, nor is there any verifiable statement or document confirming such involvement. - She owns a prestigious boutique that was looted.
The footage shows the looting of a Franprix supermarket, and the woman does not own it. - She told the attackers that she supported asylum, and they spat on and trampled her.
The report on the footage describes her intervention and calls for them to stop, not the alleged conversation, spitting or trampling. - She lost her life’s work because of the migrants she had defended.
The looting is real, but her ownership, personal loss and the migrants’ status of the perpetrators have not been established.
What did Le Monde establish? Journalist Raphaëlle Bacqué describes the scene outside the looted Franprix supermarket on Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple. She reports on Emma Kunstlich, a 24-year-old acting student who tried to stop the looters and criticised their attacks because they had no political message and could help the far right come to power.
The story had already circulated in almost identical form in English, including on Twitter. Now some people here are simply translating and spreading it as though it were an established fact. Interesting, isn’t it? Someone takes real footage, adds a politically convenient story to it, and suddenly we have proof that left-wingers are themselves to blame for everything that happens to them.
That does not, of course, mean that the violence and looting did not happen. They did. The perpetrators must answer for their actions, regardless of where they come from or what their political beliefs are. But there is no need to embellish real violence with invented details in order to prove that your politics are right.
What fascinates me most about posts like this is how quickly people will accept anything, as long as it confirms their beliefs. No questions. No checking. Not a shred of doubt. Then we wonder why society is becoming ever more divided.
Perhaps, to begin with, it would be enough to engage our brains for a minute before the next click on “share”. Yes, that bit underneath the hair. Because the photograph may be real, the event may have happened, but the story attached to it may be entirely made up. Just because you read something on Facebook does not mean it is true. Not even if the post has a thousand likes and five hundred shares.