VOX leader hints ‘anti-EU’ Muslims fuel French riots [photos]

The leader of the far-right party VOX, Santiago Abascal, indirectly accused radical Muslims living in the European Union of fuelling and masterminding recent rioting and looting in France.

The French authorities are still on alert in Paris, although the sixth night of riots was comparatively much calmer. The government has urged social media to take action against hate speech as youngsters use online platforms to coordinate their attacks.

EURACTIV reports on the ground from the suburb of Nanterre, where the 17-year-old Nahel was killed by a French policeman.

“There is a Europe threatened by mobs of anti-Europeans who smash police stations, burn libraries and stab to steal a mobile phone, who are unwilling to adapt to our way of life and our laws and who think we are the ones who have to adapt”, Abascal said on Saturday, without directly mentioning “Muslims”, El País reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced on Friday what he termed “unacceptable” attempts to use the recent death of a teenager at the hands of the police to spread riots across the country.

Since the killing of a young man on 27 June during a police check, riots have increased throughout France and gained intensity.

Poverty is not an excuse

Abascal rejected the notion that poverty and marginalisation, as some analysts suggest, are the root cause of the riots in France.

Poverty and marginalisation “never led Europeans [presumably of the Christian religion] to stab babies in the south of France, slit the throats of teachers in the outskirts of Paris, break into concerts with guns as in [the Paris disco] Bataclan (November 2015), hack into a parish with machetes as happened in Algeciras [January 2023] or run over pedestrians with vans as here in Barcelona [August 2017]”, Abascal, a close friend of Hungary’s Orban, Italy’s Meloni and France’s Le Pen, stated.

“Europe cannot continue to import more immigration from Muslim countries”, he said in a speech in Barcelona, VOX reported on Twitter.

VOX is currently Spain’s third political force, governing with centre-right Partido Popular (PP/EPP) in Castilla and León, Europe’s largest region. Following the May regional and municipal elections, it has also concluded several agreements with the PP to govern together in many Spanish city councils and regions.

Fresh polls point to a PP victory in the Spanish general election due on 23 July. However, if the right-wing party does not obtain a clear majority, it must rely on VOX´s support to form a stable executive in Madrid.

However, Abascal made it clear several times that his party aspires to occupy key portfolios in a future PP-VOX government and not just serve as parliamentary support to the centre-right political formation.

Macron meets affected mayors

Meanwhile, in France, the sixth night of riots since the killing of the 17-year-old youngster was much calmer. No major incident was reported at 1:30 a.m., by when the police had made 78 arrests across the country.

President Emmanuel Macron held an extraordinary meeting with the prime minister and ministers of justice and domestic affairs on Sunday.

According to French media, Macron asked his ministers to “continue to do everything to restore order and ensure a return to calm”.

On Tuesday, Macron is expected to receive to the Élysée Palace more than 220 mayors of municipalities affected by the riots. On Monday, Macron will meet with the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher and Yaël Braun-Pivet, President of the National Assembly.

The French public was shocked by a car-ramming attack on Saturday night against the residence of the mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, in the south of Paris.

A bike belonging to the mayor’s family was completely destroyed. [EURACTIV]

The authorities said there was an attempt to burn down the local official’s house with a burning car, during which the mayor’s wife was severely injured.

A burning car almost led to a human tragedy in the suburb of L’Haÿ-les-Roses. [EURACTIV]

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the government would “not allow any violence to pass” and that “the greatest firmness” would be applied in the sanctions.

A mantel in the residence’s garden ‘prevented’ the burning car from entering the house, where the mayor’s family was sleeping. [EURACTIV]

“We won’t let anything go […] We will stand with the mayors”, Borne said.

A ticking bomb in Nanterre

Meanwhile, EURACTIV visited Nanterre, the Paris suburb where Nahel was killed.

“There is much police violence, and this negatively affects our daily life”, a youngster said. [EURACTIV]

The city’s chaotic situation resembled a “war zone”, with burnt cars, destroyed ATMs and banks and damaged restaurants.

Hundreds of burnt cars in the suburb of Nanterre. [EURACTIV]

The local population was reluctant to speak to journalists, while on every wall of the town, one could see graffitis calling for “revenge” and “justice”.

“Justice for Nahel”. [EURACTIV]

“There is much police violence, and this negatively affects our daily life”, a youngster who wanted to be anonymous told EURACTIV, adding that the riots resemble the chaos of 2005.

A destroyed residence building. [EURACTIV]

Another youngster explained that some policemen treat third or fourth-generation migrants as “third-category” people.

Throughout the town during the day, reparations are being made, waiting for another chaos after midnight.

The exterior space of the restaurant was completely ruined. [EURACTIV]

Social media urged to moderate hateful content

Several youngsters in the suburbs told EURACTIV that everything is coordinated via social media platforms, and they set up meetings after midnight to launch attacks.

“The location is decided on the spot quite rapidly”, another youngster said.

For this reason, the French authorities urged social media platforms to gear up to moderate and take down “online hatred”.

Both Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot met with social media platforms representatives Friday (30 June), including Meta, Snapchat, Twitter and TikTok, to remind them of their “responsibility” to take down violent content as soon as humanly possible.

“Often, [violent] content is not deleted, or way too late”, both ministers said, making clear it is the platforms’ responsibility to flag hateful content and work hand-in-hand with law enforcement.

The ministers said that messages and videos on social media “contribute to fuel hatred and tensions” across the country.

Social media, especially Snapchat and TikTok, “play a considerable role” as focal points for the “organisation of violent gatherings,” warned Macron on Friday.

Snapchat and Instagram “stories are used to organise riots, and the message then gets quickly relayed” across the web, a specialist in digital education, Yasmine Buono, told French public TV broadcaster France 3 over the weekend.

Indeed, the past week’s longest trends on Twitter France are #guerrecivile (‘civil war’), #etatdurgence (‘state of emergency’) and #émeutes (‘riots’).

Unlike the previous major riots, the last of which was before the advent of social media in 2005, riots now rely on the heavy use of texting and video-sharing, changing both the nature of the clashes and the age of rioters, who are now younger than ever before.

“Social media are a distorting mirror of reality”, digital governance expert Leïla Mörch told French radio France Inter, acknowledging, however, that “at the end of the day, it is a social and democratic crisis”, thus nuancing the role of social media.

Meta confirmed on Saturday that they were in constant touch with French authorities and had put together a dedicated monitoring team.

Platforms are expected to gear up their moderation and deletion capabilities under a new EU-wide Digital Services Act (DSA), which will take full effect in France on 25 August.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.EURACTIV.es, Théo Bourgery-Gonse | EURACTIV.fr, Sarantis Michalopoulos reporting from Nanterre | EURACTIV.com)